MIM is dead! Long live MIM!
Revolutionary Internationalist Information Network
RIIN is Marxist media upholding world proletarian revolutions, anti-imperialism and feminism. Regarding proletarian revolutions and anti-imperialism, we uphold cardinal principles of Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) that is based at California, USA. Regarding feminism, we follow writings of authors Chalam [1894 – 1979] and Ranganayakamma [1939–]. You can contact us at our email address hegel2mao [at] rediffmail [dot] com
We consider USSR under Josef Stalin (from 1922 to 1953) and China under Mao Zedong (from 1949 to 1976) as real models of socialism. We reject the legacy of the CPSU since 1953 and of the CCP since 1976. We consider Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite social-imperialism to be one of the ugliest totalitarian social systems in world’s history and we see its direct and logical continuation in the post-Soviet Russia of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
In the face of an uncaring world, MIM announced its suicide last month, the last gasp of a tiny group of revolutionary academics from California. Other Maoist (Marxist-Leninist) groups still-existant in the United States — and in addition to the Great Leader‘s — include the (rival) Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Workers World.
In the United Kingdom, Maoist and Marxist-Leninist political formations include the Communist Party of Britain, the Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), the New Communist Party of Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and last — but by absolutely no means necessary least — the Stalin Society.
On a vaguely related note, Peter Tatchell represents for Mount Waverley:
In 1968 I was a 16 year old student at Mount Waverley High School, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia [School motto: “Learn to live and live to learn”]. My home state was, in those days, Victoria by name and Victorian by nature. The federal government was also ruled by a suffocating, authoritarian right-wing government. Abortion and homosexuality were totally illegal. Plays, books and films were subject to ruthless censorship. Protests were heavily repressed and it was a crime in the city of Melbourne to hand out political leaflets in the street. Anyone with even vaguely liberal views was denounced as a communist, which carried serious social stigma and potential career derailment in sensitive professions. The Victorian state premier, Henry Bolte, was Franco lite…
Unfortunately, I’ve looked but can find no Australian Maoist blogs. Or, to be precise, none that dare speak their name and/or actually function. Perhaps the closest thing to a Maoist blog is (was?) LastSuperpower.net — “established by leftwingers who support the war in Iraq” — which unfortunately appears to be down at the moment.
Does Bill Kerr’s blog qualify?
LastSuperpower.net (December 2002–) appears to have had its brief maoment in the sun a few years ago, when members offered themselves to General Public as the voice of the pro-war Left. The remnants of the Miaowist student movement of the 1960s, the mob at LastSuperpower encapsulated their demands of World History in the delightfully euphemistic phrase ‘draining the swamps’. As embodied, for example, in Kerry Langer’s ‘Drain the swamps where terror breeds’, published in The Australian (September 25, 2005). ‘Ironic’ that in their youth, qualified to serve their part as cogs in their country’s death machine, the Miaowists were anti-war; 30-something years later, and a little bit long in the tooth for active duty, they snipe at the ‘pseudo-Left’ from internet bunkers.
- The Maoist Age:
Iraq: holding the left to account, Pamela Bone, June 12, 2003
Latham v reality: the looming crisis, Albert Langer, June 14, 2004
The Maoist who made premier, Wendy Bacon, June 26, 2004
Protesters proud of role in time of turmoil, Andra Jackson, April 30, 2005
ASIO files full of Hyde and seek, Sushi Das, September 23, 2005
here’s a CPA blog link, http://www.cpasouthoz.com/ , it mainly concerns itself with South Australian issues, but it’s a commo blog nevertheless.
[Fly away Peter.]
Hi Slackbastard,
Thanks for commenting that unfortunately LS is down. The whole thing has been getting too big to stand up properly and so has been for a long time slow or worse timing out and impossible to read. These problems are being addressed with the establishment of a new blog style called Strange Times. As yet it is only a test site and we are all learning the ropes… But for now some points of clarification.
The CPSA blog mentioned in comments is run by Ben Carslake who was part of the group that had split from the Communist Party Australia in 1968? the Socialist Party of Australia (SPA). That group took up the name of the Communist Party Australia (CPA) again after the 1984? dissolution. Sorry, I ought to remember those dates and it isn’t easy to check the actual dates at present.
Once in a galaxy far far away I was in a Paddy wagon with Ben and 3 others in the middle of the desert at a Nurrungar protest. It developed into a very difficult situation and I am glad that i was with such a hardened campaigner. Great character, but I wouldn’t join either the SPA then, or the CPA now for quids.
Bill Kerr does have a very interesting blog I don’t have a look there nearly often enough.
Also, I think you will find the reference to ‘draining the swamps’ refers to the ‘debate’ some Lastsuperpower members had with Noam Chomsky but the term was coined by Noam Chomsky and not LS.
Ah!
Drain the swamp and there will be no more mosquitoes
Noam Chomsky
The Guardian
September 9, 2002
September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That’s all to the good.
It is also the merest sanity, if we hope to reduce the likelihood of future atrocities. It may be comforting to pretend that our enemies “hate our freedoms,” as President Bush stated, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons.
The president is not the first to ask: “Why do they hate us?” In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described “the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people”. His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is “opposing political or economic progress” because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region.
Post-September 11 surveys in the Arab world reveal that the same reasons hold today, compounded with resentment over specific policies. Strikingly, that is even true of privileged, western-oriented sectors in the region.
To cite just one recent example: in the August 1 issue of Far Eastern Economic Review, the internationally recognised regional specialist Ahmed Rashid writes that in Pakistan “there is growing anger that US support is allowing [Musharraf’s] military regime to delay the promise of democracy”.
Today we do ourselves few favours by choosing to believe that “they hate us” and “hate our freedoms”. On the contrary, these are attitudes of people who like Americans and admire much about the US, including its freedoms. What they hate is official policies that deny them the freedoms to which they too aspire.
For such reasons, the post-September 11 rantings of Osama bin Laden – for example, about US support for corrupt and brutal regimes, or about the US “invasion” of Saudi Arabia – have a certain resonance, even among those who despise and fear him. From resentment, anger and frustration, terrorist bands hope to draw support and recruits.
We should also be aware that much of the world regards Washington as a terrorist regime. In recent years, the US has taken or backed actions in Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama, Sudan and Turkey, to name a few, that meet official US definitions of “terrorism” – that is, when Americans apply the term to enemies.
In the most sober establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington wrote in 1999: “While the US regularly denounces various countries as ‘rogue states,’ in the eyes of many countries it is becoming the rogue superpower … the single greatest external threat to their societies.”
Such perceptions are not changed by the fact that, on September 11, for the first time, a western country was subjected on home soil to a horrendous terrorist attack of a kind all too familiar to victims of western power. The attack goes far beyond what’s sometimes called the “retail terror” of the IRA, FLN or Red Brigades.
The September 11 terrorism elicited harsh condemnation throughout the world and an outpouring of sympathy for the innocent victims. But with qualifications.
An international Gallup poll in late September found little support for “a military attack” by the US in Afghanistan. In Latin America, the region with the most experience of US intervention, support ranged from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama.
The current “campaign of hatred” in the Arab world is, of course, also fuelled by US policies toward Israel-Palestine and Iraq. The US has provided the crucial support for Israel’s harsh military occupation, now in its 35th year.
One way for the US to lessen Israeli-Palestinian tensions would be to stop refusing to join the long-standing international consensus that calls for recognition of the right of all states in the region to live in peace and security, including a Palestinian state in the currently occupied territories (perhaps with minor and mutual border adjustments).
In Iraq, a decade of harsh sanctions under US pressure has strengthened Saddam Hussein while leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – perhaps more people “than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history”, military analysts John and Karl Mueller wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1999.
Washington’s present justifications to attack Iraq have far less credibility than when President Bush Sr was welcoming Saddam as an ally and a trading partner after he had committed his worst brutalities – as in Halabja, where Iraq attacked Kurds with poison gas in 1988. At the time, the murderer Saddam was more dangerous than he is today.
As for a US attack against Iraq, no one, including Donald Rumsfeld, can realistically guess the possible costs and consequences. Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.
They presumably also welcome the “Bush doctrine” that proclaims the right of attack against potential threats, which are virtually limitless. The president has announced: “There’s no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland.” That’s true.
Threats are everywhere, even at home. The prescription for endless war poses a far greater danger to Americans than perceived enemies do, for reasons the terrorist organisations understand very well.
Twenty years ago, the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Yehoshaphat Harkabi, also a leading Arabist, made a point that still holds true. “To offer an honourable solution to the Palestinians respecting their right to self-determination: that is the solution of the problem of terrorism,” he said. “When the swamp disappears, there will be no more mosquitoes.”
At the time, Israel enjoyed the virtual immunity from retaliation within the occupied territories that lasted until very recently. But Harkabi’s warning was apt, and the lesson applies more generally.
Well before September 11 it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil.
If we insist on creating more swamps, there will be more mosquitoes, with awesome capacity for destruction.
If we devote our resources to draining the swamps, addressing the roots of the “campaigns of hatred”, we can not only reduce the threats we face but also live up to ideals that we profess and that are not beyond reach if we choose to take them seriously.
The ‘debate’.
The SPA split from the CPA in 1971 (presumably in reaction to news of my birth) only to reclaim the title in an uncontested bout in 1996.
“Those who oppose current US policy have failed to look beyond the superficial appearance of things to see the deeper reality. The pseudo-Left opposition is driven by a backward-looking victim mentality focused on complaining about how bad things are rather than on how to change them. Objectively they are united with the conservative Right, which is similarly beset by doom and gloom due to not yet having come to terms with the very limited options available to the last superpower.
Quite simply: It’s no longer possible for the US to hold back the spread of democracy and modernity across the planet. This is something that we on the Left should celebrate, support and take advantage of.”
FYI, neither Workers World or their splinter Party for Socialism and Liberation are self-defined as Maoists although they would probably accept Marxist-Leninist. Daft annoying groups, both of them!
Hey @ndy. I just checked out the link for Ranganayakamma and it is really interesting. She is certainly no dogmatic Maoist.
rebel love
Dave