A fascinating piece of history — eight ‘new left’ activists acting in 1971 to protect the citizenry’s right to dissent … by exposing the FBI’s actions to infiltrate protest groups, spy on all sorts of people opposed to the Vietnam war, and, along the way, to ‘enhance paranoia’. Nice work.
click to view ‘Stealing J. Edgar Hoover’s Secrets’ at NYTimes.com
Well worth watching at NYTimes.com. Pretty courageous, huh?
– P
I support Mr Snowden, because I think the US homeland hoopla has gone too far. The yanks are chasing shadows. The Muslim extremist threat is minimal. There is little real risk of global annihilation as a consequence of Muslim extremism.
The Cold War was a very, very different story.
There is substantial revisionism on this subject by the Left, which seeks to minimise their collaboration with the evil communist empire.
Furthermore, the Left typically seeks to downplay the risk the world faced from the communists. Sure, the good team won in the end, but I don’t think that these guys helped with that.
I suspect that these Lefties are the type of people who would have considered Mao to be “cool” back in the day, hence their disregard for State intelligence.
If these clowns conducted themselves like this in China or Russia during the Cold War, under Mao and Stalin, they would have been found, tortured and then executed.
I have just finished Jung Chang’s book about Chairman Mao, and it is shocking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story
Enuff,
*p*
On this: “There is substantial revisionism on this subject by the Left, which seeks to minimise their collaboration with the evil communist empire.” we agree.
It’s intriguing (from the luxury of 2014) to recall, for instance, the links some of those senior in the trade union movement in NZ (and elsewhere, obviously) demonstrated to the USSR, and the role ‘useful idiots’ and the apparent wilful blindness of some big-s Socialists who defended the repression of the Soviet bloc as if it were defensible.
However, if by ‘these Lefties’ you mean the Media burglars in the documentary above, no, we disagree. I don’t detect that Communist Party apologia in them.
Also, this: “If these clowns conducted themselves like this in China or Russia during the Cold War, under Mao and Stalin, they would have been found, tortured and then executed.” seems silly. The US is where people can be sentenced to multiple life terms in prison — you know, 30 years — isn’t it?
Surely you see the irony of your statement when Bradley/Chelsea Manning has just been incarcerated for 35 years …?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/judge-to-sentence-bradley-manning-today/2013/08/20/85bee184-09d0-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html
re Mao: Yes, I’ve discussed him with my pal Graeme who has had reason to research the 20th Century’s genocides. Truly Mao was a diabolical man whose actions saw MILLIONS murdered or starved to death. Not cool at all.
poomastery, kindly: it amuses me to see you slip into cliché aand excessive generalisation and use of this label ‘The Left’ as if you believe a homogenous ideology genuinely exists somewhere on the political spectrum. (You don’t do you? — There is no ‘party line’ … is there?)
Would you accept a view of Conservatism as so homogenous? I think not.
More important question: Is Socialism dead?
– P
Courageous? No.
I’d choose these two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Dehuai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi
Rgds,
*p*
Both “posthumously rehabilitated”. Like Alan Turing.
The worst.
– P
[…] Earlier I linked to a NY Times video/upcoming book promotion revealing the source of leaks about the FBI’s sometimes illegal COINTELPRO activities against individuals and groups exercising their democratic right to dissent from government policy. […]
Hi Peter, you ask:
“Is Socialism dead?”
In terms of pure socialism, as you know, there are a few Third World countries (North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela etc) still struggling along with this system. I can’t imagine that this is likely to be a growing club, given their economic living standards.
The Scandinavian countries used to have a lot of socialist policies, but Sweden changed course in the 1990’s, and converted to a more conventional free market macroeconomic policy. They are now fairly conventional in their economic policies.
The last remaining big economy I can think of still largely pursuing socialist policies is France. I suspect that France will eventually abandon this approach, because their economy continues to perform badly.
Actually, the world is now awash with centre-right governments.
Obama could be a notable exception – except that being on the left in the US would be on the right anywhere else. As per above, France still has a leftist government. I can’t think of many others. Can you?
I would say that socialism is indeed now dead, but centre-left governments are still viable, although even centre-left governments seem to be out of favour at the moment.
The trade-off that centre-left governments generally require (lower living standards for greater uniformity in economic outcomes) does not seem to be popular with electorates globally at the moment.
Rgds,
*p*
Thanks. Good comment.
It can be tricky, it seems to me, to label a government ‘centre-right’ or ‘leftist’ … when there is so much consensus both sought and found which then becomes political orthodoxy e.g. NZ’s nuclear ships ban.
Remember how ‘leftist’ that policy was pre-introduction. Now it’s common ground, if not common sense. John Key adopted it as part of National’s skin-deep ‘Labour Lite’ transformation (astutely) prior to the 2008 election.
‘Socialist’ policies exist all over the place. But not necessarily governments who would wear the label.
-P
I think you are correct.
The New Left barely bothers arguing about economics anymore, so badly have their economic policies fared around the world.
Instead, the New Left are now virtually 100% concerned with foreign policy, and in this sphere, they have been completely victorious with regards to public opinion.
Their policy, which is the new zeitgeist after Iraq, could be described as pacifism at all costs.
The “New Left” tends to view any Western military intervention as “illegal”.
This means that there seems to me to be virtually no chance of Western intervention in the civil war in Syria. If there was another Bosnia style civil war in Europe, I doubt the Western governments would do anything. Expect the West to pull out of Afghanistan, and leave the locals to it. There is no longer public appetite in the Western world for any military intervention, because New left pacifist policies have won the general public over.
Personally, I am not sure if the “New Left” support of pacifism at all costs is optimal policy-making. Without America actively fighting the Cold War (in Korea, Vietnam and CIA operations around the world), I suspect that large swathes of Asia, South America and Africa would have fallen to the Communists. Furthermore, I think military intervention in places like Rwanda (which Mr Clinton refused to implement) should have been conducted. Advocating doing nothing ever, yet claiming that this is some sort of high moral ground, seems to me to be inhumane.
The “New Left” typically describe such interventionist policies as imperialism, and advocates ignoring it all.
Nonetheless, I think the New Left have been successful with regards foreign policy, in terms of convincing the general public that Western military intervention is wrong. So in this regard, I think that you are correct above.
Rgds,
*p*
Cheers. Consider a couple of things…
https://twitter.com/RenegadeEcon/status/425321632698494976
and, I don’t know if we’ve discussed Noam Chomsky before, you & I, but he describes Leninism as ‘ultra right’. (I think with some justification, don’t you?)
Is hunger for power a ‘left’ or a ‘right’ thing?
He also says left & right have been ‘almost evacuated of their meaning’ so ‘distorted and irrelevant it’s almost better to throw them out’.
— quotes from his dark, disturbing book How the World Works p287.
Chomsky also describes/recounts the efforts of the US and other ‘Western’ victorious allies post WW2 to suppress anything remotely resembling socialism or communism in Europe and South America (let alone, of course, Indo-China/SE Asia) or that could be held up as a ‘good example’.
US actions included using crushing economic sanctions and political sabotage, (think CIA, Allende, Ortega, Iran-Contra) as well as funding groups opposed to anti-traditional (i.e. authoritarian, fascist) models of government.
– P
The old Left .. including JM Keynes had it right.
I am so gratified that the “new left” are singled out for the jolly good cheekslapping they deserve.
Pink Gin on the terrace anyone .. game of tennis or cwoquet mayhap …
Peter, you say:
“…Leninism as ‘ultra right’. (I think with some justification, don’t you?)”
Both the extreme left (Stalin, Mao, Lenin) and the extreme right (Hitler) are in essence totalitarian. This similarity is undeniable.
However, I personally would not argue that one of the most important communists in history was ultra right.
I can however understand why the leader of the new left, Chomsky, wants to distance himself from his intellectual Godfather.
Lenin was a horrific man, whose terrible crimes against humanity were only limited by his rather fortunate early death. Thank God for small mercies.
I do not think there is an author I disagree with more than Mr Chomsky. He describes himself as a believer in “libertarian socialism”. What? This is a contradiction.
Chomsky “opposes private ownership of the means of production and wage slavery, which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.”
This doesn’t sound especially libertarian to me.
I am not surprised that Mr Chomsky opposed US efforts in the Cold War. Given the rest of his views, I find this somehow comforting.
Sorry, I think Mr Chomsky is just plain nuts.
Rgds,
*p*
Hi poormastery,
Hmm, yes, I find Mr Chomsky’s book and some of the narrative and ideas contained therein very dark & disturbing, as I said.
However, I think his criticisms of the actions Nixon and Kissinger (and later Reagan) took via their intelligence agencies to ‘suppress’ (cough) any diversity of governmental styles overseas while preaching the virtue of ‘democracy’ have merit, as you might expect.
You may write Chomsky off as ‘plain nuts’ (as he appears to do re Kissinger) but do you agree or disagree with the point I quoted?:
… because, I’m pretty much of that view myself, (see: http://www.thepaepae.com/left-and-right-useful-when-doing-the-hokey-cokey-but-passed-its-use-by-date-for-politics/23183/ ) and more so when I see shallow comments like:
http://storify.com/onThePaepae/conversation-with-zagzigger-keith-ng-dfisherjourno
– P
And lets not forget of course … senor Presidente Salvador Allende of Chile ..
Viva Socialisme
A martyr to the cause …
Mao, Stalin, Lenin and Marx … were not socialists .. in the sense of the type of outlook typified by MJ Savage for instance .. or even FDR or J M Keynes in economic terms.
I think you all have it wrong.
But if i cant string my reasoning out into many and complex paragraphs of erudite reasoning i feel i am left wanting in your (masters of the) Universe.
Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez are examples of those with a socialist leaning and thinking …
But then .. i am an admirer of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara …