[lbo-talk] the other L word

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Feb 23 09:21:00 PST 2004


John Halle wrote:


>In a word, I would say yes, that's exactly what he is doing. Though
>I would imagine Nader's contempt for the LI derives from the
>Chomsky-Vidal side rather than the nativist right.

There's more than a touch of the nativist about Vidal. He fetishizes pre-Civil War America, when only white men could vote, as some kind of republican ideal, and has professed a lot of sympathy for Western European anti-immigrant feeling. And Nader has a xenophobic streak, e.g. his hysteria about trade (and pornography imports!), and a petit bourgeois one (he's more interested in promoting competition than effective regulation). So it's not that much of a stretch for him to pander to the Bubba vote.

What kind of politics is this, that depends not on organization and institution-building but on momentary coalitions of the variously disaffected?

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list