Daniel Ortega a plant of the far-right?

[Cheung Mo]

1. He opposes a woman's right to choose.

2. He claims to have "found God and lost Marx".

3. His running mate is a former leader of the U.S.-backed, fascist "Contra" terrorist group.

4. He promised there will be no land seizures or nationalisation of corporations if he's elected.

Sort of reminds me of a Bob Casey in the PA Senatorial election: I hope Santorum wins because Casey is a religious extremist who shares all of Santorum's positions but is pretending to be a centrist alternative. Likewise, Ortega is supposedly a leftist yet shares a large proportion of his positions with the Nicaraguan right.

[YKTMX]

2. He claims to have "found God and lost Marx".

That's hilarious.

Oh well, I can't be too critical, he's doing what he needs to do to, as he sees it, get elected. He's a politician, that's his job.

[bolshevik butcher]

I think that it's sad that this is happening, however Ortega has always been an oppertunist and stalinist in his leadership style of the Sandanista movement, this recent move to the right is just a continuation of this.

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by bolshevik [email protected] 03, 2006 07:12 pm
I think that it's sad that this is happening, however Ortega has always been an oppertunist and stalinist in his leadership style of the Sandanista movement, this recent move to the right is just a continuation of this.
I think that's probably correct.

For everyone who makes a similar political journey to this, it's always "consistent".

Although, in Ortega's sense, I see he's adopted a particularly rapacious form of Latin American catholicism.

What a wanker.

[Cheung Mo]

Chavez's faith has led him to make unjust decisions too. Remind when he opposed extending any sort of civil union or marriage to same-sex couples because of his faith in spite of the fact that many within both his political party and the other members of his governing coalition objected to his position.

Remember, Catholicism is/was the faith of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, the entire Croatian and Hungarian fascist movements, Maurice Duplessis, the authoritarian neo-liberal prats who have run the Philippines into the ground for decades, Silvio Berlusconi, Berlusconi's far-right allies, Rick Santorum, Francisco Franco and his Opus Dei cronies (the fucks who now control the "centre-right" Popular Party in Spain) Sam Brownback, and tons of authoritarian and far-right prats in the political who deserve to have their lives destroyed and their graves pissed on.

Not all Catholics are evil (far from it...), but even post-Enlightenment, powerful figures associated with the Church have brought as much suffering to the masses as Stalinists and those holding to related ideologies.

[amanondeathrow]

Remember, Catholicism is/was the faith of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini

Actually Hitler was raised catholic but abandoned his parent's faith when he left home.

Mussolini was far from a Catholic and many historians beleive he was most likly an atheist. There were many anti clerical elements within the facsist party that attacked Catholics, so to try and link the development of fascism with catholisism is just plain idiotic.

This is not to say that Catholism has not been a negative force in the world or that many modern catholics exhibit facsist tendencies.

[RedKnight]

Originally posted by Cheung [email protected] 03, 2006 07:03 pm
1. He opposes a woman's right to choose.

2. He claims to have "found God and lost Marx".

3. His running mate is a former leader of the U.S.-backed, fascist "Contra" terrorist group.

4. He promised there will be no land seizures or nationalisation of corporations if he's elected.

Sort of reminds me of a Bob Casey in the PA Senatorial election: I hope Santorum wins because Casey is a religious extremist who shares all of Santorum's positions but is pretending to be a centrist alternative. Likewise, Ortega is supposedly a leftist yet shares a large proportion of his positions with the Nicaraguan right.
For those in Pennsylvania who don't want to vote for Bob Casey, there is another alternative to Santorum. http://stanleyhetz.250x.com/

[Andy Bowden]

To bring the issue of Ortega's catholicism back in, how do Comrades think this impacts on (some of) the Lefts previous endorsement of "Liberation Theology" as religion manifesting itself in a progressive, pro-working class fashion?

Are "liberation theologists" doomed to follow the dead end Ortega has taken?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

See: ELN.

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by Andy [email protected] 04, 2006 11:56 pm
To bring the issue of Ortega's catholicism back in, how do Comrades think this impacts on (some of) the Lefts previous endorsement of "Liberation Theology" as religion manifesting itself in a progressive, pro-working class fashion?

Are "liberation theologists" doomed to follow the dead end Ortega has taken?
Not neccessarily.

Ideas flow from material realities, and liberation theology flows from the material reality of class struggle in the context of highly "catholic" societies. This is, of course, mirrored today in the "Islamic" nature of resistance movements in Muslim countries such as Iraq, Lebanon and to some extent Palestine.

Ortega has moved right precisely because the class struggle of which he was one political representative of has subsided. Of course, he explains this in all sorts of exotic language ("finding God and losing Marx"), but essentially it's, as I said, a political neccessity for him.

So, liberation theology, like all ideas, is just a product of the totality of social and economic relations.

What's interesting right now, I think, is Islamic liberation theology, and the possibility of a nationalist/anti-imperialist movement within Islamic societies.

[Wanted Man]

Surprisingly, I can find some common ground with YKTMX here. In fact, I don't think anyone here can agree with someone who has been "finding God and losing Marx". Still, in the end, both Christian and Islamic "liberation theology" will have to make a choice. But, until then, there is no doubt between who I support more: them, or their ridiculous overlords.

[Cheung Mo]

Often times Islamists have worked with Washington against the interests of the toiling masses. Ever here of a place called Afghanistan. There would have been no material conditions for civil war in Afghanistan had the U.S. not worked with religious wackos to stop the Moscow-supported government from executing warlords, decimating feudal and semi-feudal land distribution arrangements, and sending women to schools (or Hell, giving everyone in Afghan a real education as opposed to an Islamist one...).

I look of what socialism, what capitalism, and what theocracy have brought to the world's exploited nations, and I see that the material conditions are outright putrid in those run along capitalistic or theocratic lines. Hell, even the most strident (liberal anyways) capitalists that I talk to quickly tell me that they would choose Chavez or Castro over the Taliban or Christendom when I ask...And that's because even their own bourgeois numbers prove that believing otherwise would be pure fabrication.