File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9709, message 445


Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 09:34:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Marxism  vs. Maoism & nationalist "socialism"


On Mon, 22 Sep 1997, James Heartfield wrote:

> This is the bigest lie of all. The aid agencies did try to force the
> refugees home by withholding aid. It was just that the refugees were so
> terrified of what the RPF would do to them that they preferred to live
> in the bush.
> 

Heartfield, you are a sleazy ideologue. What is confusing about you is
that your ideology is unpredictable and based, I suppose, on the mood of
your cult-leader when he gets up in the morning. Your "Revolutionary
Communist Party" is on the barricades right now, I have discovered, with
Human Rights outfits over this Hutu question. Nobody but you and the US
State Department has taken up the "cause" of the Hutus. 

Your position would have some merit if you had reporters on the field in
Rwanda and Congo and you could put some facts and statistics on the table. 
Facts and statistics would cut through all the bullshit, but you prefer
bullshit to accuracy. You continue to evade my direct questions about the
casualty rate of Tutsis versus Hutus in the Rwandan civil war, the ethnic
composition of Kabila's army. You make a charge about the "Ogundi"  in
Nigeria acting as a cat's paw of imperialism. There are no such people as
the "Ogundis". What was your reaction to being reminded of this? You said,
"Whoops." We are not interested in your "whoops" or your "pip-pips"  or
your "sticky wickets."  We are interested in hard facts. 

James Heartfield is endowed with a rather penetrating intellect. It is too
bad that it functions most of the time in the service of Living Marxism
hack-work. If he stuck to something that he knew about--like
Heidegger--people would respect him more. When he blathers on about
American or African politics, he embarrasses himself. You will not add raw
material to your cult if you continue to come across as superficial
commentators on Africa. Or on environmentalism, for that matter.

Another bee in Living Marxism's bonnet is that the fears over nuclear
power are the paranoid obfuscations of people who have read too much
Adorno. Their "authority" on nuclear power, as Yoshie our fine detective
discovered, makes his living as a mouthpiece for the nuclear industry.
Heartfield never even said "whoops" on that one.

Okay, Heartfield, so what are the "Ogundis"? What is the evidence of
imperialist manipulation in Nigeria that you were referring to? Or were
you thinking of Namibia? Both countries start with an "N" and terminate in
"ia".

DO YOU HAVE AN OPINION ON THE OGONI STRUGGLE IN NIGERIA? WHAT WAS THE ROLE
OF KEN SARO-WIRA? WAS HIS STRUGGLE AGAINST SHELL OIL A PRODUCT OF READING
TOO MUCH HEIDEGGER? OR DID IT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT
SHELL OIL WAS DESTROYING THE LIVELIHOOD OF OGONI FARMERS?

Louis Proyect





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