File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/97-03-11.171, message 44


Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 00:51:19 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-G: Lousi >< P and the Truth


Note the rhetoric of Lousi P's latest posting.

Paragraph one:

>No, the only parallel between you and people like Vishinsky is that you lie
>for political expediency. I am interested in the question of veracity which
>has importance for *all* political tendencies, including Trotskyism. Nobody
>is excused from the need to tell the truth, just the way that nobody is
>excused to from the bar against the use of violence in the worker's
>movement. The Healyite group in England was infamous for lying and for
>violence. Despite all of the tributes paid to the memory of Trotsky at
>banquets and party conferences, Gerry Healy was a liar and used violence
>against political opponents, just the way that the CP of the 1930s did.

Count the words! Umpteen uses of "lie", "truth", "veracity" etc.

Count the substance! How many examples of a lie? None. Any attempt at proof
or demonstration? None. Insinuation and brazen assertion of what needs to
be proved? Plenty.


Paragraph two:


>Your tendency, the Morenoite tendency, has no record of violence against
>opponents as far as I know but evidently is in the habit of lying based on
>your eagerness to lie about the Simon Bolivar Brigade.

"Habit of lying"?! I've been posting for ages here, but Louis's the one who
has been caught out lying too many times for anyone to even try and list
them briefly. Most notoriously in his cop-smearing attacks on Bob Malecki.
Making up a "habit" is real hard when you haven't even demonstrated the
single case of lying that's supposed to provide the moral foundations for
all this hypocritical huffing and puffing.

"eagerness to lie about the SBB". Well, let's see what the criminal lie or
lies is supposed to be ...


>This outfit had no
>support in Nicaraguan society the way that the Bolsheviks (or Mensheviks
>did) in Russia, or the POUM in Spain, or any other mass-based revolutionary
>organization.

Neither I nor anyone else has claimed mass support for the SBB. If we'd had
mass support, we wouldn't have been chucked out, and the Nicaraguan
revolution would have taken a different course. So who's lying?


>It was a nothing, a zero, a flea.

So why did the Panamanian goons have to come in and prise us apart from the
Nicaraguan revolutionary workers and peasants we were working with? Some
*nothing*! Again, who's lying?


>Nobody like Ken Loach will
>ever make a movie about this brigade. Nobody has written books or ever will.

Is this supposed to be about *lying*? How many significant actions of the
revolutionary left have ever made the films? I can't offhand recall having
heard of any film about the Paris Commune, though I suppose there must be.
Trotsky's life is full of episodes (like the creation of the Red Army and
its years beating back the imperialist invasions) that haven't been made
into films, that I know of -- yet. Louis is unreal in his accusations --
not making the books or films, becomes a political lie of gigantic
proportions (and I mean "gigantic" -- equal in Lousi's eyes to Vishinsky
and Stalin, and the "biggest liar in Trotskyist politics". Of course, he
could be using the words in a distorted sense -- our truth-loving friend
... But Mr Probity wouldn't do that now, would he? I mean, it might mean we
don't have to take him all that seriously, and that would never do. No,
every word weighed on golden scales. This man means everything he says,
Hugh is the biggest liar in Trotskyism and a genuine challenger to
Vishinsky and Stalin.

>It only has heroic proportions in your own mind because you enjoy telling
>tales to make you feel better.

Now could this be the *big lie* about which Louis is getting so worked up?
International solidarity with a revolution being made into something
heroic? What a shameful *lie*! What distortion of *veracity*. How can
anyone stoop so low as to view travelling to another country and risking
your life to help overturn a bloody and extortionate dictatorship as
heroism?! Shame and shame again.

By the way, did anyone see "Missing", or "Zeta" or "Reds". Fighting
reaction is such gunky stuff, no wonder it makes Louis want to vomit.

Just as a matter of interest, however, I'd like to see a quote
substantiating me claiming "heroic proportions" for the SBB. And while
we're at it, something to *substantiate* how anything I said in relation to
the SBB could be viewed as "tales to make you feel better".


>The truth is rather unpalatable, isn't?

What truth, Lousi? Your ritual put-downs of tendencies to which you're
opposed? Give us a single substantial truth to relate to!!


>The rest of us understand that the class struggle can only be advanced by
>confronting the real world and not one of our fantasies.

After all the build up -- this thin platitudinous gruel!! So it's real
world versus fantasy time, eh? Wow. But all this "fantasy" and "heated
imagination" stuff that Lousi purveys -- is it really the same as the
world-shaking LIES he's been accusing us of? When will Lousi get his act
together?



>Hugh tries to make the case for the Simon Bolivar Brigade by quoting from a
>another Morenoite! I asked for independent verification of the role of this
>shadowy outfit in Nicaraguan politics and Hugh cites a member of the
>faction. What a sick joke. This is would be the same as if someone asked
>Vishinsky to back up his lies and he would say, just ask Stalin. He'll back
>me up.

I give this creature an eye-witness account -- and he calls up Vishinsky
and Stalin from the deepest recesses of Hell!!!


>Hugh, you are the biggest liar I have ever met in the world of Trotskyist
>politics.

Lousi, my friend, what is this LIE you are on about? *Where* have I *lied*?

Are you disputing:

The existence of the Simon Bolivar Brigade?

It's political line?

The measures taken against it by the Sandinista and Panamanian states?


Are you claiming that I exaggerated its size? If so, show me the figures or
indications I gave and disprove them!

The significance of the Brigade is a question of political judgement, on
which we quite obviously disagree. Are you claiming that a difference in
political judgement is sufficient grounds to level charges of "the greatest
liar" at someone, and compare them to such proven liars as Vishinsky and
Stalin?


Lousi rounds off in grand style:

>Not only are you a liar, you won't even make an effort to cover
>your tracks. People all over the world are wondering to themselves. Isn't
>there a single book, magazine or newspaper that is separate and apart from
>the propaganda machinery of Hugh's own organization that can back him up?

On what, dear Lousi? The existence, political line and expulsion of the
SBB? But who's disputing these things? Are you seriously claiming that the
SBB didn't exist? And that it wasn't expelled with the assistance of
Panamanian goons as Carlos described (in the quote I repeat below)?


So there we have it. Once more we've been treated to a full-dress hatchet
job on a subscriber's moral worth by Mr P for Probity Proyect. Lousi should
get a job as a medium and turn an honest buck playing on the fears and
hopes of the poor and gullible, instead of trying to perform his
spiritualistic tricks on Marxists.

Strutting, opinionated, shit-smearing, counter-revolutionary
petty-bourgeois filth -- that's the sum total of Lousi P's contributions to
the list. Oh, and self-aggrandizement...


Cheers,

Hugh




>>PS Here's a brief account of the role of the Simon Bolivar Brigade by
>>Carlos, who was there when it happened. Since we've been through all this
>>before, I'll just quote his posting of 29 Feb 1996:
>>
>>
>>
>>    The Internation Simon Bolivar Brigade *was not formed* with
>>    the task of "helping the workers and the landless to organize
>>    independent and combative trade unions."
>>
>>    The ISBB was formed in 1978/79 to fight alongside the FSLN against
>>    Somoza's National Guard.  They did that and were very heroic.  Some
>>    of the streets in Managua still have the names of those
>>    internationalists who died there.
>>
>>    The ISBB members, after Somoza and most of the National Guard fled
>>    the country, were active in defeating the first attempt of a
>>    counter-revolutionary armed revolt against the new government in
>>    Bluefields.
>>
>>    They started to build tradeunions in the Zona Franca, later in
>>    Granada and Masaya. But this was a natural sub-product of its
>>    main reason to be formed in the first place.
>>
>>    They were not *jailed* by the Sandinistas, but something worse.
>>    Because two detachments of the FSLN *refused* to act against the
>>    members if the ISBB, the FSLN invited the Panamenian National
>>    Guard to do so.  The Panamenian soldiers arrived in two transport
>>    planes and irrumped in a meeting between FSLN leaders and members
>>    of the ISBB (to which ISBB members were invited to *discuss* and
>>    instructed to come unarmed).  They Panamenian troops *kidnapped*
>>    the ISBB members and transported them in the planes under military
>>    custody to Panama.  There, they were jailed by the Panamenian
>>    government for a few days and expelled to different countries days
>>    later.
>>
>>    The FSLN jailed one member of the IWL(FI) leadership who remained
>>    in Nicaragua for 45 days and freed him after an international
>>    campaign.  This was done days before the former Maoists and two
>>    groups of dissident FSLN members were going to reach political
>>    agreement with the Trotskyist to form a united organization.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>>
>>
>
>
>
>     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---




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