[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Anti-Empire Report, May 12, 2010

[Brussel Morton K.]

I would suggest a) that there are similar aspects to the current situation and what has passed before, but there are also differences too, as always—Blum brought out similarities; b) he did not infer or say that all people are stupid (or ignorant), but there are plenty of them and they come out of the woods periodically. This was his point I think, and people should understand it.

As for Chomsky's mistaken? remark: I would say there are some grievances which are legitimate, clearly not all, and it is unclear to me that those motivating the current movement are legitimate.  You can pick and choose (socialism? government? Obama's birth?, immigration? taxes? bailouts?…). Mostly, they seem to be missing the boat. 

I think a degree of contempt is justifiable, but one should certainly not dismiss them as a "movement", however illformed and ill informed it is.

You mean by "petit bourgeois" that they are mostly shopkeepers, small business, "middle-class" people? Or are they salaried or unemployed?  How many union people join them? Immigrants? I suspect that there are even fairly well off Repubs among them, those who hate Dems, Obama and other despicables who want to spread their wealth.

Sometimes contempt is appropriate, but, again, one should try to enlighten and organize for better ends as much as possible. I'm not optimistic here, but good luck. (Admission: I hung out with them once with flyers showing that their precious tax dollars were being diverted to killing, and was  ignored for the most part.)

--mkb

On May 12, 2010, at 8:11 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> I think it would be a mistake to include either (a) there's nothing unique about the current political situation or (b) it's all because people are stupid. There certainly are parallels between anti-communism and anti-terrorism - but that's because they were both massive propaganda enterprises of the American ascendancy.
> 
> Chomsky's comments have certainly been misinterpreted.  He makes two points, both correct it seems to me: (a) the grievances motivating the teaparty movement are real; and (b) the Left in this country has allowed the Right to offer (mad and dangerous) interpretations of those grievances.
> 
> Simply ridiculing the teaparty movement - or dismissing it with contempt as simply low-class racism - is also mad and dangerous.  A flood of (quite legitimate) popular distress - dammed up by liberal indifference and denied a political spillway - will burst through in crazy and far more dangerous ways.
> 
> Of course the tea party movement is not a working class uprising. The teapartiers are, in classical terms, mainly petty bourgeois - but with substantial appeal to the working class, as the Nazis were.  The crucial point about them is that, while they amount to about 18% of the population (according to a NYT survey), 48% of the population sympathize with their attitudes and beliefs (as compared with 44% for Obama).
> 
> What the left should be doing is what it did in the 1930s, when there was also a very dangerous nativist movement, but it was countered by working class organizing - not contempt for the stupidity of the masses. --CGE
> 
> 
> On 5/12/10 6:19 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>> ... *Anti-Empire Report *May 12, 2010 William Blum www.killinghope.org
>>> <http://www.killinghope.org/> *Terminally-dumb people have always been
>>> with us of course. It can’t be that we’ve suddenly gone stupid.* ... If
>>> you shake your head and roll your eyes at the nonsense coming out of the
>>> Teabagger followers of Sarah “Africa is a country” Palin and other
>>> intellectual giants like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ... If you have
>>> thoughts of moving abroad after the latest silly lies and fantasies like
>>> “Obama the Marxist” and “Obama the antichrist” ... If you share Noam
>>> Chomsky’s feeling: "I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime”
>>> ... keep in mind that the right wing has long been at least as stupid and
>>> as mean-spirited...


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