<<Didn't Marc Cooper do a show where he had Unz on as a guest on KPFK???>>
I heard him do a Pat Buchanan interview, but I must admit I am not shocked. KPFK's roots are in the old left, and it long ago made its peace with the underlying status quo. The after glow of 1930s popular front politics is alive and well in the form of opportunistic cozying up with any bourgeois force which sounds progressive on a point or two. For example, Arianna Huffington, a right-wing columnist can criticize the bombing of Yugoslavia on tactical reasons and she is -- unbelievably -- part of the KPFK teach-in a Leo Baeck Temple. My prediction is that listeners will be able to spend hours at that teach-in fruitlessly waiting to hear a simple truth I heard at a late 1960s teach-in against the Viet
Nam war.
If you are opposed to the war (either one will do), then you must understand that they arise from imperialism. And if you are, therefore,
opposed to imperialism, then you must realize that imperialism is a stage of late capitalism. Therefore, the soundest antiwar position is one that opposes these wars to their capitalist roots. If not, then reformist approaches, such as 1968s "Bring the boys home." or 1999s "Stop the bombing" prevail and leave the causes of these wars untouched. With the
capitalist engine of war left intact, future Vietnams and future Kosovos
are inevitable.
My conclusion, the KPFK-Nation-Americans for Democratic Action troika (founded by Hubert Humphrey in 1948 as an explicitly anti-Communist liberal organization!) will happily disseminate right-wing and liberal criticisms of Clinton's Yugoslavia policies, but not a truly class-conscious, left-wing criticism which will move those attending to an anti-capitalist position.
-- Marta Russell