Moral position of the "anti-totalitarian left"....

[RadioRaheem84]

After reading the position of many pro-war liberals and leftists they leave the anti-war movement in a tight spot. To them if you didn't support the Western intervention into Iraq and Afghanistan then you support the theocratic fascists that want to re-create an imperial caliphate. While I think these ideas are rather madcap they do put us into a hard position of implying that somehow the resistance against occupation in Iraq or to the US in general is somehow an anti-imperialist force. It also says that we supported the containment of a brutal dictator that murdered millions.

Is there an anti-war position that does not involve the notions that we could not have overthrown either regime because we supported them at one point?

[Crux]

After reading the position of many pro-war liberals and leftists they leave the anti-war movement in a tight spot. To them if you didn't support the Western intervention into Iraq and Afghanistan then you support the theocratic fascists that want to re-create an imperial caliphate. While I think these ideas are rather madcap they do put us into a hard position of implying that somehow the resistance against occupation in Iraq or to the US in general is somehow an anti-imperialist force. It also says that we supported the containment of a brutal dictator that murdered millions.

Is there an anti-war position that does not involve the notions that we could not have overthrown either regime because we supported them at one point?
Maybe you should rephrase your post because I have a bit of a trouble understanding what you are saying. If you are wondeirng if there's a middle ground between supporting US imperialism and the Taliban, well...there's socialism. A pre-condition would be the right of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to define their own future, something that can't be done under either US occupation or the previous regimes.

[FSL]

First, you fight imperialism. Then, you fight imperialism some more.



The troops which conquered Bushire and Mohammerah will, it is understood, be at once sent to China. There they will find a different enemy. No attempts at European evolutions, but the irregular array of Asiatic masses, will oppose them there. Of these they no doubt will easily dispose; but what if the Chinese wage against them a national war, and if barbarism be unscrupulous enough to use the only weapons which it knows how to wield?
There is evidently a different spirit among the Chinese now to what they showed in the war of 1840 to '42. Then, the people were quiet; they left the Emperor's soldiers to fight the invaders, and submitted after a defeat with Eastern fatalism to the power of the enemy. But now, at least in the southern provinces, to which the contest has so far been confined, the mass of the people take an active, nay, a fanatical part in the struggle against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European community at Hong Kong by wholesale, and with the coolest premeditation. (A few loaves have been sent to Liebig for examination. He found large quantities of arsenic pervading all parts of them, showing that it had already been worked into the dough. The dose, however, was so strong that it must have acted as an emetic, and thereby counteracted the effects of the poison). They go with hidden arms on board trading steamers, and, when on the journey, massacre the crew and European passengers and seize the boat.
They kidnap and kill every foreigner within their reach. The very coolies emigrating to foreign countries rise in mutiny, and as if by concert, on board every emigrant ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than surrender, go down to the bottom with it, or perish in its flames. Even out of China, the Chinese colonists, the most submissive and meek of subjects hitherto, conspire and suddenly rise in nightly insurrection, as at Sarawak; or, as at Singapore, are held down by main force and vigilance only. The piratical policy of the British Government has caused this universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners, and marked it as a war of extermination.
What is an army to do against a people resorting to such means of warfare? Where, how far, is it to penetrate into the enemy's country, how to maintain itself there? Civilizationmongers who throw hot shells on a defenceless city and add rape to murder, may call the system cowardly, barbarous, atrocious; but what matters it to the Chinese if it be only successful? Since the British treat them as barbarians, they cannot deny to them the full benefit of their barbarism. If their kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres are what we call cowardly, the civilization-mongers should not forget that according to their own showing they could not stand against European means of destruction with their ordinary means of warfare.
In short, instead of moralizing on the horrible atrocities of the Chinese, as the chivalrous English press does, we had better recognize that this is a war pro aris et focis, a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality, with all its overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a popular war. And in a popular war the means used by the insurgent nation cannot be measured by the commonly recognized rules of regular warfare, nor by any other abstract standard, but by the degree of civilization only attained by that insurgent nation.

[RadioRaheem84]

Maybe you should rephrase your post because I have a bit of a trouble understanding what you are saying. If you are wondeirng if there's a middle ground between supporting US imperialism and the Taliban, well...there's socialism. A pre-condition would be the right of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to define their own future, something that can't be done under either US occupation or the previous regimes.

Well some would argue that the Kurdish were trying to but couldn't fight the Baathists. This also extends to the resistence within Iraq. I think the problem is that people like Hitchens focused too much on Baathist apologists like Ramsey Clark, George Galloway, etc. and other vocal idiots within the left who thought that Jihadists or elements of the Iraqi resistence were the last stand against American Imperialism since the end of the Cold War.



First, you fight imperialism. Then, you fight imperialism some more.


Their arguments is that they are fighting imperialism; a sort of reactionary Islamic Imperialism.

Yet, I don't get the claim that one must use an imperial force to battle another? :blink:

[Demogorgon]

A pretty good argument is the invasions made a bad situation much worse.

[RadioRaheem84]

A pretty good argument is the invasions made a bad situation much worse.

Not to a pro war Liberal-leftist. A good argument is that in order for a man on the left to support an invasion they would have to give up thier leftist credentials as liberation, defined by the neo-conservatives that designed the operation, included free enterprise as a means of reconstruction. So in essense they would be supporting imperialism on steroids. Pro War Liberals and leftists see this as a lesser of two evils over Baathism and Talibanism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Demogorgon, in the most succinct of ways, is correct.

It is not, moreover, the position of the 'anti-totalitarian left', to be against an invasion and occupation that is against even the laxest of bourgeois international laws, has the aim of entrenching Capitalism in a pivotal part of the world (in the sense that the fate of the Palestinian national liberation movement depends on the power struggle going on in the Middle East region) and above all has caused the needless loss of life of thousands upon thousands of people from all ilks - workers from all nations, civilians etc.

In addition, if we must feel guilty for not having a solution to the anti-socialist theocracies that reign in many Middle Eastern nations, we can at least have a clear conscience that we are not doing our utmost to spread that most anti-socialist of words, war, and by association, poverty and crime.

[RadioRaheem84]

Demogorgon, in the most succinct of ways, is correct.

It is not, moreover, the position of the 'anti-totalitarian left', to be against an invasion and occupation that is against even the laxest of bourgeois international laws, has the aim of entrenching Capitalism in a pivotal part of the world (in the sense that the fate of the Palestinian national liberation movement depends on the power struggle going on in the Middle East region) and above all has caused the needless loss of life of thousands upon thousands of people from all ilks - workers from all nations, civilians etc.

In addition, if we must feel guilty for not having a solution to the anti-socialist theocracies that reign in many Middle Eastern nations, we can at least have a clear conscience that we are not doing our utmost to spread that most anti-socialist of words, war, and by association, poverty and crime.


Some anti-totalitarian leftists do support the Palestinians while not supporting the reactionary elements within the Palestininan community. Likewise they defend the State of Israel while denouncing the reactionary elements that assert control over policy in the Gaza Strip.

The point is that left hawks like Hitchens had to totally resign as socialists and assert 'global capitalism' as the new revolutionary force behind progress in order to support and defend his position on Iraq and Afghanistan.

The point of contention I have with them is that while they're doing this they throw it back at us and tell us to play ball or we're with the terrorists.

Also, has anyone noticed that when Hitchens was muckraking his way to the top he was despised in the mainstream American press? As soon as he supported the US position in the War on Terror he suddenly became such an articulate intellectual to the ninth degree? Funny, they think of him this way now seeing as he so "brilliantly articulated" a defense for war that the US neo-cons and right wingers NEVER made. The whole pro-war moral stance is bullshit.

[RadioRaheem84]

I asked Christopher Hitchens, who accompanied Penn but was snubbed by Castro, why the actor was in the thrall of Castroism. "A lot of people cannot believe there is no alternative to free-market, bourgeois democracy," Hitchens said. "It would be too bitter a pill for them to swallow if the Cuban Revolution were nothing but a cruel joke on the Cubans. Sometimes David just has to triumph over the American Goliath."

He's been reduced to espoucing TINA, the acronym for 'there is no alternative' famously quoted to Margaret Thatcher.

[blake 3:17]

The point of contention I have with them is that while they're doing this they throw it back at us and tell us to play ball or we're with the terrorists.

Let them stew over it.

Troops out now. If a Baathist or Taliban or Al Qaeda isnpired person blows away some occupying troops, good. Westerners coming back in body bags accelerate the speed in which we leave. We need to get out and quit messing with people. People can work it out themselves.

[coda]

anarchists do not take sides in capitalist-imperalist wars. We are intransigent. We don't support their wars and we don't support their peace.

[RadioRaheem84]

Let them stew over it.

Troops out now. If a Baathist or Taliban or Al Qaeda isnpired person blows away some occupying troops, good. Westerners coming back in body bags accelerate the speed in which we leave. We need to get out and quit messing with people. People can work it out themselves.

Statements like this are what they use to impune the left. They use it to turn the left or the "acceptable" left into proponents of state power. Sorry comrade, but it is not good.

[gorillafuck]

How is anti-war in contradiction to to anti-totalitarianism? This thread confuses me.

[9]

Statements like this are what they use to impune the left. They use it to turn the left or the "acceptable" left into proponents of state power. Sorry comrade, but it is not good.

Well, I think your problem here is that you see the pro-imperialist left as the "acceptable" left. So long as you continue to view things like that, you will naturally continue to make capitulations to imperialism.

[La Comédie Noire]

European History is replete with totalitarian dictatorships and theocratic states, would it be reasonable to argue that the only way say, France, could have gotten rid of Louis XVI or Napoleon III would have been to be invaded from without?

Just kindly remind them, no nation has ever been invaded for "its own good."

[RadioRaheem84]

How is anti-war in contradiction to to anti-totalitarianism? This thread confuses me.

It's not. That is just how the liberal hawks frame the debate.



Well, I think your problem here is that you see the pro-imperialist left as the "acceptable" left. So long as you continue to view things like that, you will naturally continue to make capitulations to imperialism.
I don't see them as the acceptable left. They view themselves in that light and will use statement like the one you made as examples of how un-acceptable we are.

[RadioRaheem84]

European History is replete with totalitarian dictatorships and theocratic states, would it be reasonable to argue that the only way say, France, could have gotten rid of Louis XVI or Napoleon III would have been to be invaded from without?

Just kindly remind them, no nation has ever been invaded for "its own good."


Excellent point. Although I wonder if they would counter that argument with a hypothetical support of an intervention by the United States.

[9]

It's not. That is just how the liberal hawks frame the debate.



I don't see them as the acceptable left. They view themselves in that light and will use statement like the one you made as examples of how un-acceptable we are.

What statement?
Anyway, you're right that liberal pro-imperialist ideologues (social-democrats, etc.) see militant communists as unacceptable. This is good, in my opinion; any ideas/movements which threaten capitalism will be seen by the bourgeoisie as "unacceptable", and that's really the bottom line. There is no "making the bourgeoisie see the truth through rational debate"; they act in their class interests. We, as workers, act in ours. These two opposing positions are irreconcilable, and communists aren't interested in making efforts (futile as they'd be) at reconciliation - that's the role of reformists. If the "acceptable left" (liberals, social-democrats, etc.) no longer see communism as unacceptable, it must mean that communism has ceased to be a threat to the system which they defend and seek to preserve.

[RadioRaheem84]

What statement?
Anyway, you're right that liberal pro-imperialist ideologues (social-democrats, etc.) see militant communists as unacceptable. This is good, in my opinion; any ideas/movements which threaten capitalism will be seen by the bourgeoisie as "unacceptable", and that's really the bottom line. There is no "making the bourgeoisie see the truth through rational debate"; they act in their class interests. We, as workers, act in ours. These two opposing positions are irreconcilable, and communists aren't interested in making efforts (futile as they'd be) at reconciliation - that's the role of reformists. If the "acceptable left" (liberals, social-democrats, etc.) no longer see communism as unacceptable, it must mean that communism has ceased to be a threat to the system which they defend and seek to preserve.

Amen! My beef with them is that they're trying to subvert the left and take it's mantle. They want to push out the "reactionary" elements in favor of reformist trite. They're doing this by painting us as apologists for terrorism and despotic regimes. It's an attempt to alienate the real elements of the left so that the liberals can take for itself all that the left has worked for. It wants to reconcile or compromise with the right while still appearing morally superior.

Oh and the statement was made by blake. Sorry.