Terrorism and Globalization

Rob Schaap rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au
Sat Dec 1 23:50:57 PST 2001



>but i happen to think the attackers are nothing more than another group
>that >wants to share the imperialist stage.

I happen to think this, too.


>i cannot support anything that encourages them to think that their action
>was >appropriate and that their action got them what they want.

If they're the pragmatic bastards we think they are, then the ends may well justify the means for them. As I can't believe they didn't expect Washington to react massively, killing lots of innocents and opening itself to opportunistic charges of anti-Islamismin the process, I am obliged to suspect they may well have achieved their ends (as it were).


>i cannot support policies that will help bring them to power.

We don't know who they are, we don't know where they are, we don't know what their strategy is. Hard to know which policies will culminate in what, then.


>they aren't fascists, but they're close enough for mine. as i keep saying,
>they're reactionaries. i refuse to support them.

So don't support 'em. If both sides wanted their flaming day of reckoning, neither side is worthy of support, I reckon.


>sheesh. i've expl'd this so many frickin times. i HAVE considered the
>arguments you presented above. that's why i gave the answer above when i
>gave it, twice on this damn list already! :)

Funny, that's how I feel!


>rubbish. have you not read habermas on feminist consciousness raising as an
>exemplar of his theoretical perspetive?


>From the vantage point of discourse ethics, I don't think you have redeemed
a central validity claim (that your interlocutor was in fact doing what you said he was doing, meaning what you said he was meaning, exemplifying/perpetuating the structural oppression which you said he was exemplifying/perpetuating). I don't think the claim was necessary to the argument you said you were making, either (ie that structural oppression persists via the normalising of his desires at the expense of the 'elision' of hers). So I'd argue a point of relevance, too.

And 'tis the better argument Habermas wishes to issue from discourse, not the more pointed personal attack.

So I'll stick by my rubbish on that one.

Cheers, Rob.



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