> You have - rightly in my view, castigated many who are discourteous -
> not to say infantile.
HK-----------------------
"Michael Pugliese" replies to this with: TWO SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTS:
(1) Hari, as someone who I sense has spent a good five decades, like Comrade Tron at leftist_trainspotters, agitating for communism, and alas, like the rest of the socialist and communist left, has over that time frame, seen the social networks influenced by marxism, dissipate and decline into irrelevence, I pose a despairing question, one I have increasingly obsessed over. What amount or level of blame do you assign marxist-leninists who, in more cases than not, exhibit extreme anger, hostility, arrogance, dogmatism, towards comrades in their own orgs. or supportive peripheries, let alone opposing currents, whether Trotskyist, Maoist, Stalinist, Hoxhaist, or Kumarist, for the decay of M-L? What possible attraction can there be to joining a cadre formation or broader mileau full of pricks that make jokes about virtual icepicks and spend most of their time not fighting capitalism, racism and imperial slaughters but berating and slagging fellow leftists?"
REPLY One: My Dear Michael,
This is a rare ocassion when you are not simply citing hyper-links at one. Thus it deserves a serious reply.
My age is irrelevant I suspect. But it is 53 - never one to be coy am I? This last Monday a.m. at 0230 - was the Ontario sky full of the Aurora Borealis, for hours in fact - it was a fine birthday present. I do not take it as any omen however.
But - What do I have to do with idiots who preach sectarianism, with ice-picks or pointless repetitive verbal "duels"? You lay charge/responsibility to myself and Marxist-Leninists - I know nor wish to know, of no Kumarists by the way - for the behaviour of idiots and charlatans in various left-wing movements.
What if were I to lay the onus for the many, many, Indeed vastly innumberable - RANK failure of Liberals and so-called "Rational Enlightened Ones" , and one end of the left-wing movement - on the likes of yourself and Doug Henwood? Would that indeed, be "Rational" or "Enlightened"?
Forsooth man. Talk sense. Judge my & Bill Bland's & Alliance ML analyses/actions - not the shibboleth of your encounters with others.
When did I wield an ice-pick-axe? Or threaten to do so? What ravings do you rave?
(2)"On the subject line...I've from the time I became a teenage marxist in the late 70's, despised ethno-religious nationalisms of any variety, being a sucker for that good 'ol Enlightenment rationalism, that is a common heritage of both marxian socialism and liberalism. So anti-Zionist arguments should be second nature to me. And, like the concrete oppression and exploitations suffered by Salvadoreans, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Vietnamese, etc., the Palestinians, have a more than just cause. But, unlike my days in CISPES, where the opposing side was so obviously bestial fascists, I find it more difficult to identify with the activist circles that agitate on behalf of the Palestinian cause in the USA, (with the exception of folks like this http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml foe example) 'cuz way too many, seem motivated by pure hatred of Jews and advance slogans and analyses and programs that are simplistic, utopian and extreme." Michael Pugliese---
REPLY: (i) I am quite unaware of what sectariana is the CISPES. It always intrigues me that you, who profess to be such a pure non-sectarian, are so full of the most arcane details about any tiny splinter - you revel in the details and know the grains/lines of cleavage intimately. An un-healthy obsession is my poor and presumptive diagnosis.
(ii) You wail about how..: "anti-Zionist arguments should be second nature to me". However - there is the rub eh? - "Should be".
At times like now when Palestinians and Aaahrabs are being slaughtered & carved up, you can make such high-minded fine distinctions, as those you do? "I would support what they say, but really - they just despise Jews.." _ Is this again your refrain? .. Well of course, you do say it more elegantly : "cuz way too many, seem motivated by pure hatred of Jews and advance slogans and analyses and programs that are simplistic, utopian and extreme."
You are a better man than that Michael. Salve your world philosophy in whichever way you want, and which allows you to live. But do not necessarily expect 53 year old farts to believe that this is anything than a modern day Liberal washing of the hands.
I have lost too many Jewish friends & progressives to their extraordinary refusal to accept that the Israeli apartheid and fascist state is ... just that. Criticism of Isreal and Zionist Imperial Designs does NOT equal anti-semitism. This is something that many - I suspect you are one - simply cannot somehow accept. Despite all you professions about attraction to "Enlightenment".
I heard Tarakai speak last week. Is a One State for Jew & Arab: "simplistic, utopian and extreme".
Ah well. There is another rub.
Hari Kumar