[lbo-talk] Chomsky, Nader, & the Green Party (March 20, 2004, Columbus, OH)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com, Sat Mar 20 09:06:54 PST 2004, 
March 20, 2004, Columbus, OH:
<snip>
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>The Anybody But Bush pundits who -- rather than simply advocating 
>>voting for John Kerry -- ask Americans not to cooperate with Ralph 
>>Nader and the Green Party are a vocal and yet tiny minority among 
>>US leftists; they are mainly sectarian intellectuals, few of whom 
>>are movement organizers and activists.
>
>Do you have any evidence for this claim? I doubt more than a handful 
>of union organizers support Nader. I guess you could call Noam 
>Chomsky a "sectarian intellectual," but you'd have a hard time 
>selling that to his many fans. And since when are activists better 
>qualified to make political judgments simply because of their 
>classification as activists?

I looked into the article "Chomsky Backs 'Bush-lite' Kerry" (Matthew 
Tempest, March 20, 2004, 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1174017,00.html>), 
but Chomsky simply advocates for voting for Kerry, unlike the Anybody 
But Bush pundits who vilify Ralph Nader and the Green Party.  Given 
his position on political freedom, I doubt that Chomsky will ever 
join the anti-Nader/Green crusade.  That's the difference that I 
referred to in the sentence that you quote above: it's one thing to 
say, "Vote for Kerry"; it's another thing to say, "Don't dare to 
compete with Kerry, or else" -- e.g., Jon Johanning, "If they get 
enough votes to put Bush back in, they will be absolutely blackballed 
and non-cooperated-with by the rest of the U.S." (at 
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040315/005923.html>). 
Unfortunately for the poor ABB pundits, however, they have no 
cultural hegemony over "the rest of the U.S." and no power to 
"blackball" anyone.  :->
-- 
Yoshie

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