RE: Decline of KPFK

["Mark Jones" <jones118@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Macdonald Stainsby
> I have tended to look at Mr Henwood as someone who was not my cup
> of tea, but an
> ally for the most part who simply had allowed his theorising to
> become a matter
> of too much academia and not enough struggle and practice. I have little
> patience to read through most of such things, but can readily be
> pleased these
> people exist as slightly flaky versions of our movment. I had
> thought the bulk
> of the "left opposition" (LP and others) from the internet found
> him to be an
> inflated ego, perhaps one who had rubbed them personally the
> wrong way. In other
> words, the majority of the criticisms were overplayed due to personal
> contradictions I couldn't decipher. In other words, Henwood had become
> unfortunately an Ivory Tower intellectual.
>
> I am however, stunned that he can take the time to drift outward
> into this issue
> with such non-chalance. I am no longer convinced he would know,
> the day of the
> barricades coming down, where he stood. I fear he would simply
> report on the
> events, as a disconnected observer. And that, is the ultimate
> shame. We have a
> fledgling radio station here. It is always a matter of struggle
> for it to stay
> on the air. If someone were to try to make a left-liberal CBC out
> of it, then I
> would be of the highest worry and the implications would be clear.
>

Henwood has preserved an internet presence. Most of his ilk: the Marc
Coopers, Susie Weissmans, Hillel Ticktins and a whole host of others-- have
always rejected the Internet. It is too democratic for their taste. And they
haven't figured out a way how internet debates can advance their careers
(the main thing). They were looking for a business model that worked, like
so many others New Economy pioneers, and they failed. The faux new left/old
left had its Internet bubble burst even before Wall st did and with the same
results. Now they are disillusioned; they can't get an audience, it doesn't
help them scramble up the greasy pole towards academic recognition, tenure,
being intellectually fashionable, and finally achieving the ultimate career
goal of mainstream acceptance as someone 'new' and 'interesting', albeit
neutered and harmless, with radical, fashionable notions which can find a
wider niche or even a mass market thus converting your witty radicalism into
what really counts: liquid assets, treasury bonds, plus fame, and, best of
all, a wider choice of sexual partners.

So they turned their backs as one on the net. They ignore it. They are
disdainful of our efforts. They do not participate. They continue to publish
pompous books with printruns of 200 copies and magazines which no-one reads,
which they occasionally spam us with their ads for. The ads alone speak of
their own dreary irrelevance. So-called revolutionary parties also ignore
the Net; it is a threat to their leaderships' private ambitions, in just the
same way. The British SWP forbade its members from participating in elist
discussions.

They all excluded themselves, but life went on, the movement went on, the
Net found serious application both as an instrument for organising, for
propaganda, for mass theoretical work and the creation of a new kind of
'organic intellectual'. We didn't go away. We are still here, and we operate
in a culture which is not interested in beauty contests or pissing contests,
where prima donnas have a short shelf life, and where academic or
intellectual pretensions get mercilessly interrogated.

Henwood was one of the very few of that caste who properly understood the
net from the start. Probably it resonated with his right wing libertarian
origins. Now he is here and cannot very well go away, altho I suspect he
will go away in the end; he doesn't look a happy bunny any more and in fact,
his presence is much less than it used to be. But you have to admire someone
who has had the guts to do it and stick with it so long. And without him it
would be a poorer place. He stands in locum tenens for a large tribe of
self-serving, careerist, petit bourgeois academics whose own infights are so
spectacularly vicious and awesome to watch just because (as someone put it)
so little it at stake in them: almost nothing, actually, except crucial
questiosn of purely private interest, career advancement, the endless search
for tenure, the search for a publisher's contract etc.

Mark