alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
An interesting article on the depiction of Jesus the Christ as a Westerner, but, of course you may be a mythicist and don’t believe he even ever existed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/19/trump-2020-joe-biden-extreme-left
the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor near Washington in February. Its official theme was “America v socialism” and the agenda included sessions such as “Socialism: Wrecker of Nations and Destroyer of Societies” and “Prescription for Failure: The Ills of Socialised Medicine”
“The idea of trying to portray Joe Biden as somebody who is either an empty vessel for the left or in cahoots with the far left makes a lot of sense to me. We’ll have to see how effective the attack is, but I think it is the best available play in the playbook.”
“The radical leftwing mob’s agenda? Take over our cities. Defund the police. Pressure more towns to follow. And Joe Biden stands with them.”
Cheers for the clarification. But i will continue the debate because i think it is an important one to have
I still wonder if calling for a level playing field or supporting catch-up policies is as sectional as you suggest – sectional meaning it is divisive and that it strengthens one part of our fellow-workers at the expense of another, weakening them.
We do suggest in our goal that resources should be distributed according to needs and groups and individuals needs are different and require to be addressed differently. Some of us say these needs should be self-defined – although such an expression has issues as we have discussed on the forum elsewhere. Self-defined but subject to society’s criteria.
Isn’t positive discrimination and quotas about addressing that ongoing and persistent disadvantage that has arisen from past policies? Rectifying misdeeds.
Historically, some social reforms which are empowering or beneficial such as education and health (even the ability to vote) in the USA has benefited only a section of the working class – white folk – and disproportionately been detrimental to another section – African Americans – with the effects actually apparent on a wide variety of metrics.
I know there are many poor whites just as deserving of amelioration, just as there were poor Afrikaaners in apartheid South Africa but the sectionalism came from the State just so that it could divide and rule.
Reparations can easily be seen as mere re-distribution of poverty but government expenditure comes from the taxation of the capitalists’ wealth, so isn’t it their burden. Isn’t it making the capitalist class retrospectively pay for a part of their slice of surplus value extracted from the black community. But, of course, some capitalists will try to reimburse themselves with cuts in other parts of government spending. We see that even now.
Isn’t it for workers as a whole, regardless of colour, to ensure, that there is resistance to austerity cuts?
But i think the real problem is whites resenting reparations for blacks but the reparations understandably expected by the Latino and Native American population too who as Marcos often reminds us had vast areas of territory invaded and stolen from their ancestors.
It may seem from the above, i am arguing in favour of reformist demands but what i’m saying is that our analysis must be nuanced to not appear denying or dismissing the extra-special suffering and misery experienced by particular members of our class.
What our approach has to be is not to argue that reparations or whatever are sectional but that they are simply not going to be achievable other than by some token gestures in the form of programs such as quotas and positive discrimination and those palliatives will be very limited and full of loop-holes and gaps.
The capitalist class will never pay the full cost of their predecessors past crimes.
We need to explain our case that permanent restitution can only be feasible with socialism and a totally new way of compensation for historic mistreatment.
We have to express our sympathies and solidarity in the clearest manner possible, acknowledging that some remedial amelioration can be taken such as reducing racial profiling, while at the same time counselling a different course of corrective action for real social change, that people identify with the one unifying characteristic we all share – wage-slavery, whether black or white or brown, unskilled or skilled, male or female, short or tall, impoverished or even relatively prosperous.
Let us talk of slavery and how it has never ended.
How can we as socialists take sides between two sections of the working class?
But we do take sides, don’t we?
We are on the side of those who are oppressed particularly if it is because of the colour of their skin.
We oppose racism and we are against racists regardless if they are members of the working class as they invariably are.
We also support those who protest and resist the brutality of the coercive agents of the State such as the various police departments and the National Guard.
Do we debate if African-Americans are generally discriminated against? Do we question if such a thing such as white supremacy exists?
Indeed, as you point out, we always face the reality that self-appointed interests try to steer and direct workers’ movements. It doesn’t lead to us disassociating ourselves with them or withdrawing our sympathies.
We do have an important role in explaining the links to capitalism and the class-nature of our society and how racial differences are used to divide and rule. But need we distance ourselves from those who seek to protest their conditions by suggesting that racist workers are comparable.
“Those who play the black card”
Not so sure about the implication of those words. Are African-Americans and the black minorities in many other countries being played?
Couldn’t such inference give support to the Soros-type conspiracies that BLM and what appears to be genuine grassroots resistance are that they are being manipulated by outsiders “playing the black card”
Whereas we do witness politicians and media feeding white peoples racial fears, deliberately “playing the white card”
But Libcom had a link to an interesting story that there is a black flight to the better-off suburbs and resentment against the newcomers from racists.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11829316/the-hidden-toll-of-californias-black-exodus
Here is another article debunking it and suggesting it is the pro-war hawks who circulated it.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/07/18/russia-bounty-story-falls-flat
” An unreliable Afghan report is blown into a national controversy in hopes of forcing the White House to cancel the Afghan troop withdrawal.”
The US defends Polish government
The U.S. ambassador to Poland said the European Union’s criticism of Poland’s adherence to democracy is “overblown”
“If you’re asking me…do I think that a lot of the attacks on Poland about democratic values is overblown, my answer is yes, I do,” U.S. ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher told Reuters
However she was critical of some aspects
“I think there were homophobic undertones,” Mosbacher said of the campaign. “Do I like it? No. And I’m pretty vocal on that publicly.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a changing world needs new social protection policies with safety nets including universal health coverage and the possibility of a universal basic income.
“There was the Jewish Bund, which was a left-wing socialist movement that rose to prominence in the early 20th century that articulated a deterritorialized nationalism in Eastern Europe. They felt their place was Eastern Europe, their land was Eastern Europe, their language was Yiddish. And they wanted to struggle for freedom in Europe where they actually lived. And they felt that their struggle for liberation was against oppressive capitalist governments in Europe.”
The white card it seems includes whipping up the fears of white surburbia that there will be an influx of non-whites from the inner city. So according to Trump
“Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical left want to significantly multiply what they’re doing now. And what will be the end result is you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs. Suburbia will be no longer as we know it…. The suburb destruction will end with us.” He added, “Our plan is to protect the suburbs from being obliterated by Washington Democrats, by people on the far Left that want to see the suburbs destroyed — that don’t care. People who have worked all their lives to get into a community and now they’re going to watch it go to hell.”
it was the small towns that put Duda in office. Almost every city in the country backed his liberal challenger, Rafał Trzaskowski.
Sylwia Urbańska, a sociologist at Warsaw University, said the PiS discourse about giving dignity back to the countryside is important, and compared it to late 19th-century anti-modernism.
“Then, as today, populists referred to the ideal of a rural community, a rural family, a rural woman as a bastion of national values, patriotism, the patriarchal ideal of family relations, heteronormativity, ethnic purity and Catholicism,” she said. She noted that in recent decades the Polish countryside has suffered from depopulation and the sharp economic effects of neoliberal policies introduced in the transition from communism. This, combined with an elite public discourse that paints the countryside as “stupid” or “backwards” has led increased receptiveness to notions of regaining dignity.
“Emphasising the moral, gender and religious purity of the countryside, and contrasting it with the city, identified with corrupt elites, the ‘gender monster’ and ‘LGBT+ spaces’ – these are the new qualities of Polish authoritarian populism,”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/18/andrzej-duda-poland-rural-urban-re-election
Another informative article by Jonathan Cook
“Peter Beinart, an influential liberal commentator on Israel and Zionism variously described as the “pope of liberal Zionism” and a “bellwether for the American Jewish community” concluded: “The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades – a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews – has failed… It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish-Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish-Palestinian equality.”
“Beinart’s main point is that a commitment to Israel is now entirely incompatible with a commitment to equality for the region’s inhabitants…Beinart is doubtless ahead of most liberal Jews in the US in rejecting Israel as a Jewish state. But it would be foolish indeed to imagine that there are not many others already contemplating following in his footsteps.”
A slap in the face for those who consider denying the legitimacy of the Israeli state is anti-semitic.
Rudy Giuliani –
“This is not — please, understand this — this is not isolated. This is not spontaneous. This is planned. This is planned by Black Lives Matter, it’s funded by [George] Soros to the tune of $30 to $40 million. And the plan is to change your government. To take it away from you. To take away from you a government based on free enterprise. To take away from you your Second Amendment right to bear arms. To take away from you, really, your right to have a religion. Soros is a notorious atheist. Proclaims the fact that he’s an atheist. So are Marxists, by the way. It’s one of the cores of Marxism, atheism.
And one of the cores of Marxism is no private property. They want your property. They want the government to control it. But they do want one preferred class and that’s the people who are — they’re going to get, like, a lifetime salary. And that’s going to be — Black people will get that. And they’ll also get to choose property that they want, and that’s the reparations for slavery. Except it’ll include Black people that came from the Caribbean. And it’s going to get paid by white people who never had anything to do with slavery.”
“Amazing I have to inform you of the extreme Marxist agenda of BLM. It is fairly described as a Marxist violence promoting spewing hatred for America, it’s history, it’s founders, it’s ideal of nuclear marriage, it’s private ownership of property and an end to policing and the virtual end of the military… There’s so much more on their Marxist plan to overthrow our form of government but it begins with getting us to hate America … it’s founder, liberator, the author of our liberty. But when has become an apologist for a cause or organization no chance …”
“Marxists are never consistent. The party people become wealthy. Here Blacks are the preferred class they get life time salary, no one else, and they can claim property. So let’s call it bastardized Marxism as it always is.”
Congress would violate every one of the 375 treaties it made with Indian tribes as well as numerous statutory acts, according the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/17/oklahoma-is-always-has-been-native-land/
An article that is well worth taking the time to read
America’s secret police
Oregon Governor Kate Brown has accused federal agents in unmarked cars who apparently detained protesters in Portland of a “blatant abuse of power”
Federal officers, deployed by US President Donald Trump, have also fired tear gas and less-lethal munitions into crowds of demonstrators.Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) contained detailed accounts of witnesses who had seen federal law enforcement dressed in camouflage emerge from unmarked vehicles, grab protesters without explanation and drive off.
