This is absolutely the key! The problem would not have happened if the moderator of the meeting had firmly said, "That is off topic. Next." But the moderator is a nice liberal woman member of the Democratic Socialists of Columbus, Ohio, so she put the topic on the meeting agenda. . . .
On 7/11/07, Chuck <chuck at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> I think that the American Left has collectively underestimated this
> problem.
<snip>
> My approach to the conspiracy theorists has been one of confrontation
> with the more rational members of this movement.
I 100% agree with you. The problem is that most anti-war activists here mistake polite tolerance of BS for "freedom of speech" and "broad coalition building," so they have no stomach for confrontation. Strangely, a number of these very polite people are anarchists and socialists, and some of the latter even belong to Marxist-Leninist organizations like the International Socialist Organization! Apparently, politeness overrules whatever ideology they have. Michael Pollak's observation is correct: "the main norm [of the USA] is politeness" ("Hitch on Borat," <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-November/022637.html>).
On 7/11/07, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> We're having similar experiences in our local anti-war group
On 7/11/07, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> I was just at
> Mayday books (a Mpls radical bookstore) and all the people who have worked
> there now buy into this stuff. I really can't understand how people who
> are ostensibly Marxist could buy into this stuff....
BTW, a local twist is that the Columbus chapter of World Can't Wait, an RCP front group, apparently has many overlapping members with "Columbus 911 Truth": <http://www.columbus911truth.org/>; damn, the group has even organized a "TRUTH Film Festival": <http://www.truthfilmfestival.com/>!). This "right opportunist deviation" is a purely local phenomenon, not the deviation of the RCP itself, right? If so, whatever happened to democratic centralism? If there is any use for democratic centralism at all, it has to be to put an immediate stop to BS of this nature. "Marxists" who buy into BS have forsaken Marxism.
Lenin's words should never be applied out of context, but when it comes to conspiracy theory, my inclination is to follow his "Better Fewer, But Better."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/02.htm>
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We have been bustling for five years trying to improve our state apparatus, but it has been mere bustle, which has proved useless in these five years, of even futile, or even harmful. This bustle created the impression that we were doing something, but in effect it was only clogging up our institutions and our brains.
It is high time things were changed.
We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all. -- Yoshie