Douglass In Context

Leo Casey leoecasey at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 9 10:58:06 PST 2000


Over the course of three decades of activism on the American left, I have been called many things, I have been red-baited, pink-baited, and gay-baited; hell, for the crime of having campaigned for Gore's election as the best way of advancing progressive causes, I have been condemned on this very listserv as without principles; for the crime of holding democracy as primary value, and of eschewing political alliances with those who are its self-avowed enemies, I have been condemned as a cold war anti-Communist. All of this goes with the terrain, with an inbred, marginalized American left that would rather turn in on itself at every opportunity than have any effect on the larger political world. But I have to admit that this is the very first time I have been called a "neo-conservative." I don't know who would be more surprised at discovering that we were political soulmates, Midge Decter, Getrude Himmelfarb and Norman Podhoretz, or me. I suppose I should be offended by being the object of such a characterization, but my reaction is just that it is so dumb, such an incredible leap of logic and such a stupid reach, that it is next to impossible to muster anything but bemusement at the lengths to which this type of discourse can be taken. This is the "Christian" form, I suppose, of the Third Period charge of "social fascism." Call this discourse what you want, but the terms sectarian, dogmatic and ultra-left seem quite accurate descriptors to me.

How, pray tell, do you make any sense of a diatribe which begins by describing as your political ally, someone [Foxman of ADL] you don't know, never met and insofar as you are even aware of his politics, don't agree with them? This is a classic McCarthyite technique, in which you are faced with the challenge of proving a negative. I don't have a clue as what Foxman has to do with anything here, except that -- apparently -- he and Chip have crossed swords somewhere.

For the record, although I began my life on the left as part of the pacifist Catholic left, and although I have always had much more affinity with the pacifist tradition than with the archetypal American glorification of violence that marks the self-avowed revolutionary left, I do not hold to an absolutist position on non-violence. I am closer to the position of Frederick Douglass, which -- when all non-violent means have been exhausted, and where there is some reason to hope for success -- would support the measured and limited use of violence. It is bizarre beyond belief, however, that a commitment to an absolutist pacifist position -- a position held by Norman Thomas, A. J. Muste, John Lewis, Bob Moses, James Farmer, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Daniel and Phillip Berrigan and David McReynolds, by CORE, SCLC, the original SNCC, the Catholic Worker movement, the War Resisters League and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, to name just a few American radicals and organizations in this vein, would become a criteria for establishing "neo-conservativism."

It also strains credulity how criticisms of ultra-left politics, of the type of "revolutionary suicide" which has been advocated on this list [not my term, but the terminology employed by its very advocates], constitutes an espousal of "a heroic, romanticized electoral center." What it is is a refusal to engage in a pseudo-politics which leads to certain and deserved marginality.

But I have seen this particular ritual played out too many times, as those on the American left turn their fire on those one step to their right to establish their credentials as authentic leftists, to not see it as a paradigmatically psychological exercise that has little to do with either logic or politics.


> Hi,,
>
> I am sure some of your red-baiting friends and
> allies (Foxman at ADL?)
> continue to regard me as a "sectarian and dogmatic
> ultra-left" devotee, but
> I am a democratic socialist and Christian social
> justice activist. Have been
> since I was a teenager. Commie friends, but no
> card. Democratic centralism
> always seemed like an oxymoron to me. Surprise.
> See my article "Abstaining
> from Bad Sects" objecting to sectarianism at:
>
>http://resistinc.org/newsletter/issues/1999/12/berlet.html
>
> The quote you cite has two errors fixed in later
> scholarship:
>
> "depreciate" and "roar of its many waters"
>
> That's the nitpicking part. You might want an
> accurate quote. Perhaps not. I
> think historical accuracy is important. I argue
> with editors over ellipses.
>
> The larger issue is the typical argument of the
> discredited
> "centrist/extremist" theory of neoconservatives
> that there is a sharp line
> detween "legitimate" protest in the heroic
> romanticized electoral center,
> and the so-called irrational extremist "lunatic
> fringe" which sometimes
> takes to the streets. Debunking this claim is a
> central feature of the new
> book I cowrote on "Right-Wing Populism in
> America."
>
> http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/more.htm
>
> Douglass disagreed with John Brown, but considered
> him a friend and ally.
> Douglass, in the full quote, makes it clear that
> the struggle he supports
> may well include confrontation, even violence,
> perhaps death for those
> resisting oppression.
>
> This is what you appear to condemn as
> "revolutionary suicide." My argument
> is that your use of the Douglass quote to defend
> your neoconservative
> politics of genteel discourse among the truly
> deserving centrist elites is
> like citing Carl Sagan to defend UFO sightings.
>
> haiku for struggle
>
> democracy rocks
> noisy protests in the streets
> frowns high in rich suites

Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --

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