Blast-from-the-Right department :
>From the get-go there are problems with the article. It does provide a
service
in pointing out that there is a neo-Communist element in the Wall Street
protests.
Not a surprise, not at all, but the author never once explains how he
"knows" that
the Marxist office he visited is "the HQ" of the movement. This is
especially
important since The Cause now includes decidedly non-Marxist capitalist
workers,
viz, union members, a sizable contingent of the unemployed but otherwise
middle class, as well as anti-Communist Anarchists with their own agenda,
plus elements of the non-Communist "Religious Left" and any number of
"others."
The impression it is impossible not to get from the hard Right is that
anything which
is critical of Wall Street must be, by definition, Marxist-Leninist.
I have no idea why this is substantively different than the way that many
on the Left
in 2009 - 2010 characterized the Tea Party as "fascist."
Yes, and there always are in such cases, Marxists as part of this movement
But elementary principles of either scholarship of good journalism require
establishing facts, not just asserting one's observations as the only
possible
viewpoint, and who needs any alternative viewpoints ?
Billy
-------------------------------------------------------------
(http://www.nypost.com/) Updated: Mon., Oct. 17, 2011
New York’s Marxist epicenter
By CHARLES GASPARINO
Last Updated: 4:06 AM, October 17, 2011
Posted: 10:23 PM, October 16, 2011
The standard portrayal of the Wall Street protesters goes something like
this: Ragtag group of unemployed young adults, venting often incoherent but
overall legitimate populist outrage about economic inequality. But go down
to the movement’s headquarters, as I did this past weekend, and you see
something far different.
It’s not just that knowledge of their “oppressors” -- the evil bankers --
is pretty thin, or that many of them are clearly college kids with nothing
better to do than embrace the radical chic of “a cause.” I found a
unifying and increasingly coherent ideology emerging among the protesters,
which
at its core has less to do with the evils of the banking business and more
about the evils of capitalism -- and the need for a socialist revolution.
It’s not an overstatement to describe Zuccotti Park as New York’s Marxist
epicenter. Flags with the iconic face of the Marxist revolutionary Che
Guevara are everywhere; the only American flag I saw was hanging upside down.
The “occupiers” openly refer to each other as “comrade,” and just about
every piece of literature on offer (free or for sale) advocated socialism in
the Marxist tradition as a cure-all for the inequalities of the American
economic system.
Don’t try to explain to any of these protesters how those who sought to
create a Marxist utopian dream of revolution also gave us the Stalinist
purges, Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution and many other efforts to
collectivize
thought in the name of economic “justice.”
One woman was holding a “Nationalize the Federal Reserve” sign; I tried to
explain that the Fed is already nationalized, because it’s part of
government, and she told me to “go check my f--king facts -- it’s privately
owned.
”
That’s when I was handed a piece paper offering the following wisdom: “The
Game of Capitalism Breeds Dishonest Men.” The author of such deep thinking
was a dude named De La Vega, an artist convicted a few years back for
painting graffiti on a warehouse in The Bronx.
That was pretty mild compared to the sentiments offered in the official “
Statement of the League for the Revolutionary Party” on the protests. These
guys view as the enemy not just Wall Street tycoons, but also liberal labor
leaders like Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO.
The problem with Trumka, according to the Revolutionary Party and its
Zuccotti Park contingent: He wants to work with wishy-washy Democratic Party
politicians, where the true revolutionaries want to “defend and develop
Marxist theory as a guide to action,” which is the protests’ real purpose.
Maybe the worse-spent dollar I have ever spent in my life was on a
propaganda broadsheet titled “Justice,” which advocates “Struggle, Solidarity,
Socialism.” On the front page of the newspaper-like document, beneath the
headline “Capitalism: System Failure,” was a tease for a story on the economy
and how “influential business economist Nouriel Roubini” recently said how
“Karl Marx had it right. At some point, capitalism can destroy itself.”
Yes, the left-leaning Roubini made that fatuous statement, and many similar
ones -- so many, in fact, that he has lost much of his credibility in
financial circles, though that didn’t quite make it into the “Marx Was Right!”
story.
Also absent was any notice of how the much-hated banks benefited not from
free-market capitalism, which would have let them fail in 2008, but from
crony capitalism that bailed them out. The similar cronyism practiced by
Trumka and the Obama administration -- massive spending on useless but
politically connected businesses like Solyndra, paired with class-warfare
rhetoric
-- likewise has very little to do with free markets.
I don’t advise going down to Zuccotti Park to have a serious conversation
with the protesters, given their growing propensity toward violence and the
growing revolutionary tone of the movement. But I would suggest that
President Obama might want to put a hold on his support for the Occupy Wall
Street movement as his 2012 re-election bid approaches.
If he keeps saying nice things about the protesters, the debate among
business types and voters won’t be whether the president has some socialist
leanings, but how much virtue he sees in the thoughts of Karl Marx.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.
--
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