Re: More Delightful Insight From Jared

[John Lacny <deathtocapitalism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        I'd like to "shake the hand" of Owen Jones, if that's
possible to do over e-mail.  For some time now I have
refrained from replying to Jared Israel's garbage, for
several reasons: (1) I was under the misapprehension
that discussion of the Balkans had been banned; (2) I
think that this list often has some pretty valuable
posts, so I was loath to risk expulsion; and (3) why
bother with Jared, anyway?  But Owen has thrown
caution to the wind, and for that he deserves the
thanks of everyone on this list who opposes the new
sectarian ideology of Mihailovicism-Milosevicism-Jared
Israel Thought, but hasn't yet mustered the energy to
hold it up to the ridicule it deserves in this forum.

        Where to begin with Jared Israel?  Owen has pointed
at Jared's utter contempt for facts, and that's
certainly a great starting place.  Now, Louis Proyect
has defended Jared on the grounds that he has high
phone bills due to calling his Chetnik friends in
Belgrade.  This is certainly a novel way to gain a
reputation as a prestigious "researcher."  Let's try
another such example: my girlfriend and her parents no
doubt spend a hefty sum each month on calling (1) the
Ustashi branch of the family in Vinkovci, Croatia; and
even (2) the Chetnik branch of the family in a small
town in Serbia, although those are more distant
relatives; and so more calls go to (3) the Bosnian
Serb part of the family currently in residence in
Canada, whose political opinions range from outright
Chetnik through vaguely Partisan, with most falling in
the category of people who are politically confused,
but of the general opinion that bloody warfare between
competing ethnic gangsters was Not Good for
Yugoslavia, hence emigration.  Do these phone calls
make my girlfriend a quality researcher in Louis's
book?  I'd like to know, and if so I will encourage
her to join the list, even though she doesn't have
much time for it and even though she and Jared will
most assuredly not get along.

        But oh, Jared.  How about his assertion that the
Ustashi priests were in charge of education in
Croatia, and that the Tito government did nothing to
counter that?  That's news to me.  Call it "research"
if you want, but my girlfriend's mother remembers
differently.  When she was in primary school, the
teacher used to address the class every Monday
morning, asking: "Who went to church this weekend?"
Those who admitted to attending church would have
their knuckles slapped with a ruler.  Now, we can
argue back and forth over whether this was the right
policy for the Tito government to pursue.  Personally,
the idea of slapping little kids makes me queasy, but
it's kind of understandable that the government would
take harsh measures to extirpate the influence of
clergy who had been supportive of fascism.  But no
matter what you think about it, to say that the
government did nothing to fight the influence of the
Church would be utterly stupid.

        Tito's hostility to the Church was used by Catholic
anti-Communists in this country to promote the Cold
War among the Catholic working class, which had a
large first- and second-generation Eastern European
component.  Stepinac was listed as a martyr along with
Hungary's Mindszenty, as well as less prominent
Polish, Slovak, and other Catholics.  Needless to say,
the Chetniks were anticommunist martyrs as well.  I'd
advise folks to check out the proceedings of the
conventions of the CIO in the immediate post-WW II
period.  Especially in the days before Tito's break
with Stalin, Yugoslavia was cited as a vicious
anti-Christian dictatorship by the anticommunist
forces within the CIO who were trying to cause tension
between Catholic rank-and-filers and the left-wing
leadership of some unions (particularly UE).  One
speaker I remember reading cited both Archbishop
Stepinac (Ustashi Croatian) and Draza Mihailovic
(Serbian Chetnik commander) as martyrs in the
anticommunist cause in Yugoslavia.  The Orthodox were
less numerous than the Catholics in the American
working class, but crude appeals based on religion
were useful in roping them into the anticommunist
cause as well, as this example shows.

        The way this played out in the trade union movement
reflected the way it played out in the larger society,
as religion became a bulwark of anticommunism in the
United States.  The far right in the US and Britain
especially were up in arms that the British and the
Americans had supported Tito's Partisans instead of
Mihailovic's Chetniks.  Four and a half decades later
the Serb nationalists were once again angry that the
imperialist powers had decided to support the Croat
and Muslim nationalists instead of them.  Had the
situation been the reverse, they could have been
waving the American flags.  How disappointed they must
be.  Instead of the US government, they got the
Russian one; and instead of every liberal intellectual
hack in the Western world, they got Jared Israel.  It
must goad them to no end, especially when they have to
hide the Mihailovic busts when Jared comes to visit,
in deference to his lingering leftist sensibilities.
This ardent supporter of a government which contains
the likes of Votislav Seselj has the gall to brand
Tito's Yugoslavia soft on fascism, and most of the
members of this list don't have the energy to call him
on his bullshit.  Perhaps, like Louis Proyect, we all
feel sorry for him because he has $250 phone bills, or
perhaps we all want to believe the part of Jared's
charade where he likes to pretend he's still a
leftist.  It's a charade in which he appears to
believe himself.  But it took 15-year-old Owen Jones
to point out that the Emperor indeed has No Clothes.

        Jared's Chetnik friends can put up with his
idiosynracies, though.  After all, the "red-brown"
alliance in some parts of Eastern Europe is getting
closer every day, and those who make apologies for it
are shedding more and more of their scruples.  Mark
Jones, another "personality" on the Net's myriad
Marxist listservs, last year had no problem referring
to Albanians as "bad rubbish," and although he has
memorized every excuse for the anti-Semitic rants of
various members of the KPRF, he finds less occasion to
use them these days, when most of the people he's in
contact with over the Internet have stopped calling
him on it.  But it's easier to understand Jones: he's
been in the habit of unthinkingly taking orders from
Moscow all his life, and sees no reason to change now.
 Ex-Maoist Jared Israel is a somewhat tougher nut to
crack, although he may still be taking out his
frustrations on the political heirs of Enver Hoxha,
who broke with China so many years ago.  Who's to say?

        I'd advise Owen and the other younger comrades to pay
no mind to the old-fogeyish approach of people who
have never made a good-faith effort to break with
their old, semi-religious habits.  Don't worry if
Jared rants at you for it. Shrug it off if Carroll Cox
sends you a crabby reply; the man's been in a
perpetually bad mood for the last 30 years and you're
pissing him off even further is not going to make an
appreciable difference.  Those youngsters who tail
this kind of absurdity will end up spending their
e-mail time forwarding the reports on pig-iron quotas
from the Korean Central News Agency, in search of the
approval of the high priests of this list's dominant
"non-sectarian" sect: the Cult of the Bloc of Four
Classes.  Don't fall for it, and remember that this
little squabble is not entirely inter-generational,
but that that's definitely a part of it.

        John Lacny
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