What liberals and bikers have in common

On the face of it, not much.

When you dig a little deeper though, a few nuggets might turn up.

Biker culture has undeniable working class roots. Guys who wear patches and ride Harleys work in steel fab shops and truck repair joints and on construction sites large and small.

They're working folks.

Most so-called liberals consider "working folks" their grass roots.

Their bread and butter.

Their "base."

Unfortunately, those liberals also consider themselves "the vanguard of the proletariat."

Sorry folks.

The vanguard has to come FROM the proletariat, not out of sociology or poly-sci programs in Ivy League schools.

I'm sure Louis Proyect could set me straight on everything I've said here.

But at the end of the day, bikers and liberals are both dedicated to improving the lot of the working class.

Should you trust a "Marxist" who gets his news from the New York Times?

I see where "the Unrepentant Marxist" has another scoop that vilifies the critics of the Empire.

Could it be that Louis Proyect is a Posamarxist?

Maybe he's just a stooge...

Louis Proyect; last spokesperson standing for Hillary's imaginary Free Syrian Army

You really have to wonder about the Marxism of the Unrepentant Marxist.

Well, maybe you don't. Proyect's Marxism is the marxism of the academic elite. It was never Louis' lot in life to soil his hands with manual labour. While I was wasting away in welding shops Louis was waxing wise at Bard College.

I like Louis a lot. Well, I don't know Louis, so like you I base my opinion on what I find of him on the internet. But mostly I like what I find.

He's a genuine supporter of old school American culture, especially jazz and film.

And he's got the Gaza conundrum figured out.

But when it comes to Syria, he's totally on the same page as the most vile Beltway neo-cons.

Regime change in Syria was on the target list of the neo-con crowd long before any "spontaneous protests" erupted in 2011.

Louis has spent as much time in Syria as I have, which is to say none, but he vilifies Shamus Cooke for not having read the right things.

Dude, do a little more reading.

Phooey to Louis

Louis Proyect styles himself The Unrepentant Marxist. While he may well be unrepentant, there is certainly room for discussion about what sort of Marxist he was/is.

His most recent missive seeks to disparage any hope of a left-right convergence. Ralph Nader is the specific target of Louis' wrath.

Back in the day I used to hate Ralph Nader. He was the guy who killed the Corvair - America's answer to the Porsche 911. In the decades since I've more or less come around to the view that Ralph did every potential Corvair purchaser a huge service by killing it before it killed us.

Along the way, Ralph did the progressive side a huge service with his Public Interest Research Groups. That's now become the equivalent of a service club on a lot of university campuses.

Go Ralph!

So Louis is pissed that Ralph is talking about a left-right convergence. Ralph is inviting folks to his get-togethers that Louis would never deign to talk to.

Get over yourself, Louis. Progress is made when people talk to people they see as their enemies. Talking to the converted is a feel-good exercise that feels good but doesn't have a chance of advancing anything.

Talking to your enemies can change everything.

Stop reading that senile liar Seymour Hersh and get the truth from the NYT and Wall Street Journal!

I was somewhat taken aback by Louis Proyect's character assassination of Seymour Hersh.

In fact, I had to read it a couple of times just to make sure I wasn't missing a level of irony or two, but no, Proyect seems to be serious.

Proyect styles himself "the unrepentant Marxist." Fair enough, I suppose, but it's a strange sort of Marxism that turns to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal for its truths.

What we know for sure is that regime change in Syria is something that has been on the agenda of The Empire for many years. Many of the details of how that is playing out have been obscured by the fog of war.

I am reasonably confident that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have spread far more fog than Seymour Hersh.

And as for senility, Proyect's not that far behind Hersh in that trip down the Alzheimer highway.

Louis Proyect discovers not all Ukrainians were anti-semites

Take it away, Louis;

A Ukrainian protest near my building

Filed under: Ukraine — louisproyect @ 10:41 pm

Just a half-hour ago from my 13th floor apartment I saw some kind of protest march wending its way up 3^rd Avenue and headed east on 91^st Street—obviously toward the Russian Consulate that ironically is in the mansion that Columbia records executive and CP sympathizer John Hammond owned.
I understood that the yellow and blue banners were carrying the Ukrainian colors but couldn’t figure out the crescent and star banners with a red background that looked like the Turkish flag. It turns out that it was a contingent of Crimean Tatars, who after all are Turkic peoples.
I threw on my coat and followed the crowd toward 5^th and 91^st, where the Consulate is housed. It looked like a couple of thousand people there. On the way over I chatted with a young couple from Ukraine who were students here. When I raised the question of whether Maidan was a fascist plot, they looked at me like I had two heads.
Once there I noticed a guy in his 30s being interviewed by what looked like a Cable TV reporter. Since he seemed knowledgeable, I struck up a conversation with the guy, whose name is Bogdan. On the question of fascists dominating Maidan, he denied it vehemently. He then went on to talk about anti-Semitism, another charge leveled against the movement. He said that Ukrainians protected Jews during WWII and that Jewish divisions fought alongside Ukrainian units. Apparently there is some basis for this. A Greek-Orthodox Metropolitan (a title roughly equal to Cardinal from what I can gather) named Andrey Sheptytsky stood up for the Jews. This is from an article in the Ukrainian Week, an online newspaper. I have a feeling that the author’s first language is Ukrainian so some of the formulations are a bit odd but you will have no trouble understanding the main points:

In his attempts to save at least some forms of political life for his nation under occupation, Metropolitan Andrey helped establish the Ukrainian National Council in 1941 on the basis of a Council of Seniors. It also, did not live long. In February 1942 Sheptytsky’s sharp protest addressing Himmler where he judged the massive killings of Jews drove the Reichsfuhrer-SS so mad that he ordered his men to disseminate the Council. Three experts in Ukrainian issues were sent to moderate Andrey Sheptytsky, including Hans Koch, Otto Vechter, and Alfred Bizanz. However, their conversation ended up a complete disaster. The old Metropolitan scolded the visitors for how they treated the conquered nation. The offended Nazis said the “hereditary Count and aristocrat” had “bad manners”… To scare the Metropolitan, the Nazis searched his chambers looking for weapons. In response to this terror and abuse of power Sheptytsky began to save the Jews who lived in Halychyna. He hid hundreds of Jewish children, dozens of rabbis, and scrolls with Torah texts in his personal chambers at Sviatoyurska Hora, St. George Hill in Lviv, monasteries, church hospitals and orphanages. The Metropolitan risked the devastation of his church but still gave shelter to the persecuted Jews.

In the surge of WWII in late November 1942, Andrey Sheptytsky published an angry letter titled ‘Thou Shall Not Kill’ which came like thunder out of the clear blue sky. When blood shedding became a routine solution to any political problems and millions of people were turned into executioners and victims, the Metropolitan warned everyone encroaching on the life of others that God’s punishment and anathema would find them. He was particularly critical about the struggle of Ukrainian nationalist organizations against each other, labeling it fratricide and demanding that the mutual violence be stopped and a compromise be found for the sake of Ukraine. As he did not see the ways to implement political ideals of the nation, Metropolitan Sheptytsky desperately longed for bringing to life the principles of religious unity. He wrote letters to Orthodox Christians, both the clergy and intellectuals; sent his priests to the Great Ukraine; and tried to go to Kyiv to start the unity campaign. However, the German government and stubborn short-sightedness of Orthodox Church leaders hindered all his attempts.

As Bogdan and I continued our conversation, the crowd chanted “Down, down Putin” and “Peace in Ukraine”. From what I have been hearing from the Putinite left this week, you almost expected them to be singing “Deutschland Uber Alles”. Bogdan is a software developer and an extremely reasonable person. He struck me as exactly the sort of person who rallied in Kiev. Indeed, he told me that a good friend of his had been part of the protest there and got shot in the back by the secret police. He is now a paraplegic.
One of the things I try to do when confronted by a movement that does not fit into the neat boxes the dogmatic left likes to create is see it firsthand. I traveled down to Washington in 2011 to videotape a pro-Syria rally where the keynote speaker was a Palestinian professor that David Horowitz tried to get fired from a California university. The guy had been an activist for decades, including Central American solidarity and anti-apartheid work.
Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass what other leftists think about Syrians and Ukrainians. I make up my own mind whether or not that makes me part of the in crowd or not. After 11 years of the SWP in a previous lifetime, I learned that is always best to think for yourself,

*****************

I have nothing to add to that except to say that I couldn't agree more; at the end of the day it's always best to think for yourself.

 

Oligarchs, democrats, and Ukraine

Louis Proyect has a depth of expertise on divergent strands of Marxism that I can only dream of. When he speaks of "Baathist Socialists" you can bet your bottom dollar he knows what he means, whereas I have no clue what the difference is between a Baathist and non-Baathist socialist.

At least part of the reason for that is the fact that while Louis was spending a career studying the working classes I was a dumbfuck schmuck enjoying the pleasures of the shop floor.

Nevertheless we have each self-identified as "Marxists" of one stripe or another. (and at this juncture I want to tip my hat to the fact that Louis would be able to not only identify each of those stripes, but could provide the complete history of that stripe and how it split from other stripes and which revisionists and revanchists stabbed the other stripes in their running-dog backs etc.)

But Louis constantly reveals himself as a true mensch with his vast knowledge of pop culture. How many Marxists of any stripe are mourning the passing of Devo guitarist Bob Casale?

Louis also manages to throw a new light on certain certitudes about current events. His recent post about Ukraine is a prime example. Who knew that one of the prime backers of supposed right-wing Ukraine President Yanukovich uses the same beltway PR folks as Senator John McCain? That's a story well worth reading.

It's also a story that brings to mind certain certitudes I've harboured for a long time. Should we be surprised that billionaires of any stripe have more in common with other billionaires than they do with non-billionaires who may share some of their other markers? Does a Ukrainian billionaire have more in common with Ukrainian factory hands or with Russian/US/Mexican billionaires?

Does not an unemployed black autoworker have more in common with unemployed white autoworkers than with middle-class black "activists?"

Does not a queer welfare recipient have more in common with straight welfare recipients than with well funded middle-class gay activists?

I recall a winter night many years ago at the end of a second shift when a bunch of us walked out of Frankel Steel with layoff notices in our pockets. Black, white, couple of yellow guys, a few Pakis... at that moment we had way more in common with one another than we had with the black or white or yellow folks for whom life was merrily rolling along in the subdivisions on the other side of the 401.

I don't know what the right read is of the disaster unfolding in Kiev. Is there a Ukrainian national spirit emerging that puts the unemployed Ukrainian and the queer Ukrainian and the billionaire Ukrainian and the left and the right and the politically indifferent Ukrainian all on the same page at this moment in history?

When the left-commentariat is this boring, it's no wonder we watch Fox News

Louis Proyect is an old-school radical with a bountiful CV and a thirst for truth and justice.

But read this and tell me he hasn't become a tool in the arsenal of anti-left propaganda.

Dude, you are literally boring people to death. And the tragedy of this is the people you are boring to death want to agree with you.

Proyect will forever be haunted by the petty internecine squabbles that destroyed the organized left over the course of the 20th century.

I recall many a local election in Guelph when the voters had to make a choice between candidates from the three traditional parties and half a dozen radical parties. You'd have your Marxists and your Communists and your Trotskyites and your Socialists and your Marxist Socialists and Trotskyist Marxists and blah blah blah ad infinitum.

Long story short, had all those radical parties presented a unified list they might have made an impact. As it was, they spent all their political capital undercutting one another and then had nothing left for the real fight.

Anyway, the man writes intelligently about jazz and film history and he's obviously a good guy.

But for fuck's sakes, give up the petty squabbles with those who may have supported the "wrong" strand of radicalism at some point in their careers.

There is a greater good.

Hot stock tips for Louis Proyect

Don't know how "hot" these are Louis, but I'm always keen to help out a fellow traveller.

I made a list of stinkers to avoid not too long ago.

Postmedia Networks would be a lovely short play if you can find any shares to short. The company is essentially bankrupt, but the corpse is still twitching and probably will for a while longer, but in the not too distant future the company will be but a distant and not particularly fond memory.

I'll admit I missed the boat on Facebook. They've actually regained their issue price since I wrote that. Still think they're vulnerable when the NEXT BIG THING pops up.

Now I don't know to what extent you're a big picture guy, Louis, but somewhere along the line these big gold companies are going to be a buy opportunity. Barrick is around $17 now. There is an awful lot of bullshit around all the gold miners. They've been doing write-downs like crazy because the price of gold has gone from $1,900 to $1,300.

Here's the mystery; all that stuff they are writing down was in the planning stages years ago when gold was well under $1,000. I think a lot of these write-downs are essentially fraudulent. The big boys could come out of the grave in a hurry any time. I suppose a lot depends on how comfortable you are owning shares in companies that are implicated in the most egregious abuses of the environment and human rights in their host countries.

And of course the multiple billions that will eventually have to be coughed up to cover the Lac Megantic disaster threaten Bill Ackman's magical turn-around at CP Rail, so you might want to consider that as a short.

That's not much, but I hope it helps.

In solidarity,