"Vanessa's loonies"
The erstwhile Times columnist Bernard Levin used to have a catch-all term "Vanessa's loonies" to denote the fringe of the political fringe. It was certainly an unsophisticated and arguably a puerile term, but you have to employ something like that from time to time.
On the letters page of the Sunday Telegraph Vanessa Redgrave demonstrates the point once more in defending her brother Corin. I have no insight into whether the Workers' Revolutionary Party was financed by Libya, as she denies, but the Redgrave siblings' political realism may be inferred from this accompanying judgement:
Mr [Kevin] Myers has every right to express his views, to wit, my brother and I are lunatics baying at the moon, that the WRP (which we left in 1986) was vile, evil, etc. He did not mention that Trotsky exposed to the world all the horrors of Stalin's regime before any writer in the West.
Perhaps instead of 'exposed to the world' she meant to say 'was responsible for'. It would make more sense.
Trotsky declared in a speech on 29 June 1918:
... now let [the former ruling classes] clean [the dirt] which they are leaving behind, until such time as they join the working class in the pursuit of a common goal.... Let every bourgeois house be marked as one in which so many families live who lead a parasitic mode of life, and we shall post yellow tickets on these houses.
Ah yes, those yellow signifying marks for enemies of the state....
Here's a comment from the same author, from 1930:
If the realisation of communism should require the sacrifice of Jewry in its entirety, this would be the most beautiful mission that could ever fall to the lot of any people.
Both statements are quoted by Leonard Schapiro in his review article 'Trotsky as he really was', originally published in Government and Opposition, volume 17, Summer 1982, and reprinted in the posthumous collection Russian Studies (1986).
Are you accusing Trostsky of being a sympathiser with the Bolsheviks' murderous regime because he believed in the higher good of communism, or of being a genocidal antisemite?
The former is true, obviously, but to imply the latter is dishonest. The first quote may be redolent of Nazis, but comes long before their emergence; the second quote is saying "even if my whole race is destroyed, if the result is communism then we should be proud to die". Silly, but not Nazi.
Posted by:john b | July 26, 2004 at 06:08 PM
I suspect that there are some nominally trotskyite groups who would apply the apparent sentiment of that quote out of context, however.
Posted by:David T | July 26, 2004 at 07:50 PM
'exposed to the world' she meant to say 'was responsible for'.
The two are not mutually exclusive. While it is not true to say that he was the very first significant figure to 'expose' Stalinism, he did expose it. That he was partly responsible for its horrors is another matter, but Redgrave cannot be dismissed as a 'lunatic' on the basis of the above. Is it not plausible that his 'exposure' of Stalin in part stemmed from a recognition of culpability?
Trotsky 'as he really was' - the phrase should immediately arouse suspicion. One immediately suspects a journalistic 'debunking' exercise; one senses a simplistic opposition between appearance and reality; the stripping away of myths to expose the fallible and unpleasant truth is itself the most banal of tropes.
'As he really was' was doubtless contradictory - fascinating, repellent, brave, cowardly, impossibly and cruelly utopian. It is unlikely that an inveterate anti-Semite would count George Steiner amongst his admirers. Ok, bad example..
Posted by:e.a. | July 27, 2004 at 12:34 AM
I've posted some old and rather damning material on the WRP on my blog here. Enjoy!
Posted by:Paul Anderson | July 27, 2004 at 01:26 AM
Does anyone know anything about the attempt, I believe in the 1980's, to blacklist Jewish actors?
Laurence Olivier put a stop to it, I recall, but it would help my research if anyone could email me more information. williamscottadler@hotmail.com
Posted by:Scott Adler | July 27, 2004 at 07:47 AM
Neocons have a soft spot for good ole Leon Davidovich Bronstein. Why shouldn't they? They're his intellectual heirs as One World ideological fanatics and warmongers. Conquest by other means-- finance capitalism dolled up as "modernity", instead of workers' power.
Witness born-gain neocon Christopher Hitchens's encomium in this month's "Atlantic Monthly":
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/07/hitchens.htm
Here, trace the direct intellectual line of descent from the Man via his US admirers:
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/January2004/0104Raimondo.html
The more one investigates this "left v right" business, the more of a scam it appears.
Posted by:PaleoMan | July 27, 2004 at 10:01 AM