> Their politics are very crappy and they should not be legitimized.
Crappy politics can be argued against, but what's particularly bad about Platypus is the disingenuous pose of equidistance.
If you recall, sometime ago the Platypus newspaper published an awful article by Joachim Bruhn. When confronted about this, Cutrone maintained his pose that Platypus does not endorse Anti-Germanism, but rather sees both Anti-Germanism and Anti-Imperialism as opposing manifestations of a "crisis of the left".
But then, some months ago, the very same Cutrone said in the course of another online discussion (I can't remember where exactly, most likely the comments section at Principia Dialectica), that Platypus does *indeed* feel affinity for Anti-Germans.
So that's the thing, the whole two-faced pose of distance while subtly and indirectly offering a platform to the positions that one suspects Platypus *really* sympathizes with.
Incidentally, after I raised a stink about the Joachim Bruhn piece, Platypus made the offer to me that they would publish my translation of a respectable critical history of the Anti-Germans by Bernhard Schmid, who now lives in France, is a member of the LCR/NPA, and who reports on France and North Africa for German left media. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't do it for them. Eventually I will probably publish that piece on my blog, where it won't legitimize Platypus's fake critical stance.
And besides, who the fuck still talks about any "crisis of the left" with the global Occupy/Indignado Bewegung?!! This is the time to separate the real leftists from the "critical critics".