The thread is mostly people talking past each other. Charles twice treats Gandall as a two-stater, and Gandall has already said he isn’t. Gandall’s actual point was tactical: the two-state frame shapes public opinion, and activists have to reckon with that. Charles never engages that point. His second post also drifts into the Moscow Trials line that Trotskyists plotted to overthrow the Soviet government, which is a separate fight.
The most striking move is Meeropol’s Trotsky analogy, and I think it cuts against him. The Fourth International’s position was defense of the USSR against imperialist attack with no political support for Stalin. That is close to the stance many on the left take toward Gaza now: defend the people under attack and refuse to endorse Hamas. So his example supports separating the two, not insisting on the distinction as a reason to police the marches. Edmundson asks the question nobody else does: does anyone actually chant for Hamas? He also points to the 2017 revision of Hamas’s founding document and its call to release Barghouti and Sa’adat. No one answers him, and the thread drifts into Pugliese’s McDonald’s report and Baugher’s Camden 28 correction. Underneath all of it, everyone is arguing about flags and chants as if the symbols were the politics of the movement. No organization is present whose program could say what the movement wants, so allies and enemies alike read the symbols as the program. -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#43692): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43692 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/121651941/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
