Ever since I left the SWP in late 1978, I have been attending the yearly Left Forums in NY that were known as the Socialist Scholars Conference prior to a split in the leading bodies in 2004 over Yugoslavia. Veteran social democrat Bogdan Denitch, who died a few months ago, was viewed as a Serbophobe by the faction that would go on to form the Left Forum in 2005. That year there were two conferences, one in the name of the Socialist Scholars Conference and the other as the Left Forum. Next year there was only the Left Forum as many of the figures aligned with Denitch reconciled with their erstwhile ideological opponents.
From 2005 until 2015 (excluding 2007 for some reason I canât recall), I have written reports on the Left Forum and more recently produced videos of the sessions I attended. This year I have decided not to attend since it has reached the point where quantity has turned into quality as Plekhanov might have put it. Or more accurately, it has reached the point where quantity has turned into excrement. In a nutshell, the same sort of idiocy that has taken over the left on Syria has become so pervasive this year that I cannot justify spending $70 to attend. Are there panel discussions that would be worth my while? I suppose so but that is almost like someone trying to convince me to tune into WBAI. The station exudes such a stench that my hand refuses to obey my brainâs order to dial up 99.5FM.
In a very real sense, the Left Forum has been transformed into something resembling WBAIâleading to the pun that it has been subject to Pacification. The other night the hand got the upper hand over the brain and I listened to WBAI for a couple of minutes. I was not surprised to see that they were in the midst of one of their biweekly fund-drives. Nor was I surprised to see that they were offering premiums for a 5 DVD documentary titled “The Great Lies of History”. One, of course, is about 9/11. Another is: âCancer: The Forbidden Curesâ. It claims that the âdrug-dominated medical professionâ has suppressed cures including Mistletoe and Bicarbonate of Soda. I suppose they are geared to oral and stomach cancer respectively. I donât think that Lew Hill had this in mind when he launched Pacifica in 1946.
While WBAI is much more fixated on such quackery from the likes of Gary Null, it too traffics in the sort of âanti-imperialismâ that has swamped the Left Forum. Amy Goodman, the stationâs star for what thatâs worth, has allowed Seymour Hersh to babble on about Syria in the very week that Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami were in NY on a book tour for âBurning Countryâ. When Goodman was approached about doing an interview with them, she said no.
Meanwhile, Goodman and Slavoj Zizek are doing the closing plenary on Sunday night. At this stage of the game, inviting Zizek to speak to a left audience is almost as much of an insult as inviting Donald Trump. I have heard through the grapevine that Verso Press has cut its ties to the Elvis Superstar of Marxism over his filthy insistence that Syrian refugees adapt to Western norms but he is good enough for the Left Forum apparently.
I have to give credit to Amber Aâlee Frost who sized up the 2015 Left Forum conference accurately in The Baffler.
Thatâs right: If you pay your registration fee and fill out the proper forms, you get a room and a table and a spot on the schedule. So in addition to all those experienced and intelligent rabble-rousers, Left Forum is a home for 9/11 Truthers, those who would save us from the terrors of âmandatory fluoridation,â and the generally batshit and/or pathologically anti-social. No one is required to observe their lectures, but they wander into other peopleâs and there is something truly dispiriting about not being able to distinguish self-identified radicals from the parodies of us imagined by the right wing.
Frost singled out a panel from 2014 as a âwackjob nadirâ, the infamous âĆœiĆŸek Delenda Estâ (âĆœiĆŸek Must be Destroyed.â).
The thesis of the panelâwhich featured at least one âtankie,â slang for Soviet apologist, or actual Stalinistâwas that Slovenian Marxist philosopher Slavoj ĆœiĆŸek is some kind of COINTELPRO crypto-Nazi.
Whatâs odd about their obsession with Zizek is a failure to see how close he is to them ideologically. With his disparagement of the Syrian rebels as âa mess of fundamentalist Islamist groupsâ, youâd think heâd be hoisted on their shoulders. Of course, on the far left some of the bitterest quarrels take place among sects that were born from the same womb. Just look at the Trotskyists.
It must be said at the outset that the people who run the Left Forum are not identified with this kind of conspiracism. It just so happens that it is a Big Tent that allows virtually anybody to schedule a panel discussion. The fact that this yearâs conference is flooded with âĆœiĆŸek Delenda Estâ type barking dogs only reflects the sirenâs call of conspiracism on the left, one in which a Marxist class analysis is so sorely lacking.
Let me walk you through a few of the panels to give you an idea of what you can get for your $70, starting with Deep State: The Fabricated Global War on Terrorism — Why the Left Should Unite to Expose and Rebel Against It that pretty much epitomized the malaise that afflicts the Left Forum. The organizers breathlessly announce:
The yellow-journalism press rarely reports that ISIS was 100% planned, created and controlled by US/NATO/Israel/Turkey/Saudi forces. Publicly this newest bogeyman is reviled and used to whip up fear and bellicosity. Behind the scenes, ISIS is our shock troops, the go-to mercenaries to effect regime change in places like Libya and Syria, and ensure wavering countries like France tow the line.
One of the speakers is Wayne Madsen, an âinvestigative reporterâ and author of âUnmasking ISISâ. He is a 9/11 Truther, as are many in this neck of the woods. As part of his investigative reporting, he came up with the startling revelation that Barack Obama is a homosexual who belonged to the same Chicago gay bath house as Rahm Emmanuel. Madsen was able to provide about the same amount of proof as those who allege that Obama was born in Kenya. Madsenâs articles have appeared in  CounterPunch, In These Times, The Progressive and The Village Voice. Donât ask me why.
For more of the same, you can attend How Universal U.S. Sovereignty Threatens World Peace. It features Sarah Flounders of the Workers World Party and Michael Perino, who once told CounterPunch readers that about 50,000 Blacks were âmassacredâ in Libya. Since the highest estimate for all casualties in the Libyan civil war was half of that, who knows where Perino got his number.
Want to know about The Situation in Ukraine? Then haul your ass over to a panel organized by UNAC, the âcoalitionâ made up of Socialist Action members and other like-minded leftists who have succumbed totally to the âaxis of resistanceâ disease now an epidemic on the left. The SA members were educated in the Socialist Workers Party, a group that was distinguished by its embrace of Ukrainian opponents of Soviet domination in the 1960s. One of the speakers is Bruce Gagnon, who like many in this milieu blames Kiev for starting the civil war in Ukraine when it threatened to remove Russian as one of the official languages as if the people in Donetsk and Luhansk would suffer the same kind of fate as Kurds in Turkey. This was essentially a Goebbels type of big lie. The truth is that Russian would continue as a regional language along with 17 other languages including Yiddish but Ukrainian would be the sole official language, which only meant that it would be used in driver license applications, etc. Was that a reason for Putin to dispatch thousands of special forces into Eastern Ukraine? Obviously not. His real intention was the same as Catherine the Greatâsâto keep Ukraine under Russiaâs thumb.
You can guess from the title The US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and War in the “Middle Eastâ (I have no idea what the scare quotes in the title indicate) what this one is about. Organized by the pro-Assad International Action Center, it includes Kazem Azin as one of the speakers, a contributor to Workers World newspaper and an ardent supporter of the Islamic Republic who once claimed that âImam Khomeini was able for the first time to unite all religious groups and the majority of the people under the banner of Islam.â Of course, if you were stiff-necked enough to refuse being so united, you might end up being tortured in Evin prison.
If you miss the X-Files, as I certainly do, you might want to check in on Deep State: False Flags — How a United Left Could Defeat a “Global Gladio” Agenda since it features Richard Dolan as a panelist. Dolan is the author of “A History of False Flag Operations” but he is probably best known for his books on UFOâs and the National Security State. This leftist version of Fox Mulder once met with a CIA agent referred to as âAnonymousâ who on his death bed revealed that The Truth Is Out There:
Facing impending kidney failure, this individual felt compelled to disclose secret information he feels is too important to keep secret. In the video, he claims to have served in the U.S. Army, worked for the CIA, and worked on the U.S. Air Forceâs Project Blue Bookâone of the USAFâs official studies of UFOs. And he refers to the project as âpartially a fraud.â Asking for clarification, Dolan states, âYouâre saying some of the Blue Book cases were completely fictitious?â The anonymous man responds, âYes.â
âAnonymousâ alleges that, after an invasion threat from President Dwight Eisenhower, he and his superior at the CIA were allowed inside the secretive Area 51 in Nevada to gather intel and report back to the president. There, âAnonymousâ describes seeing several alien spacecraft, including the craft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. Then, he and his superior were taken to the S-4 facility southwest of Area 51 where they observed live extraterrestrials.
On Sunday thereâs more from UNAC at The Fight to End US Wars as well as two 9/11 Truther panels, one titled Time to Take Down the Wall Between the Left and the Truth Movement and the other Exposing 28 Pages of 9/11 Evidence, Legislating Transparency. Donât forget to bring the Sunday NY Times crossword puzzle in case your mind begins to wander. Also, for vintage conspiracy theory navel-gazing, you canât top The JFK Murder Cover-up: Your Rosetta Stone to Todayâs News, Elections, Policy. I suppose that one of the speakers will argue that Al Qaeda was on the grassy knoll at the rate things are going.
Just to be clear, 90 percent of the workshops are more conventional in nature. I wish I could say that this would be sufficient for me to shell out $70 but I am afraid that far too many are empty theorizing that I have little use for. For example, something titled Marx, Hegel, and the Current Situation  is a non-starter. Apparently the participants have been studying Hegel for years at the Brecht Forum and at the Marxist Education Project at the Brooklyn Commons. With all due respect to the speakers, I studied Hegel fifty years ago at the New School mostly to maintain a student deferment and donât want to go back there now. But if Hegel works for you, donât let me get in the way. Thatâs a helluva lot better than nattering about Area 51 but then again just about anything else is–especially for $70 that can be better spent on dinner for two at a Thai restaurant.