> -----Original Message-----
> From: mike larkin [mailto:mike_larkin2001 at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 2:49 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Chip Slimed
>
<<SNIP>>
>
> Being red-baited by these clowns is true flattery. Way
> to go, Chip!
<<SNIP>>
Red-baiting the National Lawyers Guild goes back to the McCarthy period. What the author fails to mention is that finally the NLG warned the U.S. Attorney General that if the NLG was listed as a "communist front organization" it would sue the government, on the grounds that while it welcomed everyone who agreed to the NLG statement of principles (including communists) as members, it was defamatory to call it a "front." The listing was dropped, but professional red-baiters still make the claim because it had been made by witnesses at various red-hunting committees, and in the anti-communist press.
As for my really interesting experience with the Friends of Albania group, I wrote about this for the Resist newsletter, where it should be clear that personally I am not a fan of Leninism, much less Stalinism, but I am willing to work in coalitions with a broad range of left groups as long as they abide by the larger principles of unity of the coalition or mass group. See my fun ruminations in "Abstaining from Bad Sects," at:
http://resistinc.org/newsletter/issues/1999/12/berlet.html
But facts apparently don't stand in the way of a good sliming on Horowitz's FrontPage.
Real democratic progressive coalition work will always attract the red-baiters.
So I embrace this red-baiting as "true flattery."
Chip Berlet Senior Analyst Political Research Associates http://www.publiceye.org