I think you have to work with people that you disagree with even on many fundamental issues, in order to get things done. I am not sure, for example, why "liberals," if you can find anyone who will admit to being such a thing, I mean, _I_ will, but the people you are are thinking of will say I'm a commie lunatic, anyway, these "liberals" who support imperialism, why are thy worse than Stalinists, who make apologetics for the Gulag? I suppose the Stalinists are more or less politically irrelevant today, but so is anyone you can find who will admit to being a liberal.
And sexual and even racial bigotry is a dangerous litmus test. If you do union work, for example, you will work with homophobes and racists or you will not do union work. Many union members and leaders, rank-and-file opposition leaders, are neither, many are one or the other or both.
Surely the thing to do in many contexts, for example is you struggling against a corrupt or in-bed-with-management business unionist leadership, or if you are in a head-to-head with management, _especially_ if you are in a head-to-head with management, is to try to educate the bigots.
And this goes as well for the cases in which we have to work with Democrats to, for example, get a living wage law passed -- or, as a friend of mine involved in land use struggle against sleazeball Democratic power structure in the Michigan UP has found, with Republicans.
I used to do a lot of work in the peace movement with anti-abortion Catholics. They were great activists, dedicated, courageous, and I spent a fair amount of time arguing with them about their misguided politics on reproductive rights.
I do some work in the left Jewish community around Palestinian rights. That means I work with people who consider themselves Zionists. And they work with me. Reading them out of the movement would mean reading _me_ and the nonZionist Jewish left out of whatever marginal effectuality we have in the American Jewish community.
If you do civil rights work, you will find that there is a lot of homophobia among many African-Americans, as among white people. Will you refuse to work with homophobic African-American civil rights activists and leaders? Then you will find yourself not doing much in the black community.
There are lines. One doesn't collaborate with Nazis or the Klan, not that they'd collaborate with us or that collaborating with them would do us any good, quite the contrary. Or with Operation Rescue or the Rev Fred Phelps (the scumbag with the "God Hates Fags" slogan.)
But insisting that the global politics of any collaborators be pure, or even within what you'd consider the boundaries of reasonable disagreement, is a recipe for isolation and ineffectuality. The question has to be judged on a case by case basis.
--- BklynMagus <magcomm at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > Doug probably agrees with Fred Halliday that
> leftists should
> line up with liberals, even if they are imperialists
> ("Cooler
> Elites"), against religious, anti-imperialist
> populists who are
> fundamentally or may become illiberals
>
> Why is it either/or? I do not think leftists should
> ally with
> those who support any kind of imperialism, sexual or
> otherwise.
>
> Brian
>
>
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