[lbo-talk] Re: people in glass cages shouldn't...

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>The concept of "monsters" is a mental block that prevents us from
>>analyzing the history of Iraq in particular and the nature of
>>political power in a modern state in general.  The approach we we
>>want is a combination of historical materialism and concepts such as
>>"the banality of evil" developed by Hannah Arendt.
>
>Oh, right, I keep forgetting the Correct Line.
>
>Is it ok to say the Ba'athist regime was monstrous? Or is that a
>contravention of the Correct Line as well? If it is, better tell Noam
>Chomsky and Tariq Ali, who both used that sort of language when I
>interviewed them.
>
>Doug

The Correct Line, of course, is to paint Saddam Hussein or the 
Ba'athist regime as a Monster and leave it at that, but the word does 
not add anything to an understanding of the Ba'ath Party.

Tariq Ali actually has an extended analysis of the origin and rise of 
the Ba'ath Party in his _The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, 
Jihads and Modernity_.  Have you read it?

Yoshie