The RCP has published a new comment on the “9 Letters to Our Comrades.” It appears on their website with little fanfare, and we publish it here for discussion. The new essay is described as as an “observation from readers.” We will comment more on the content of this Observation, but for now a few initial points:
This Observation is written for a very very small audience. Read the Observation’s opening sentence out loud:
“First of all, this is truly another round with Menshevism – outraging [sic] capitulation and reactionary rebellion against an even more thoroughly revolutionary communist line, vision, and leadership than 30 years ago, at a time when the horrors of this system and the need to get rid of it are being manifested and felt in even more bloody and devastating ways than then (e.g., the “food crisis” and growing famine in many countries, which is in the headlines now) and when crucial advances in the theory for communist revolution, for breaking through toward a whole new world, are there to be taken up (and further developed) and the fight to arm the masses and lead them to transform this into a material force is underway – and some initial new breakthroughs (even if still far from what is needed) are being made.”
Who outside of the most well-steeped RCP circles will have a clue of what this rambling sentence means or what its reference points are? This Observation is a follow-up note targeted at the RCP’s own hard-core. And what is the message sent to their own ranks and periphery?
This Observation lavishes praise over each point of their party’s Official Polemic one after another:
“Excellent,” “forging more clarity and unity,” “very sharp and very important,” “very good argumentation,” and “really very very good.”
In fact all this Observation does is praise the Official Polemic. No documentation of their sketchy arguments. No exploration of the important questions the Official Polemic left unanswered.
So a question: Why does the RCP need to instruct its own circles of supporters on the value of its previous polemic? What is the point of such cheerleading except as a corrective for RCP supporters who feel the Official Polemic is wrong or unsatisfying?
Both the tone and content of the new Observation suggests that this party’s leadership is gripped in an ongoing argument with significant portions of its own following.
In an outrageous mix of chauvinism, ignorance and cowardice, Dunkin Donuts caved in to rightwing attackdogs who shouted that traditional Arab clothing is “terrorist” and so shouldn’t be allowed on American TV. The following article appeared on the Huffington Post.
Dunkin Donuts has pulled a commercial featuring pitchwoman Rachael Ray wearing a scarf because Michelle Malkin and other conservative observers thought the scarf looked too much like a kaffiyeh, what Malkin describes as “the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”
Scott McClellan, no doubt in an effort to assuage his guilty conscience about all of the lies he told as Presidential Press Secretary, reveals some truths about this White House in his memoir.
The story he tells about the run up to the Iraq war – “manipulating sources of public opinion” and misleading people about why they wanted that war – are all being played out once again in relation to their plans for war on Iran.
“Fucking propaganda – I don’t see why there’s a need to repeat such slanders.”
(That’s the entire comment).
* * * *
On the Kasama sites, we don’t feel compelled to paste a warning label on every article we post from the mainstream press. And we don’t spoonfeed folks what to think whenever we post something.
We expect people to “compare and contrast.” And we expect people to themselves dissect ideas (right or wrong) in the discussion threads. You live in this society — you are quite capable of reading things critically.
So we have been posting accounts from all kinds of sources on the historic events in Nepal, where the Maoists are reaching for state power. We have given much space to the Maoists themselves — including leader Prachanda. But some reports come from the mainstream (meaning anti-revolutionary) press. Some have analyses and “facts” that are highly questionable. [Example] We post this so our readers can get a well-rounded sense of how different political forces are treating the revolutionary movement.
Our approach is controversial, as you can see from Auswatch’s reply. It is a break with methods of some communist forces (who don’t welcome debate until they have some tidy package summation to “bring down”).
That chaperone approach to ideas makes for a very (uh) un-nimble movement. In practice it becomes an “info diet” where difficult truths are ignored. It is what Mao called trying to “train communists in a greenhouse.”
WASHINGTON, May 20 (UPI) — Google has refused a request from U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind.-Conn., to remove videos produced by terrorist groups from its video-sharing site YouTube.
In a statement posted on the YouTube blog, the company said that it had taken down some of the videos identified by Lieberman’s staff because they contained hate speech, gratuitous violence or in other ways violated community standards.
“Senator Lieberman stated his belief, in a letter sent today, that all videos mentioning or featuring these groups should be removed from YouTube — even legal nonviolent or non-hate speech videos,” the statement said. “While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view.”
A reader sent this for all of us…. for obvious reasons.
A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up, She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.
Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil; without saying a word.
In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, ‘ Tell me what you see.’
We have added a new feature to our site: Kasama Threads.
We have created it for one basic purpose: It allows folks to create their own threads and discussions.
Now you can post news articles, announcements, documents, reviews, comments — and start discussions around them. We encourage everyone to post important and interesting things. And dig into the debates.
She obviously hadn’t intended to say it in public. But who doubts that it reveals an argument shared among her inner circles: Why pull out of the election, Barack Obama may yet get shot? Hillary Clinton blurted out that after all Robert Kennedy had been shot in June. The bloodied presidential cup had passed to someone else.
The Clinton campaign has been more and more openly resting on white racism — ever since Bill Clinton’s South Carolina remarks pegging Obama into a Jesse Jackson category. In the Pennsylvania primary, Hillary’s close sidekick Governor Ed Rendell openly remarked that many white people just won’t vote for a black man, and so the Democrats would be wiser to simply accept (and adopt) the logic of accepting white supremacy. Rendell himself is notorious as a key player in the prosecution and persecution of Mumia Abu-Jamal — he is one of a whole generation of prominent Pennsylvania politicians who made their bones in that case. and then came West Virginia and Kentucky (and references to Ohio) where the argument for Clinton became, more and more crudely, that Obama could never be a cross-over hit.
This is a white man’s country — that (stripped of subtlety) is the argument being made. (Though perhaps, it is suggested, it may have room for a white woman, if the alternative is part African.)
And so the Clinton machine (which once supposedly included “America’s first black president”) has become a vehicle for revealing the power and dynamics of white supremacy in American power politics.
And as if that was not clear enough, Hillary made a deliberate point that she was capable of mass murder on a criminal scale — when she openly threatened to “obliterate” Iran under some conditions.
White racism and mass murder in defense of empire– the oh-so-savvy Clinton clan saw that as the key credentials for presidency. And it is revealing, not just about them, but about this political system, this power structure, this historical invention called America.
And now… finally… at the end of all that, comes one more revealing moment:
An Hero suggested that we post the following famous ad by the democratic president Lyndon Johnson — arguing that his opponent (the Republican Barry Goldwater) was a war mongerer who might trigger a nuclear war.
Literally within days of winning in a landslide, Johnson started planning a major escalation of war in Vietnam.
Two points stand out:
One is how little things change: The Democrats will claim that they are the forces of peace, while they themselves prepare to administer and preserve the empire.
the second is how much things change: In 1964 threatening nuclear war was considered a horror. In 2008 a major Democrat like Hillary Clinton shamelessly threatens to “annihilate” Iran and its people in nuclear attacks — and considers her willingness to be a major prerequisite for power.
This article appears thanks to “History as a Weapon.” Often this problem of anti-intellectualism comes up as a dismissal of the importance of theory.It also now takes the form of an assertion that the “way out is known” and “it is there for the taking.” The verdict is on theoretical controversies is in, “the train has left the station.” And (relatedly), we are told that the urgency of this moment (each moment!) means that there is no time for this chatter. And so the task at hand is to accept and apply the old (and new) orthodoxies we are handed. “Action Will Be Taken”: Left Anti-intellectualism and Its Discontents
By Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti
“We can’t get bogged down in analysis,” one activist told us at an anti-war rally in New York last fall, spitting out that last word like a hairball. He could have relaxed his vigilance. This event deftly avoided such bogs, loudly opposing the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan without offering any credible ideas about it (we’re not counting the notion that the entire escapade was driven by Unocal and Lockheed Martin, the “analysis” advanced by many speakers). But the moment called for doing something more than brandishing the exact same signs – “Stop the Bombing” and “No War for Oil” – that activists poked skywards during the Gulf War. This latest war called for some thinking, and few were doing much of that.
So what is the ideology of the activist left (and by that we mean the global justice, peace, media democracy, community organizing, financial populist, and green movements)? Socialist? Mostly not – too state-phobic. Some actvisits are anarchists – but mainly out of temperamental reflex, not rigorous thought. Others are liberals – though most are too confrontational and too skeptical about the system to embrace that label. And many others profess no ideology at all. So over all is the activist left just an inchoate, “post-ideological” mass of do-gooders, pragmatists and puppeteers?
Stanley Rogouski shared this essay with Kasama — describing the feeling of many people like him who feel a powerful pull to abandon a deep political opposition to the Democratic Party in order to register an anti-racist statement by supporting Obama. Publication on this site does not represent an endorsement, but an offering of important views, arguments and political sentiments for discussion.
“How will I react? Will I react like George Bush and Dick Cheney, so certain in my ideological correctness that I can dismiss a tenth of the population of one of the most progressive cities in the United States? Or will I try to figure out what they’re seeing that I’m not? Will I chose democracy or ideology?”
February 15th, 2003 in New York City, it was brutally cold. I was part of a crowd the NYPD had penned into metal barricades on 1st Avenue. A few blocks north was the stage. A few blocks south was the way back home to my warm house. The NYPD had set up the security in order to make it as uncomfortable as possible to participate in the anti-war protest. They wanted to keep the size of the crowd small, but it hadn’t worked. There were at least half a million people near the United Nations. I had already muscled my way far enough up 1st Avenue to the point where it was almost impossible to move inside the massive swarm of people. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Hey Mike!
I recently attended a presentation by Ray Lotta on the Cultural Rev. There wasn’t much unusual about it. It was based 95% around the print version of STRS. But one thing that did stick out to me was that he cited “class truth” as a one of the shortcomings of the cultural revolution. The thing that was interesting about this was he defined it different than Mao meant it (as far as I can tell). Lotta defined class truth as people of a certain class origin naturally holding more truth than those of bourgeois background. The tendency in the revolution for people to judge each other based on their parents class, and this was what he was criticizing wihle assigning it the name “class truth”. Now I am pretty new at this, but I am fairly confident that when Mao was talking about “class truth” he did not mean Ray’s definition. Have you had any experience with that specific definition being assigned to “class truth” within the RCP?
Mike E’s Response:
Mao writes (in one of his most famous and provocative quotes in the Red Book):
“The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding, it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge.”
I think that alone gives a clear sense of why the RCP (with its genius theory and posture of preaching to everyone) has to break with Mao. Anyone with passing acquaintance with the RCP (these days, not always!) has a sense of why this thread running through Mao’s thinking…
It is tied to their abandonment of any serious application of the mass line…
I am going to post a series of things here in this thread.
For reasons never clearly explained, the communist movement has generally ignored (and really dismissed) psychology. At its crudest, the existing communist movement has reduced matters of psychology (personality, desire, illness, addiction, obsession, crisis etc.) simply to matters of ideology and conscious worldview — denying the particularity of mind, and the role of dynamic, underlying, unconscious and sub conscious factors.
There is often entrwined with this a reductionist denial of both biochemistry and genetics (so that the nurture/nature debate is often treated one-sidedly as if “all is nurture.” i.e. socialization — and then socialization is itself reduced one-sidedly to ideology and choice.
There are many examples in the handling of sexuality, in a priori assumptions about the origins of gender differences, in the approach some take toward alcoholism and other addictions, in the view of “mental illness,” in the suspicious negation of desire and passion (including of the non-sexual kinds)… and more.
Meanwhile, outside the organized communist movement, there has been a great deal of new and quite radical thought on these matters — new insights into the mind-body dynamics, new insights into the role of biochemicals in thought, new insights into the role of genetics (in gender, inclinations, etc.), new knowledge about how mind and personality is structured in child development, and more.
This is a time when the war criminal John McCain, a man who enthusiastically participated in the mass bombing of Vietnam’s people, is relentlessly called a “war hero.” His “service to his country” is praised, over and over, by his supporters and his Democratic Party opponents alike — exposing to us all what they agree on.
For that reason, it is exciting and welcome that real heroes emerge from one of America’s wars. We should speak about them and about our internationalist values. People need to know about this courage and consciousness emerging among the soldiers of the empire.
Army Sgt. Matthis Chiroux’s public statement (also available in video):
Good afternoon. My name is Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, and I served in the Army as a Photojournalist until being honorably discharged last summer after over four years of service in Afghanistan, Japan, Europe and the Phillipines. As an Army journalist whose job it was to collect and filter servicemember’s stories, I heard many stomach-churning testimonies of the horrors and crimes taking place in Iraq. For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes, but never again will I allow fear to silence me. Never again will I fail to stand.
The following article appeared in the Washington Post exposing large-scale involuntary drugging and other outrageous mistreatment of immigrants being deported.
by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers
The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.
The government’s forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the “pre-flight cocktail,” as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.
“Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac,” says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was “dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose,” according to an airline crew member’s written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards “taking down” a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.
Kasama received the following essay from Keith Joseph. A debate is needed over how to stand, speak and act in regard to Obama’s campaign for president. Add your commentary and debate here. We hope to post substantive essays with other views on Obama as we receive them.
I know Jeremiah Wright… Well, I never met him, but I know his ideas, he is a part of the American political left. Nothing he said outraged me, or even upset me. I agreed with a lot of it, and disagreed with some of it. If we were to meet in person I imagine we would get along just fine, and we probably could do some good work together. Obama had to distance himself from his pastor in order to remain a viable candidate — a smart move. Gary Wills, writing in the May 2008 NY Review of Books, pointed out that Abe Lincoln, who Obama invoked when announcing his own candidacy, was associated with John Brown and the “radical” abolitionists. Like Obama, Abe had to distance himself in pubic from the “extremists.” But the abolitionists remained the left wing of Lincoln ’s coalition, and although he publicly disavowed them (gently) he was secretly and indirectly connected to them.
The following article reports on the announcements of Peru’s military. As in such reports over the years, it is hard to know what here is true and what is not. However this evidence of continued compative capacity by the Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path) is worth a post — so that we can evaluate and discuss it.
By Ángel Páez
LIMA, May 9 (IPS) – The armed forces have launched a major offensive against the most combative remaining column of Sendero Luminoso (the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas) which is operating in the jungle valleys of the Ene and Apurimac rivers in southeastern Peru, where most of the country’s coca leaf and cocaine is produced.
By order of the armed forces’ Joint Command, 5,000 troops belonging to army infantry brigades No. 2 and No. 31, 200 members of Special Operations and the marines, and 200 more from the air force Defence and Special Operations unit, have been mobilised to the area.
The enemy they are facing is made up of only 200 combatants.
The RCP has published a new comment on the “9 Letters to Our Comrades.” It appears on their website with little fanfare, and we publish it here for discussion. The new essay is described as as an “observation from readers.” We will comment more on the content of this Observation, but for now a few initial points:
In an outrageous mix of chauvinism, ignorance and cowardice, Dunkin Donuts caved in to rightwing attackdogs who shouted that traditional Arab clothing is “terrorist” and so shouldn’t be allowed on American TV. The following article appeared on the 
