[lbo-talk] "Critical Support" (Re: Fidel)

[andie nachgeborenen]

We have different experience. Mine over many decades
(I know you have more)  is that to build coalitions
and win support you have to establish common ground --
not just Out Now, but Should I Work With You? 

And a detailed denunciation with a bill of particulars
is not called for. All you need yo say, practicaly is
that Saddam Hussian (or whoever) is brutal tyrant and
I would be happy to see the Iraqi (or whichever)
people themselves get rid of him, BUT it' s not our
call. We should not be involved because . . . . 

All the left wingers denounce me as a bourgeois
liberal democrat anyway, _and they're right!_ so I
don't wrangle with then. But I never saw anyone get
anywhere with building an Out Now coalition without
the "X is an evil bastard and I don't support him"
preface. 

Actually with the Sandinistas and Castro it is a
little more complex because they are not evil
bastards, just people who do some bad things sometimes
and more good other times, so I get in troublde not
with the left but with the Democrats for saying so.

--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> 
> 
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > 
> > This is arrant none sense, pernicious claptrap,
> and
> > politically idiotic. One of the few places it
> matters
> > what we sat about Cuba, etc., is in live
> > antinterventionist movements. There the audience
> is
> > not the Cubans, etc,. but potential participants
> here
> > in the movements.  Needless to say, if you refuse
> to
> > say, Milosovic (Saddam, etc.) is a tyrant, BUT,
> you
> > will paint yourself into the self-isolated ghetto 
> 
> First of all, I don't think the last sentence here
> is empirically
> accurate. The _main_ negative response one gets from
> "potential
> participants" is always, in one formulation or
> another, What Good Will
> It Do? The mass of people simply don't hassle about
> this in the way
> leftists worrying about the mass of people do. And
> it is among the
> organizers that this hassle about Saddam etc does
> its damage: it is a
> barrier to discussing the things that need to be
> discussed. Chuck's
> lunatic response to you (quoted below) shows my
> point. You don't get
> that sort of looniness (or Mpug's sort) outside the
> narrowly defined
> left (and of course among dogmatic followers of
> Rush, etc). In mass work
> refusal to be sidetracked into "criticism" of Saddam
> or Milosevic or X
> simply doesn't bother anyone. But it certainly eats
> up meeting time
> among leftists and drives people away who are there
> for the first time
> and can't stand or don't have time for the
> wrangling.
> 
> Carrol
> 
> Chuck wrote:
> > 
> > andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > 
> > > I ask you the same question I asked Chuck: do
> you want
> > > the Miami Cubans back in power and Cuba as whole
> > > flushed the way the Nicaragurans were?
> > 
> > What a fucking stupid question!
> > 
> > Come on, you can do better than that!
> > 
> > You know, it is possible to oppose Castro, the
> Miami Cubans, the U.S.
> > government and support other more positive
> alternatives.
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> 


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