[Peace-discuss] on the debate over the DSA et al Socialism conference & US foreign policy

[David Johnson]

In my opinion this paragraph says it all -

 

“ Is publishing a book in support of US Right to Protect interventions, as Haymarket did, a difference of opinion, or an error? Is platforming Venezuelan socialists, Marea Socialista, who met repeatedly with Juan Guiado, an error? When those holding one position in the debate find themselves writing in the Atlantic Council website or publishing op-eds in the NYT, we are entitled to question whether we are dealing with legitimate differences amongst comrades, or a performatively ‘left’ position which in fact reflects the interests of those who own the NYT and the Atlantic? “

 

David J.

 

 

From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2019 1:51 PM
To: Peace-discuss List
Subject: [Peace-discuss] on the debate over the DSA et al Socialism conference & US foreign policy

 

 

The debate over the Greyzone piece and response caused this nice piece of text to arrive on my computer, author unknown. 

 

"there is a substantial portion of the semi-academic civil society/NGO apparatus in this country – AKA ‘the Left’ – which is personally, politically, and institutionally invested in a politics at odds with anti-imperialist internationalism.

 

That politics operates through four mechanisms: (a) it focuses far more on the crimes of targets of US imperialism than non-hot spots; (b) does not believe that the primary task of US leftists is to build opposition to US crimes; (c) embraces analyses which beyond frequently being incorrect, fundamentally prevent the coalescence of internationalism in the US context by demonizing every large-scale left project to build a better world, from Venezuela under Maduro to Bolivia under Morales to the Philippines Maoists; (d) attacks those who attempt to highlight media fabrications and the operations of US soft power as ‘Stalinists,’ ‘Assadists,’ or other terms of thuggish abuse which very quickly lead their targets to the unemployment line and the victims of soft power to the graveyard.

 

Are these differences of opinion? Of course. Are they debates between comrades? That depends on one’s perspective, where one draws one’s red lines, and whose perspective one shares. Is publishing a book in support of US Right to Protect interventions, as Haymarket did, a difference of opinion, or an error? Is platforming Venezuelan socialists, Marea Socialista, who met repeatedly with Juan Guiado, an error? When those holding one position in the debate find themselves writing in the Atlantic Council website or publishing op-eds in the NYT, we are entitled to question whether we are dealing with legitimate differences amongst comrades, or a performatively ‘left’ position which in fact reflects the interests of those who own the NYT and the Atlantic?

 

And when do ‘errors’ in aggregate become a political line, when does a political line reflect Eurocentrism? When does a categorical refusal to deal with the national question in times of imperialism become a form of complicity with the imperialist apparatus, unwittingly or wittingly? And when does it become a question not of what we think our intentions are, but what we should know of the effects of our stances and actions? Do we want a Left that looks to the substantive dissolution of hierarchies between nations and thinks internationalism starts at home, or a left that shrugs at questions of location as ‘US-centrism’? These are the questions before us, including the DSA, which has gathered in its ranks tens of thousands of activists full of real commitment to changing the world. But we were raising them well before July 2019."

 

===




Robert Reuel Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

(202) 448-2898 x1

 

 

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