[Marxism] Militant headline was: "Jew-hatred, red-baiting, Jew-hatred, HEART of 'neocon conspiracy' theories" (my emphasis)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I realize I forgot to cite the above headline in my comments on the
Militant article.  The headline clearly labels  EVERYONE who denounces
the neoconservatives as driven by or toward Jew hatred.  It clearly
presents much of the current antiwar protests as incipiently
anti-Semitic since many participants probably share one or another
aspect of these supposedly Jew-hating theories.

They quite deliberately  did not headline: 'Neocon' conspiracy theories
RESONATE with Jew-haters," which is all the article said in plain
English, although in a way intended to create a quite different
IMPRESSION --  the one in the headline.  The entire article is clearly
(for someone concerned with political facts, undeniably) written to
convey a slander, stated directly in tghe headline.

They did not use the alternative but politically much weaker headline
because that would have limited the political impact of the article
since any crime committed by Jewish individuals or groups in world
politics (and there is quite a bit of that today) RESONATES  with people
who are Jew-haters.  Any piece of pro-Palestinian propaganda tends to be
read by them in this spirit for example.  What other framework would
they put it in?

The strategic purpose is to amalgamate the  antiwar protests, the
liberals, the (according to the Militant) ESPECIALLY loathesome liberal
media, and the fanatically hated "middle class left" as attacking Bush
fundamentally from the right and even the radical right, at least
"incipiently."

Thus the threat of fascism and bonapartism in the United States today
comes at least as much from the left, including the antiwar protesters,
as from the right.

This is the way the Militant is written today.  The line determines the
content of the articles and, editorially, only successfully conveying
the line really matters.  Fact-checking, for example, is subordinate to
the line, and in the new STRONGER party, is also subject to IRON
DISCIPLINE.  Certain statements of fact, regarded as line, never have to
be checked at all. The statement,  "The Militant tells the truth" is
true only in the sense that the line is presumed to be true by the iron
laws of discipline, centralism, and homogeneity, and therefore that
which contradicts the line cannot be true.  The "truth" in the Militant
is simply a byproduct of the infallible correctness of the line
according to the norms. And when the line changes, the "corrected" line
simply assumes the same infallibility and invulnerability to mere
empirical and shallow fact as its predecessor.

Its not hard to prove that the Militant had a lot of sectarian baggage
and interpretations in its best days, but I can tell you  as an absolute
fact, it was not always that way -- not at all.
Fred Feldman


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