Re: Forward from Anthony re Malvinas

[Xxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lenin would have clipped all extraneous text before replying to a message, so 
should you.
~~~~~~~~~
Anthony writes
> III. Did Nestor say 'socialists who opposed the war over the Malvinas
> should have been jailed', or words to that effect?

No, he did not say that exactly but it was implied. In the quotation below
he spoke of most of the "left" parties objecting to the war, then digressed
into a discussion of liberal democrats and then said "these were the
"democrats" who I would have liked to see in jail in 1982"... I initially
characterised this as Nestor favoured the state putting those who opposed
the war into jail and implied that as Nestor identified many "left" parties
as opposing the war he would include those activists in his list of
should-be prisoners as well. In his responses Nestor failed to make a
distinction between "democrats" and "leftists" and argued that Argentine
socialists who opposed the war weren't really socialists so I read this as
Nestor lumping the groups together and being in favour of jailing both of
them.

>From a post originally  made to the LI list -   Wed, 16 Jun 1999 21:08:11
reposted to the Marxism list on October 13

Nestor wrote:

> most of the "left" parties objected the Malvinas war, which,
> of course, they did not (and still do not) understand as a
> potentially liberatory colonial war. The right wing traitors
> included no less than the then Minister of Economics, and
> others simply wanted the war to end because (as Alfonsin
> himself told to a delegation of my party) they feared that a
> new wave of military nationalism would strike Argentina and
> then, professional "democrats" like him would lose any
> ground for good. "If we win", he said, "then democracy would
> be seriously menaced".  He and most of the mainstream
> politicians had been in talks with the predecessor of
> Galtieri, Viola, who wanted the regime to reach a honorable
> way out of power and was holding "secret" meetings with
> these "democrats" so that the Generals could silently go
> back to their "specific duties" after the main dirty work
> was already done.
>
> Democrats! For Alfonsin and most of the semicolonial
> politicians, those who are always praised in the foreign
> newspapers and monopolize "political correctness", democracy
> is a democracy that cannot stand an Argentinian victory
> against Thatcher, that is the downfall of Thatcher and the
> Tories.
>
> These were the "democrats" who I would have liked to see in
> jail in 1982.