Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:27:29 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: Re: SV: M-TH: Re: Burying the dead -- still a live issue in Kosova


Bob writes:

>Actually the left hooked into one side of this conflict from the very
>beginning including Hugh and his organization. The Bosnian Muslim side. It
>reflects the fact that they have no understandiong of the national question
>and especially the question of inter penetrating peoples..

This is not so. There has been no "left" consensus on the Yugoslavian civil
wars.

My organization the LIT took the side of the Bosnian people, most of who
are officiously muslims the way most Swedes are registered Christians. In
our direct intervention we struggled to help working-class Bosnians in
Tuzla, where the multi-cultural, working-class traditions are strongest
(they are also strong, but less class-based in Sarajevo).

By emphasizing the "Muslim" aspect of supporting Bosnia, Bob is doing part
of the job of the imperialist propaganda machine for it.

>Now Hugh is playing the left tail to Albanian nationalists. And is using
>nationalist arguements against the Serbs to back up this stuff.. And doing
>it with some pretty horrible jingoism!

So now Bob jumps on the smears bandwagon to misrepresent what I'm saying as
irrational chauvinist ravings.

Bob, how are you going to deal with the Kosova problem without a programme
including a united front with Albanian nationalists?

You don't have a concrete understanding of the role of bourgeois democratic
demands such as national liberation and democratic representation in a
repressed nationality or ethnic group. This weakens your political impact
greatly.

>He completely covers up that all sides in the Yugoslavian conflict are
>prepared to commit all kinds of attrocities if just they had the military
>capability..

All sides in a war fight with weapons if they can. Atrocities is another
matter.

Would you apply this same reasoning (as many reactionaries did) to the
military activities of the NLF and the North Vietnamese fighting against
the US?

What you can't accept is the obvious fact that the Serbian state has been
and is the aggressor oppressing minority peoples, and the reason is your
sterile identification of a deformed workers' state with progress as
against any of its opponents. This is dead-end stuff.

Cheers,

Hugh




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