> At 11:10 AM -0400 19/8/02, Tom Wheeler wrote:
>
> >Ah yes, another leftist calling for the imprisonment of people for *thought
> >crimes*. Lovely.
>
> I have my doubts there's much *thought* going on in Chuck's head when he comes out with that nonsense. But in any case, it isn't what he thinks, but what he says, that disturbs me.
>
> To my mind, when someone publicly advocates the necessity of dispersing people, they are as guilty as the people who actually do it. If the advocated dispersal of people is going to result in millions of deaths, it is at the level of a crime against humanity. The advocates of crimes against humanity, the advocates of genocide, mass murder, slavery, torture and other such horrendous crimes, have to take responsibility for what they advocate. The sad truth is there's some weak-minded people who might act on such nonsense.
>
And ironically, Chuck0's "we must disperse people" plan - held up by himself as a programmtic part of anarchism whether other anarchists like it or not - is exactly one of the ten points advocated at the end of The Communist Manifesto. (See Point 9 at the end of the Manifesto, about redistributing population equitably between town and country). And this from someone who has supposedly "moved beyond" left and right, and endorses "Post Leftism."
It's as inane as the assertion that libertarian socialists need to reassess themselves after the fall of the USSR in the late 80s. The libertarian left had criticized the USSR for its failings since 1917.
Brian Oliver Sheppard