Comments on: Blog and Manifesto

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:27:00 +0000

“the tone in which the two deserve to be discussed”
But what you’ve got there really is two placeholders, the figures they are as they’ve been given to you – one, Bush, through a carefully controlled and constantly monitored set of media filters and buffers; the other, Churchill, through much the same process, with a lot of negative backspin, and of course far less attention overall.
The “deserve” part of that bit is an extension of the manipulative creation of image on both counts.
You’re being told what to feel about both men, by the same off-stage prompt.
Bush was expendable from the get. Anyone who thinks he’s presided over the clampdown of the polis and the gutting of the Constitution for his own accession to the throne is dangerously naive.
Considering the prominence and mainstream acceptance of grotesque actors like Dershowitz and so many others – considering the clear and full-system bias of American media, which is where both Bush and Churchiill exist, as they’re used here – it should be obvious that only someone like Proyect, already out at the thinnest margin of public discourse, is going to come in having Churchill’s back.
Repeating the mediated slanders and substanceless claims of Churchill’s detractors as though they’re proven fact is only possible in a climate where men like Alan Dershowitz have free and mostly uncriticizable rein at the public.
This doesn’t bode well for unprejudiced and furthering conversation.
I understand how difficult it must be to try and convince those to the right of you to get hold of some commonality before everything falls apart – with Churchill and really a very few others over to the left tossing Molotov cocktails into the dialogue – but he’s right in his main complaint, about the unaddressed genocide of aboriginal Americans – and that isn’t getting acknowledged, because it’s inconvenient, and there’s nothing driving the necessity for it, other than some vestigial moral regard.

By: No Preference

No Preference — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 13:45:04 +0000

“I find it ratheer bizarre that the second paragraph of a rather long manifesto is about Israel. Why? What is this obsession?”

A case of ‘the lady doth protest too much, methinks’: because for a large number of Serious Liberals, attitudes towards Iraq were shaped by that point.

Hear, hear. I suspect that the vigor of the “nonsense on stilts” response is due to Judt’s making that obvious point in his LRB essay .

By: abb1

abb1 — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 09:00:15 +0000

Churchill doesn’t believe in “the right to exist”, bastard. Hence he certainly deserves waaay more venom than Bush, who does.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 05:51:34 +0000

Maybe I wasn’t clear, Barry, though I thought my reference to relative quantities made the point reasonably well.

Obviously, Bush has had far more opportunities and done far more harm than Prof Churchill, and for that reason gets far more criticism. But the tone in which the two deserve to be discussed is much the same.

By: Barry Freed

Barry Freed — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 04:40:54 +0000

…. CT as the kind of place that is where you will find equal amounts of venom hurled at George W. Bush and Ward Churchill. Id agree that the two are equally deserving of venom…

Seriously, John? I thought much better of you than that. Or have I underestimated Prof. Churchill’s body count by many orders of magnitude?

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 04:16:38 +0000

I see Proyect has a piece on his blog, describing CT as the kind of place that is “where you will find equal amounts of venom hurled at George W. Bush and Ward Churchill”. I’d agree that the two are equally deserving of venom, but the relative quantities hurled here reflect their relative (in)significance.

By: engels

engels — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 02:52:56 +0000

Nathaniel – I can easily believe that is the intention. As I said, I wasn’t trying to draw an inference about his views. I just think that calling yourself “unrepentant”, when the first thing that comes into most people’s minds in the US when they think of Marxism is the gulags, is a little tone deaf. And as I also said above, essays in the mould of Judt’s NYRB piece irritate me too.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 23:41:19 +0000

I deleted Proyect’s fifth pro-Milosevic comment on a thread and told him I’d do the same for anything further on the same lines, but I don’t think he was ever banned from commenting more generally.

By: Nathaniel

Nathaniel — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:50:59 +0000

Louis Proyect comes from a Trotskyist background (USA SWP), so I doubt he’s an apologist for the gulags. I think it’s meant more as a response to the idea of having to be apologetic for being a Marxist in the “death of communism” atmosphere after the end of the Soviet Union. To return to Tony Judt, his NY Review of Books piece about Marx recently that someone linked above might be an example.

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:31:38 +0000

Daniel – As far as I remember, we didn’t actually ban him – one of us deleted a few of his more offensive remarks, and he huffed off. Or is my memory betraying me?

By: engels

engels — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 14:22:00 +0000

I think “Unrepentant Marxist” is the title of Louis’ blog

Yes, sorry, that was just my little joke and I wasn’t trying to bait people to slag off Mr Proyect behind his back.

That said, I can’t resist saying why that phrase always stands out for me, which is that I can’t think of many other people who would voluntarily describe themselves as an “unrepentant Marxist”. That does seem to imply that, yeah, you’ve read Solzhenitsyn and Applebaum but you just don’t think there’s anything there to feel bad about. That may not be at all indicative of his views, but it is what the title suggests to me. (And I think that Marx was right about lots of things, and I don’t think the Soviet Union “proved” that Marxism is wrong. All off-topic anyway. I’ll shut up now.)

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:17:45 +0000

What does this manifesto have in common with the Eustonites’?
What do the makers of this manifesto have in common with the makers of that one?
Well there you go.
What does Tony Judt have in common with Walt and Mearsheimer?
Well there you go, again.
Is the coast clear now? Can “liberals” crawl out from under the furniture and change their pants?
Is it time for the ol’ switcheroo?
Can we blame Iraq on Bush and lose him in the dust, while the evident gains of that quagmire/debacle still accrue to our various affinity groups?
Possibly Louis Proyect could be more aptly described, by those here wishing to describe him, as “a lunatic to the left of me, with whom I frequently disagree, and whose opinions and the expression of them I often find threatening and unsafe”.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:19:15 +0000

Henry – I think “Unrepentant Marxist” is the title of Louis’ blog. (btw, while I would not want to unreservedly defend LP’s style of online debate, I think it’s a bit unfair to be calling him a lunatic if we’re not going to let him respond)

By: koshem

koshem — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:05:45 +0000

Judt is not a Liberal; he is an Arabist from Greenwich Village.

Ackerman and Gitlin are Liberals, but what happened to the old Leftists. Those that don’t talk only about foreign affair and civil rights, but also care about laborers rights, right to unionize, health care and free higher education.

I guess it’s way too messy for academics.

By: RobW

RobW — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 02:51:45 +0000

As for the issue of Judt’s j’accuse, I suspect much of the irritation can be traced yet again to American confusion over the terms ‘leftist’ and ‘liberal’.

I posted this at one in the morning local time and now I’m at a loss to know to which ‘irritation’ I was referring. Let this serve as a warning to those who would post while half-asleep!

Oh, well, at least it generated an interesting discussion.