Re: AUT: Chris re Reeves

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Katha Pollit:
>   But in any case, I wouldn't describe myself as ga-ga over Reeve. I
>think he and Sylvie raised some interesting questions, and I wanted to
>know what other people thought.  I brought him up as often as I did
>because it seemed that people were simply ignoring the first article
>("Behind the Balaclava"). I guess I feel in my old age that the US left
>has a tendency to romanticize third-world revolutionaries and to support
>them in an uncritical way. Think of the Sandinistas.There too
>charismatic leaders had tons of uncritical support from guilt-ridden
>First worlders. The nuts and bolts of the Sandinistas' policies were
>often highly questionable, but (partly because our own govt was trying
>so hard to overthrow them) an atmosphere existed on the US left in which
>it was hard to ask, or even to conceive, those questions -- let alone
>have a productive discussion. (Which left the job of critic to people
>like Paul Berman!).

Actually, Reeve's article reminded me very much of the sort of thing that
Paul Berman does, except that it is draped in ultraleft rhetoric.

What is the problem with dictating tactics to Sandinistas or Zapatistas:
"Don't censor La Prensa"; "Stop harassing the Catholic Church"; "Stop
kow-towing to the Catholic Church." Simple. It implies a level political
playing-field, when in reality the discourse is unidirectional. It is
always the leftists in imperialist countries who behave this way. People
like Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Subcommandante Marcos wouldn't dream
of advising the Nation Magazine not to endorse Clinton.

If there was a united socialist movement worldwide, where sister parties
had equal weight, then such give-and-take on tactics might not be unseemly.
In the given political context, it strikes me as big brother arrogance.

Louis Proyect



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