Carl Remick wrote:
>UKers were asking for it because of their reckless foreign policy
Foreign policy, British and American, is obviously a big part of the story, but these guys were British, and hardly poor. So the mechanism is a bit more complex than simple blowback.
Doug
^^^^^ CB: Think racism and anti-racism
It is not difficult to think of British youth of color identifying the racism they experience at home with the racist, imperialist wars on the south Asian countries with religion and ethnicities related to theirs.
Plenty of Black American youth have been anti-US based on identification with foreign victims of color of U.S.imperialism and racism.
"Middle" class youth, students etc., are often politically more active in this regard than working class youth. Political fighters for the poor are often not poor themselves, say on the U.S. left. Left parties usually have more petit bourgeoisie and middle incomed than working class members. It would not be unsual for non-poor to take on a role of representing the poor.
It is not really hard to believe or understand that if the UK had not invaded Iraq, these youth, ethnically affine with Iraqis, would not have retaliated on behalf of Iraqis, Afghanis, etc.
^^^^^^
And Michael Pugliese:
"don't lefties and liberals overdo the poverty breeds terrorism line?"
^^^^^ CB: No. See above. "Middle classers" frequently are the larger numbers in political vanguard , armed struggle groups representing the poor's grievances vis-a-vis the power structures around the world. It is not an indication that armed struggle is not "bred" by the poverty that the armed strugglers are not themselves out and out poor.
James's discussion below is thoughtful. But an armed struggle/terrorist group doesn't have to be left or progressive or a working class national liberation group to be objectively caused by imperialist aggression. Historically, lots of retaliations against imperialism come from colonialist groups with rightwing or bourgeois ideologies.
National liberation movement is contradictory from a class standpoint, combining bourgeois, working class and peasant elements.
Bottomline on this is discussion of how armed strugglers/terrorists' acts have causes other than imperialism lead to what action ? None. Surely it would be a grievous error to conclude leftists should support "anti-terrorist" campaigns by the imperialist governments. The fact that the London bombers might be British citizens or not poor should not deter anybody from blaming those bombings on British imperialism. Only the link between terror and imperialism gives LBO'ers something to act on: Stop the U.S./British Crusading war.
James H.: Part of the problem is accepting the blanket label, terrorism, which is more often than not, loaded.
It is important to distinguish the popular struggles that were branded terrorism (I am thinking of 20C. national liberation struggles, primarily) and those individual acts of terrorism, like the Unabomber, or indeed Timothy Macveigh.
Also, once popular movements can descend into individual terrorism when they lose contact with their social base. That happened in France in the early 20C. when the revolutionary socialists were isolated by the legalisation of the trade unions. The Bonnot Gang used terror to carry on their underground struggle in increasing isolation as most French workers embraced legal unionism (See Richard Parry's book for an over-sympathetic anarchist account). So to the Irish National Liberation Army in the 1980s, which had carved out a popular base to the left of the IRA were isolated by the latter's turn to the left. Less constrained by popular expectation, and holding authority over its membership by reckless encounters, the INLA descended into murderous feuding, which cost it a whole generation of cadre.
And then there are those pseudo-revolutionary sects that aped the military organisation of third world national liberation movements more as a cover for their own lack of support, than because they were responding to popular demands. I mean the Red Army Faction in Germany and Italy. In Italy, in particular, these claimed from war-time Partisan militias that had been isolated by the Italian Communist Party's constitutional politics. In Germany, the actual roots of the RAF in '68 failure was more apparent.
These latter movements were more a psycho-social expression of the collapse of popular militancy than an expression of it.
My argument is that the Al-Qaeda 'movement' has much more in common with the latter than with the national liberation movements. It is a loosely-based coalition of usually western-based or cosmopolitan intellectuals, who are characterised by their distance from popular struggle. Their actions are largely arbitrary, because they reflect isolation rather than movement. Their tactics are rightly called terroristic, because they relish killing people and commonly demonise the masses as corrupt and unworthy (somthing they have in common with the R.A.F. and Unabomber).
To consider this as a popular reaction against Western policy seems to me to be wholly deluded. It is quite distinct from, in fact isolated from, the militant opposition to American and British forces in Iraq, even.
And if that's what Fox News is saying then Fox News is a more trustworthy newssource than the LBO list. --------------