--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> The problem with red-baiting as an obsession is that
> it does not respond
> to the case in front of it
What Carrol is trying to say here is that Stalinists have such a scummy history that they dont want to talk about that...they prefer instead to point their fingers at western capitalism's oppression and atrocities and forget about the one's that stalinists have made. A red-baiter is anyone who reminds them of the atrocious stalinist regimes instead of just focusing on the limited class of regimes that they dislike.
Of course, George Bush and company do this from the opposite perspective. They point to the stalinist atrocities and would have us forget about the
When they call on us to "unite"...it means that we should forget the atrocities committed by the stalinist regimes as if they never happened and stick to criticizing US imperialism, etc.
Then we get the binary thinking that stalinists love to engage in where they basically say we must choose between the capitalist bloc or the so-called "socialist" bloc, ie stalinist regimes. The dont allow for a third alternative which is to accept neither form of oppression.
-Thomas
===== "The tradition of all the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"
-Karl Marx
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