[lbo-talk] Enough of Adolph Reed

[Wojtek S]

I have not been on this listserv for while, but I must say that I find it
refreshing to see that Cde Cox's is still posting on the dangers of
supporting Democrats.  Although I still believe that we need an institution
to change the US system, the recent experience plus some reading convinced
me that the Dem party is not that institution.  What is more, the Dem party
under Clintons effectively sabotages social movements trying to change the
status quo.  Far from being an instrument or even an ally, the Dem party is
the Trojan horse or the fifth column inside any progressive movement
hell-bent to destroy it.  I would not be so harsh on Obama though -
whatever one may say about his policies, he left remarkably clean air after
himself, free of any malfeasance, corruption, fraud, or outright criminal
conduct (unlike the Clintons).  As I see, "his" policies are crafted by the
Clinton machine inside the Dem party - just like Bush's policies were
crafted by Karl Rove, Dick Chaney and the Vulcans.  Obama and Bush are for
the most pat figureheads announcing these policies.

Wojtek

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 8:03 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:


> From a recent article by Reed, published by Common Dreams:
>
> " I assume readers get the allegorical point of that story. Just to drive
> it home, here’s another, more dramatic one that Harold Meyerson adduced
> last month in The American Prospect: in the early 1930s, as the National
> Socialists gained strength, Ernst Thällman, the Chairman of the German
> Communist Party held to the line that the Social Democrats were a greater
> threat to the working class and to the possibility of revolution than were
> the Nazis. The Communists’ conflict with the Social Democrats was both not
> without justification and mutual.  Some Communists believed that the
> elements of the working class who were drawn to the Nazis, e.g., those in
> Ernst Röhm’s Brown Shirts, could be won from them. In 1931 some sought to
> collaborate with the Nazis to bring down the weak Social Democrat
> government. In expressing the conviction that the Social Democrats were the
> main danger in German politics, Thällman uttered the quip that has long
> outlived him as a cautionary device: “After Hitler, our turn.” His point
> was that a Nazi victory would expose them as fraudulent with no program for
> the working class. What Thällman didn’t count on was their success at
> criminalizing and liquidating all opposition. He died in a concentration
> camp."
>
> This tired tale has been endlessly repeated by various political cowards
> calling themselves "leftists." It is simply despicable.
>
> There is no doubt that Adolph Reed is both highly intelligent and
> well-intentioned -- which goes to  demonstrate that there is no necessary
> or even probable connection between intelligence & intelligent arguments,
> and it also underlines the old saw re the pavement of the road to hell.
>
> I have often argued in the past that "Fascism" was a special product of
> the inter-war period in southern and eastern Europe. The endlessly repeated
> squawks about the Fascist threat have the utter stupidity of the following
> bit of logic:
>
> X is a mammal
>
> Therefore X is a rabbit.
>
> There are real threats to "bourgeois democracy" in the United States, but
> they don't come from either Trump or the likes of David Duke.
>
> They come from the Clintons, the Obamas, and the fools who support them.
> The great achievement of the Obama Administration is to legitimize and
> raise to standard policy the wars initiated by the Bush Administration.
>
> Clinton's  Crime Bill was far more sinister than any of Trump's ravings.
>
> Carrol
>
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-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."