[lbo-talk] Todd Gitlin on "Incoherent Left'

David Green davegreen84 at yahoo.com
Wed Jan 26 14:04:34 PST 2011


While we're discussing the reading habits of undergraduates, let's not forget who's teaching them. This is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Review":

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Incoherent-Left/126011/

It's quite possible that the Verso book is primarily a fundraiser. But if so, why take it too seriously? Todd Gitlin's MO, since the 1960s, has been pro-Israel as a cover for anti-left:

"It's good to represent the ex-colonial world, but why a Palestinian poet who heralds "the glory lost since Umayyad conquests"? Why reproduce bumper-sticker slogans from groups like the Crips and Bloods, while omitting Albert Camus? Why may kibbutzniks not apply? Why honor the Sartre who declined the Nobel but not the Sartre who for decades defended the State of Israel's right to exist?"

"They quote Albert Einstein when he opposes the terrorist Menachem Begin in 1948, when he writes compellingly about socialism in 1949, when he co-signs a humanist, anti-cold-war manifesto with Bertrand Russell in 1955, but not during the many occasions when he declared himself a Zionist."

David Green



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list