Fw:Rewriting Dissent to please Henwood, et al

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Wed Sep 19 08:06:30 PDT 2001


Well, whether or not Mitchell (two "l"'s not one, the other guy, Mitchel, I like to mock cuz of his overheated rhetoric on GMO) Cohen and Michael, "All wars are unjust except wars against the Palestinians, " Walzer (as the jibe goes, unfair to the book, "Just and Unjust Wars, " but it makes a point, eh!), would have thought of inserting imperialist USG in their statement is another matter, but, just as in the debates in the anti-Vietnam war movement between, "Negotiations Now, " , "Bring The Troops Home Now!" (which as Carrol noted the other day, both the USG and the Movement saw would led inexorably to a defeat by the SVA by the NVA/NLF, as did occur two yrs. after the US withdrawl in '73) and, "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF Is Gonna Win!, " the nuances and rhetorical emphases of all these statements from the left, are good indications of varying levels of support or not for the Evil Empire whose address is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.Assuming the impossible, if Ron Dellums or Barbara Lee was the occupant of that address, then the US Empire would be well along the way to being dismantled.And further along that thought experiment, just as what happened on another September 11th, this one being 1973 in Chile, President Dellums or Lee, would be dead, and all of us, Leninists, left social democrats, anarchists, left-liberals and the International Proletarian Vanguard Tendency(M-L) (Provisional), (Sado-Masochist Bikers Club, Friends of deSade, sympathizing section, Bolshevik-Leninist Oehlerite) would be herded into sports stadiums or these! US CONCENTRATION CAMPS (supported by your tax dollars!!) ... the delivery of food to these camps under the supervision of UN Guards. ... of Saratoga Recreation center 200 - 300 yards off. ... is a site for a massive concentration. ... www.mumia.org/wwwboard/messages/2038.html Operation Garden Plot, Operation Cable Splicer, Concentration ... FYI-----TBone Concentration Camp Plans for US Citizens Supplied by Free Enterprise Society 300 W. Shaw ... www.mt.net/~watcher/camp79.html Concentration Camps in the US Today and Historical Precedents ... You are here ... 800-959-1991. "300+ concentration camps" (98/4/17), List of camps ... www.greaterthings.com/News/Concentration_Camps http://www.google.com/search?q=300+Concentration+Camps+NWO&hl=en Michael Pugliese P.S. I'll tell Stuart, to change to plain text. Jul 19 -- WW Chicago -- Re: LI: moderators comment and ... ... on the level of theory and evidence, eg "Mr. X stubbornly clings to his miserable Oehlerite line" in response to some post by Mr. X about the world today, not ... www.leninism.org/stream/98/li/0719-loupau.asp (Lou Paulson who appeared in a fwd. the other day here. WWP in Chicago? Or Czechago as some SDS'ers said at the DNC in '68 as the Warsaw Pact was crushing the Prague Spring as the CPD was having a police riot as the Commission report afterwards said.) http://www.google.com/search?q=Oehlerite&btnG=Google+Search http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Oehlerite
>From the archive of Wankers Vice
... and disintegration must be painted. Barely split from us, the New York Oehlerite caucus chief, a turncoat named Mendelsohn, left his friends, joined the SP ... alt.politics.socialism.trotsky - 24 Jan 1998 by Scott McLemee Heh, brilliant Scott! Wankers Vice! Add to my calling the RW of the RCP, the Revolutionry Wanker. And, last, last comment, didja know that Jerry Garcia gave 1K to the RCP every two weeks for yrs. until his last wife demanded he stop throwing away his money! Sectariana from leftist_trainspotters at yahoogroups.com

----- Original Message ----- From: Stuart323 at aol.com To: debsian at pacbell.net Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 2:16 AM Subject: Rewriting Dissent to please Henwood, et al

[I got to thinking what Walzer and Cohen could have written to satisfy the leftists on LBO. I'm not a very skilled churner of leftist phrases, but here goes. Bold is additions, [bracketed text would be omitted] [for comparisons in italics]

This is a time to speak quietly and act carefully...firmly, inventively, boldly, but above all carefully. With [all] Americans, with decent people the world over, we mourn the working class victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. By the time you read these words, more will be known than we know now about the number of the dead--probably also about the identity of their murderers. Perhaps the imperialist U.S. government will have mounted a military response. We can only write prospectively: how should we respond to this barbaric act?

The first thing to say is that there is no way to match the spectacle of the attack, and no good reason to try. A massive response might be theatrically appropriate; it won't be morally, politically, diplomatically, or even militarily appropriate. The working class [We] needs an anti-terrorism program that is measured and sustained over time. We need a program that is plausibly addressed to our real enemies, who do not have a street address or a central headquarters or an army or a capital city. Like global capital, the terrorists have no fixed address.

Who are they? They claim to act for the oppressed, against their oppressors; for the "south," against the "north"; for the world's poor, against the forces of global capitalism. All these claims are false. There are plenty of people in the world today who need a radical/revolutionary [left] politics especially the victims of American genocide, but terrorism is not that politics. It is not intended to be a left politics, and men and women on the left should actively repudiate apologists for terrorism--those who say, "Of course, it is wrong to kill the innocent, but you have to consider the frustration of these people..." No buts. Terrorists are parasitic on oppression; they are not friends of the oppressed.

[cf Campaign for Labor Rights :A clear and unambiguous distinction must be made between radical/revolutionary political action on the one hand, and terrorism on the other, regardless of whether the causes that *appeared* to inspire the terrorist action(s) are just. Open and unmitigated attacks on civilian targets do not advance radical/revolutionary causes and must be repudiated. Rather, such attacks inevitably antagonize the populace, weaken any existing popular support, and help legitimize heightened levels of repression by the imperialist state against *all* progressive/radical/revolutionary political activity, including increased restrictions on the civil rights of the people. ]

These terrorists are a new kind of force. They represent the basest religious and political emotions. Doctrinally, they are reactionary, fundamentalist, repressive; they are hostile to [liberal] revolutionary values and universal human rights. But they make brilliant use of the most advanced technologies and, despite their parochial commitments, they operate effectively in a global environment. They are organized in cells and networks, not in brigades and hierarchies. They make coordinated and sophisticated plans, but they don't need a Pentagon of their own to do that; a few basements, a few living rooms, with computers running, are enough. So terrorism has to be fought cell by cell: resolution and stamina are necessary; intelligence and police work, not military posturing.

Diplomacy is necessary too. This should not be America's war alone; we need a little help from our friends--even from our near-friends, political rivals, and economic competitors. We should work to assemble the largest possible coalition, so that states that provide refuge and support for the terrorist networks can be ostracized, embargoed, blockaded. In the immediate aftermath of September 11, political leaders around the world are pretending that terrorism has no supporters. In fact, it has supporters, and we should recite their names and rally nations, parties, movements, ordinary men and women, against them. In other words, transform the imperialist war into a revolutionary struggle against fuedal oppression, oil sheikdoms, and theocracies.

We have to defend our lives; we are also defending [our way of life] the working class. Everyone says this, but it is true. The terrorists oppose and hate our way of life--and would still oppose and hate it even if [we lived our lives far better than we do] the working class held state power.. It is critical, then, not to lose our way: the war against terrorism cannot be fought with [terrorism of our own] the reactionary terror of the capitalist ruling class; they kill innocent people; we must not. The war cannot be allowed to compromise the liberties of American citizens and others within our borders. [All of us] The working class must join together in resisting mob violence against scapegoated ethnic or religious minorities. And finally--this is critical too-this war cannot take the place of all our other wars: against poverty, hatred, and exploitation.

[As in WWII, revolutionary workers will oppose any "no strike policy." ]

Stuart Elliott



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list