Nathan Newman wrote:
>My god Doug-- if being a personable guy was exclusive of supporting
>monstrous crimes, most of the worst crimes of history could not have
>happened.
-I said reasonable and sane and in his presentation non-monstrous. -When you hear all kinds of nasty things about a group and an actual -member fails to live up to the billing you wonder what's up. Maybe -it's all a ruse, who knows?
I don't think either myself or Chuck ever said that WWP folks were socially incompetent. Unlike the Sparts, they are solid organizers, grant them that, which requires some degree of reasonable presentation of self. I've ended up working with them in other coalitions in the past (out in the Bay Area) and my points have repeatedly been that the problem is that their politics are monstrous and the effects of building empty coalitions led by them is the retardation of effective long-term mass organizing.
And as I said, true monstrosity is the "banality of evil" that Arendt noted where quite reasonable people believe and further quite evil ends, all while smiling and kissing their children goodbye each morning. This applies from WWP-allied North Korea to the Bush White House-- and to all their defenders.
-- Nathan Newman