I'm anti-religion. Your arguments aren't very persuasive. You've even shifted this discussion from the destruction of a few crappy Catholic churches to the destruction of landmarks. I have plenty of reservations about destroying landmarks, but then I'm also keenly aware that the institutions which those landmarks represent are oppressive, horrible insitutions.
Blowing up Notre Dame is a crime against humanity? Jesus Christ! Talk about hyperbole!
Have you ever visited Notre Dame? I have. It's a nice old church, but nothing to write home about. I'd be more interested in saving some of the bigger gothic cathedrals.
And where is it written in stone that these landmarks have to last forever? Eventually they will crumble into dust and be replaced by something else.
But this is all irrelevant, because we're talking about Spanish anarchists who destroyed churches that were the everyday base of power for religious people who supported the fascists. I see the actions of the Spanish anarchists and others as being understandable given the war they were fighting against the Fascists.
> Please notice (a) that I am not a Marxist, much less a
> Stalinist or Marxist Leninist, (b) I don't give the
> Bolshevists and Stalinists a pass on their butcheries
> and didn't here; (c) I agree with whoever it was that
> said that the relevant comparison point, if you are
> doing body counts, is before the Bolshies got state
> power, since the anarchists never wielded real power,
> and btw didn't wield the power they did in a very nice
> way, and finally
Right! Anarchists never wielded power! Which is the whole fucking point!
That's one reason why anarchism is better than Marxist-Leninism.
> (d) Let's stop this silly old battles:
Well, you say this and then attack anarchism below. What's your point?
> 1) Stalinism is a dying religion and has been for 50
> years, with no more chance at state power than Howard
> Stassen. Antistalinist Marxism is politically
> irrelevant and has been historically even more
> irrelevant than Stalinism.
Stalinism isn't dying. It's dead. But authoritarian leftism lives on.
> 2) Anarchism stopped being a force in US political
> life around the time of the Palmer Red Raids. Like the
> CPers, the anarchists do some good activist/reformist
> work with some fire-breathing rhetoric, but that'
> about it.
What a bunch of nonsense.
> Consequently it is really quite immaterial whose
> irrelevant movement is nastier. We are not going to
> get anywhere until we stop fighting debates that even
> few of the faithful give a flying fuck about any more.
My movement is incredibly relevant! I wouldn't spend every day working to build it if I thought it was "irrelevant."
Bu then, I'm plugged into it enough to know that your dismissal of anarchism is laughable.
Are we going to go on to something more interesting or are we going to continue with these pointless exchanges?
Chuck