Save us from 60s Nostalgia (RE: Sweeney Defends Gore Endorsement

Apsken at aol.com Apsken at aol.com
Wed Feb 16 06:13:22 PST 2000



> For me, the major excitement is that the level of activism seems to
> be rising to 60s levels. It's a quantity issue more than a quality
> one. In fact, as the much-demonized Marc Cooper said to me at the
> Seattle jailouse demo, "They're smarter than we were."

That was the good side of Doug. Unfortunately, when Austrian activists similarly took to the streets with militant protests, Doug insulted them with a one-line caricature and preferred the company of a snobby above-the-fray celebrity academic. I'll keep my fingers crossed that Doug's negation-of-the-negation will soon be at hand.

When masses of demonstrators, including Doug, took to the streets in Seattle, Doug was not swayed by sophistries about whether or not the WTO was the perfect target, whether everyone's motives were pure and their tactics perfectly executed, and so forth. But when Austrians took to the streets in a massive anti-government movement that continues to swell every week, all that Doug (and not only Doug, other more fervent anti-activist LBO-talkers too) wanted to discuss was Zizek's banalities on Haider and Haider's bourgeois critics.

That is scholasticism with a vengeance, at a time when one should be taking sides and sending messages of solidarity, seeking to link up the militants on both sides of the pond.

Ken Lawrence



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