> I'll have to see what Chuck's authority over it will be, I've had some of my comments on his news board censored, which strangely makes it more authoritarian than most message boards I'm on.
Yes I've posted to infoshop under the pseudonym "rise" and had a large number of posts marked as "flamebait" - these were posts about 5-8 pages in length that were detailed critiques of the primitivist and pseudo-anarchist bull**** that routinely gets paraded around on that site. In addition he banned the outgoing IP from my college, and a popular ISP in western Canada, merely in an attempt to prevent me from posting to the site. Obviously his "censorship" policy has nothing to do with whether or not a comment is legitimately serious, or ethically acceptable, and has eveything to do with whether or not he politically agrees with the views expressed. Infoshop is a good example of what happens when a person has no accountability or responsibility, and merely censors things based on opposing ideological view [ie - if it's a real, social anarchist piece, he'll censor the fuck out of it more often than not].
As for the questions, I'm far too young to have been there, but here's what I've gathered from my own research over the years...
> * Was the main SDS split of PL/WSA and RYM over the "national question"?
Kind of. The PLP joined the SDS in an entryist fashion to try and take it over and, when this failed, they were given the boot. The "Worker Student Alliance" was another front group formed by PLP. The split was, primarily, over the contradicton between all of PLP's policies and those of the other two SDS factions.
A huge part of this was the national question, because the RYM faction supported Hispanic and African-American national liberation movements, whereas the PLP didn't [and in fact didn't have much of an understanding of the dynamics of racism within north american society].
> * Why did RYM split into RYM I and RYM II?
RYM was the radical left opposition in to the PLP/WSA and, as such, was a loose opposite slate within SDS. They split over disagreements in strategy - the Weathermen advocated the need for underground guerilla activities, and RYM II were more into party building and such.
> * What was the relationship between BARU, RU and RYM II?
BARU was basically an ML-M (Marx-Lenin- Mao Tse-Tung thought, later just MLM Marxist-Leninist-Maoism) formation set up in opposite to what was seen as the "soft ML-M" of PLP. BARU set up a position on national liberation that was realistically in line with both the Chinese communist's views on national liberation, and also advantageous to the growing revolutoinary situation in the US.
As it turns out there were, surprise surprise, PLP entryists in BARU as well (such as Bruce Franklin). So in '68 the hardcore M-L sections split from the soft M-L ones and the RU was formed. They continued on until the RCP was formed around '78 and '79 over the whole Deng Xiaoping revisionist thing when the MLM movements was divided around the world over support for the new, "revisionist" regime or the gang of four.
> * What is the family tree of RYM II? Was it born of SDS and BARU? Were there RYM II groups not part of the RU/Venceremos/RCP group?
RYM II came out of a whole bunch of SDS factions, but it didn't come exclusively out of BARU. The RYM II line of party building over armed struggle was more or less concurrent with the BARU line at the time, so the two had overlapping membership, and BARU's leader (CHairman Bob "exile in style" Avakian) was a leading member of RYM II.
Venceremos was the group formed out of the '71 RU split led by Franklin. They had all these guerilla-warfare, going underground ideas, and they adopted a lot of the "Che Guevara" brand of stalinism over Avakian's straight up personality cult brand (there were important distinctions over and above this, obviously, I'm just being cynical abour it). Venceremos were ironically criticised as being infected with "anarchist" ideas. They went out, tried to organize armed struggle, got their asses kicked and were decimated, and then folded. Pretty short lived history. So yes there were ex-RU and RYM II people in Venceremos but their line was contradictory to that of the RU.
- paul