Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 18:27:48 -0400
From: dhenwood-AT-panix.com (Doug Henwood)
Subject: Re: Bombings, Surveillance, and Free Societies (fwd)


At 1:08 PM 3/7/96, rakesh bhandari wrote:

>> There should be
>>tremendous potential appeal for a truly radical message among the
>>population that people recklessly refer to as "The Militias." If there
>>isn't, then we might as well give up on radical politics in America.
>
>Doug, I just don't see how this follows.  It may be that people who have
>made the choice to join the Militias are the least interested, perhaps most
>hostile to radical politics, though they are of course militants (the same
>could be said of the hard-core members of the *Nation of Islam*). Who is
>throwing in the towel about the American working class?  Is the Militia the
>working class?  What does most of the working class think of them?

I think I've said about a hundred times now that I think it's reckless to
refer to a broad and complex social phenomenon as "the militias." That's
why I kept putting it in quotes in my response to you, Rakesh. The broad,
complex social phenomenon I'm speaking of is the bitterness of the white
working class, which is taking many strange forms, militias one among many.
Armed racists scare the hell out of me, and there's no question they're the
enemy. My point is that it only serves elite purposes to code *all* white
working class anger as armed racism. It's one of the ruling class's great
tricks to get to define its opponents - witness the idenficiation of
opposition to NAFTA with the repellent Perot, and of anti-corporate
feelings with the even more repellent Buchanan.

>I understand that in a future *Progressive* Adolph Reed writes of how
>Herrenvolk democracy is coded in this seemingly neutral classic American
>mode. At the same time, I am very open to rethinking the principles which
>animate radical thought; I have expressed in one effort at rethinking
>Marxism: Jacques Camatte's *This World We Must Leave and other essays*.

I'm a big fan of Adolph's, so I look forward to this.

We should draw a distinction between the often very confused thinking of
the masses and the malignant uses to which bad leaders put that ideology
to.

Buchanan's fairly dismal showing in the primaries is a sign that bigotry
has a very limited appeal.


Doug

--

Doug Henwood
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