Beyond the fringe
As the main parties launched their election campaigns last week, on the political fringe a simmering squabble became an emerging imbroglio. The Socialist Workers’ Party is a principal component of George Galloway’s new organisation, Respect. On the letters page of The Guardian, the SWP’s national secretary accused the Green Party of ‘red-baiting’ for pointing this out.
The argument dates – as such disputes tend to do – from the foundation of the new party, last October. The Greens, wary of a potential threat to their own countercultural constituency, observed that Respect:
... looked like a front for the hard-left revolutionary Socialist Workers’ Party.
The Greens' reasonable suspicions on this point helped stymie attempts in February to agree on a joint slate of candidates for the European and Greater London Assembly elections.
It’s unnecessary to share the Greens’ antediluvian economics to sympathise with their predicament, yet the SWP’s accusation against them is strictly true. Red-baiting is not McCarthyism. Senator McCarthy’s techniques comprised smear, exaggeration and falsehood directed at those who were not Reds at all. The SWP, by contrast, really does advocate the overthrow of parliamentary democracy and its supersession by the dictatorship of the proletariat. The party advances its cause much as American Communists did in the 1930s, by establishing front organisations to camouflage its influence.
There is neither mystery nor novelty in this. As the SWP’s founder, Tony Cliff, declared of one such organisation in 1979 (in a small-circulation and long-defunct radical magazine called The Leveller):
The leadership of the Anti-Nazi League is in reality the SWP and we don’t give a damn.
Recently, the SWP adopted the same approach with the Stop the War Coalition, whose million-strong demonstration in Hyde Park in February 2003 was unwisely addressed by Charles Kennedy. The Coalition is a coalition only in the sense that its leadership comprises more than one far-Left group (its chairman, Andrew Murray, sits on the politburo of the Communist Party of Britain and is a declared supporter of North Korea). There is no mistaking its dominant faction in ideology and organisation.
Respect describes itself as ‘the political wing of the anti-war movement’; its London Mayoral candidate, Lindsey German, is convenor of the Stop the War Coalition and was till recently editor of the SWP’s monthly journal. Whereas most anti-war campaigners will have had no sympathy for Saddam Hussein’s regime, the SWP explicitly wished it victory on the battlefield (“while war lasts by far the lesser evil would be reverses, or defeat, for the US and British forces”, Socialist Worker, 23 March 2003).
More serious for a London municipal election is the SWP’s distinctively illogical stance on community relations. Having recently concluded that Muslim particularism is progressive, it continues to denounce Jewish nationalism as reactionary. It thus denies any legitimacy to the state of Israel, whose supposedly racist character it extravagantly denounces and against whom it urges armed revolution.
It matters, in a cosmopolitan capital city where an important minority draws inspiration from a Jewish homeland, that local election campaigns not be used as a canvas for the combustible and intractable politics of the Middle East. It matters for the same reason – literally the same reason – that the British National Party’s occasional municipal successes in the North-West matter despite the party’s minuscule overall support. A party without commitment to constitutional democracy and liberal political rights, and whose mission is to polarise a polyglot society, has a corrosive and enduring effect on public life.
To allow this to happen is the price of a free society. To abridge the political liberties of the intolerant would be immeasurably more damaging; but it is a cost nonetheless, and one that is worth trying to mitigate. Stating plainly the characteristics of such an organisation is not an underhand technique but a public service. There is far too little red-baiting in British politics, and the Greens have, in spite of themselves, done admirably in reintroducing it.
"More serious for a London municipal election is the SWP’s distinctively illogical stance on community relations. Having recently concluded that Muslim particularism is progressive, it continues to denounce Jewish nationalism as reactionary. It thus denies any legitimacy to the state of Israel, whose supposedly racist character it extravagantly denounces and against whom it urges armed revolution."
I notice you don't bother repeating the charge that the SWP is "anti-semitic" (although I suppose this is something in the way of temptation). But if you must "red-bait", Oliver, do try to get your facts right. Islamic particularism has not been deemed "progressive" by the SWP. Here is Chris Harman on the subject:
"It has been a mistake on the part of socialists to see Islamist movements either as automatically reactionary and 'fascist' or as automatically 'antiimperialist' and 'progressive'... But socialists cannot give support to the Islamists either. That would be to call for the swapping of one form of oppression for another, to react to the violence of the state by abandoning the defence of ethnic and religious minorities, women and gays, to collude in scapegoating that makes it possible for capitalist exploitation to continue unchecked providing it takes 'Islamic' forms. It would be to abandon the goal of independent socialist politics, based on workers in struggle organising all the oppressed and exploited behind them, for a tail-ending of a petty bourgeois utopianism which cannot even succeed in its own terms.
The Islamists are not our allies."
http://www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/harman/1994/prophet/ch10.htm
"Whereas most anti-war campaigners will have had no sympathy for Saddam Hussein’s regime, the SWP explicitly wished it victory on the battlefield (“while war lasts by far the lesser evil would be reverses, or defeat, for the US and British forces”, Socialist Worker, 23 March 2003)."
Please note that nothing in that article or in anything written by SW contributors could reasonably be construed as "sympathy for Saddam Hussein's regime". Supporting the frustration of imperial ambitions of a militarily powerful state led by ideological fanatics is not the same as supporting the enemy, (no matter what Orwell may have said in a moment he was later to regret).
Posted by:lenin | May 10, 2004 at 04:09 PM
Oh dear.
1. I "don't bother" to refer to the BNP's antisemitism in the above post, either, but that doesn't mean I'm undecided on the matter. It means, rather, that some pieces of information are so obvious in the context as to be redundant. If it makes you feel better, however, I'm happy to confirm that the SWP is the principal conduit for antisemitism in British politics today.
2. In my statement that the SWP has "recently concluded that Muslim particularism is progressive", you will note that there is rather an important qualifier. Or rather, you obviously don't note it at all, because the Chris Harman tract you brandish triumphantly was written a full decade ago. The SWP's recent opportunistic turn in this direction is the substance of the criticism that has been directed at it by leftist writers such as Nick Cohen, whose entirely convincing explanation for the phenomenon is that the SWP is very stupid indeed.
3. That being the case, you fit the picture of the typical SWP activist dispiritingly well, because - not for the first time in our occasional correspondence - you have affected knowledge that you do not possess and reading that you have never undertaken, and have slipped up badly as a result. Your delphic reference to "what Orwell may have said in a moment he was later to regret" is - I should explain to those of my readers who have no idea what you're talking about - nothing to do with George Orwell the writer. It is instead a rather sad urban legend about what Orwell is supposed to have said, cooked up and retailed by sundry semi-literate far-Left web sites who are disconcerted by the force of Orwell's criticism of the peace movement of his day. You are in the unfortunate position of having been gullible enough to swallow it whole because the web site where you stumbled across it conforms with your own ideological prejudices. You are more fortunate, however, that I exploded this particular Internet hoax last year. If you go to my old Blogger site here and scroll down to the entry entitled 'Orwell and the peace movement', all will be revealed. I would urge you to follow carefully the links and references given there, and to read thoroughly the Orwell essays in question, before you come back on this point, otherwise your remonstrations will merely fit their characteristic pattern of being a waste of everybody's time.
4. I think on this occasion I will forgo the opportunity to expound to you the political character and implications of the SWP's supporting military victory for a genocidal despotism consciously modelled on both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. As my regular readers will know, I'm willing to go a long way down into the mud for a political fight, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
Posted by:Oliver Kamm | May 10, 2004 at 06:32 PM
Ah, again, he sniggers too soon!
On the first point, I have already systematically demolished your claims here .
On the second point, you'll note that you are engaging in precisely the sort of language you once chided me for: pretending the SWP is "stupid" because you disagree with its politics. Unfortunately for you, Oliver, you haven't the slightest bit of evidence that we have altered our position on this. The Chris Harman article is entirely consistent with our present position.
On the third point, I'm pretty sure you miss my point. I'll dally with yours for a moment, however. In my volume, the reference to Julian Symons comes on page 293 (it's an old edition). Orwell says:
"[T]he first thing I have to admit is that up to at any rate the end of 1942 I was grossly wrong in my analysis of the situation ... I particularly regret having said in one letter that Julian Symons 'writes with a vaguely Fascist strain' - a quite unjustified statement based on a single article I probably misunderstood. But this kind of thing results largely from the lunatic atmosphere of war..."
I gather that your assumption is that I am referring to the last sentence.
No. I suggest you go to pages 288-9 (sorry, no idea how to translate that for YOUR volume... look up pacifism in the index...). On page 288-9, the following:
"The same propaganda tricks are to be found almost everywhere. It would take many pages of this paper merely to classify them, but I here draw attention to one very widespread controversial habit - disregard of an opponent's motives. The key word here is 'objectively'.
We are told that it is only a person's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis: and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying the same thing more than once..."
Now, I would count that as some kind of "regret", wouldn't you? (How silly of you to assume once again that I hadn't read the book).
On the fourth point, you are of course free to sling as much mud as you like. The SWP supported a defeat for the US and a victory for Iraqis - we still do. As you know, the entire far Left was united behind the idea that the Iraqi people should be given the chance to overthrow their vile government for themselves. It would have made for a much more authentic and lasting "liberation". Sadly, on the one occasion on which they came close to achieving this, they were blocked by the US.
Posted by:lenin | May 10, 2004 at 08:01 PM
One of the reasons it's not easy to debate contingent hypotheses with the True Believer is that he operates on different epistemic criteria from the normal practice of the social sciences. What you proclaim to be 'systematic demolition', for example, is - should any reader be minded to pursue it, as I should not recommend - a quotation from an article that I had myself drawn your attention to in the first place in an SWP publication. Because the article proclaims opposition to antisemitism, you take this as evidence that the SWP opposes antisemitism. You will, I hope, forgive me for pointing out that the rigour of your rebuttal is not of the highest, especially given my observation to you that the reason the SWP manages to maintain this risible claim is that it defines antisemitism as only something that can be espoused by its political enemies. It was because your triumphant counter-assertion took this form that I realised there was little to be gained by pursuing the matter further with you - as indeed I should have realised long before, and regret not having done so, for it would have saved a modicum of time and effort on my part.
My invocation of the SWP's 'stupidity' is in fact a quotation from Nick Cohen, though the evidence he cites is compelling, and in this you are clearly keen to demonstrate your fidelity to the party's positions.
Unfortunately, the party's positions are mysterious to you in other respects. Because you are a ubiquitous poster on other people's blogs (not limited to mine), you have consistently been caught out making claims about your party's declared policies on which other readers, not of your party, have then had to correct you. Not long ago, for example, you denounced indignantly on my good friend Harry Hatchet's blog the supposed calumny that the SWP had refused to condemn the destruction of the World Trade Centre - only to have it pointed out to you wearily by other readers that that morally repugnant stance was precisely what the SWP stood for. Please take it from me that the SWP is likewise well-known to, apparently, everyone but you for the distinctive stand it has taken on Muslim particularism in the past couple of years. (If you doubt this, try finding in the pages of Socialist Worker a condemnation of the recent statement from the Muslim Association of Britain welcoming George Galloway's opposition to abortion.)
I am aware of the Orwell quotation, which is what my rebuttal last year had in mind, as well as the web site from which you have cribbed it. The point I was making is that your insistence that Orwell renounced his elision of the distinction between opposing war and supporting victory for the other side is exactly wrong. What he did was to make later allowance for the fact that sometimes subjective intentions do in fact matter, and thus to distinguish between subjectivity and objectivity. Orwell certainly did not revise his view that the anti-war movement of his day was, in fact, helpful to fascism. More to the point, his position is of no help whatever to you in your protestations, for, as I have demonstrated by means of direct quotation, today's SWP explicitly has the SUBJECTIVE intention as well as objective effect of supporting military victory for Saddam Hussein.
I am afraid that I would no more 'debate' the character of that stance with you than I would argue the merits of Holocaust denial with a member of the British National Party, and for the same reason.
Posted by:Oliver Kamm | May 11, 2004 at 12:55 AM
Oliver - I discussed that article (and John Rose's) because you brought it up. You claimed that it proved the SWP were anti-semitic, that we "declined" to condemn anti-semitism. You claimed that John Rose condemned Israeli citizens "in toto". Both of those charges have been refuted. So what else do you have to make such charges with?
Nothing. You have not followed it up with a single particle of new evidence - just more ad hominem invective which I shall ignore.
As for the SWP's attitude to Osama bin Laden and the attacks on the World Trade Centre. Socialist Worker was clear on this:
"[W]hoever was responsible, socialists have a clear attitude. We abhor violence, and oppose indiscriminate bombings of civilians."
There you go. We "oppose" it. We are against it. We "abhor" it. Could it be any clearer?
Finally - "The point I was making is that your insistence that Orwell renounced his elision of the distinction between opposing war and supporting victory for the other side is exactly wrong."
I am aware of your precarious word-juggling on this issue - however, I did not insist upon any such thing. I said that he had cause to "regret" it. And of course, I was right. The reason I mentioned it, for your information, is that I had already read your silly screed and thought I'd do a little "baiting" of my own.
Finally, the SWP's "subjective" position was that we wished for a defeat for the US in WHATEVER circumstances. Not quite the same as supporting Saddam, but I'm sure you'll find a way to make the elision stick. Good day.
Posted by:lenin | May 11, 2004 at 01:44 PM
Wow lenin wonderful way to split hairs. You wished the US defeat "whatever" the circumstances. IE when they were fighting a vicious genocidal tyrant you were hoping for US to be defeated. How is that not supporting Saddam's fight against the US? There were two sides and you picked one. You, and you side, supported a genocidal dictator who left huge mass graves all over his county.
If the SWP supported neither side then surely staying neutral on the matter would be the best course of action?
Posted by:Andrew Ian Dodge | May 11, 2004 at 02:43 PM
No, I said the SWP declined to condemn Arab antisemitism. Your omission of the adjective makes an important difference to the sense of that statement. Of course the SWP happily condemns antisemitism in principle, so long as it's not required to demonstrate opposition to antisemitism in practice. The article I linked to, by SWP ideologue Sabby Sagall, demonstrated the point by redefining Arab antisemitism as something that doesn't exist, or that insofar as it does exist is unexceptionable and progressive anti-Zionism:
Note the scare-quotes in the final sentence.
I also pointed out that the SWP ideologue John Rose, in his notorious pamphlet Israel - The Hijack State, had condemned Israeli Jews as a people and not merely Israel as a state. This is beyond argument. Whereas genuine progressives favour a two-state territorial compromise that respects the national claims of both Jew and Palestinian, Rose depicts Israeli Jews as an illegitimate force animated by racism. He denounces what he sees as:
He even puts a figure on it. On the basis of a poll that he completely misreads, he insinuates that this 'mass of Israelis' consists of 99% of Israeli Jews (he says 'Israeli population', but presumably he means to count only Israeli Jews). If you want to be literal-minded you can claim that 99% of Israeli Jews is not Israeli Jews 'in toto', but I think my point is made: he denounces Israeli Jews, and not just Israel itself.
Actually I should have realised that you would want to be literal-minded, given the wreckage of your empirical claims in all other respects. This is the only sense I can make of your triumphant rebuttal of the charge of SWP antisemitism on the grounds that Rose praises one Israeli Jew. You might be interested to know that the British National Party takes the identical position: if you go to its web site, you'll find the party gives extensive and highly favourable coverage to the fulminations of an antisemitic Israeli crank called Israel Shamir; and you might be able to infer from his name that Mr Shamir is not a Gentile.
As for SW's imagined condemnation of the destruction of the Twin Towers - yes, of course the statement you quote could be clearer. It's an utterly feeble equivocation - a statement of the same kind as the SWP's empty declaratory opposition to antisemitism that I have discussed above. No one says in principle that he favours the indiscriminate bombings of civilians. Even Osama bin Laden disclaims that aim - he says he's attacking infidels, who happen to number among them civilians. The charge at issue is that the SWP does not condemn the specific act of flying aeroplanes into the Twin Towers. On this matter, as has been pointed out to you at length by people on other blogs who have displayed a commendable amount of patience, the SWP has maintained a consistent and morally abhorrent silence. Paul Foot displayed the absurdity of this position in its most arrant form in his article for The Guardian on this subject not long after the event: he made it clear he couldn't support such acts, because they offended against the writings of Trotsky on the subject; at no point did he clearly, unexceptionably and directly say, "I condemn these acts", and at no point has the SWP said this either.
You clearly alluded to Orwell's invocation of Scripture to the effect that 'he who is not for me is against me' (later made use of in a slightly different form by President Bush), and then stated that Orwell had regretted saying this. No, he didn't. All he did two years after writing that article was to allow that subjective intentions matter when assessing anti-war campaigners. That defence isn't open to you, because the SWP subjectively and explicitly favoured military victory for Saddam Hussein - a point with which, as it's a matter of fact, I'm unsure why you wish to take issue.
I infer from your last two words that you've had enough of this discussion. Allow me to say that that is a wise decision on your part in the circumstances.
Posted by:Oliver Kamm | May 11, 2004 at 03:30 PM
'lenin' is either ill-informed of his own parties position on September 11th or he has other motives for misleading readers here.
When the Socialist Alliance Executive met to vote on a statement after the atrocities of September 11th, 2001, the agreed on the following wording (I post the intro only):
The Socialist Alliance shares the horror felt by people across the planet at the devastation and suffering in New York and Washington. We condemn these acts of indiscriminate violence against masses of human beings, for which there can be no justification, and which have set back the cause of poor and oppressed people everywhere.
This wasn't good enough for the SWP who issued a seperate note:
The SWP supports the statement drafted by Mike Marqusee, but wishes to have noted its reservations about the opening formulation. We do not believe that the use of the word ‘condemn’ is appropriate in relation to the tragic events in the US.
Clearly we do not support the attacks on working class people and it should go without saying that we oppose the strategy of individual terrorism. This would be our preferred way of stating our case. But the language of ‘condemnation’ is that which is always required of socialists and national liberation movements by the media and the ruling class. It would have been better to avoid it for this reason.
The most important task of socialists is to patiently explain why the US government is hated so much and why there are people who are prepared to kill themselves and many others in opposing the US. The answer is US imperialist foreign policy.
At the moment we are in the eye of a media storm directed at mobilising international and popular domestic support for a bloody and destructive imperial intervention. We should not allow either the really terrible events of September 11 in New York or the media campaign that has followed to drive us to use language that we may regret when the real balance of terror is revealed by the war the major powers are now planning.
There are lines to draw here - we believe the Socialist Alliance should be part of an unstinting and principled opposition to US and western imperialism and the further mass murder Bush and Blair intend to unleash on the world.
John Rees and Rob Hoveman, SWP
Source: Weekly Worker, September 20th, 2001
Posted by:Harry | May 11, 2004 at 04:25 PM
Oliver - John Rose does not "insinuate" anything of the kind. "[T]he existence of a colon mentality amongst the mass of Israelis" is an indisputable fact, and it would be hard to imagine how it could be otherwise given the circumstances under which Israel came about. Precisely how you choose to define mass is not as important in this argument as the fact that it leaves room for the "brave souls in Israel who opposed the invasion of Lebanon and who even tried to protest about it, like Dr Shmelzman quoted at the start of this chapter"... Once again, not "in toto".
In fact, it seems to be you who is "insinuating" things. Although Sabby Sagal specifically denounces anti-Semitism, you say he "declines" to condemn Arab anti-Semitism on the grounds that he urges a distinction between European anti-Semitism and Arab anti-Semitism, and because he puts the latter in scare quotes. For this to be persuasive, you would have to have shown that Sagal was attempting to enforce a distinction that made one kind unacceptable and the other kind not only acceptable but a positive good. In fact, he does no such thing. The distinction he tries to make is between anti-Semitism as a force of exclusion and oppression within Europe and anti-Semitism as a reaction to exclusion and oppression within the Arab world. That doesn't imply that the latter is a worthy reaction, or indeed that it has no weight of its own beyond being reactive. It simply means that it is different in quality to European anti-Semitism. I think that such a distinction can be reasonably asserted.
However, I have no doubt you will revert once more to the enthymematic mode which is your forte or, worse, to dispensing promissory notes for arguments without ever actually following through.
On the attitude to Iraq, once again, let me make it clear: When it is Saddam versus Iraqis, we are with Iraqis; when it is the US versus Iraqis, we are with Iraqis. The much hoped for "defeat" of the US may now in fact be in the offing, and I can't tell you how encouraged I am by this.
On the SWP and its attitude to the WTC attacks, there isn't anything equivocal about it. "We do not support" and "we oppose" are straightforward statements of position, or opposition. I'll take both you and Harry on this one, as your points coalesce. First point Harry made was that I was either ignorant or "misleading" people. Neither is the case, unfortunately for him. I did not attempt to assert that the SWP had not avoided the "language of condemnation". What I have in fact said is that the SWP opposed these attacks. That is evident BOTH in the initial reaction and in the piece that Harry cites. That is simple empirical fact.
There is no hint that the attacks are considered anything but "abhorrent" or are anything but "opposed".
The only other comment I would add is that, in retrospect, I cannot accept the reservations appended by John Rees and Rob Hoveman to that statement. THEY may not wish to use "the language of condemnation" but I do. And, in fact, having attended many many meetings on this subject I happen to know that most SWP members were happy to use "the language of condemnation", describing bin Laden, variously, as "the scum of the earth", "that vile vile man" and so on. I don't consider those reservations to have been entered in bad faith, or in secret sympathy with bin Laden - but I do consider them misguided.
I appreciate your "hospitality" and "patience", of course - but then, you made no bones about helping yourself to mine, did you?
Posted by:lenin | May 11, 2004 at 07:23 PM
You state (in alarmingly tortuous syntax, but it's possible to disinter the nature of your claim):
Yet on 14 March you had this to say in the comments box on Harry's own blog:
Is there any purpose in continuing with this discussion, or shall we just pack up and say no more about it?
Posted by:Oliver Kamm | May 11, 2004 at 08:14 PM
I would be negligent if I did not not add a couple of other remarks which bear on these discussions:
1) The Chris Harman essay I quote was re-printed in 2002 in a revised, updated edition. The words I cited have not been deleted, altered or otherwise attenuated. Here, however, is a new addition:
"The left has made two mistakes in relation to the Islamists in the past. The first has been to write them off as fascists, with whom we have nothing in common. The second has been to see them as 'progressives' who must not be criticised. These mistakes have jointly played a part in helping the Islamists to grow at the expense of the left in much of the Middle East. The need is for a different approach that sees Islamism as the product of a deep social crisis which it can do nothing to resolve, and which fights to win some of the young people who support it to a very different, independent, revolutionary socialist perspective." (Page 60).
2) Orwell DID regret saying what he said. He says that he is "guilty" of saying it, that such tactics are "dishonest". Once more, I'd call that some kind of "regret", wouldn't you?
Posted by:lenin | May 11, 2004 at 08:17 PM
"Is there any purpose in continuing with this discussion, or shall we just pack up and say no more about it?"
If you want to concede defeat, Oliver, by all means do so. I thought you were asking me about something I actually said. You'll note that my comment in that box is accurate. The SWP did not "refuse" to condemn the attacks. Instead, the SWP leadership entered reservations about the use of the "language of condemnation" but supported the statement with the condemnation anyway.
Once again, however, I do not support those reservations.
Posted by:lenin | May 11, 2004 at 08:27 PM
That certainly answers my question.
Posted by:Oliver Kamm | May 11, 2004 at 08:36 PM
"When it is Saddam versus Iraqis, we are with Iraqis; when it is the US versus Iraqis, we are with Iraqis"...and when it was the US versus Saddam, you were with Saddam.
Given that Saddam was a fan of Stalin, it's only natural.
Posted by:GrimReaper | May 11, 2004 at 09:09 PM
For someone sick enough to parade around the blogosphere with a name like "lenin", you're awfully coy about your extremism.
Posted by:Peter Cuthbertson | May 11, 2004 at 09:11 PM
I don't know why any statement from the SWP is taken seriously. 'The Hook', as he is popularly known, says that when muslims live in nonmuslim countries they have a 'covenant' with the population which says they can't attack them - only people from the outside have the honour of coming in and committing terrorist attacks. But no one is remotely stupid enough to believe a word of it - just as no one could possibly believe that the SWP weren't doing anything but dancing a jig on 9/11 as they saw liberal democracy take one in the eye.
Put it this way; Lenin has already admitted that nothing would please him more than if Saddam's men could string up Iraqi democrats from the lamps post in Baghdad - anyone think he and his SWP ilk were saddened about the slaughter of a mere 3000 Americans?
Posted by:Martin Harvey | May 11, 2004 at 09:13 PM
"Old hat" - if it was old hat then why do you use it. For the record, Lenin supressed all other parties and made terror (against the left as much as anyone else) an instrument of state policy. That is what dictatorship of the proletariat (one of Marx's sillier phrases and a further sign that the great man could do sociology and economics but not politics) was all about. Indeed it was Lenin - the real one and not the paper seller - who belived that dictatorship could be exercised through the will of one man.
Posted by:Anti-Lenin | May 11, 2004 at 10:12 PM
"While anti-Zionism is not inherently antisemitic, the SWP’s variant of it in my judgement does cross an important and regrettably porous boundary."
Can you furnish an example of a critic of practical Zionism who is (a) not "anti-semitic"; (b) not a "self-hater"?
I don't mean Rabbi Kahane or Neturei Karta. I mean someone you would consider mainstream and moderate-- Jewish or not, Israeli or not-- who thinks Israel has not, on balance, been good for the Jews.
Posted by:WJ Phillips | May 17, 2004 at 09:18 PM