Date: Sat, 8 Mar 1997 19:37:41 GMT
Subject: M-G: Re: The moderator's position and Godena's trousers


>From the moderator of the M-I list, Louis Godena:

        .
>Adolfo writes of his suspension:            
>        
>>Who wanted this action?  Apparently only Zeynep Tufekcioglu, and since
>>Godena in shining armour has come out to vouch for the lady and share her
>>guilt, him too, while Jonathan, simply remains in the backgroud mumbling
>>obscurities.   
>
>Adolfo,  I have already taken full responsibility for what happened on
>marxism-international.    Zeynep was genuinely upset by the type of language
>that was being bandied about on that list.    As she has had to live with
>the immediate consequences of a fractious and internecine "Left" (as have
>you,  I'm sure),  I can well understand her visceral reaction.    But that
>is neither here nor there as far as the real issue is concerned,  that of
>the action taken by the moderators on March 2nd.    As I have already
>stated,  the decision to suspend was agreed to,  in effect,  by all three.
>If there is culpability here (and there is), it lies with me and not,  by
>any stretch of rhetoric,  with Zeynep or Jon Flanders.    If there is
>someone who remained in the background "mumbling obscurities",  that someone
>is me.   I acknowledge it,  I regret it,  and (for the third time) I
>apologize for it.
>
>Adolfo continues:
>
>>But what kind of "death talk" is that upsets this "revolutionary Marxist
>>lady"?. Certainly only one kind of death talk - anti-imperialist
>>anti-reactionary death talk.  
>>As to pro-imperialist, reactionary death talk - millions of murders by
>>Stalin, Chairman Mao, the PCP, and whosoever ever dares to touch a hair of
>>the reactionaries and the imperialists, such "death talk" really never
>>upsets her!  On the contrary, it "gladdens her" - she sees it as "necessary
>>criticism", and she occassionally indulges in this "death talk" herself
>>without upsetting her tummy even a little tiny bit.
>>She winces in pain at the mention of the word icepick - but her lips curl
>>turgidly while the imperialist catchword "gulag" rolls easily and matter of
>>factly from her own tongue.     
>
>Adolfo,  I can only regard every word of this as fantastically untrue.
>How on earth can you say such a thing?   There is private suffering and
>there is public suffering (such as we see in many guises on this list).
>Last summer,   Zeynep was quite "upset" by what was happening to her
>comrades inside the dungeons during the hunger strikes.    Far more so than
>any hypothetical threats emanating from a mailing list in cyberspace.   It
>was a wrenching time for her and many others.    She is not in any way
>"gladdened" by the accusations leveled against Comrade Stalin or the PCP
>(and I know you can not really believe that she is): on the contrary,  she
>is deeply troubled by what she sees as the cavalier attitude of many on the
>Left toward the seminal issues of human suffering,  issues that must engage
>all of us if our revolution is to ever mean anything.    You have
>misrepresented her,   my friend (and I hope we are still friends).    Your
>quarrel is with me,  and should be addressed as such.
>
>Louis Godena
>

The response of Adolfo Olaechea:


Since you ask:

I am sorry Godena that you are lending now your trousers to cover up the
behaviour of the female member of your moderators staff and insulting
womanhood into the bargain with all that talk about "visceral reactions".

The "visceral reactions" from women who claim themselves revolutionaries I
understand are those like the mother of Dr. Abimael Guzman's lawyer who is
imprisoned deep underground like the leader of the PCP in Peru.  That woman
of the proletariat said on a TV interview when questioned about the "peace
agreement plot":  "I rather my son was dead that he become a traitor".   

What on earth are these "seminal issues of human suffering" may I ask? What
is that crass Amnesty International style demagogy suppose to mean in the
mouth of a communist? 

>From the time of Spartacus and long before the oppressed classes have
undergone the most horrendous human suffering. Today the world is a cauldron
of human suffering. Has there been and is there not enough of this suffering
already endured and being endured every day that it may also be used in the
most opportunistic fashion as a cheap excuse to cover up for unprincipled
actions geared to favour their enemies as well? 

If what you want to say is that in your irresponsible behaviour - pretending
to interpose yourself - for whatever reasons - and protect the enemies of
the revolution from their just desserts - you placed a person shell-shocked
by an action that - deserving of unstinting support as it was - is, by the
standards of the suffering endured by the proletariat and the people in this
century, in Spain, China, Soviet Socialist Republic, Hungary, Italy,
Germany, Philipines, Peru, Kurdistan, Palestine and Turkey itself, Greece,
Mexico, you name it, and except for a handful of countries in the world
everyone has seen this century war and fascist savagery in their own homes -
I repeat, you placed this person in a position of taking a politically
charged decission completely unsuited to her temperament, and, moreover,
gave her a green light to indulge her opportunistic and outright reactionary
whims out of your marked liberal penchant for damsels in distress, and on
that account you now appeal to my friendship and even to my "fellow male
understanding" for that weakness, then say so in a less convoluted and
lachrymose way. 

However as a communist, I strive to have no friends but comrades, and as a
"fellow male" I have too much respect for women not to regard them as my
equals and fully able to stand up for themselves in all terrains of the
struggle. 

But to say that you regard what I say as "fantastically untrue" is a
complete denial of reality on your part.   On the record there is a wagon
full of cleverly slanderous attacks on Stalin and the Soviet Union under his
leadership authored by the weasily pen of Zeynept - and even more recently,
her condescending idiocies about "third world Stalinists" that only go to
show her desperate alienation from the working class in her own country and
even from the working class in many countries of the imperialist world, her
penchant for the  aristocracy of labour towards which her liberal heart is
really set and misses a beat in romantic rapture.   

I was not born yesterday and I can tolerate a certain amount of liberalism
for a certain time.  But that you would deny to my face that Zeynept is a
denigrator of Stalin and that she never bats an eye about all that
reactionary and Goebbelian "death talk" of imperialist propaganda against
communism, socialism, the living revolutions, etc., is certainly the most
"fantastically untrue" statement as yet on your part. 

This is something that the very aftermath of her "visceral reaction" has
proven beyond doub:

First, here is Tufekcioglu twisting the facts about the true character of my
remarks and talking in the name of the moderators:

"Adolfo Olaechea is suspended from posting for two weeks for the contents
of his posts..... The moderators would like to remind
Adolfo that the rules also clearly forbid sexist language and hence he, as
all list members, has to refrain from terminology of "castrated eunuchs"
etc"


You have now admitted that the content of my posts did not violate list
rules, nor constitute sexist talk and even less any sort of death threat.
But that is certainly not what Tufekcioglu says, or is it?

Then Tufekcioglu issuing a Zubatovist Privateers' Charter:

"..... along with calling list-members "agent provocateur", which is again
banned in the list rules". 

Of couse if Marx was to come back to life and denounce Herr Voght in this
list, he would likewise be banned by such rules. To take the name of Marxism
and to interpret the list rules in this fashion is - for me - absolute proof
that M-I is designed as a "baiting pit" at the service of the agent
provocateurs of the imperialist bourgeosie.  

However the term "agent provocateur" is very clear in the Marxist tradition
and does not necessarily mean that the "agent provocateur" actually is in
the payroll of anybody.  It just means that act as a "red baiter" on behalf
of the class enemy for whatever reasons, including its own
counter-revolutionary ideology.

And this is "innocent" Zeynept Tufekcioglu fully giving the cue, and,
moreover, endorsing the agent provocateurs lies - lies geared to serve
imperialist objectives:  

"We have no problems with "hard words" of any kind".

In other words, just go ahead and throw as much mud as you like, of which
she would immediately give a good example: 

"Calling on someone to "kill himself using a trap working on the icepick
principle, to not to make us waste a bullet, not that it would not honor us
to do so" is not acceptable, no matter how much in anger it is written".
I find a sharp distinction between "hard words" and such language".

Of course the fact that I told Levy that no one should dirty his hands in
that task of "social cleansing" she has "translated" into that we would be
"honoured" by wasting a bullet on a worthles worm.  If that is not chicanery
of the worst sort, you tell what should we call it?

And then, here is weasily Tufekcioglu encouraging the bean fest of the
Rossers, the maleckis, the Utica Roses, etc.:

"There may be people who genuinly want a revolution,
but have a different view from ours, or say, who are misguided. Who is to
judge?......"

Making clear to the counter-revolutionary camp that Tufekcioglu, the
moderator, won't pass judgement on anything they may say or do, or that if
she does "pass judgement" it would be but a toothless grin with no danger of
"moderators action" whatsoever:

"I don't approve of "leap, lemmings" type remarks, and I ignore them".

Ergo, go ahead Rodwell, carry on with your skull and cross bones and your
red-baiting.  You will not be disciplined.  Just ignored!

And this weasel "friend of the Peruvian revolution" gives the green light to
the "updated version of Comrade Carlos" to come in and just please himself
to his heart content:

"I also ignore people like Utica Rose who comment on everything as if they
happen to be the head of Revolutionary Facts and Figures Institute". 

Ahw Right! "That is my cue", says Utica Rose. I will also be "ignored" and I
have that guarantee straigh from the horse's mouth of a "moderator" who
openly holds that she believes it is "a crime not to ruthlessly criticise"
revolutionary organisations engaged in Peoples War.  

Ahw Right! said "Utica Rose" and immediately obliged:

>the same was said of the Khmer Rouge. the "Shining Path" may be praised for
>bullying the Peruvian government; must they also be praised for bullying the
>"Peruvian people."  these armed bands, uncontrolled by anyone other than a
>band of ideologically-fickle men, are not marxist robin hoods. they are just
>hoods.

And the "respected intellectual" Zarembka - plagiarising The New York
Times's opinion adds his grain of mud:

>      In the past, Sendero Luminoso attacked legal left-wing
> organizations. Such actions have not been carried out by the
> MRTA. The Peruvian left generally regards the Senderos to be
> terrorists, whereas the MRTA are guerrillas. 

Is that not exactly what the imperialist press have been trying to say all
along during the MRTA circus show? However, undeterred and secure in the
knowledge that the moderators would not only ignore him, but that they
positively would consider it a "crime" if he was not to "ruthlessly
criticise organisations" engaged in armed struggle against imperialism, the
inefable philistine concludes to Zeynept's full satisfaction:

"Sendero never thought twice about murdering members of leftist
organizations".  In other words, here speaks the Peruvian Military High
Command with a single voice!"

Ah, but that is not all, so that list members will be in no doubt what sort
of thing can really land you in trouble, Tufekcioglu, who would tolerate and
"ignore" the "death talk" above, who would ignore "jump!, lemmings!, jump!"
headlines, death crosses and such like, speaks now with forked tongue:

"I thinkwe should clearly draw the line for death-talk. There is no room for
joking in that regard........" 

And then concluedes with smug satisfaction for a hatchet job "well done":

"What I can't understand is how we can disagree on that point".  

Marvellous!

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Who got "suspended"? Rodwell and
his death symbol next to Proyect's name?  Rosser and his "mass murder" and
"cannibalism" Voice of America allegations? No. No action was taken at all
by the distressed lady, the other "repentant" moderators, or yourself, then
or even now.

Moreover, Godena, you are taking the pose of the gun-fighting Sheriff, ready
to enforce the "law" while making quite a few disgraceful allegations of
your own.

What is all this about not even blowing a few blasts over Zeynept's hairdo?
Was it not Zeynept who was all for "ruthless criticism" of the revolutionary
people and organisations a little while ago?  What happened?  She gets
caught red-handed in unprincipled and slanderous allegations and now
scrambles to take cover behind your trousers?  A cat ate her tongue?  What
happened to the great feminist?  Shrivelled like a violet at the first 21
gun salute of mildly-ruthless criticism of the Marxist and revolutionary
variety?

Apparently not sufficiently to make any "self-criticism" herself and admit
her errors and unsuitability for the job. And with such people you want to
"make a revolution"?  And a humane one at that?  People who would take
unjust and expedient measures of repression out of their own "visceral
reactions" and then fail to redress them straight away and to acknowledge
their errors and false allegations or even act upon that? 

People that moreover would find excuses for themselves left right and center
for clinging like limpets to their bureacratic "decisions" even when they
know them to be erroneous and to have had counter-revolutionary consequences?  

It is people just like that, milksops who would abuse positions of power as
a matter of course acting in expedient fashion for visceral reasons, who
would then be the ones to cause the inevitable injustices in a revolution
which THEY themselves later would wash their hands of and blame onto the
broad shoulders of honourable and principled leaders such as Lenin, Stalin
and Mao Tse-tung. Did not Trotsky, Khruschev and Deng Xiao-ping among others
proved to be just such kind of people?   

As to your own position:  It is called "moderators cretinism" - a fairly
diminished and stunted version of parliamentary cretinism.  You are valuing
even that scrap of bourgeois power over communist principle. You would do
well - and this is friendly advice - to proclaim yourself a non-communist
progressive and stop pretending, it does you no good and it does communism
no good either, and in the event what I suggest may be better all round and
for all concerned.

Adolfo



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