>>If you have always thought of me as a terrorist sympathizer or a
>>Taliban fan, though, why have you not told us up front?
>
>I don't think of you as such. Not at all. Tahir assembled evidence
>of something you said didn't really exist.
I thought that the question at hand was whether there existed "the inability...to say that it's barbaric to blow up cafes or drive airplanes into buildings" and, if it did, whether it was widespread, rather than opinions about RAWA, the Taliban, the conditions of women in Afghanistan, etc. One can surely condemn terrors, at the same time as discussing, for instance, the likely limited class basis of groups such as RAWA as I did in the post Tahir cites (my opinions on the matter are not identical to Lou's and Mac's though Tahir might like to present them as such).
>Like I said the other day, on the American left (assuming it exists,
>of course), there's a widespread tendency to invert the claims of
>our leaders: the U.S. is uniquely good becomes the U.S. is uniquely
>bad; the U.S. is the beacon of hope for the world becomes the U.S.
>is an oppressive and destructive force without rival; Americans are
>the freest people on earth becomes Americans are the most oppressed
>and conformist; the U.S. is the most tolerant and open society in
>the world becomes the U.S. is the most racist, etc. This kind of
>thinking rules out any positive contribution of this often appalling
>country (and its often admirable people), or any consideration that
>French and Malaysian capitalists are happy to exploit their own
>workers and have the Pentagon guard the rule of capital, or any
>consideration that some social forces could on occasion be worse
>than U.S. imperialism. I like what Negri had to say about
>anti-Americanism in that interview I posted earlier.
I haven't read the Negri piece about "anti-Americanism" that you posted yet. I wonder what he would have to say about the dialectic of terror and counter-terror -- a subject about which an exiled and then imprisoned Italian radical may have a thing or two to say. I think, though, his opinion about America is altogether too abstract, based upon _Empire_.
As for there is "any consideration that some social forces could on occasion be worse than U.S. imperialism," during the heydays of Stalinism, the Popular Front, etc., such consideration was an essential element of the dominant culture of the left. The JCP, for instance, defined the U.S. occupation as "a liberating force," which made them unprepared for the Red Purge to come. With regard to the fact "that French and Malaysian capitalists are happy to exploit their own workers," the problem of U.S. imperialism is that generally it strengthens the hands of the exploiting class (often times backward sectors of the class to boot) in other nations -- that's what imperialism does, be it American, British, Japanese, or whatever. -- Yoshie
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