The Red Purge's Lasting Impacts

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Wed Mar 5 21:37:07 PST 2003


Chuck O wrote:
>How about something that criticizes ANSWER and affirms the necessity for
many >movements against the war and for peace, all of which are democratic, open and >transparent.

I'd be against this. If someone's got plans to block DC traffic, say, I'd want them to stay secret, not be open and transparent. Lots of union stuff needs to be done secretly to evade employer spies--I support that, too. Also, this undemocratic charge, what's that about? Organized religion would be excluded--they certainly don't elect their leaders. A lot of anarchist groups are pretty exclusive--and I think it's more democratic to vote than to insist at all times on consensus, and when that doesn't work one faction does whatever they want and the other faction leaves. Anyway, it seems inconsistent that you're for variety but only of a certain variety.

In my view this kind of criticism of structure is a dead end when you're talking about coalitions. Disagree with the politics, argue them out, give reasons, then people know what you're talking about and can judge it on the merits.

Jenny Brown

P.S. I thought the official NLG statement on red baiting gave its reasons and made its case. Not in the group so I don't know the ins and outs.



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