Maybe it would help this debate be productive again to try to de-personalize what Yoshie is asserting.  I'd like to take a crack at re-articulating what I gather to be her perspective, compare it to my own and see what corrections that gathers.   To summarize what I take to be her consistent opinion is that religious populists in the middle east are better Marxist-leninists than the region's secular self-proclaimed Marxist-leninists.   She thinks this because 1.They offer serious national resistance to the US empire, which is the greatest threat to humanity; and 2. They do so with the actual masses, as opposed to more traditional secular leftists in the region who have little popular support.   I suppose a part of the disagreement stems from the fact that Yoshie (and maybe carrol too, and I don't know who else) feels the US empire is by so far and away the world's biggest problem, that it being opposed by a populist (and capitalist) religious dictatorship or an equivalent party/militia, is good enough to merit our political support.   Doug (and most everyone else on the list?), on the other hand, while seeing himself a dedicated foe of the empire, also opposes theocracy, authoritarian dictatorships and their respective local elites enough that he takes a glum pox-on-all-their-houses attitude.   The thinking goes that, while the US empire might be the biggest worst out there, the global surge in oppressive ethno-religious fundamentalism (from all corners--- in its evangelical, Pentecostal, islamist, hindu and what the heck mormon varieties) is so bad itself it needs or deserves no aid from us.   The aspect of this I notice right off the bat is how Doug et al's "god they're all horrible" attitude, while consistent, has the air of fiddling and shrugging while around the world a lot of people are fighting and dying in some very serious battles that eventually will be won or lost for better or worse.   Yoshie on the other hand evinces what in its best light is a pragmatic realism that engages in the struggle of ideas and forces at play, to a specific end, with a specific strategy:   'Sadr's movement might do and be a lot of awful things I wouldn't condone in Columbus, but in the context of the charnel-house where the empire seems to be unraveling a bit, if he can unite the nationalists against the US across sects and also crush the al qaeda style apocalyptic islamists, he's worth supporting, and I think he can.   The Iranian regime might do some awful things, but all states and movements do, and if it can help Venezuela etc stand up to both the US military and the neoliberal consensus its worth not only supporting but gushing about.'    Taking realism to the extent of supporting religious dictatorships and party/militias that are drilling holes in peoples heads is a response to the crisis of socialism, right?   We'd rather have the 'should we support…' debate about a, say, Nasser, or an arab version of lula's PT.  But in much of the world the left specifically, and secular nationalism generally, is either in deep retreat or extinct ( latin America happily excepted).  Nowhere more so than the middle east.  There in particular, the forces of secular liberalism have come to be tied to local pro-western elites.   Those more explicitly and consistently left-wing are miniscule, confined to intellectuals, some filmmakers and exiles.   The desire to throw one's weight where the masses and the battles actually are, and not where the ideological purists are, is definitely my own inclination.   Someone is going to stand up to the bullets and bombs my payroll taxes paid for over there, and it looks like right now the masses in their millions are doing it are in religious parties, whereas the leftists who talk my game don't have the strength or support to do much more than talk.   Many supporters of the Iranian regime, Hezbollah and Sadr might condemn homosexuality and women's rights and other ethnicities, but then probably many members of my own union do too.   I'd rather be in a fighting working person's organization with ordinary people who have a range of opinions, many of them conservative and few of them like my own, than retreat into the comfort of the purist womb, the sect, the ivory tower or the countercultural clique.   That's just my own inclination and elko Nevada is as far from Baghdad as imagineable, but I feel agreement with Yoshie to the extent I a sympathetic with standing with the masses (with all their contradictions or problems, and Hezbollah has a hell of alot) in a clear shooting fight against a great evil like capital or empire than to throw ones hands up in disgust at how bad things are all around.     But if all that's so, I can't help but wonder why Yoshie would combine a pragmatic realism that stretches the popular front further than its ever really gone for countries in the middle east, but maintains such rigid ideological purism for US and western leftists.   If the populist islamists' conservatism reflects genuine contradictions and traditional sentiments among their constituents and that's okay, then why in the US is nobody good enough, not Bernie Sanders, not a lesser evil dem, not the unions, etc?   In the US consistent and traditional Marxist-leninists are as marginal as they are in Iran and Lebanon.  I believe this means we need to do what george Jackson said, and get to the left of the people and pull.  Working with, supporting, and building organizations, coalitions and people closer to the center than we are is part of rebuilding a mass center-left, left, and eventually radical left.   I guess this distinction derives from the fact that we are in the center of the empire.  Yoshie said something like 'if the US weren't the hegemon, a local version of the western European left would be enough.  But we're in the belly of the beast, so its more important for us to oppose the beast than anything else.'   But if we don't rebuild a mass left, which would probably start with more 'mass' than 'left' and move incrementally, we can never kill the beast.   That means finding common ground with all kinds of people in all kinds of ways here.  We used to get a hundred people out to free Palestine rallies in Richmond va, but that left aside 199,900 others in the city.  You know?   At one point yoshie did open up her religious-populists-are-better-leftists-than-leftists-are to include the belly of the beast right here, noting the progressive positions taken by the mainline Christian denominations in the US.  But that subject being further from her areas of expertise, she glossed over reality to a greater degree than when she applies this abroad.  A mass version of the Green party is not going to be formed by an ecumenical congress of latino parishes of the catholic church (or much less Pentecostals!), the episcopaleans (small, shrinking and composed of the wealthiest strata of our society), the Methodists (whose pews include bush himself, this largest mainline church a mirror of our own society's political divisions in which the left is the smallest part of the divide), the most popular religious leader in the black community today (TD Jakes not Al Sharption) (running-dog democrat anyway huh), and Unitarian universalists (as large and relevant as your average socialist sect is).   These mainline churches are all shrinking, and except for those of people of color, consist of upper-middle class white christians.  The future of Christianity in the US is less denominational and more ideological-cultural, and presently oriented to the republican right, not the green party left.   And to be honest, I'd rather debate the why's and why not's of political engagement with conservative religious people in the United States rather than the middle east, because our attitude to those of iraq is irrelevant to actual events, whereas whether or not we can construct a mass left in this here country of zealots is the only way we can ever do our own part to tearing down the empire from the inside.   But that's just my thing.