>Look at the shit Marc Cooper takes from people busily policing left >ideological boundaries. There are American leftists - I won't name names, >for the sake of amity - who spend more time denouncing him and The Nation >magazine than they do actually engaging with American politics. It's >self-marginalizing and stupid. > >Doug
This is topsy-turvy. Most of the "policing" of left ideological boundaries have in fact come from Nation Magazine contributors like Doug, Liza Featherstone, Eric Alterman and Marc Cooper. (And Christopher Hitchens before his mutation was complete, like Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly". Has anybody seen Hitch walking across the ceiling yet? Wouldn't surprise me at all.) In a series of articles in the Nation and other venues like LA Weekly, these folks have attacked elements of the anti-war movement over and over again. They don't like the ISO. They don't like Ramsey Clark. They don't like "apologists" for all those icky people who end up in the gunsights of US imperialism. Meanwhile, the WWP, the ISO and other groups out there organizing people scarcely pay attention to this kind of attack. However, I do pay attention and plan to continue to answer the Marc Coopers of the world on the Internet, as is my democratic right. Michael Perelman might be uncomfortable when I express myself democratically, but I don't plan to ease up any time soon. This is an ongoing debate on the left and since giving an adequate answer to Cooper in the pages of the letters section of the LA Weekly or Alterman in the Nation is about as likely as winning the lottery, I intend to continue speaking my mind through email where I won't be censored. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
