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I attended the Left Forum in New York this last weekend. Some experiences: A coalition of opponents to Assad organized a series of workshops. The first one, specifically on Syria itself, was attended by two left Assadist sects, one of which was the Internaionalists. For starters, they both were quite disruptive and as the chair I had to be quite firm as far as not letting them just shout out whenever they wanted to. There were 2 decisive events as far as their attitude: One was their denunciations of the White Helmets as being agents of US imperialism. We had a Syrian guy on Skype and towards the end of the session he was asked about his experiences with the White Helmets. Just as he was about to answer, the Internationalists got up and left. They know so much that they didn't have to hear the experiences on the ground. Second was their refusal to answer the simple queston: "Do you side with the Syrian revolution or the counter revolution?" We organized a walkout when Ajamu Baraka spoke at the final plenum. I heard some of what he said as we left, plus read a piece of his on his web page. He is every bit as bad as everything I'd heard about him. A complete and total practitioner of the red brown alliance, including him quoting "The American Conservative" approvingly. His view seems to be pretty prevalent in the Greens as they organized a workshop on "peace" or some such and he was the featured speaker for them. The arguments those like Baraka use are little different from those used by the Stalinists and their apologists back in the 1930s and '40s. What is the difference between their claiming opposition to US imperialism to refuse to deal with the crimes of Stalin and the present situation - except for the fact that at least Stalin wasn't presiding over a fascistic capitalist regime? So, on top of their unprincipled betrayal of working class solidarity, they are living in the past, refusing to recognize the fundamental change from the Soviet Union to capitalist Russia. In other words, what the present new age Stalinists are doing is even worse! In my opinion, much of the left reflects the generally low level of consciousness and militancy in the working class as a whole. But it reflects it in a twisted and distorted way, as if in a fun-house mirror. I think this may not change until there is a massive change in the working class consciousness, and I think that won't change without some huge shock. The only consolation is that that shock is coming. John Reimann _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
