Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 13:02:12 -0500
From: "Matt D." <mattd-AT-freenet.tlh.fl.us>
Subject: Carlos' support for Algerian reaction.


Carlos said:

>>     They [Algerian Islamic fundamentalists] are up in arms *after*
>>     they were denied political power when the *won* the elections.
>>     [The PCP] in Peru have not legitimacy aside from the self-
>>     proclaimed representation that they certainly lack.  They
>>     never won an election,

To which Taylor Ian Christopher replied:

>This is outrageous! You appear to be "justifying" a group of homicidal 
>mediaevel (sp?) insurrectionists whose aim is to drag Algeria and the 
>rest of the Islamic world back to the Dark Ages. I *seriously* doubt your 
>credibility as a progressive if you are in any way defending them! I 
>urgently suggest you ask *any* woman whether they would voluntarily 
>submit to the type of society the FIS envisage. How can you take such a 
>position? I am shocked.

Taylor,

Thanks for your very reasonable post.  If you are shocked by Carlos'
position on Algeria, it is because you have perhaps not been following
this thread from the beginning.  It has been an amazingly straight-
forward example of the stereotypical degeneration of "Trotskyism" from
a pseudo-revolutionary verbal exercise into more or less total support
for reaction.

Those of use who don't gasp in horror at the mention of Mao Zedong
are constantly taken to task on this list.  Well, now the worm has turned.
All Trotskyists on this list should be vigorously repudiating Carlos in his
support for *real* terrorism -- the feudal enslavement of all Algerian
women.

My sectarian hackles are up, here folks.  This is not an attempt to engage
the issue of whether Trotsky (or Mao, for that matter) were "good" or "bad"
or right or wrong.  But really, Carlos is the incarnation of the "evil Trot"
they used to scare us with around the RCYB campfire.

-- Matt D.

Self-criticism: An organization of which I was a member, the RCYB, had a
line supporting the Iranian "revolution" of 1979.  The exact nature of this
support was always hard to pin down -- no one defended the "legitimacy"
of the ayatollahs (unlike Carlos), but they did try to present it as "a
blow to imperialism".  Since, of course, imperialism and Khomenei turned
out to actually get along pretty well, this line has become pretty muted.  I
don't know if it's been repudiated.



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