Re: [Marxism] Guerrillas

[Brian Shannon <brian_shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 15, 2006, at 11:27 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:

> As is made clear in extensive interviews with Russ Little and
> Michael Bortin, two SLA members serving life imprisonment, the
> decision to launch the SLA was motivated by a sense of outrage over
> the continuing sins of American imperialism after the end of
> Vietnam war--and concomitantly a sense that mass action to oppose
> it was futile.

I see no more reason to accept Little and Bortin's view of themselves
than to accept the fraudulent memoiralist James Frey's recover from
his past in "A Million Little Pieces." They have had years to perfect
the rationalization of their story and present it in a way acceptable
to mainstream radicalism.

Hearst was kept in a closet, raped, and fed the filtered stories of
her father and her family by her captors. Aside from a disfunctional
family (possibly some of us have some too), it was also a 2nd and 3rd
generational one descended from a truly obnoxious individual. To
portray her conversion as representing something approaching
"normalcy" for the times makes no sense at all. We could analyze the
Hale Bopp people and in particular the Bob Jones people the same way.
There is always an explanation that makes some sense.

Do you recall their first action? The murder of the newly selected
African-American superintendent of schools in Oakland. They must been
in the same closet that they kept Hearst in to first decide to do
this and then stay with it afterwards.

What Louis overlooks is that from the beginning, this action was
denounced by the WHOLE Left in the Bay Area, including its the plate-
glass revolutionaries. Eventually they got the support of one or two
extremely suspect individuals.

We need a new Celine or Dostoevsky to present such characters. They
best way to handle they politically is to condemn them and their
actions from start to finish including their last puerile justications.

Brian




________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism