Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 17:46:30 -0800
From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (rakesh bhandari)
Subject: Re: Bombings, Surveillance, and Free Societies (fwd)


 I would agree that there are grave dangers in contributing to any hysteria
which sanctions the growth of the surveillance apparatus of the state.
However, I don't think we have to turn a blind eye to the reactionary
nature of some of these movements in order to argue against increased 
government powers. I would find such a 'rhetorical' strategy quite
objectionable.  Below I suggest that I don't think that this all there is
to it.  

As I understand it, some believe  that if we openly attempt to protect the
rights to speech and organization of far-right groups  that at some point
our principled tolerance will redound upon us in the form of principled
government or, for that matter, far right behavior to the left.    

Others argue that the ruling class very much wants us to give our
imprimatur to government crack-downs as this will legitimize the repressive
apparatus the primary target of which indeed remains democratic
revolutionary movements. This would be a case of the ruling class giving us
the rope with which to hang ourselves.   By the way, this same argument has
been conducted in India, regarding calls for repression of Hindu fascist
forces.  

 I think it is silly to assume that if and when the "left" becomes strong,
punitive institutions will sit idly by, thinking it unprincipled to unleash
repression because we were once so soft on the right.  To caution against
legal repression of the Right on the grounds that such tolerance will keep
open extra-parliamentary terrain for us at a critical conjuncture seems to
me totally groundless, a bizarre argument at odds with everything that
Lenin theorized as the nature of the state.    

 Moreover, nobody wants to play the fool who protects the rights of those
whose who will use them later to strip ourselves of the same.  

But as I suggested, I think something else is going on--a crisis in left vision.
It seems to me that some actually see something in the Militias themselves
worth affirming.  There have been those who have argued that radicals must
now speak in a different register--not proletarian dictatorship and class
consciousness but the principles of community, autonomy, federalism, and
anti-statism.  

Jacques Cammatte makes a powerful argument for such a shift.  But it seems
to me stupid to affirm any group which sometimes speaks in this language. 
It is to turn these new principles into fetishes, into lifeless external
norms.  I agree that real radicalism must be about the realization of these
principles, but sometimes to affirm anybody who simply uses this language
is actually to do the most violence to the real meaning of autonomy and
human community.  In short, I think some have softened the image of the
Militias not only for the strategic reason of checking the growth of the
repressive apparatus but also because they see certain principles, which
are embraced by the Militias,  as worth affirming.   I would agree with
neither reason to prettify the image of the Militias, to give them a
radical gloss.  It is also possible to be against the illegitimate
extension of government powers which may result from the panic surrounding
right-wing forces, hate crimes, etc.  




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