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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=dlj725@hughes.net href="mailto:dlj725@hughes.net">David Johnson</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=dlj725@hughes.net href="mailto:dlj725@hughes.net">david
johnson</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, February 12, 2012 8:36 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> critique of Hedge's article against Black Bloc</DIV></DIV>
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<H3 class="post-title entry-title">"The Cancer in Occupy": Chris Hedges
misdiagnoses the illness </H3>
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<TD style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class=tr-caption>The real brutality at work
in Davis CA</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>by Margaret Collins <BR>member CWI
USA<BR><BR>Chris Hedges has in the past, liked to invoke the recent uprisings in
Spain and Greece. Greece in particular <I>"gets it"</I> <A
href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_greeks_get_it_20100524/">he wrote
back in May 2010</A>.<I>“Here’s to the Greeks. They know what to do when
corporations pillage and loot their country... Call a general strike. Riot. Shut
down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. The Greeks, unlike most of
us, get it....Think of the Greek riots as a struggle for liberation.”
</I><BR><BR>In Hedges' recent article, however, "<A
href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/"><I>The
Cancer in Occupy</I></A>", he summons up moral outrage against what he calls the
<I>"cancer"</I> in the Occupy movement, namely the Black Bloc anarchist rioters
in Oakland on January 28. In a hysterical rant, Hedges conflates the ideas of
two anarchist ideologues, John Zerzan and someone called <I>“Venomous
Butterfly”</I>, with the actions of a handful of young people in Oakland and
their sympathizers across the Occupy movement. The reader is not supposed to
look carefully and see if this guilt by association is justified, but simply
recoil in horror. We are told that these <I>"beasts"</I> hate the <I>"organized
left"</I>, defend the manifesto of the<I> "Unibomber" </I>Theodore Kaczynski,
are <I>"infected"</I> with <I>"hypermasculinity"</I> and criticize the Zapatista
movement and Noam Chomsky. Not Chomsky! Hey, they must be evil.<BR><BR>I
guess the best thing about the <I>"Greek riots"</I> for Hedges were that they
were... in Greece. Think about it. What was the difference between the social
unrest that Hedges likes (Greece) and the social unrest he doesn't like
(Oakland)? The first difference that comes to mind is the scale of the Greek
uprisings. They had a mass character which pulled the majority of the poor and
the working class behind it. Oakland, alternatively, had 1,000 at most, a few
hundred at least when the events that Hedges recounts took place. In this case
size matters. And if that is Hedges' problem with the Oakland events, then
I agree. <BR><BR>But that isn't what Hedges says in <I>"The Cancer in
Occupy"</I>. When referencing the burning of a flag and the window breaking of a
relatively small group of people, Hedges says <I>"There is a word for
this—“criminal.”</I>, unconsciously echoing the rhetoric of the Tory ministers
after the youth riots and looting that swept through Britain in the summer of
2011. <BR><BR>Perhaps because the anarchist element and their sympathizers are
overwhelmingly white and many come from the middle class, it makes the police
brutality in Oakland appear less serious, less worthy of criticism. After all,
would Hedges be as cavalier when talking about the police brutality of the state
which is brought down on the heads of youth and people of color every day in
this country? After all, Oakland is the home of the police force that murdered
Oscar Grant. As a card carrying radical christian and guru of the soft left, of
course Hedges would not. So why all the misplaced moral outrage? Hedges is in
danger, as his <I>"hero"</I> Malcolm X said, of <I>"...mak(ing) the victim look
like the criminal, and the criminal look like the victim."</I><BR><BR>The real
question, and the only question is <I>"... Are the given means really capable of
leading to the goal?"</I> Leon Trotsky <I>"Their Morals and Ours" 1938
"..."Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means, we answer, which
unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable
hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its
democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission,
raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from
this it flows that not all means are permissible."</I> Ibid<BR><BR>Let's take
the actions of the anarchist influenced youth in Oakland and look at them
through Trotsky's lens. Not moral condemnation but a discussion of tactics are
in order. Wouldn't a direct appeal to the working class in Oakland, by fighting
home foreclosures, evictions and high unemployment be a better tactic to grow
the movement and hurt the ruling class? There are many in the Occupy movement
that would agree and are making a turn to these very issues. <BR><BR>So who are
the real culprits that Hedges never names? Hedges says<I> "...Black Bloc
anarchists spend most of their fury not on the architects of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or globalism, but on those, such as the Zapatistas,
who respond to the problem. It is a grotesque inversion of value systems."</I>
Well how about this for a grotesque inversion? Hedges expects young people who
have never seen the trade union leadership in this country wage a a serious
offensive battle to <I>"spend most of their fury on the architects of NAFTA"</I>
when the AFL- CIO are unable to do it themselves. The same AFL- CIO which is
unable to mount a consistent ideological and industrial offensive to big
business or build a party of the working class and has poured 41 billion dollars
into both big business parties since 1990. <A
href="http://(factcheck.org)/">(Factcheck.org)</A> <BR><BR>In recent days,
especially connected to the Occupy ILWU events in Longview, we have seen quite a
bit of hand wringing and tsk tsking of the soft pseudo left about the tactics of
Occupy. If their criticism is really meant to strengthen the movement and not to
provide a left cover to the real <I>"criminals"</I> ie: the labor bureaucrats
and the parties of big business they support, then the bloodletting against
Occupy must stop. Or be seen for what it really is. A distraction from the real
<I>"cancer"</I> that lurks in the body of US society. A capitalist system that
will multiply, devour, and destroy every healthy cell in our bodies.
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