The morphing of accusations against the Cubans involved is exactly the kind of rhetoric that McCarthy used.
Why is it so hard for people just to say, Castro is engaging in human rights violations of a high order here. He is executing people and imprisoning non-violent dissidents. Whether you agree with the "timing" of the petition against those acts, the refusal of people to just call a human rights violation a human rights violation is exactly the problem.
And why I'm doubly glad I signed the petition and hope many leftists follow suit.
-- Nathan Newman
----- Original Message -----
From: andie nachgeborenen
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 4:33 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Cuba petition
The CPUSA never wavered in its official view (from 1936 on) that it was seeking change by peaceful electoral means. It predicted fascist dictatorship during the McCarthy period, and asserted the right of revolution in the face of fascism, but it did not take an RCP like position that violent overthrow was its strategy. And while the CPUSA took money from the Soviets, who, btw, did not use the specific language of peaceful coexistence during the Pop Front Era, neither did the Soviet Union ever _officially_ adopt as its goal (at least after Lenin's death) the violent overthrow of the US govt; the chill of the Cold War period was, like the CPUSA's, due a prediction that US woquld initiate conflict, not to am unrealistic long or short term aspiration to overthrow it. You cold wat liberals buy all the old anticommunist myths -- Reds under the Bed, seeking to Overthrow Our way of Life and make us all learn the Cyrillic alphabet. You'd think people would know better by now. jk! s
Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
Well, to get the facts correct-- the coexistence language was abandoned after Browder until Krushchev and it was that period that coincided with the height of McCarthyism.
And the folks being imprisoned in Cuba are themselves officially committed to working within the Cuban system and changing things politically. Most are associated with the grassroots Varela petition project.
So again, there is no condition in that regard that is really different about the CPUSA in the early 1950s and the Cuban dissidents presently being jailed in Cuba.
-- Nathan Newman
----- Original Message -----
From: andie nachgeborenen
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 3:10 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Cuba petition
Actually, oddicially, the USSR had abandoned the goal of ovethrowing the US system under Khrushchev. The watchword was "peaceful coexistence." The CPUSA was (whatever some its members may have privately hoped) officially committed to peaceful change through electoral means (Practically speaking it was (since 1936 or so) and is entirely under the wing of the Democratic Party.) You cold war liberals never get even the basic facts right. jks
Luke Weiger <lweiger at umich.edu> wrote:
> Officially, the Soviet Union was trying to overthrow the US system, which
is
> one reason they were funding the CPUSA. Everything people say seems to be
> supporting McCarthy in his arguments.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
The only difference is the likelihood that the government in question might
be overthrown.
-- Luke
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