Subject: Re: AUT: Remove Scott from this list!
From: chris wright <cwright.21stcentury-AT-rcn.com>
Date: 14 Feb 2003 15:37:58 -0600


Hey Harald,

If you think you didn't want to reply to this, I really wanted to reply
to you, but here we are on my third try as Win-doze crashed 2x on me and
now I am back in Linux trying for a third time.  And believe me, I wrote
enough that I am very tired ;)

> 
> First I certainly do not agree in a general politics -- if that it can
> be called --- of making "fascists ... a walking 24/7/365 target
> with a 'beat me' sign on them." I find this stupid at best, at worst
> proto-fascist. 

I was afraid this would be taken this way.  I am NOT proposing that
anyone take up beating up nazis as a political tactic.  I agree with you
on that and on its political nature.  My point is that being a Nazi
makes one a target for this kind of stuff, and I am not crying for the
Nazis who bet beaten up.  I do try to get people out of this kind of
macho, proto-fascist strategy, but if a fascist gets whupped, I don't
give a damn.  It serves them right for being a fascist, which is to say,
an active, always looking to be actively violent, reactionary.  Fascists
attack people, beat up people, hurt people, etc.  They are physically
active and violent paramilitaries, IMO.

But I would oppose using this strategy on reformists or even
garden-variety reactionaries if they are not initiating violence.  So
even if Scott takes some reactionary positions, IMO, he is not a fascist
sympathizer.

More importantly, I understand his sentiment and I think it is important
to point out to him that he is objectively taking sides with the
bourgeois state.  This is not an anti-colonial struggle or a struggle
against the imposition of the capital-labor relation.  It is a battle
between two capitalist states over the flow of capital and the hierarchy
of state power.  There is no alliance with the state in a war which
works in the workers' interests, and since I am not an anti-fascist,
whether or not Hussein and the Ba'athists are fascists or not does not
matter to me in this context.

>         On a whole other point, I am unsure of what "anti-Islamic
> racism" mean if not distinguished from anti-Islamic or anti-
> Christian non-rascism. And given that reference here is to the
> News and Letters if I am not mistaken, and given their strong,
> and uncrtical from my point of view, support of  the struggles
> of the "muslim" Bosnians  and Kosovo-Albanians, it is hard
> for me to believe that the label "anti-Islamic racism" fits
> them well.

My point about anti-Islamic racism has several components.

First, the people who carried out the attacks on 9/11 were not generic
Muslims, but Wahabbists, whose Islamicist politics were fostered by the
US via the CIa and the Saudi state in order to undermine the Iranian
Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  To take a position
which cries out that Islam is reactionary compared to the progressive
traditions of the Enlightenment is to racialize the conflict by making
it one of a reactionary culture and people versus and Enlightened
tradition.  It also sidesteps the connection between the Enlightenment
and racial formation, nicely connected by Loren Goldner in his 2 part
article on Racism and the Enlightenment at his web site.

Second, the result of this is to sidestep US complicity in the creation
of al-Qaeda (and the Islamicist sects in the PLO, btw) and Islamicism in
the Middle East.  To pose the tragedy of 9/11 as beyond explanation then
and link it to an irrational Islamic origin is to racialize the process
and the crisis.  And in the US media, and in US handling of Muslims,
that has been the case.  Racial profiling has taken a distinctly
anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Pakistani form and so has the hostility
to Iraq.

Third, this anti-Islamic perspective provides a cover for the US and it
is the exact opposite of what must be done in relation to one's own
state.  I cannot do much against the Iraqi state, but I can refuse to
aid and I can attack this state with more than words (just as Scott and
the sects cannot do more than mouth militant words as their form of
"military support."  I'd be more impressed if they started running guns
to Iraq, but then maybe if they did they would really have to be held
accountable for aiding fascist regimes.)

So IMO we are seeing a process of racialization which has a history in
the formation of a racial stereotype.  That is anti-Islamic racism.

The opposition to Islam is not in itself racist anymore than the
opposition to Judaism is anti-semitic.  And opposition to Islamicist
politics is just as correct and reasonable as anti-Zionist politics. 
The problem is that one has to be careful to not slide from one to the
other.
 
> But to the point. What I wrote, I stand by:
> 
> :"As is clear from the above and everybody  who have
> followed Scotts consistent advocacy of class
> collaboration -- including with Nazis -- on this list, Scott
> supports workers serving as cannon fodder in capitalist
> wars, so as to defend "their" capitalist regimes. The Iraqi
> workers in 1991 were not as stupid to follow Scott's
> absurd advice to defend capitalism and their butchers
> in the Bath regime. They deserted and turned their
> weapons the other way as soon as they got a change."

Scott did not say "side with Nazis."  He called for a defense of Iraq
based on statist conceptions, in opposition to what he sees as the
greater evil of US imperialism.  In other words, he is caught up in the
nationalist logic of "my enemy's enemy is my friend."

We agree that it is a wrong position and no amount of discussion of
permanent revolution will resolve the call to defend the state.  The
whole argument is premised on the validity of the state and the idea
that workers' power will mean state power.

> 
> Now for normal thinking people this cannot be read in
> any other way than the advocacy of class collaboration
> in the form of a "military block" with the Baathist/Nazi
> regime of Iraq. It is hardly a question of even advocacy
> of collaboration but for the complete subordination to
> the rule of this regime. It is very hard to think that
> even Scott is so ignorant to believe a political independent
> military organization would ever be allowed to exist as
> long as the present Bathist regime of Iraq holds power.

Again, fascist or not is irrelevant.  There is no room for a military
block with the bourgeois state.  Even the Bolsheviks did not make a
military block with Kerensky, in so far as they did not expect Kerensky
to do anything but to be militarily paralyzed by the call in a situation
where part of the state had deserted Kerensky and the opportunity arose
to strengthen the arming of the workers and the formation of a council
militia.  Not only that, the tactic was especially aimed at the
Mensheviks and SRs and getting them to support the expansion of the
arming of the workers and recognition of the soviets as having the right
to defend the revolution.  What in Iraq ia anything at all like that
situation?  Nothing.  IMO, the Trotskyist position is fallacious even in
relation to 1917, regardless of whether or not it was the right choice
in 1917.  IMO, there is nothing that keeps the revolution from taking
measures to paralyze the state and its enemies, even if it means playing
one wing against another.  But that requires power and an insurgent
revolution, which does not obtain in this situation for anyone except
two capitalist states.

> It might also in this context be worthwhile to remember
> that "Communists" in Germany in 1920ies marched and
> organized meetings together with the Nazis, even
> carrying banners displaying both the Swastika and the
> hammer and sickle, all in the name of anti-imperialism
> of course.
 
They sure did and this is certainly the potential end of these politics. 
 
Cheers,
Chris

ps Harald, if you leave I will be very angry with you since I always
enjoy your carfeful and thoughtful points and general integrity.


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