Carrol
On 6/9/2011 3:40 PM, Dissenting Wren wrote: I don't know what we disagree about either! I just picked up on a line that said "Wren might disagree..." So maybe we don't disagree on anything, and merely imagine that the other might disagree about something, somewhere, in some possible world...
Clearly, Gandhians in India are a whole different animal, and I should have distinguished them from Western Gandhians (some of whom, like David McReynolds, are politically admirable, even though their Gandhi is a projection of their own moral imaginations). And Gitlin, Naiman, et al. are no Gandhians at all . . . except when they are telling other people to be Gandhians. (Or did I miss them when I was out campaigning and going to jail for unilateral US nuclear disarmament?)
----- Original Message ----- From: // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Cc: Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2011 3:26 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Todd Gitlin: the most pompous ass ever?
On Jun 9, 2011, at 3:17 PM, Dissenting Wren wrote: I was once a pretty down-the-line Gandhian. My training as a political organizer came from the War Resisters' League, I spent time in jail for civil disobedience, etc. But during that time, I knew nothing at all about India, and the Gandhi I thought I knew something about was little more complicated than Attenborough's Gandhi. It wasn't until I went to grad school and actually started to learn something not tied to my own moral projections that I discovered (a) that Gandhi was a much more complicated figure - for better and worse - than I had imagined, and (b) that India's independence movement was far more than the Salt March writ large.
I agree with most of what you wrote, so I am not sure either what in my post (which you responded to) you are disagreeing with. Perhaps you are unhappy that I agree with R. Naiman that the obvious course for Palestinians to pursue is non-violence (on which Gitlin happens to be right). So be it. At this moment, I find it not needing debate and so obvious a point that even stating it invites the question of motive (and hence such questioning of Gitlin). However, I will read with good attention contrary writings here on the list. They might well change my mind on this point.
I would like to add that those of us who are still down-the-line Gandhians don't fall into neatly divided camps of Attenborough idealists or 90-volume educated Westerners (no disrespect to Finkelstein; or you). When we talk about Gandhian non-violence we are not speaking either of Gandhi as sainted by Attenborough, or the single entity as embodied in his writings.
-ravi
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