[PEN-L:29361] stalinophobia

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: stalinophobia

[was: RE: [PEN-L:29360] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramen to On So cialMovement History]

I don't see how inaccurate criticism (if that's what Rappaport did) of FARC has anything to do with Stalin or Stalinophobia. FARC isn't Stalinist or Stalinophilic, is it?

BTW, your letter to ATC is fine (as far as I know) except it wanders about, bringing in irrelevant stuff about NACLA. More importantly, were there other articles in ATC besides the offending one by Rappaport? is it possible that ATC doesn't always publish stuff that fits the "party line" but instead publishes several viewpoints so that its readers can figure it out for themselves, while leaving the "line" for editorials?

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Louis Proyect [mailto:lnp3@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 12:01 PM
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:29360] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In
> Sacramen to On So cialMovement History
>
>
> Jim Devine:
> >In any event, these points don't answer my question: is there a
> >diffference between the "Stalinophobia" that Louis decries
> and (say) the
> >view that Stalin was a bloody dictator who helped establish
> the rule by a
> >new stratum or class that would fight like hell to preserve
> their power
> >(as with the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the
> suppression of many
> >strikes by unions) and (among other things) killed a lot of
> Bolsheviks,
> >perhaps more than the Tsar did.
>
> Of course my points answered your question. Stalin's dreadful
> record as a
> dictator is no excuse to print lies about the FARC,
> especially when the USA
> is poised to engage in a Vietnam-type intervention.
>
> ====
>
> Reckless Charges Against the FARC
>
> In the current issue (May-June 2001) of Against the Current,
> there is an
> article by Dr. Joanne Rappaport titled "Colombia: Options from the
> Grassroots." She is an "anthro" who has spent time working
> with Colombian
> Indians. Her article takes no position on class questions,
> but is written
> from a "civil society" and "need for peace" perspective found
> in NACLA, the
> Nation Magazine, etc. Although not mentioning these publications
> specifically, James Petras has an article in the May Monthly
> Review titled
> "The Geopolitics of Plan Colombia" which tries to cut through these
> middle-class pieties.
>
> In general the Colombian "peace movement" internationally has
> tried to use
> indigenous demands as a wedge against the FARC, less so
> against the ELN
> which tends to operate in territories less populated by Indians. The
> conflicts between the FARC and the Indians tends to be a
> side-effect of the
> civil war that is mainly a contest between the leftwing
> guerrilla movement
> and the army and paramilitaries. Official Indian
> organizations such as the
> CRIC have complained about incursions by both left and right
> into their
> territory, especially in Cauca. In one well-publicized
> incident, the FARC
> killed 3 indigenous activists from the USA who had been
> misidentified as
> CIA agents. In general, the FARC suffers from a heavy-handed
> paternalistic
> attitude toward Indians that is not much different than the
> one that led to
> clashes between the FSLN and Miskitos in Nicaragua.
>
> That being said, it is of crucial importance to hold the FARC
> accountable
> for any such misdeeds on a fair and impartial basis. Whatever their
> failings, they are in the gunsight of what might turn out to
> be the most
> perilous military intervention by the US since the Vietnam war.
> Unfortunately, left-liberal journalism has not adhered to the highest
> standards in the past.
>
> For example in the July/August 1999 NACLA Report, editorial
> board member
> Mario Murillo stated that "Over the past year, FARC guerrillas and
> right-wing paramilitaries have murdered, abducted, and
> threatened numerous
> members of the Embera Katío community, a tribe of about 500
> families living
> along rivers in northern Córdoba..."
>
> However, a report filed in July 22, 1999 on the website of
> the Presbyterian
> Church of Colombia reported that the murders were committed
> not by the
> FARC, but by members of the rightwing paramilitary United
> Self Defense of
> Colombia (AUC) disguised as FARC combatants. When I emailed
> Murillo asking
> for an explanation of the discrepancy, he failed to reply. He
> also stuck to
> his story at a conference on Colombia held at Hunter College.
> When I asked
> one of the Indian panelists at the plenary session if she could
> substantiate the NACLA charges, she said she could not.
>
> Rappaport's article is written from the same exact perspective as
> Murillo's, which is troubling considering that we would
> expect Against the
> Current, purportedly some kind of Marxist publication, to
> have a more acute
> class analysis than that found in NACLA. Rappaport warns us
> that the FARC
> should not be confused with the FSLN or FMLN, since it is
> less popular and
> more brutal than the Central American revolutionary movements
> of the 1980s.
>
> Of course, one of the big problems facing those of us who
> would like to see
> imperialism defeated in Colombia is the lack of an organization like
> Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador in the
> USA which
> could counter lies about the FARC. This is a party function
> of the FARC's
> own insular nature, which can be explained by its nearly 40
> year isolated
> struggle. Its leader Manuel "Sure Shot" Marulanda could never
> possibly be
> mistaken for Subcommandante Marcos, who consciously reaches out to a
> cosmopolitan audience through the Internet. "Sure Shot" seems
> more at home
> with crude peasants like himself, although he has met with American
> corporate leaders who seemed to be hedging their bets.
>
> The other problem is that legislation against "terrorist"
> groups, passed
> largely because of the success of CISPES, has made it more
> difficult to
> work with the FARC. In one instance, a US ISP was forced to
> close down a
> pro-FARC because of fears of prosecution.
>
> In any case, when reading through Rappaport's screed against
> the FARC, one
> sentence did not sit right with me. She wrote that the "FARC
> killed peasant
> leaders organizing against the encroachment of Carton de
> Colombia". My
> reaction as a self-taught journalist is to ask questions such
> as "Who,
> what, why, when, where and how." I wanted to know what prompted such
> killings. Did the FARC kill people because they were Indians?
> Or did they
> kill them because they supported the encroachment? Or was it
> a case of
> mistaken identity? I wanted to understand the POLITICAL
> context in other
> words.
>
> When I wrote Dr. Rappaport requesting further information,
> especially from
> independent sources who had no particular axe to grind, she
> finally got
> back to me. She wrote, "Sorry. I don't have any information
> on that on
> hand. That was in the late seventies and I heard of it
> through AICO, the
> movement that organized the indigenous community of La Paila
> in Buenos Aires."
>
> All I can say is that when the FARC is charged with a 25 year
> old murder in
> one of the highest-profile socialist magazines in the United
> States and the
> author can not document her charges, the solidarity movement
> in the USA
> which will be necessary in case of war will have to pick and
> choose its
> allies very carefully.
>