Rawthentic
19th June 2009, 00:25
Mike Ely wrote this here: http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/iran-it-is-right-to-rebel/#comment-14604
-this is in response to those such as the third worldist "maoists", PSL, and other fake, pro-imperialist "radicals." You all have disgusting politics.
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There is a self-deceptive politics that seeks to prettify all kinds of reactionary forces that (for one reason or another) are in opposition to U.S. imperialism — including Islamic reactionaries, Kim Jung Il, “hardline” revisionists of the Li Peng and Honecker type and so on.
My sense is that such politics arise from a despair over actually developing our own revolutionary forces — and a resigned assumption that we have no other alternative but to fall behind any forces (ugly, oppressive, reactionary or not) who (one way or another) seem to be on America’s shit list.
This is not a unipolar world with only one defining contradiction. Yes, we understand (and must understand) that the U.S. acts as a central pillar of world capitalism… but it is hardly the only pillar or the only reactionary force.
As someone who remembers this Iranian regime murdering our comrades and drenching the people in blood, it is hard not have a far more nuanced sense of such events. The world is full of reactionary governments and forces who are in sharp hostility — but there is certainly no reason to believe that we (or the people generally) have to pick to side with one reactionary force over another. Sometimes the clash of oppressive forces create great openings through which radical, secular and even revolutionary forces can emerge, learn, organize and act.
In essense, this simplistic approach is an approach that really has a distain for the masses of people, for their ability to learn and develop politics in complex situations, and which seems rooted in a rather strange attraction to any ugly force in the Third World that seems somehow “hard line.” What kind of a world will that create? What kind of evaluation is that of these forces?
And, finally: It [is] exactly a question that can be seen as “class understanding” — in the sense that the oppressed of the world are not limited to a choice between various capitalist and feudal forces (they are not forced to pick between U.S. or their own ruling class).
Someone said to me: “People opposing these demonstrations have no sense of how revolutions unfold in real life.”
I think there is a lot to this. Often revolution emerges from cracks like this. And revolutionary forces (that will have a role in the future) reach new audiences and forces in events like this.
If you look at Iran: any future hope for radical change [lies] among the people in the streets, not in the bloody military and religious forces running the government.
-this is in response to those such as the third worldist "maoists", PSL, and other fake, pro-imperialist "radicals." You all have disgusting politics.
****************
There is a self-deceptive politics that seeks to prettify all kinds of reactionary forces that (for one reason or another) are in opposition to U.S. imperialism — including Islamic reactionaries, Kim Jung Il, “hardline” revisionists of the Li Peng and Honecker type and so on.
My sense is that such politics arise from a despair over actually developing our own revolutionary forces — and a resigned assumption that we have no other alternative but to fall behind any forces (ugly, oppressive, reactionary or not) who (one way or another) seem to be on America’s shit list.
This is not a unipolar world with only one defining contradiction. Yes, we understand (and must understand) that the U.S. acts as a central pillar of world capitalism… but it is hardly the only pillar or the only reactionary force.
As someone who remembers this Iranian regime murdering our comrades and drenching the people in blood, it is hard not have a far more nuanced sense of such events. The world is full of reactionary governments and forces who are in sharp hostility — but there is certainly no reason to believe that we (or the people generally) have to pick to side with one reactionary force over another. Sometimes the clash of oppressive forces create great openings through which radical, secular and even revolutionary forces can emerge, learn, organize and act.
In essense, this simplistic approach is an approach that really has a distain for the masses of people, for their ability to learn and develop politics in complex situations, and which seems rooted in a rather strange attraction to any ugly force in the Third World that seems somehow “hard line.” What kind of a world will that create? What kind of evaluation is that of these forces?
And, finally: It [is] exactly a question that can be seen as “class understanding” — in the sense that the oppressed of the world are not limited to a choice between various capitalist and feudal forces (they are not forced to pick between U.S. or their own ruling class).
Someone said to me: “People opposing these demonstrations have no sense of how revolutions unfold in real life.”
I think there is a lot to this. Often revolution emerges from cracks like this. And revolutionary forces (that will have a role in the future) reach new audiences and forces in events like this.
If you look at Iran: any future hope for radical change [lies] among the people in the streets, not in the bloody military and religious forces running the government.