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

[Laurie Solomon]

>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.

I really think this assertion is questionable and maybe an after the fact 
myth.  Many of the working class and many of their organizers joined rather 
than countered the nativist movements in the thirties not only in the South 
and Midwest but also in the West and Southwest as well as the East along 
with California and Washington states.  Unions and union members for the 
most part were anti-Semitic, anti-black and Hispanic, anti-Asian, 
anti-native American, and anti immigrant - especially if that immigrant was 
from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe; they were pro-capitalism and the 
establishment although not as much as they were to become in that did not 
want to end the Captialist system or destroy the establishment as much as 
get their fair share of the goodies.  They were Pro-American super patriots 
who saw themselves and their WHITE asses as the blessed ones who were better 
than everyone else  and  the people destined for salvation as God's chosen 
ones in the world.  The workers coveted middle class bourgeoisie values 
(e.g., the ownership of a house with a white picket fence and yard, and the 
like which the middle class professionals and shop keepers had).  What the 
working class organizing countered was not the nativist movement but the 
agrarian movements attempting to return to the values and institutions of 
the past to the detriment of the urbanized industrial locations and 
populations, the practices of the wealthy Robber Barons and laisser -faire 
versions of Capitalism which used the power of the State to support the 
Robber Barons and put down the ordinary poor while holding that the State 
should not intervene in the affairs of the Capitalists in any negative way, 
and employment of immigrants and the poor impoverished members of society as 
strike breakers by the establishment.

I am not sure if it really was the case that the working class organizers 
did not privately have contempt for the masses that they were organizing, 
did not view them as merely tools and peons to use as canon fodder in the 
fight, and did not have disdain for stupidity of the masses who were so 
easily manipulated.  Of course, they could not and would not put on a public 
front that smacked of anything but respect, faith, and honor of the masses 
they were attempting to organize.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 8:11 PM
To: "Brussel Morton K." <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
Cc: "Peace-discuss Discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Anti-Empire Report, May 12, 2010

> 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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