So, Yoshie, can Stalinist be criticized and excoriatedwithout commiting the horrible vice of red-baiting? Or is the "left red-baiting" the commie analogue to the "self-hating Jew" rebuttal of the Zionists, a way to short circuit criticism and condemnation evenw hen it is merited?
After all, Stalinists are advocates of tyranny and repression, apologists for mass murder, at the very best self-deluded about the real nature of the regimes they defend, hard as that is at this late stage, and, although this is not the worst of their crimes, they are major causes of the decay of the fortunes of the left. But it is not permitted to say this, even if it is true, because this is red-baiting? Get real, grrrll, you are too smart for that. --jks
In a message dated Thu, 6 Jul 2000 2:41:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes:
<< Christine Petersen wrote:
>sent to another list, from a poster who sees himself as libertarian leaning
>conservative. he gave it the subject heading.
>
>http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz.html
>
>
>What he's saying here is basically the same thing that he always
>says: anyone who is even slightly left, say a vegetarian pacifist
>democrat, is really a stalinist. What is the proof of this? David
>Horowitz used to be a stalinist, or maybe it was maoist, and so he
>would know. qed. Moderate progressivism is just a big front or cover
>for these raging pathological lunatics.
<snip>
>So don't go and even associate with any people who are slightly into
>progress who use the deceptive terms of 'civil rights', or 'justice'
>or 'peace', because it's on a steep road of no return.
This sort of red-baiting (favorite epithets include "Stalinist," "authoritarian," etc.) is quite common among American liberals and leftists (loosely defined). Though in another thread Tim Shorrock, Johannes Schneider, Jean-Christophe Helary, I, etc. argued that U.S. imperialism stunted democracy in Japan, Germany, and practically everywhere, we forgot to add that U.S. imperialism had the most damaging effect on political culture in the USA itself. There probably is no country on earth whose liberals & leftists are so committed to red-baiting as America.
The U.S.-led Red Purge didn't destroy communism in Japan, Germany, Italy, France, etc. as totally as it destroyed it in the USA. Marxism = Stalinism in American minds. And it is not just the Right that subscribes to this formula. American liberals & leftists can't blame right-wing ideologues like David Horowitz alone when the formula comes back to haunt themselves, since the American Left (very loosely defined) are quite fond of Stalinist-baiting.
Yoshie
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