Several weeks ago, a very small group of individuals (apparently belonging to ‘APOC Philly’) disrupted the 2009 CrimethInc convergence — a gathering of ‘White supremacists’ according to the Smackheads. They shouted, among other things, ‘Go back to Europe!’.
The meme seems to be catching, as in Melbourne last week another, ‘anonymous’ mob distributed a leaflet in the suburb of Frankston, informing African immigrants who might choose to reside there that they should instead ‘Go back to Africa!’. In both cases, the fallout has been interesting.
A ROW has broken out between state and federal MPs over a racist leaflet that attributes rising violent crime to African residents in social housing.
The leaflet, distributed in Frankston over the weekend, reads: ”Do you want Frankston to become like Dandenong? The state government intends to build 386 high-rise commission flats in the centre of Frankston and fill them with Africans.
”The levels of violence in Dandenong and Noble Park have risen sharply since the huge increase in the African population,” the leaflet claims.
Labor MP for Frankston Andrew Harkness said the leaflets were ”found by unsuspecting residents on cars parked in their driveways last Saturday” and were also put up on telephone poles and outside a primary school. He called the leaflets ”a disgraceful and inflammatory dirt sheet aimed at inciting racial violence and hatred in Frankston”.
He said the number of flats specified in the leaflet was incorrect and there were plans for about 70 units in the Frankston area.
Mr Harkness suggested federal Liberal MP Bruce Billson and state upper house MP Inga Peulich had incited anonymous campaigners to produce the leaflets through their involvement in campaigns against the proposed social housing. ”(Mr Billson) has consistently misrepresented the facts and incited the sort of response we saw last weekend,” Mr Harkness said in Parliament on Tuesday.
Mr Billson said he found the leaflets disgusting and had no part in their production. ”It’s an appalling, baseless, juvenile, cheap shot under the privilege of Parliament from a muck-chucker who’s not done anything to address a genuine local community concern and has resorted to this kind of gutter tactic instead,” he said.
In Parliament Ms Peulich said Mr Harkness’ remarks were offensive and asked that he make a public apology. ”All members of Parliament are united in their stance against racism, and any attempt to falsely impute or invoke racism is counterproductive to a cohesive Australia and Victoria,” she said.
The fracas in Frankston and the pandemonium in Parliament it produced naturally brings to mind the rather inexpert efforts of Tories in NSW to capitalise on anti-Muslim feeling. Just days before the last Federal election, a fake leaflet [PDF] was produced by Tories in Lindsay claiming that a fictitious Muslim group (“The Islamic Australia Federation”) was giving the ALP its full support on the basis of the ALP’s own ‘support’ for the Bali bombers[!].
As for the leaflet distributed in Frankston, it’s on a par with various forms of racist samizdat that periodically draw wider, principally media-driven, attention. The leaflet’s authorship is unknown, and the bigot responsible has wisely decided not to attach his name to his handiwork. The reaction on racist forums has been predictable. On the Australian Protectionist Party’s forum, for example, a racist using the handle ‘Oz’ responds (Re: Leaflets warning of African migrants ‘racist scaremongering’ says ethnic council, August 15, 2009, 07:56:15 PM):
Well done whoever made those leaflets, but no one will listen to them. They will all encourage diversity, with the local mayor being so outraged by these leaflets he’ll probably bring in a few [A]frican families himself… it[‘]s not until their [sic] raping and pillaging that they’ll realise what they’ve done.
Note that the APP presents itself as being a ‘moderate’ alternative to the more straightforwardly anti-Semitic ‘Australia First’ Party.
On his blog, fellow APP forum member Scott — a person described as an ‘anarchist’ by student journalists in Sydney — contends that it is “more and more commonplace” for him to view such material, and also “more and more common for these leaflets to be written in a sensationalist manner in order to garner media attention. The reason for this is that journalists, unless they can use the “racist” or “nazi” card, will very rarely cover any issue regarding mass immigration or racial tensions” (http://anarchonation.blogspot.com/2009/08/racist-leafletting-condemned-while.html).
Notwithstanding the mountains of evidence to the contrary, of course. (Mind you, Scott thinks that the Holocaust was a joke, and that fluoridation is a Communist plot.) He does have a point, however, in noting that the strong feelings of his fellow white nationalists, when not placated by those in authority, can sometimes result in violent outbursts. According to Scott, this is the fault of ‘multiculturalism’.
On Scott, former ‘Southern Cross Soldier’ turned ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ supporter ‘VectorBased’ (Re: Leaving The “Movement”, Reply #12 on: August 15, 2009, 12:47:02 AM) writes:
VB: “I’ll take a crowd of proud Aussies on Australia [D]ay over a bunch of Nazis pretending to be [‘New Right’], [‘national anarchist’], moderate, or intellectual, or whatever group the skins [sic] feel like dressing up as that week.”
Luke Connors: “Amen from [sic] my part, but I have a feeling [Scott] is not going to like you much.”
Yeah, I know, but the only reason he gets angry is because he knows it[‘]s true. He’s taking orders from The Master Race in Sydney, and going to questionable music events, and then cracks it when people point out that the promo video for his “anti fascist” ideology contains a guy with a shaved head, all while blaring Blood Red Eagle for theme music.
Looks Nazi. Sounds Nazi. One can only guess Nazi. If he wants to stop the Nazi question constantly hanging over the group, stop appearing to be Nazi. It[‘]s simple.
VectorBased is here referring to the leadership role of Sydney-based Welf Herfurth: Mister Wolf is the MC for the 2009 Sydney Forum, a former or current member of the German neo-Nazi NPD, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, the Australia First Party, Blood & Honour NSW, Australian Friends of Europe (AFE) (formerly known as Australian Friends of the BNP), the New Right/’national anarchists’ and, most recently, Volksfront Australia (along with Douglas Schott, the diminutive vocalist for Blood Red Eagle).
Finally, a sensational Eurasian blogger writes that “If we gave Sudanese families places to live in Glen Waverley or Toorak or Brighton, you might hear complaints from the locals, but you would also hear less about Sudanese gang crime in general – because the kids would grow up in an environment that is all about academic success and social advancement.” This, in my opinion, is a superb idea, with obvious preference to be given to Toorak: unlike proles, rich people are never racist, and Toorak has ample room.
…while there is, as usual, loadsa stuff i wanna write about, i am, unfortunately, sick as a dog. in brief and in the meantime: Racist leaflets target African refugees, Edwina Scott, The Australian, August 14, 2009 (& ‘Frankston leaflet bags Dandenong’, Jason Gillick / Michael Randall, Frankston Independent, August 11, 2009)… 1 + 1 = 3 = 8 — a shop on Sydney Road that a few local knuckleheads believed for some reason I worked at — now has a website… Leftist Trainspotters Wiki forges ahead like… um… The train of the Predrevoyensoviet… in an incident that will bring a wry smile to Dion’s face, Charity workers’ bodies in boot, Clifford Levy, The Age, August 13, 2009 (“THE bullet-riddled bodies of a Chechen activist and her husband were found in the boot of their car, the latest in a string of high-profile killings in Chechnya under its Kremlin-backed leader…”)… hurr hurr… Russia is funny… hurr hurr… No God No Master, currently in production, stars David Strathairn and takes place during the Red Scare of the 1920s…
that is all.
(almost)
They held up a stone.
I said, “Stone,”
Smiling they said, “Stone.”
They showed me a tree.
I said, “Tree.”
Smiling they said, “Tree.”
They shed a man’s blood.
I said, “Blood.”
Smiling, they said, “Paint.”
They shed a man’s blood.
I said, “Blood.”
Smiling, they said, “Paint.”
~ Dannie Abse (Adapted from the Hebrew of Amir Gilboa), 1982
Curious as to what might have motivated Leonard Zeskind to write a hatchet job on Noam Chomsky, I thought I’d look a little closer at his bio.
According to Zeskind, in addition to winning various awards and grants over the last 20 years or so for his journalism:
I am a life time member of the NAACP, [and] have in the past served on the board of directors of the Petra Foundation and the Kansas City Jewish Community Relations Bureau… I am president of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which examines racism, anti-Semitism and far-right social movements; analyzes their intersection with civil society and social policy; educates the public; and assists in the protection and extensions of human rights.
He is also, supposedly, a former member of the (now-defunct) Leninist ‘Sojourner Truth Organization’. According to one source, Zeskind was, along with Elaine Zeskind (his wife), responsible for establishing the STO in Kansas City in 1973. The STO itself was established in 1969 (or possibly 1970), and departed this world 16 years later, in 1985. Some of those formerly involved in the group (?) have established an online archive of STO publications (Insurgent Worker, Urgent Tasks: Journal of the Revolutionary Left, and various pamphlets); elsewhere, a fella called Michael Staudenmaier has a blog — The Sojourner Truth Organization: Notes Toward a History — with a view to publishing his research as a book. According to Mike:
I intend for my book to be a political intervention, aimed at anarchists and other revolutionaries, encouraging a rethinking of contemporary theory and strategy by drawing on the experiences and perspectives of a largely forgotten group of revolutionaries. I’m not interested in what one former member called “sociology” (by which I think he meant depoliticized, academic assessments), but rather in the lessons that can be learned by present-day and future radicals from this particular corner of hidden history.
One blog entry (May 26, 2006) explores ‘The Legacy for Anarchists’ of the STO. On a spotterly note, Mike writes that:
From beginning to end of STO’s existence, one of the group’s guiding principles was the notion that white people, including white workers and poor white folks, have certain privileges that give them advantages relative to any and all people of color. The idea of white skin privilege is now probably best known among anarchists through the journal Race Traitor, which not coincidentally was co-edited by Noel Ignatiev, who was a founding and long-time member of STO. Race Traitor was particularly popular with some segments of the membership of the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, and again Ignatiev was briefly a member of L&R in the mid-90’s. A different version of the white skin privilege analysis has gained currency among those anarchists inspired by the writings of Chris Crass and in turn by the work of feminists of color like Elizabeth Betita Martinez.
Mike makes passing reference to Leonard, contrasting the approach adopted by those supportive of the concept of a ‘threewayfight’ to that being pursued by Zeskind. Thus:
It is worth noting that a different, more institutional and less confrontational version of anti-fascism draws on roots inside STO as well. The work done by Lenny Zeskind, a long-time member of STO, with the Center for Democratic Renewal in the nineties, contributed to the emergence of a variety of community-based, but definitely not anti-capitalist, anti-fascist coalitions in many parts of the US. The CDR, in turn, was originally founded as the National Anti-Klan Network, one of the initial left responses to the Greensboro Massacre; STO members were among the founders of the NAKN in late 1979.
In summary, Zeskind is a former (?) Leninist and member of the STO, responsible for establishing the groupuscule in Kansas City, and having written articles for its publications. In 1979, following the Greensboro massacre, he helped form the ‘Anti-Klan Network’; subsequently, the Network transformed itself (1980? 1985?) into the ‘Center for Democratic Renewal’ (CDR). The CDR closed its doors in
With regards the political and social milieu from which STO emerged, Mike further notes:
When STO came into existence, the New Left was reeling from the sudden collapse of SDS in 1969, and the founders of the group were drawn away from student organizing and toward workplace organizing as a venue for challenging white supremacy and building a revolutionary movement. From the start, members of STO took jobs in factories and attempted to make connections among the various forms of spontaneous resistance that were then common in a variety of industrial contexts. For the first several years of STO’s existence, this approach was the defining characteristic of the group, which was referred to in left circles in Chicago as “those people who organize in factories.”
Which fact gives me an opportunity for another spotterly digression, this time in the direction of the New York based zine Next Left Notes, which has a kick-arse family tree tracing the (mis-)fortunes of the various children of SDS. The STO’s ‘industrial turn’ also brings to mind similar efforts by members of what was then known as the Socialist Workers Party (now the Democratic Socialist Perspective) during roughly the same period (see : The Fourth International and the circle spirit).
And ah, a whole lotta other stuff, which I’ll elaborate on later — if I could be arsed.
In the meantime, SDS spawned a monster. Many monsters in fact. (Semi-)Contemporary descendants include:
Robert Fuller, “a 54-year-old Sydney Catholic priest has been arrested and charged after allegedly attempting to groom detectives who were masquerading as a 13-year-old girl, sending them a series of sexually explicit chat-room messages.” In response, “The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell said: “This is appalling and distressing news. I share the concern and alarm of parishioners, and particularly of parents and the school community. I can assure them that the safety of children in our parishes and schools is paramount, and the Archdiocese will co-operate fully with the police in relation to this and any other investigation into abuse at anytime.”
ROFLMAO!
NB. “Father Fuller used two names during the conversations – “rr” and “rogers_2468″ the document stated” : http://www.myspace.com/rogers_2468.
I feel sorry for the majority of Catholic priests whose ‘criminal acts’, such as they are, typically confine themselves to drinking (too much), smoking, gambling, and fucking (other adults).
“Dear young people, let me now ask you a question. What are you going to leave to the next generation? What legacy will you leave to young people yet to come? What difference will you make?” ~ Pope Benedict at WYD08, Sydney
Read also : ‘Starvation Army’, Skeleton Army, SCAM, [c.1999] : Twelve Reasons to Reject the Salvation Army. An expose of the Salvos and all their dirty laundry, revealing the far right links and insidious interests of this major ‘charity’ — essential reading for any one interested in the rights of the poor in Australia and anywhere else the Salvation spreads their dirty wings.
Trawling the web for texts on the history of ‘white nationalism’, I stumbledupon a new book by US writer Leonard Zeskind titled Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). The subject is one in which I have a keen interest, so naturally when I obtain an over-priced copy in 10 years time at one of Melbourne’s better second-hand bookshops, I will read it. Until then, I will have to content myself with listening to the interview Leonard Lopate conducted with Zeskind on the subject of his book for WNYC in June 2009 (see above link).
As it happens, I’ve encountered Zeskind’s name before — he’s written quite extensively on the subject of white supremacy and the far right in the United States.
…anti-Americanism is a solid part of American life. But consideration of its ramifications is largely absent from the discourse inside the left… The questions must be asked: Are some opponents of U.S. imperialism also fundamentally anti-American? Do some anti-Americans serve as a core anti-imperialist opposition? The answer is “yes” on both counts.
I see: ‘anti-Americanism’ is as American as cherry pie (and ah, violence). To not be anti-American, then, is to be anti-American.
I think.
As for Chomsky, according to Zeskind, Uncle Noam:
…is representative of [a] trend on the left, a trend that mirrors conservatives on the right. Rather than finding the two-sidedness of American national life, they see only one aspect. The conservatives love their mono-dimensional country unconditionally and believe all others to be traitors. Those like Chomsky abjure their mono-dimensional enemy with unqualified contempt and believe all others to be morally bankrupt. It is a tendency rooted in the anti-imperialist movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the search for revolutionary agency.
Zeskind then goes on to describe this movement as it manifested in the United States, claiming that Chomsky “has emerged as the principal spokesperson for [this] older “anti-American” anti-imperialism”.
In essence, Chomsky embodies ‘anti-Americanism’.
According to Zeskind, he is also:
…an “anarchist,” we are informed, which he defines as a “libertarian socialist.” He is a free speech absolutist, we are reminded whenever a protest is lodged about his relationship to Holocaust denial and Robert Faurrison. And for twenty-five years [sic] he has been an indefatigable fighter against U.S. foreign policy, writing books faster than many people read the Sunday paper and giving speeches at every available venue. He has often skewered the hypocrisy of American elites, but at the same time he has demonstrated little understanding of the dynamics at work among the American people. For two decades, Chomsky has repeatedly sung one analytical note. Sometimes he hits the right target. Other times he has been remarkably tone deaf. One note. One idea.
America is Bad, mmmkay?
Among Chomsky’s many (other) crimes, Zeskind nominates: his delivery of a speech on the subject of US imperialism in May 1990 at the university in Hamburg — while at the same time ‘foreigners’ “were being burned out of their homes and attacked in every city”; his ridicule of the notion of ‘anti-Americanism’ and; his failure “to find a democratic or progressive thread within the American national narrative”, especially as it is to be found in the work of Eric Foner and “the industrial labor movements that culminated in the formation of the CIO in the 1930s”. In summary, according to Zeskind, Chomsky’s “frame of reference for democracy remains completely in the Third World”.
Finally, while noting that he is “not a neo-Nazi”, and does not deny the occurrence of the Holocaust, “Chomsky most certainly does not capitalize the H in Holocaust and give the event its proper name”, and fails (or failed) to note “any evidence of anti-Semitism… in Faurisson’s writings on the Holocaust”, describing him instead as ‘some sort of liberal’. In summary:
Simply put, on the issue of anti-Semitism, Chomsky is blind in both the left eye and the right eye. Two questions are then posed for left-wing intellectuals and anti-globalist street activists: Is it this man and this analysis that you want to follow when marching against war in Iraq or in opposition to free trade treaties? If irrational anti-Americanism becomes tinged with anti-Semitism, would Chomsky recognize it? Based on the evidence, the answer is an obvious no.
For my part, two questions are posed by Zeskind’s scribblings: Is this man serious? And: if he can read, why doesn’t he?
Oh yeah. As for the Dixie Chicks:
In response to Zeskind:
To begin with, the apparent fact that Chomsky gave a speech in Germany on US imperialism in May 1990, while assorted neo-Nazis were running around the country doing what neo-Nazis do best, is — like Zeskind’s other observations — just plain weird. The implication, clearly, is that Uncle Noam should have been drawing attention to these crimes, rather than those of the US state. Zeskind’s criticism of the (then) 62-year-old Jewish scholar was predicated on the fact that, rather than address this topic, Chomsky should have been denouncing neo-Nazism, or even been out there on the streets — along with Zeskind, of course — directly confronting those responsible for the attacks on ‘foreigners’.
Maybe Chomsky should have, but if so, I’m not aware of any complaints from German antifa that Chomsky failed to lead them into battle when they themselves took to the streets (see : George Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life, Second Edition, AK Press, 2006, esp. pp.165–168). Further, I’m unaware of his address having prevented any Germans from battling fascists — apart, of course, for the few hours (I assume) those who attended his speech spent listening to Chomsky.
Holocaust
Zeskind’s exceedingly bizarre assertion that Chomsky ‘refuses’ to capitalise the word ‘Holocaust’ is easily disproven by references to essays of his in which he does just that; but perhaps Zeskind is implying that Chomsky does not accord the Holocaust its proper place in history. In reality, in 1992, Chomsky stated the following (‘Israel, the Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism’, Excerpted from Chronicles of Dissent):
QUESTION: I ask you this question because I know that you have been plagued and hounded around the United States specifically on this issue of the Holocaust. It’s been said that Noam Chomsky is somehow agnostic on the issue of whether the Holocaust occurred or not.
CHOMSKY: I described the Holocaust years ago as the most fantastic outburst of insanity in human history, so much so that if we even agree to discuss the matter we demean ourselves. Those statements and numerous others like them are in print, but they’re basically irrelevant because you have to understand that this is part of a Stalinist-style technique to silence critics of the holy state and therefore the truth is entirely irrelevant, you just tell as many lies as you can and hope that some of the mud will stick. It’s a standard technique used by the Stalinist parties, by the Nazis and by these guys.
Democracy
On the question of Chomsky’s attitude towards ‘democracy’, Zeskind relies upon a single piece of evidence: the response Chomsky gave to a question put to him in an interview conducted in 1992 for Rolling Stone magazine. Here is the question and Chomsky’s answer:
QUESTION: Let’s start with the title of your latest book, Deterring Democracy. What do you mean by ‘democracy,’ what do our rulers mean by ‘democracy,’ and why are they deterring what you mean by ‘democracy’?
CHOMSKY: Well, like most terms of political discourse, democracy has two quite different meanings. There’s the dictionary meaning, and then there’s the meaning that is used for purposes of power and profit. According to the dictionary, you can say a system is democratic to the extent that citizens have ways to participate in some meaningful fashion in decisions about public affairs. That’s not a yes or a no matter. You have a lot of different dimensions in different societies. In the ideological sense of democracy — the Orwellian sense, in which the word is actually used — a society is democratic if it’s run by business sectors that are subordinated to the business sectors that run the United States. If it has that property, it’s a democracy. If it doesn’t, then it’s not.
So, for example, Guatemala in the early Fifties was a capitalist democracy in the dictionary sense of the word. In fact, it was one of the most democratic governments in the Third World anywhere. It had lots of popular support, there’s no doubt about that. Read the CIA analyses. One of the things they were worried about was that the government had so much support. But Guatemala was following policies of which the United States did not approve: independent nationalism, domestic development, land reform and so on. This was harming the interests of the elements that the United States regards as the natural rulers — they being the business classes that are linked to U.S. corporations and the military, insofar as they follow U.S. orders. Therefore the United States had to overthrow that government in 1954 to safeguard what we call democracy.
Or Nicaragua in the Eighties, to take a more recent case. An election occurred there in 1984, in fact, but not according to U.S. ideology. In newspapers, in journals of opinion, there wasn’t an election. The first election was in 1990. In historical reality, there was one in 1984. There has probably never been an election in history so closely investigated. The Latin American Studies Association, the professional association of Latin American scholars, did its first detailed analysis of any Latin American election. The Dutch government, which is very reactionary and pro-American, sent a delegation. The Irish parliament sent a delegation. Masses of observers. And the general conclusion, even by the most reactionary of them, was that this was a pretty effective election.
Of course, contra Zeskind, this is not the only occasion upon which Chomsky has had reason to refer to ‘democracy’, either according to a standard definition or that employed by apologists for US imperialism. For example: in 1977, Chomsky spoke of the ‘crisis of democracy’ detected by US elites and investigated on their behalf by the Trilateral Commission; in May 2002, he stated:
The Commission was a mostly liberal internationalist elite, from Europe, the United States, and Japan. It was mostly people like the Carter administration, liberal in the American sense of social democrats and internationalists. What they were deeply concerned about was an increase in democracy, that is, through the 1960s parts of the public that had usually been apathetic and passive began to get organized and to enter the political arena and press their demands and so on. That included women, working people, minorities, the elderly —in general the large part of the population that was usually passive. The way it’s supposed to work is that the political system is supposed to be in the hands of private tyrannies, private power, and that was beginning to erode. What they said is that there’s too much democracy and that’s no good, it’s a crisis, that we have to have more moderation in democracy, and we have to restore people to passive apathy.
In another interview (‘Radical Democracy’, Noam Chomsky interviewed by John Nichols, Capital Times, March 3, 1997), Chomsky refers to Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, and union struggles of the 1920s: “It’s a battle right through history. It’s not just the United States, of course. It was the same struggle in the English Revolution, which came before the revolution in the United States, and in every popular struggle since. And it’s going on right in front of our eyes today. It’s a never-ending struggle.” In ‘That Dangerous Radical Aristotle’ (Noam Chomsky, Excerpted from The Common Good, 1998), Chomsky says:
Aristotle [in Politics] took it for granted that a democracy should be fully participatory (with some notable exceptions, like women and slaves) and that it should aim for the common good. In order to achieve that, it has to ensure relative equality, “moderate and sufficient property” and “lasting prosperity” for everyone. In other words, Aristotle felt that if you have extremes of poor and rich, you can’t talk seriously about democracy. Any true democracy has to be what we call today a welfare state — actually, an extreme form of one, far beyond anything envisioned in this century.
In outlining his “anarchist” or “libertarian socialist” political views in yet another of umpteen interviews (‘Activism, Anarchism, and Power’, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Harry Kreisler, Conversations with History, March 22, 2002), Chomsky makes specific reference to American working class movements, arguing that in America:
…it has roots. Coming back to the United States, it has very strong roots in the American working class movements. So if you go back to, say, the 1850s, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, right around the area where I live, in Eastern Massachusetts, in the textile plants and so on, the people working on those plants were, in part, young women coming off the farm. They were called “factory girls,” the women from the farms who worked in the textile plants. Some of them were Irish, immigrants in Boston and that group of people. They had an extremely rich and interesting culture. They’re kind of like my uncle who never went past fourth grade — very educated, reading modern literature. They didn’t bother with European radicalism, that had no effect on them, but the general literary culture, they were very much a part of. And they developed their own conceptions of how the world ought to be organized.
They had their own newspapers. In fact, the period of the freest press in the United States was probably around the 1850s. In the 1850s, the scale of the popular press, meaning run by the factory girls in Lowell and so on, was on the scale of the commercial press or even greater. These were independent newspapers — a lot of interesting scholarship on them, if you can read them now. They [arose] spontaneously, without any background. [The writers had] never heard of Marx or Bakunin or anyone else; they developed the same ideas. From their point of view, what they called “wage slavery,” renting yourself to an owner, was not very different from the chattel slavery that they were fighting a civil war about. You have to recall that in the mid-nineteenth century, that was a common view in the United States — for example, the position of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln’s position. It’s not an odd view, that there isn’t much difference between selling yourself and renting yourself. So the idea of renting yourself, meaning working for wages, was degrading. It was an attack on your personal integrity. They despised the industrial system that was developing, that was destroying their culture, destroying their independence, their individuality, constraining them to be subordinate to masters.
There was a tradition of what was called Republicanism in the United States. We’re free people, you know, the first free people in the world. This was destroying and undermining that freedom. This was the core of the labor movement all over, and included in it was the assumption, just taken for granted, that “those who work in the mills should own them.” In fact, one of the their main slogans, I’ll just quote it, was they condemned what they called the “new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self.” That new spirit, that you should only be interested in gaining wealth and forgetting about your relations to other people, they regarded it as a violation of fundamental human nature, and a degrading idea.
That was a strong, rich American culture, which was crushed by violence. The United States has a very violent labor history, much more so than Europe. It was wiped out over a long period, with extreme violence. By the time it picked up again in the 1930s, that’s when I personally came into the tail end of it. After the Second World War it was crushed. By now, it’s forgotten. But it’s very real. I don’t really think it’s forgotten, I think it’s just below the surface in people’s consciousness.
And, of course, there are Chomsky’s voluminous writings. Most appropriate, perhaps, in the current context, is the essay Chomsky wrote 40 years ago on ‘Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship’:
If it is plausible that ideology will in general serve as a mask for self-interest, then it is a natural presumption that intellectuals, in interpreting history or formulating policy, will tend to adopt an elitist position, condemning popular movements and mass participation in decision-making, and emphasizing rather the necessity for supervision by those who possess the knowledge and understanding that is required (so they claim) to manage society and control social change. This is hardly a novel thought. One major element in the anarchist critique of Marxism a century ago was the prediction that, as Bakunin formulated it:
“According to the theory of Mr. Marx, the people not only must not destroy [the state] but must strengthen it and place it at the complete disposal of their benefactors, guardians, and teachers-the leaders of the Communist party, namely Mr. Marx and his friends, who will proceed to liberate humankind in their own Way. They will concentrate the reins of government in a strong hand, because the ignorant people require an exceedingly firm guardianship; they Will establish a single state bank, concentrating in its hands all commercial, industrial, agricultural and even scientific production, and then divide the masses into two armies-industrial and agricultural-under the direct command of the state engineers, who will constitute a new privileged scientific-political estate.”
One cannot fail to be struck by the parallel between this prediction and that of Daniel Bell – the prediction that in the new postindustrial society, not only the best talents, but eventually the entire complex of social prestige and social status, will be rooted in the intellectual and scientific communities Pursuing the parallel for a moment, it might be asked whether the left-wing critique of Leninist elitism can be applied, under very different conditions, to the liberal ideology of the intellectual elite that aspires to a dominant role in managing the Welfare state.
Zeskind, in avoiding any reference to these and many other examples of Chomsky’s views on ‘democracy’, has accomplished some feat. This avoidance, of course, being necessary to maintain the fiction that his “frame of reference for democracy remains completely in the Third World”. The grain of truth in this assertion lies in the fact that Chomsky does indeed comment upon and draw inspiration from popular movements in the ‘Third World’ (as do millions of his fellow Americans) and, further, in his contention that the peoples of the ‘Third World’ — rather than the US state, and the elites which frame its foreign policy — are those who should determine their own fate. Hence, the application of the term ‘anti-American’, and — given the consistency with which he has advocated this rather straightforward, ethical and political proposition — Zeskind’s complaint that Chomsky is “tone deaf”.
Finally, inre Zeskind’s warning to “left-wing intellectuals and anti-globalist street activists” of the perils of allowing this irrational bigot to assume some kinda leadership role within ‘progressive’ social movements — “Is it this man and this analysis that you want to follow when marching against war in Iraq or in opposition to free trade treaties?” — the question, like Zeskind’s critique as a whole, rests on very shaky premises. Marching against war in Iraq — or even taking direct action against the military-industrial-entertainment complex — is more likely to be(/have been) inspired by revulsion at criminal mass murder than it is Chomsky’s alleged ‘anti-Americanism’. By the same taken, ‘opposition to free-trade treaties’ — or even to capitalism as a whole — proceeds from an understanding of its effects upon those subjected to its provisions.
WOMAN: But the critique of the media in the film is taken from speeches that you gave.
CHOMSKY: Yeah, but that’s because other people are doing important things and I’m not doing important things — that’s what it literally comes down to. I mean, years ago I used to be involved in organizing too — I’d go to meetings, get involved in resistance, go to jail, all of that stuff — and I was just no good at it at all; some of these people here can tell you. So sort of a division of labor developed: I decided to do what I’m doing now, and other people kept doing the other things. Friends of mine who were basically the same as me — went to the same colleges and graduate schools, won the same prizes, teach at M.I.T. and so on — just went a different way. They spend their time organizing, which is much more important work — so they’re not in a film. That’s what the difference is. I mean, I do something basically less important — it is, in fact. It’s adding something, and I can do it, so I do it — I don’t have any false modesty about it. And it’s helpful. But it’s helpful to people who are doing the real work. And every popular movement I know of in history has been like that.
In fact, it’s extremely important for people with power not to let anybody understand this, to make them think there are big leaders around who somehow get things going, and then what everybody else has to do is follow them. That’s one of the ways of demeaning people, and degrading them and making them passive. I don’t know how to overcome this exactly, but it’s really something people ought to work on.
Despite noting the fact that Chomsky has written many scores of books, hundreds of essays, and given thousands of interviews and speeches, Zeskind relies on exactly two texts to support his arguments, neither of which are long or especially comprehensive: ‘Anarchy in the U.S.A.’, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Charles M. Young, Rolling Stone, May 28, 1992 and ‘Is Chomsky ‘anti-American’?’, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Jacklyn Martin, The Herald, December 9, 2002.
PS. Unity News announced on August 5 that it would be closing, “to allow the administrators to concentrate on the Norfolk Unity website, which will carry all the news that would have appeared here.”
Damn.
I gotta shitload of sites bookmarked.
Now I gotta tell ’em: it’s over girlfriend.
*snap*
Bloggy
Soundtrack for this post:
[Clenched fist salute to Carlos.]
The death of Grods has brought new life to the blogosphere, and A Fresh Start in August. I’d tell Bron to cheer up but the definition of a pessimist is someone who hasn’t yet heard the bad news. Instead, I’ll simply refer to the title of Dorothy Gallagher’s biography of Carlo Tresca: All the Right Enemies.
Often described as a “freelance revolutionary,” Carlo Tresca (1879-1943) was one of the most compelling and colorful figures of the American left prior to World War II. A newspaper editor, labor organizer, civil libertarian, anarchist, anti-Fascist and anti-Stalinist, Tresca had absorbed his fiery socialist principles and had been active as a trade-unionist and editor in his native Abruzzi before immigrating to the United States in 1904.
After joining the International Workers of the World (IWW) in 1912, Tresca was involved in a number of strikes, including the Lawrence, Massachusetts textile strike (1912), the New York City hotel workers’ strike (1913), the Paterson silk strike (1913), and the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, miners’ strike (1916). He edited a newspaper called L’Avvenire (The Future), first in Pennsylvania and, from 1913, in New York City. Its successor, from 1917, was Il Martello (The Hammer). Tresca’s uncompromising anarcho-syndicalist views resulted in frequent clashes with local and federal authorities, and repeated confiscation of his publications.
He devoted considerable energy to campaigning on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti in the 1920s and also became preoccupied with the struggle against fascism. Pursued by the U. S. government at the behest of the Mussolini regime, he survived several assassination attempts by fascist supporters. The Spanish Civil War intensified his anti-Communist activity and propaganda, earning him more enemies on the American left.
On the evening of January 11, 1943, Tresca was shot to death on the sidewalk in front of his office at Fifth Avenue and 15th Street. Over the years there has been a lively debate about which of Tresca’s many enemies might have been behind the murder. His murder was never prosecuted.
YouCoont is a new blog what Wah — a former Grods commentator — done. In brief, in various posts, references of a defamatory nature to TV personalities and other VIPs are made. Word on the virtual street is that concerned parties have obtained legal advice confirming the status of the material as being offensive and defamatory. They seek to have the articles/blog removed immediately from teh Intertubes. Should Wah not remove the offending material, they are instructed to brief solicitors on behalf of their client(s) to seek an injunction and damages.
I have nominated Dylan Lewis as a coont, not because he’s annoying — which is something HE MOST DEFINITELY IS NOT — but rather because he makes the vast swathes of humanity who are not as superbly talented as he is feel bad. (And sad.)
Poumista, as ever, offers a truly superb neat-o experience dining on radical history… although Poumista’s blogroll suffers from one, rather obvious, lapse.
Fires never extinguished is a blog of the fearsomely-titled Phoenix Class War Council. It is… good.
Vengeance is another angry blog comin’ outta The Belly of the Beast otherwise known as the United States, which seeks its title in the realms of the class war. Notes on a New Proletarian Anarchism is especially interesting, and the author of the blog has won the love and affection of the spelling Nazi inside of me, and will no doubt appeal to the spelling Nazi inside you too.
…not Aotearoa Skinhead. Which is like, all about skinhead and The Spirit of ’69!
Pick-up lines is a Maoist-Third Worldist project. Our goal is to provide a map of the so-called “left” for those who are not familiar with the distinctions between various lines and organizations. Our goal is to provide as many capsule reviews of online “leftist” websites as possible. Thus making it easier for people to distinguish the genuine revolutionaries from the fakes. Plus, we’ll have some fun looking at, and occasionally poking fun at, all the nonsense that passes as “revolutionary.” The title of the blog is, of course, a joke since most of ideological lines of the so-called “Left” are so unscientific that they might as well be, and often are, “pick-up lines.”
ZAPAGRINGO is a blog by RJ Maccani, who sounds like a righteous d00d. His (?) blog documents the continuing relevance and global effects of the Zapatista uprising of 1994, a revolt by some of the poorest, most oppressed sectors of Mexican society, whose struggles continue and whose determination continues to inspire creative resistance everywhere.
Dreaming Neon Black is authored by a dirty! rotten! lousy! stinking! communist. Workers are constantly fighting back on his blog, and so I would encourage Adam to post as often as possible, as quite frankly, I’m getting a little impatient for the social revolution.
So… that’s a bakers’ dozen of blogginess.
And I still got several hundred more bookmarks to wade through.
*sigh*
Anyway, here’s a song for all the lawyers and all the cops out there. Where would we be without them?
All:
God save your majesty!
Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat
and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,
that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.
Dick:
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
