Comments on: Mysterious denunciation

By: Marko Attila Hoare

Marko Attila Hoare — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 08:39:17 +0000

“But we are in the age of imperialism, not the age of the ascendant bourgeoisie.” This is a distinction that is only believed in by Marxist-Leninists, whose ideology has been thoroughly discredited: the tyranny established by Lenin and Trotsky killed far, far, far more people than Rumsfeld or Albright. “Actually, the Kosovars are just as brutal as the Israelis.” How funny of Proyect to compare a colonised nation with a colonising nation. A more appropriate comparison would be between the Kosovars and the Palestinians, whose extremists regularly blow up bus loads of Israeli civilians, though I don’t believe this detracts from the Palestinian right to self-determination…

By: Louis Proyect

Louis Proyect — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 21:00:58 +0000

Attila: “In Kosovo, at least the majority of the population is now free to live in their own homes – without NATO intervention, they would have become the Palestinians of Europe.” Actually, the Kosovars are just as brutal as the Israelis. —- Almost no Serbs continued to live in the capital Pristina after the 1999 war, except for a few isolated elderly Serbs who chose to continue living in their homes, and several dozen Serb families who lived in the so-called YU Program apartments in the Ulpiana district of Pristina. The families living in the YU Program apartments included Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, for whom the apartments were originally built in the mid-1990s, as well as Serbs displaced after the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, and some Serbs who were working for various international organizations in Kosovo. Ethnic Albanian protests from Pristina appeared to have been well organized on March 17, although they initially focused on exhorting ethnic Albanians to join the protests at Caglavica rather than on Pristina itself. At the University of Pristina, students found leaflets in their dormitories urging them to join the protests, signed on behalf of the “organizing council.” At the municipality buildings in Pristina, university officials including the President of the Independent Union of Students of the University of Pristina (UPSUP) Gani Morina and University of Pristina Rector Zejnel Kelmendi addressed thousands of students, “alterna[ting] between exhorting and placating the crowd’s emotion.”76 Throughout the day, the momentum of the protests continued to grow. When the crowds began to return to Pristina in the evening from the pitched battles at Caglavica with KFOR and UNMIK troops, they focused their attention on the YU Program apartment buildings that housed most of Pristina’s remaining Serbs. Shortly after 7 p.m., Milanka Stefanovic was preparing to put her eight-year-old daughter to bed when she heard a crowd of several hundred Albanians gather outside, yelling “UCK, UCK (Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves; the Albanian name of the Kosovo Liberation Army),” telling the residents to “Go to Serbia,” and threatening to kill them.77 The apartments came under sustained attack from the crowd, until the last Serbs were evacuated sometime around 1 a.m. The crowd shot at the building, set apartments on fire, and beat and stabbed some of the Serb residents. full: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/kosovo0704/7.htm#_Toc77665984

By: Louis Proyect

Louis Proyect — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 19:52:18 +0000

It is interesting how Hoare needs to go back into the 19th century to dredge up examples of ostensibly humanitarian capitalist interventions. But we are in the age of imperialism, not the age of the ascendant bourgeoisie. This misuse of history can be also found in Christopher Hitchen’s Iraq war propaganda. It would turn people like Donald Rumsfeld and Madeline Albright into something like the Marquis de LaFayette. It only turns my stomach.

By: Marko Attila Hoare

Marko Attila Hoare — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 17:56:32 +0000

One can cite many examples of nations that have liberated themselves with external assistance: the United States, liberated in the 1770s and 80s with French and Spanish military assistance; Greece, liberated in the 1820s with British, French and Russian military assistance; Italy, liberated in the 1850s and 60s with French and Prussian military assistance, etc. Not to mention the American, British and Soviet liberation of Europe from the Nazis… In Kosovo, at least the majority of the population is now free to live in their own homes – without NATO intervention, they would have become the Palestinians of Europe.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 14:00:00 +0000

Actually, if I’m not mistaken, Trotsky tended to partake of the view that the Macedonians were ethnic Bulgarians and tended to be more sympathetic to the Bulgarians than to the Serbians. But then, what’s the point? The point is that no “national question” can be solved from the outside , except when one thinks that colonial tutelage is some sort of a “solution” to it, as the sorry stuation in the twin Bosnian and Kosovo statelets under NATO protection seems to prove, IMHO.

By: Marko Attila Hoare

Marko Attila Hoare — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 18:21:21 +0000

Solidarity with the Irish in the nineteenth century meant supporting the Irish national-liberation struggle and condemning Britain’s oppression of Ireland, not just supporting the humanitarian rights of Irish refugees. As for what Trotsky wrote about Serbian imperialism, how about this quotation: “Serbian imperialism found itself quite unable to advance along the ‘normal’, that is, the national line: its path was barred by Austria-Hungary, which included within its borders more than half of all the Serbs. Hence Serbia’s push down the line of least resistance, towards Macedonia. The national achievements of Serbian propaganda in that quarter were quite insignificant, but all the more sweeping for that reason seem the territorial conquests made by Serbian imperialism. Serbia now includes within her borders about half a million Macedonians, just as she already included half a million Albanians. A dizzy success ! Actually, this hostile million may prove fatal to the historical existence of Serbia.” (Leon Trotsky, The Balkan wars, 1912-13, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1991, p. 366).

By: Carlos Rebello

Carlos Rebello — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:46:01 +0000

Even in the historical short run, the fact that some millions of Irish had to seek refuge out of their homeland during the Great Famine (in what many people take as an ethnocide)didn’t kill Irish nationalism as a factor in British politics, did it? Trotsky, of course, denounced Serbian atrocities during the Balkan War, but he didn’t see Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece as imperialist powers, as I do not remember him upholding the return of Turkish rule to the Balkans…

By: Marko Attila Hoare

Marko Attila Hoare — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:20:32 +0000

“offering them at the time an open arms policy of asylum” – Carlos Rebello seems to be saying that the Kosovo Albanians and Bosnian Muslims had no future in their own countries, but should all have fled abroad so that Milosevic could establish his ethnically pure Great Serbia. That’s not what I call “solidarity”. As for the comparison with Brazil: indeed, Bosnia and Kosovo had the right to defend themselves from Serbian imperialist aggression (just as Brazil in the 1930s may have had the same right, though I don’t believe that Britain in 1938 was threatening the Brazilians with genocide). Let’s paraphrase Rebello: “A Bosnian victory would have meant a development of the national and political consciousness of the Bosnian people that would eventually sweep away Izetbegovic’s regime, as well as give a mighty push to the Serbian Left.” Trotsky in 1912-13 condemned the imperialist states that were actually committing the aggression: Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. That’s more than can be said for the neo-Stalinists of today, who seem to feel that imperialist aggression and genocide are perfectly acceptable, provided they are carried out by states with “collectivised property relations.”

By: Carlos Rebello

Carlos Rebello — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:23:59 +0000

“Showing the least bit of solidarity for the suffering people of Bosnia and Kosovo” is in my view something that could be far better served by offering them at the time an open arms policy of asylum than making them colonial pawns into greatpowers’ political scheming. I’ve read Trotsky’s writings on the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars also, and forgive me, but I don’t remember him advocating something like a jointly Austro_Hungarian/German humanitarian intervention for the sake of the ethnic Albanians. I’m a member of Proyect’s Marxmail list and there we have already had more than just a go about Trotsky’s 1938 comment on an hypothetical war between England and the “semifascist” Brazilian dictator Vargas, something about which Trotsky said that Britain’s victory could only mean a change of dictators in Rio de Janeiro, but that a Brazilian victory would mean a development of the national and political counsciousness of the Brazilian people that would eventually sweep away Vargas’ dictatorship as well as give a mighty push to the English Left…Being Brazilian, I’m afraid – had I been around at the time- I wouldn’t as much as welcome Vargas’ downfall, if I were to withstand colonial tutelage on his stead.

By: Carlos Rebello

Carlos Rebello — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:22:24 +0000

“Showing the least bit of solidarity for the suffering people of Bosnia and Kosovo” is in my view something that could be far better served by offering them at the time an open arms policy of asylum than making them colonial pawns into greatpowers’ political scheming. I’ve read Trotsky’s writings on the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars also, and forgive me, but I don’t remember him advocating something like a jointly Austro_Hungarian/German humanitarian intervention for the sake of the ethnic Albanians. I’m a member of Proyect’s Marxmail list and there we have already had more than just a go about Trotsky’s 1938 comment on an hypothetical war between England and the “semifascist” Brazilian dictator Vargas, something about which Trotsky said that Britain’s victory could only mean a change of dictators in Rio de Janeiro, but that a Brazilian victory would mean a development of the national and political counsciousness of the Brazilian people that would eventually sweep away Vargas’ dictatorship as well as give a mighty push to the English Left…Being Brazilian, I’m afraid, had I been around at the time, I wouldn’t as much as welcome Vargas’ downfall, if I were to withstood colonial tutelage on his stead.

By: Marko Attila Hoare

Marko Attila Hoare — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 21:46:49 +0000

Such are the depths to which the Proyects and the Hermans have sunk – to become the left-wing equivalent of Holocaust deniers. Instead of showing the least bit of solidarity to the suffering peoples of Bosnia and Kosovo, they prefer to give their solidarity to the fascists and the ethnic-cleansers. Because let’s face it – who cares about a couple of hundred thousand dead people when “collectivised property relations” are at stake ? Well, if socialism means supporting murderous dictators and whitewashing their genocidal activities, then socialism is a bankrupt, reactionary ideology that belongs in the dustbin of history.

By: Louis Proyect

Louis Proyect — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 14:40:17 +0000

Attila asked: >>Why does he think genocide is acceptable, provided the perpetrators rule over “collectivised property relations”, like his hero Milosevic?< < The above sentence is grammatically whacked, as it must be given its intention. Attila should have asked something like this: "If a socialist government is involved in a genocide, would you still support the government?" To begin with, Milosevic was not involved in genocide. The only people who make such claims are New Labor ideologues and their co-thinkers in the USA, like David Ignatieff. These are the same people who are waving pom-poms now for the war in Iraq. With respect to actual history, the only genocides in the 20th century around which a scholarly consenus exists are: Armenians, Jews and Tutsis. To my knowledge, the Turks, the Nazis and the Hutus were not socialist. For an interesting examination of the question of Milosevic and genocide, I refer you to Edward Herman's Foreign Policy in Focus article: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405ssgenocide.html

By: Marko Attila Hoare

Marko Attila Hoare — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 10:39:15 +0000

Perhaps Proyect could stop beating about the bush and give a straight answer to a straight question: Why does he think genocide is acceptable, provided the perpetrators rule over “collectivised property relations”, like his hero Milosevic ?

By: Marko Attila Hoare

Marko Attila Hoare — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 10:38:27 +0000

By: Marko Attila Hoare

Marko Attila Hoare — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 10:37:43 +0000