Corn transcript

Liza Featherstone lfeather32 at erols.com
Tue Nov 19 17:21:47 PST 2002


Chuck0 wrote:
>
> That was my point. Liza didn't shy away from criticizing ANSWER in her
> articles and provided some context. I wouldn't be surprised if Liza got a few
> emails from ANSWER/IAC supporters accusing her of red-baiting. In the eyes of
> the authoritarian Left and their supporters, intra-movement criticism is a
> verboten topic.

You're absolutely right about this. Anytime anyone writes anything critical about ANSWER/IAC or even the ISO, the accusations of red-baiting pour in. I realize that far left party-builders do face some unfair McCarthyite dismissal just for calling themselves Communists -- and much of Corn's criticism is just that, btw -- but that doesn't mean that fellow leftists shouldn't question their tactics, secrecy, off-putting style, beliefs etc. It is just brain-dead to keep silent on important movement issues, which is of course why people do keep criticizing. I was horrified by everything about Corn's O'Reilly appearance, ranging from the way he conducted himself to the fact that he did it at all. I think it was a terrible thing to do. I didn't like his LA Weekly article either, because he made no distinction between different far-left groups, but just assumed they were all the same and functioned identically in the movement, and that all were having a bad effect. He didn't ask, for instance, did the RCP have an important/bad effect on the NION demos, and what was that effect, he just assumed that the very participation or presence of such a group was, by definition, bad for the movement. Nor did he consider nuance: the influence of a group like ANSWER might be good in some ways, bad in others.

But casting all critics as "red-baiters," is a really twisted externalization mechanism on the part of these parties and sympathizers who share their totalitarian mentality (I know I'm going to get nailed for that last phrase, but the impulse to silence criticism IS totalitarian): there's nothing about ourselves we need to examine, we're victims, let's demonize and/or try to intimidate the critics. You would think at some point they would say, hey, it's not just the tepid David Corns of the world, we're also getting a lot of criticism from people who genuinely share our hatred of capitalism. But their organizations are not structured to encourage that kind of thinking.

Liza



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