> There is a slight difference between the liberal attack and the left attack;
> the liberals attack him to boost their personal respectability, the leftists
> to boost their personal radical cred. But the pathology is the same:
> suspicion of any popular left phenomena. If the people are listening, the
> message must not be worth hearing. How are we supposed to change anything if
> we think that way?
A very interesting piece, full of some harsh truths about how the Left shoots itself in the foot constantly. I really don't want the "Left" to "get it," because I'd rather see the anarchists and anti-authoritarian left to move beyond this self-defeating behavior. Still, the author of this piece is right about how the left kicks any of those within our ranks who are successful. There are many things that can be said about Michael Moore the man and about his movies, but the guy produces really cool agitprop that strikes a chord among the masses. His film is set to hit the $100 million mark in sales, which means that millions of people are seeing the flic. Other political movies have done well, as have left books, including Barbara Ehrenreich and Eric Schlosser's books. I've been told that Thomas Frank's book is doing very well.
It is fashionable on the Left to diss those of us who do well. It's fashionable to dump on Chomsky. I haven't heard much criticism of Amy Goodman, but I'm sure that people throw mud at here. I know that from my personal experience that anarchists and leftists will bust on me because my projects reach lots of people.
In his new book, Thomas Frank talks about how the Republicans inflate this myth about how they are "persecuted" and "victims of liberals." At the same time, leftists in the USA have this "beautiful loser" mentality. We like to spend our time writing books and celebrating our triumphs of a century ago, instead of going out there, taking risks, and creating our own history. We've built up this mythology about how we were persecuted out of existence, which did happen, but which doesn't excuse inaction in the 1980s, 1990s, or the aughts. We've built up this entire mythology about COINTELPRO and government repression, when very few activists will ever experience any form of government repression, especially the white leftists who talk about the Black Panthers and COINTELPRO all the time. And the 1930s were a unique situation. History may repeat itself, but it does so in new ways, if it repeats at all.
W.P. Kinsella wrote this excellent book which was turned into the movie we all know as "Field of Dreams." One of the famous lines from that movie is "if you build it, he will come." Michael Moore's work is an example of that attitude--you are going to stay marginal if you do nothing ambitious to talk to the masses. The left has the capability of making movies and publishing best-selling books. There has always been a demand for our ideas, but the naysayers among us have held a stranglehood on our potential. We also need to stop the silly talk about when the "right conditions" will happen for a "revival of the left." We really don't need this form of Calvinist leftism, as Seattle and other things have shown that we can be active agents in the creation of history.
And then cool things happen like spotting an IWW hat on a rock star during a episode of VH-1's "I love the 90s." The 1990s, not the 1890s.
Chuck