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http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/a_simple_request/

I have followed much of the arguments back and forth on this issue and I must say I fall on Chomsky’s side on this. What he has consistently said was the massacre wasn’t why we went to war and was probably overstated for propaganda purposes. Both of these arguments are easy to believe. As far as I have seen he has never denied or whitewashed Milosovic, only argued that similar (or worse) behavior was going on in Turkey at the exact same time and we did not attack there, so it must have been a different set of motivations than the accepted story line.

So put me in the Chomsky Fanboy category. He is right more than most of the so-called left, even with his short comings.

It is not much of a qualifier. All anarchists are either socialists (Proudhonian mutualism, Tucker’s individualist anarchism, Bakunin’s anarcho-collectivism, Rudolph Rocker’s anarcho-syndicalism) or communists (Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman). Even some modern branches that are explicitly hostile to the body of thoughts that’s usually called ‘anarcho-communism’ (usually thought of as Malatesta’s synthesism and Makhno’s platformism), like the anarcho-primitivists and the insurrectionists, are in practice supporters of communist economics.

(Here we forget about radical neoliberals who call themselves ‘libertarian’ or ‘anarcho-capitalists’, as they are as anarchistic as National socialists were socialists or the People’s Republic of China was a Republic.)

The terms ’socialism’ and ‘communism’ are here used in their economical terms, and without preconceptions about what sort of political organisation would be necessary to realize them. The current state of political discourse seems to think that ’socialism’ is synonym to ’social-democracy’ while ‘communism’ is a synonym to ‘Bolshevism’. Socialism means an economy where the workers own the full product of their labor (pay by deeds). Communism means an economy where the products of labor are owned in common (pay by needs). Both are not only compatible with anarchism, but as anarchists we consider that no state-run society will ever be able to provide socialism or communism as the state is always the tool of a ruling elite that is in opposition to those goals. Even in USSR, the party bureaucrats were an elite independant of the people… Nationalisation is not communal ownership, it is state ownership. Only the worst sort of statist idealists could confuse the two. The state is not the people, it is an independant entity.

Or, as I believe Muhammed Ali put it, “No M.I.T. professor ever called me terrorist-lover.”

Of course you’re right about all that. I just get angry then depressed at times; plus, there’s a lot of pay-back sentiment that I’ve tried to bury but comes boiling up in situations like this. I confess that every once in a while, I don’t care about the alleged consciences of “centrists” and liberals because they just done too much damage for far too long to be forgiven.

But, at the same time, I know we’re about to start a new cycle and so when we win, I’d better play nice. But then at the same time, knowing as I do how centrists have fucked the Left so very hard int he past, that they’re bound to do it in the future after we mutually beat back the wingnut scum of humanity. I’m anticipating their triangulations and want to put them on notice that they’d better not fucking do it again.

It’s not just that and you know it. Fracturing is healthy usually but not in times of extreme crisis. The run-up to the war was just such a crises, and wasn’t the time to be pecksnif. Yet that’s exactly what the “centrists” and many “liberals” were.

I’m not in ANSWER and never have been. I think they are silly. But I didnt give a shit about any of that anymore than I gave a shit that anti-war paleocons are otherwise some creepy creepy weirdos. What mattered is that a broad opposition had to be mustered and everyone had to agree to overlook differences save for the war issue. But noooooooo centrists couldnt be so practical. Mass murder and imperialist conquest and upcoming torture and profiteering? What are such concerns when one might be marching next to a Free Mumia hippie!

Should left-left Chomsky idolators (or whoever) be aware that, when they bitch about Kevin Drum or Matt Yglesias or whoever, they are doing THE EXACT SAME THING?

But it wasn’t that way and you know it. If centrists had been anti-war, anything they’d said in peacetime against the Left would have been forgotten. But they weren’t anti-war for a good while, and then when they finally acknowledged the stupidity of the pro-war position, they still foolishly used part of their ammo, in typical bullshit even-handedness style, to attack the anti-war Left. I’m sorry, that wasn’t intellectual fastidiousness, it was part cowardice and part dogmatism; above all it was stupid. There is a heirarchy of concerns, and the various political positions of the anti-War Left’s aside the war was NOT an important issue. So when the “centrists” attacked, the reponse was just.

The anti-war Left did NOT weaken the anti-War position; the “centrists” did. Therefore, though I detest using the phrase, it fits here: there is no moral equivalence: the attack FROM “center” to Left was far worse in consequence than the counterattack from Left to “center”.

The comments to that post covered it thoroughly; and Andrew knew it, hence his silly “I’m sucking up to David Broder” post.

It was in his tone; it was a direct throwback to 2002.

It’s prefectly fine to say that RFK, jr. got some stuff wrong. What’s not fucking fine is bullshit even-handedness in saying so, in saying on the one hand there is election fraud but the REAL PROBLEM IS RFK!!!1!!

Andrew was so so loathe to say what the real fucking issue is, because, why, that would be intemperate and Leftist!: that the FUCKING REPUBLICANS STEAL ELECTIONS! God, it just sounds like the X-files! And Sensible Liberals simply cannot STAND conspircy theories. So what’s best is to attack RFK while euphemising republican election theft as merely a vote-fraud problem. Because the main thing is, nevermind the negation of democracy, ONE SHOULD NEVER BECOME CYNICAL!!!

Really, Sifu, your loyalty here is nice but there’s no redeeming the stupidity and moral abdication Andrew is guilty of in that post, which was so like the utter stupidity and moral abdication of pretty much all his posts from 2002-2003.

Jesus. It’s even worse than I’d thought.

What did Prof. DeLong say, specifically?

This, complete with glowing admission that the neoliberal template was the economic imperialism of late 19th century England and France. If DeLong isn’t admitting that the WTO/IMF “benevolently” forced liberalization of third world capital markets *didn’t* benefit the third world poor or poor here, I’ll eat my straw hat. And this is really about what was at the root of Free Trade — free movement of capital was the precondition for it all. What went wrong? Why, the elites of the Third World sucked up all the profit and then sent it back here to accumulate interest; the rich soaked the poor, as everyone with any sense knew they would in such a scheme. Wow, the “left” (Clintonoid branch) thought they’d help the poor in the third world by using the methods the English “helped” their colonial subjects with a hundred years ago; how could anyone not see disaster coming!

I will say that my general opinion on globalization is that it’s going to happen whether we want it to or not, and you can either fight it, Pat Buchanan isolationist-style, or you can accept it and integrate it into a participatory, democratic process.

This is a cop-out. You can make law that asserts national sovereignty over corporate soveriegnty. People said the exact same thing you’re saying 100 years ago wrt child labor and enviromental laws and consumer protection issues, that it was pointless to try to stop such things. Except we did and it was through law and now the only people who regret it are the subhuman libertarians who think that the right to employ children in coal mines is a natural right of liberty.

But you can’t make law when the people who are supposed to be outraged by such depredations of capital themselves think like fucking robber barons. This is why I say “centrists” and “liberals” would NOT accept a New Deal; their thinking runs directly counter to it. Somehow, neo-liberals have convinced themselves that the methods of Robber Barons are the best ways to “help” the poor anywhere; that far from being technocrat tools of social darwinist pigs, they are actually geopolitical Mother Theresas, their multinational sweatshop ministry being a tool with which the gospel is spread and the dusky are enlightened.

.

And what would Rosa Luxemburg say if she heard you saying the Left is dead? She’d pelt you about the head with pamphlets, is what she’d do. Everyone thought the left was dead in 1919, too, and we’re still holding on.

Don’t feel like you aren’t doing anything – you really are. You’re keeping the ideas alive and the lines of communication open with those who really ought to know better – these “centrists” who think they’re “liberals” and who are really just shallow thinking, smug little kings of their own hills. We’ll get through to them eventually…I’ve taken to inviting folks I know who think they’re good liberals to read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” lately, with special emphasis on MLK’s part about how he saw the biggest impediment to civil rights being not the racist, but the polite, moderate centrist. I dunno if it’s made anybody rethink their stances, but it’s a start. This isn’t a sprint, after all – it’s a marathon. We’re going to win because we’ve got the endurance. Keep showing them how their charming little “reforms” never work and always bring yet more hardship on those they sought to help. Remember that what makes them liberals instead of conservatives is that they actually have consciences – sooner or later, that conscience is going to prick them. If you’re there when that happens….

I’m working on the historical amnesia part by teaching history. You keep working on being the Thomas Paine to the consciences of your fellow-travellers. You’ll get ‘em eventually. And if you don’t write up something clever using that idea about an “ideological speculum”, I’ll be horribly disappointed.

Oh – and Zbigniew Brzezinski can suck it. Through a straw. With mayonnaise.

But thanks, Gav. I’ve never seen the whole thing. And thanks to Mal de Mer for digging up Vidal’s Esquire article (long suppressed by a libel suit from Jnr.)

Hey, if you want to follow the widening spat, you should definitely go read Dennis. For myself, being a nasssty little cynic, I can’t help thinking MB’s bitch with Chompers has rather more to do with MB’s support of the NATO bombardment of Serbia and the invasion of Afghanistan (both of which NC denounced) than it has to do with some bullshit claim that Chomsky is a Slobolover. But that’s me – let’s not get into it. You’re much better off having this very necessary debate about just how much the left should expect to be reamed by the libs in order to help rid the world of the GOPer threat in November.

But like you said, save the majority of the bile for the wackjobs, even if they are self-evidently wackjobs, who should be ignored, right?

Remember, and this is your own point – “no enemies to my left” – the only way, the only real way, for anybody to hurt any cause you believe in right now is to vote Republican.

And look again at those compromising centrists; when is the last time that Josh Marshall praised a wingnut, really? Or Kevin Drum?

Ask those two if they want the New Deal back. They do.

What they do to you – to those you respect – is the same as you do to them.

Like you were saying, there’s one real enemy.

I’m wasted right now; been at the river all afternoon and hehe. So, uh, how are you hehehe? I’ve been drinking to Eugene Debs all day…

Anyway, I know that I shoudtn rely on liberals to be decent but geez. I’m not even a dem-soc; I’m a soc-dem (though I wont join SDP/USA, it being spawn of several neoconservatives and last I heard still being Schactmanite in general disposition). Hell, I’d be happy with New Deal liberls. Fuck, Great Society liberals would be excellent!

The thing is, “liberals” now are, at their left extreme, Jimmy Carter liberals — witness the traction Zbig himself still gets among the “left”, he’s their foriegn policy Grand Old Man! Zbig, the man who created the mujahadeen/taliban because he was such a creative detente destroyer. wtf…

“Centrists,” who do indeed seem liberal next to a crypto-fascist like Rush Limbaugh, are in actuality just carbon-copies of what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans. The ideological spectrum has been skewed that much; it’s an ideological speculum now; everything is so tilted and makes a decent person gag; Fascism or, at the very least, Phalangism, is accepted now. Michael Savage is objectively to the right of F. Franco.

But you can’t tell anyone that because no one gives a fuck about world historical standards; specifically 20th century standards (or, hell even modern world standards: remember the neoliberalism that is ascendant now in Germany and GB is wildly “socialist” to the point of near-commie if you ask an American “liberal” or wingnut his opinion). All anyone knows is the last 15 years of American history, in which wingnuts have made a mirror-filled fun house of what’s really liberal really conservative, really pure full-blown fascist. Thus, people like Brad DeLong are somehow “leftist”; because it’s all about context. Milieu. And what doubly sucks is that I do have to accept them as allies, the act of which appears to buy into the false labelling system.. and which makes the whole scheme worse.

Blah; I dunno. I owe Sifu a response, and I know my stomach will demand that I give one once I’m sober and get the outrage back, but now I just feel like — fuck it. What’s the point of doing any of this? The Left is impotent and destroyed and while liberals of most stripes are engaged now, thank God, the “centrists” are fated to fuck them/us over again. I know they will. They are like Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass whenever wingnuts say anything, looking for something to praise or meet halfway and looking inside true leftist proposal with the same thoroughness, finding everything they can to call “extreme” and oppose and call old and discredited. Worse, most of them also have the gall to call FDR or Galbraith, say, inspirations, when these men wouldnt recognise them as political comrades but rather as enemies, and would urinate on them if they were on fire.

I’m tempted to throw in the towel. It’s not wingnuts who put the final nail in the coffin, it was “centrists” who swung the hammer for them, who offered to help; they are comlicit in murder and torture in Iraq through their ignorance and cowardice yet could have made a better effort of stopping it if only they’d helped stand against it at the first…. Yet hate only gets me so far; I’m outraged to death and weary. I’ve seen what centrists have done; the factories in my town died not in the 00s but in the 90s. “Centrists” did this by shrugging, saying it would happen anyway, just as the Democratic enemies of the Populists and Progressives a hundred years ago said that child labor was natural and gonna happen anyway so shrug shrug. Blah blah blah.

It just stings. Wingnuts are horrible human beings and the scum of humanity. I expect depravity from them; it’s all they know. “Centrists” and liberals, I expect more from — as Mencken said of them, at least they are civilized men. And I suppose many were in his day. But now they are gutless wonders.

Fuck it. Fuck it all.

>Not to interrupt, but I just want to remind people that nobody would have voted for Nader if they’d thought Bush would actually win. IIRC (and I might not, I was a wee little thing back then), a Gore victory looked like a sure thing

Not by election day, when the MSM was predicting a major Bush victory.

I haven’t read any Chomsky, but he sounds like a smart guy here. Buckley sounds like an asshole. I’m guessing the only reason anyone listened to him was because he sounds vaguely British, and British people are teh smart.

Just take a deep breath, and remind yourself that liberals are not leftists.

This is something that I think not only the Silly wing of the Republican party forgets sometimes (and the Very Silly wing forgets ALL the time) but something that leftists forget sometimes as well.

Liberals are not the allies of leftists. They’re not on the same side.

There’s a great deal of overlap, but they are distinct groups with different agendas.

Getting mad at liberals for being liberals makes about as much sense as getting mad at babies for spitting up milk and making doodies in their diapies. It’s just what they do. And in this case, what they do is promote imperialist wars of expansion. It’s a classic liberal tenet with venerable historical antecedents.

You work with liberals when you can, and you bitch them out when you have to, but you shouldn’t get angry at them for the fact that they’re ethically challenged. They’re liberals. ;-)

The general rightward shift of political discourse in America has forced a weird sort of uneasy alliance between liberals and leftists (although to be fair, the alliance has its roots in the Cold War, I think). There’s nothing inherently wrong in forming an alliance with a group that is in some ways dramatically opposed to your goals, but I think the whole process is made less painful when each side is clear about where they’re coming from. There are soooooo many liberals nowadays running around thinking they’re “on the Left” that it makes my teeth ache. Don’t let their confusion result in you being confused.

Have a drink. Feel better. I know I’m grabbing something with dinner in a bit, and I’ll toast the memory of the International Workingman’s Association if it’ll make you feel better.

One thing now and the rest later (and I mean it; I have to do get drunk and stoned now, because that’s what stupid hippies do aside being consistently against imperialist war, but I swear to address all the rest with links soon)

Your conscience is clear? Our nation engages in illegal war, torture, indefinite detention. The principles which we (or at least I; I don’t know anything about where you grew up or were educated) were born to honor are being savaged by our elected government. We never supported these things, but we didn’t stop them, and until we do I don’t know how any American’s conscience can be clear, at all. This is our nation. Yours, mine, Brad DeLong’s. The responsibility for ending this lies with all of us, and then, maybe, I’ll talk to you about who is more noble, who’s conscience is clear.

This isn’t about me; it’s about a position and group that has been consistently shit on.

This group did from the start everything it could to stop/protest this war. Thus, such people have a moral clout that the wafflers and former hawks et al don’t have.

Also, while being tarred with the pinko-commie-ANSWER brush, they, like Chomsky, didn’t give a shit about their fellow-travelers who might be commies there or Mumia-lover here or whatever because such concerns are *superfluous in light of the Iraq War issue*.

What I abhored, and continue to abhor, is the mentlaity of “centrists” who engaged in the bullshit even handedness of saying “Well, Bush’s true designs are a concern but I’m for regime change generally and blanket opposition to the war to the point that one is ‘associated’ with ANSWER et al, is a real problem too.”

Like fuck it was and like fuck it is. ANSWER actually is stupid apart from the war protests and is distinct from Chomksy/Vidal et al yet that didnt matter. No, what mattered was that the “center” in its so very noble enterprise of being equal-opportunity-bashers played into the stupid bullshit narrative that every wingnut war-loving cretin was then circulating. The “centrists” short-shrifted their allies and played directly into the wingnuts’ hands. Now some may have done this is good faith; yet others, I am certain, did this as a sort of “decent left” exercise so that they wouldn’t be accused of “America-hating” and therefore would keep hold on whatever degree of pulpiting they could claim. IOW, it was done as a craven exercise in triangulation; and like all instances of triangulation, those whom it is hoped will be appeased (wingnuts) are unimpressed, while those who hold the genuine moral highground are fucked-over.

What do I expect from Andrew Northrup? A little contrition would be nice, and not that fake sort of self-innoculating shit he pulls where he makes a self-deprecating joke without alluding to any specifics and everyone gets a laugh. I don’t expect him to read ANSWER shit but that was a nice touch, I admit — see RM is for ANSWER what a comm1e!!! Actually, if it wouldn’t be too fucking much to ask, he could read Gore Vidal before calling him in so many words and old America-hating queen who should just shut up. As a matter of fact, Andrew, who after his conversion to a sort of moral sensibility, wisely noted the use among wingnuts of language-manipulation and insidious mass-employment of euphemism to disguise what is stupid and evil (Andrew then wisely cited Confucius rather than the more clicheed citattion of Orwell), might read some of Vidal’s essays during the 80s “small war” era that said the same thing with the same citations.

And I’m genuinely sorry for my tone here; I’m not pissed at *you* or even, really, too pissed at The Editors. I’m pissed at a general bloc of people and the structure of moral retardation they have built and perpetuated.

Also sorry for the incoherence. This whole subject really REALLY makes me angry.

The readers’ editor has considered a number of complaints from Noam Chomsky concerning an interview with him by Emma Brockes published in G2, the second section of the Guardian, on October 31. He has found in favour of Professor Chomsky on three significant complaints.
Principal among these was a statement by Ms Brockes that in referring to atrocities committed at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war he had placed the word “massacre” in quotation marks. This suggested, particularly when taken with other comments by Ms Brockes, that Prof Chomsky considered the word inappropriate or that he had denied that there had been a massacre. Prof Chomsky has been obliged to point out that he has never said or believed any such thing. The Guardian has no evidence whatsoever to the contrary and retracts the statement with an unreserved apology to Prof Chomsky.

The headline used on the interview, about which Prof Chomsky also complained, added to the misleading impression given by the treatment of the word massacre. It read: Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated? A: My only regret is that I didn’t do it strongly enough.

No question in that form was put to Prof Chomsky. This part of the interview related to his support for Diana Johnstone (not Diane as it appeared in the published interview) over the withdrawal of a book in which she discussed the reporting of casualty figures in the war in former Yugoslavia. Both Prof Chomsky and Ms Johnstone, who has also written to the Guardian, have made it clear that Prof Chomsky’s support for Ms Johnstone, made in the form of an open letter with other signatories, related entirely to her right to freedom of speech. The Guardian also accepts that and acknowledges that the headline was wrong and unjustified by the text.

Ms Brockes’s misrepresentation of Prof Chomsky’s views on Srebrenica stemmed from her misunderstanding of his support for Ms Johnstone. Neither Prof Chomsky nor Ms Johnstone have ever denied the fact of the massacre.

Prof Chomsky has also objected to the juxtaposition of a letter from him, published two days after the interview appeared, with a letter from a survivor of Omarska. While he has every sympathy with the writer, Prof Chomsky believes that publication was designed to undermine his position, and addressed a part of the interview which was false. Both letters were published under the heading Falling out over Srebrenica. At the time these letters were published, following two in support of Prof Chomsky published the previous day, no formal complaint had been received from him. The letters were published by the letters editor in good faith to reflect readers’ views. With hindsight it is acknowledged that the juxtaposition has exacerbated Prof Chomsky’s complaint and that is regretted. The Guardian has now withdrawn the interview from the website.