Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Jaco in the bin | s0metim3s

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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Yeah, it's definitely a misrepresentation of Jacobin's editorial line. Gindin 
was profoundly and dangerously wrong when he said we should drop the open 
borders position, but "liberalized but not open" is different from "heighten 
border controls." And it's just disingenuous to present Jacobin as endorsing 
Wagenknecht's position given that just last month, they ran something by a 
member of Die Linke that rejected Wagenknecht's position as pandering to AFD, 
the political establishment, and xenophobic racism: 
httpsj/die-linke-germany-sahra-wagenknecht-refugees-afd/

Let's criticize Jacobin when they're wrong (and any accommodation to xenophobia 
is obviously wrong), but that doesn't mean distorting the facts in what comes 
off as a bad-faith dismissal, to be frank.


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 Original Message 
On Feb 17, 2017, 5:59 PM, Tristan Sloughter via Marxism wrote:

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This is full of stretches:

"The editors of Jacobin had already announced their intention to press
for more voluble support for border controls, in various contexts and
articles."

This sentences links to the article by Sam Gindin where he says, "To
simply assert the righteousness of fully open borders in the present
context of economic insecurity cannot help but elicit a backlash and
will ultimately do little for refugees and future immigrants". I
completely disagree with Gindin's argument that we shouldn't continue to
stand firmly behind open borders, but his article is not the editors of
Jacobin announcing anything at all.

The same goes for the Die Linke article, proper link:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/die-linke-germany-sahra-wagenknecht-immigration-xenophobia-afd/

Thinking these views reflect the opinion of the editors of Jacobin is
wrong. This doesn't mean there shouldn't be push back when they publish
articles we disagree with, they can always do better. Their articles on
Syria are a clear case of publishing absolute shit for a period and then
turning it around.
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Re: [Marxism] ‘Resist’ Is a Battle Cry, but What Does It Mean?

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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"Bob Bland, fashion designer in New York, co-chairwoman of the Women’s
March on Washington.

'It’s a daily mental practice...'"

(For context, she's the one who designed the "official Women's March hoodies" 
you could buy through their website for $55.)

Liberals discredit themselves with stuff like that tbh - although that only 
means anything if the Left is actively there offering a concrete alternative to 
"resist by thinking resist-y thoughts every day (and buying my company's 
products)."

The approach my group's been taking in Seattle has been to participate with 
enthusiasm in the protests and whatnot, but at the same time rhetorically 
emphasize that the Dems and GOP are equally vehicles of Trumpism and that while 
Trump the man is a symptom, they're actually part of the disease.

Personally, my prediction is that if Trump doesn't die or resign, the GOP will 
impeach him, at which point the Dems will end up actively supporting Pence 
doing everything the can to demobilize everyone who's gotten politicized over 
this. The only way we can avoid being caught in their contradiction and maybe 
salvage some momentum when the impeachment comes is by doing anti-Trump stuff 
but framing the Dems as an equally big enemy.



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 Original Message 
Subject: [Marxism] ‘Resist’ Is a Battle Cry, but What Does It Mean?
Local Time: February 15, 2017 5:56 AM
UTC Time: February 15, 2017 1:56 PM
From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
To: Sophia Burns 

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(As a movement develops against Trumpism, it will require adroit
strategic and tactical maneuvers for the left to develop its own base
within the dominant Democratic Party hegemon. The easiest thing would be
to stand apart to preserve ideological purity but revolutionary politics
has never been easy.)

NY Times, Feb. 15 2017
‘Resist’ Is a Battle Cry, but What Does It Mean?
by Yamiche Alcindor

‘Resist’ has become a one-word battle cry for the anti-Trump forces. But
what does it mean?

Charlene Carruthers, 31, the national director of Black Youth Project 100.

Bayard Rustin’s call for civil disobedience and direct action tells us
that “the only weapon we have is our bodies and we have to tuck them in
places so wheels don’t turn.” Even if it that’s not your jam, everyone
has a role in creating a society where we divest from things that punish
and invest in real community-based measures that keep us safe. It will
take community organizers, cultural workers, farmers, caretakers and
builders. Now is the time to go big; we have everything to gain.

Enrique Morones, 60, of San Diego, executive director and founder of
Border Angels.

On Nov. 9, 2016, thousands came to our doors and website saying: “Que
paso? What do we do now?” Resist, we told them. Be informed about your
rights, join the masses, register to vote or get others to vote. This
April, for the fourth time, Border Angels will open the door of hope,
and children will hug deported parents and grandparents at the wall.

Bob Bland, fashion designer in New York, co-chairwoman of the Women’s
March on Washington.

It’s a daily mental practice to galvanize yourself and to remind
yourself to not become acclimated to this barrage of executive orders
and then people being stripped of their rights because that is not what
this country was founded on, and we should be moving forward not
backwards. And that is why we all have to get out onto the streets and act.

Tamika D. Mallory, 36, gun control activist and co-chairwoman of the
Women’s March on Washington.

I think it looks like a variety of things that all make people
uncomfortable and not able to rest well and feel like what they are
doing is O.K. And I think it’s important that white people particularly
go on record and say we don’t agree with the actions of this
administration because there are some who will sit back and say, “The
majority population was O.K. with this.” So it’s important that white
people are on the record saying, “We don’t stand with you on what you
are doing to these marginalized communities.”

Aisha Dew, political and arts consultant living in Charlotte, N.C.

“Resist” means to stand for the people who already make America great.
The United States is diverse because we are a country of immigrants who
came to America for freedom 

Re: [Marxism] Have the Syrian Kurds Committed War Crimes?

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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"By the rather sensationalist style
and dubious and unbalanced use of evidence I'd say he was determined to
justify his grant by finding a sensational story that bravely contradicted
received wisdom, so that's what he found."

And in the process, coincidentally happen to discredit a leftist experiment run 
by people that NATO, particularly Turkey, have wanted to eradicate for decades 
(and which Turkey is actively fighting against) :P



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 Original Message 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Have the Syrian Kurds Committed War Crimes?
Local Time: February 10, 2017 5:21 PM
UTC Time: February 11, 2017 1:21 AM
From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
To: Sophia Burns 

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I've not got time to take up everything in this long article in detail but
considering:

* The uncritical relaying of a truther-like conspiracy theory peddled by a
former regime judge that the ISIS assault on Kobane was fake news;

* The uncritical relaying of a conspiracy theory peddled by a regime
security operative, albeit in more creative detail than other versions of
the theory, that self-government in Rojava was a cosy arrangement secretly
worked out in early 2011. This theory and those of close PYD-regime
collaboration is widespread in different versions among both Assadists and
among those supportive of the Syrian rebels, including in the latter case
otherwise relatively sensible people like Joseph Daher in his recent
Jacobin article. But such theories ignore the fact that self-government
clearly dates from the violent seizure of power by Kurdish forces in July
2012, taking advantage of the crisis precipitated by the Damascus bombing
of a number of regime figures, and that subsequent administrative
arrangements are post-hoc adaptations to the politico-military balance of
forces that can and do break down regularly due to the incompatibility of
the aims of each side, as discussed for example in the report on this
academic discussion on the Rojava experience available at
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2016/08/26/rojava-at-4-examining-the-experiment-in-western-kurdistan/.
BTW I think such arrangement haven't been unknown in rebel-held areas,
judging by a description in Jonathan Littell's Syrian notebooks of a
pharmacy in rebel-held Homs still receiving Health Ministry subsidised
medicine (I'm sure most health and other arrangements between the centre
and regions have collapsed or been denied in rebel held areas); also BTW
Daher's conspiracy theory of recent close collaboration that would lead to
a pay-off to the PYD-led movement was rather contradicted by the recent
complete rejection of any federalism by the regime (Daher was particularly
silly in seeing the dropping of the Kurdish word Rojava from the name of
the Northern Syrian Federation as proof of his theory, nonsensical given
that it was part of a stronger declaration of independence from the regime
and of a democratic alternative for all of Syria);

* The uncritical relaying of the views of the increasingly
military-authoritarian Turkish state and the billionaire ganster-run
northern Iraq quasi-state that they're innocent injured parties who've just
had to form a tight blockage around Rojava because the regime there is so
very bad;

* Regarding "ethnic cleansing" claims, the heavy use of satellite photos
which haven't been shown to prove anything except that buildings are
destroyed in war; the article claims that there's "lots and lots" of
example where the destruction post-dated fighting, but in the example it
gives, the dates between the photos includes periods of fighting; it should
be noted more often that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rejected
these claims in 2015
http://www.voanews.com/a/suspicion-grows-between-syrian-rebels-and-kurds/2852276.html
as did a team from the Syrian National Coalition
http://aranews.net/2015/06/kurds-liberated-tel-abyad-no-displacement-against-arabs-syrian-opposition-figure/,
and that a Human Rights Watch report had some negative things to say about
the Rojava regime in 2014 which may or may not have some validity but
didn't mention ethnic cleansing
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/06/18/syria-abuses-kurdish-run-enclaves;

* On ethnic cleansing and other issues, the author claims PYD figures just
brushed him off; he doesn't 

Re: [Marxism] On the black bloc

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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"The fetishization of a self-defeating tactic like Black Bloc merely
signals the absence of an effective strategy and a powerful organization"

Fetishes go both ways, and maybe fixating on protesters wearing black as 
somehow responsible for the massive expansion of state political repression 
that's emerged since (and was rhetorically justified by) 9/11 (while not 
actually engaging with the fact that, yes, it is important for mass protests to 
be able to defend themselves, and it's hard to imagine what that would look 
like except as a Black Bloc, and that is indeed one of the roles that Black 
Blocs materially fill) is itself dodging the question.

I agree that the Left is internally in a terrible state. But that's not because 
of Black Blocs. It's because the activist subculture is dominated by academia, 
NGOs, and the middle class, who have a material stake in keeping "dissent" 
toothless and manageable. Of course, scapegoating the Black Bloc does play into 
their narrative, where "legitimate" activism is always being derailed by 
"extremists" (i.e. anyone to the left of the current Hillary analogue). That's 
why it'll always get plenty of sympathetic coverage from liberal-capitalist, 
Dem-aligned media outlets.

Black Blocs can be done well or poorly, but I've seen them done well often 
enough not to assume they're always done poorly - and I've seen the police 
attack enough times without provocation (honestly, I don't know that I've ever 
seen violence at a protest where the police didn't strike first without 
provocation) to know that when push comes to shove (literally), the people in 
black make things more safe for the rest of us, not less.

As far as strategy - personally, I think that our top collective priority ought 
to be building up a network of autonomous, participatory-democratic 
institutions focused both on defending the people and on meeting needs 
capitalism can't or won't. In Gandhian language, that's the obstructive program 
plus the constructive program, with the constructive program being more 
important but both of them ultimately necessary.

And finally - Jeffrey is right that, even when they don't do it well, the Black 
Bloc is often the only visible challenge within mass protests to liberal-middle 
class-NGO-Dem hegemony. And that, alone, deserves praise, no matter what 
criticism ought to accompany it.



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 Original Message 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] On the black bloc
Local Time: February 10, 2017 1:34 PM
UTC Time: February 10, 2017 9:34 PM
From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
To: Sophia Burns 

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No, I studied under John McCarthy (if course we had our differences) but
thanks for assuming I don't know the subject.

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 1:29 PM, Jeffrey Masko 
wrote:

> No, I studied under John McCarthy (if course we had our differences) but
> thanks for assuming I don't know the subject.
>
> On Feb 10, 2017 12:21 PM, "Louis Proyect"  wrote:
>
>> On 2/10/17 2:51 PM, Jeffrey Masko wrote:
>>
>>> The black bloc may make incorrect decisions about direct action, but
>>> they recognize this and are trying to resist protests that do nothing by
>>> assuaging liberal feelings of doing something.
>>>
>>
>>
>> It sounds to me like you don't understand the purpose of mass
>> demonstrations. I invite you to read John Berger:
>>
>> https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1968/no034/berger.htm
>>
>


--

J.A. Masko
College of Communications
Penn State University
State College, Pa 16801

"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without
becoming disillusioned."

Antonio Gramsci.
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Re: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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I agree that consensus is a terrible decision-making method. You're absolutely 
right that it's every bit as anti-democratic as the democratic centralism of 
self-anointed vanguards. (And at least in my personal experience in such a 
group, majority rule didn't apply among the membership, either, except on 
paper.) And one fundamental line I push in the projects I'm part of building is 
that bloc voting by ideological groups is entryism, not democracy, and that 
entryists should be booted from anything that aspires towards participatory 
democracy.

That said, the protesters at Berkely weren't a single organized group. How, 
exactly, could a majority vote have been taken? I don't think any of us has the 
empirical basis to say what a majority of them did or didn't support. Also, I'd 
argue there's a fundamental difference between building a working-class 
institution like a union or neighborhood council and mobilizing for a specific 
protest. The former is much more important, but both are necessary, and 
ultimately they serve to reinforce and strengthen each other if they're being 
done well. But in a protest setting, "diversity of tactics" shouldn't be 
treated as a program to support or oppose but as an inevitable reality on the 
ground. A protest is made of everyone who shows up that day, and they will 
necessarily have different agendas and methods, from Black Bloc stuff to NVCD 
to collaborating with police to passing out campaign literature for Democratic 
candidates to doing the stuff that Leninist groups do during a march. If the B
 lack Bloc has no right to impose its presence without somehow getting a 
majority vote beforehand, why do any of those other formations have the right 
to do so?

In the end, the Berkeley protests did succeed - they had a defined goal (stop 
Milo from speaking) and a defined rationale (he would have named undocumented 
students, and at previous campus talks he'd singled out other students for 
harassment, including a trans woman who dropped out of school as a result of 
the harassment incited by Milo's speech). The capitalist media and the 
individuals it made the choice to interview may have disapproved of the methods 
used by the Black Bloc, but those methods worked, and the fact of that success 
is something I've yet to see an anti-Black Bloc argument properly square with.

Finally, there's the repeated assumption that the Black Bloc (or anarchists 
generally, or "extremists" generally - from which liberals and conservatives do 
not exclude us, btw, even though we're not "horizontalists") is somehow 
separate from the rest of the activist community, or the general population of 
protesters, or (in the Berkeley case) the student body. But that's an absurd 
claim on the face of it - are we supposed to believe that there are no 
anarchists at UC Berkeley, or that the non-Black Bloc protesters didn't contain 
a large share of non-students? It's the "outside agitators" canard with 
slightly different language.



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 Original Message 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?
Local Time: February 7, 2017 3:35 PM
UTC Time: February 7, 2017 11:35 PM
From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
To: Sophia Burns <sophia.bu...@protonmail.com>

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On 2/7/17 6:22 PM, Sophia Burns via Marxism wrote:
> The Black Bloc is not our enemy. Whether a given example makes large
> mistakes or doesn't, they're on our side and one-sidedly dismissing
> the positive examples just plays into the other side's hands.


The question of the effectiveness of the tactic is not the only
consideration. There is an equally urgent decision that the left has to
make, namely whether we can build a mass revolutionary movement when a
minority fraction is so indifferent to the wishes of the majority. As I
pointed out in my critique of David Graeber today, he dismissed the need
for a majority vote when the left is building a movement.

He said that he preferred "consensus", a more "horizontalist" approach.
I think this is a fundamental challenge to the socialist movement's
practice going back to Karl Marx. What gave the black bloc the right to
impose its tactics on 10 times the number of protesters at Berkeley?
What i

Re: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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Speaking anecdotally, it's just not true that Black Blocs enjoy zero political 
support. At least within the activist community/activist periphery in Seattle, 
I'd say most people range from indifferent or mildly critical to strongly 
positive - at at confrontational protests, like those on J20, especially when 
neonazis are likely to be present, I've heard next to no opposition to their 
presence. Like, the sense is that given the other side's willingness to use 
violence, we need ppl on our side who will keep the rest of us comparatively 
safe - and people get that the Black Bloc is that.

Now, it's certainly true that Occupiers who thought it was mostly important to 
attract "mainstream supporters" (meaning middle-class liberals and the 
Democratic Party) hated when the Black Bloc was involved. They also hated when 
non-Black Bloc anarchists showed up, and when Marxists and socialists showed 
up. This piece treats their perspective as the "authentic" voice of Occupy, but 
that's an ideological choice by a capitalist newspaper that wants to discredit 
the Left. And I second the claim that it wasn't anarchists in black who killed 
Occupy, but rather the FBI-coordinated actions by local police departments that 
physically dismantled the occupations, forcibly dispersed the Occupiers, and 
destroyed many of their belongings while inflicting bodily violence on them. 
And I'm sorry, but it's just not true that the Black Bloc somehow brought that 
on everyone's head. What brought that down was the fact that people were 
occupying public squares for weeks on end and protesting against the
  neoliberal order. The capitalist state tends not to appreciate that.

Black Bloc tactics are often misused and sometimes counterproductive (just like 
literally every other tactic available). But most of the arguments treating all 
Black Blocs as somehow monolithic, and acting as if there are never any 
circumstances where they could possibly be useful, are arguments of convenience 
from people (conservative or NGO-liberal Dems) who will object to any tactic 
the Left uses because they object to the Left's goals. Not only is a 
categorical dismissal of Black Blocs not reflective of the reality on the 
ground, but it's literally just repeating an anti-socialist instrumental 
argument.

The Black Bloc is not our enemy. Whether a given example makes large mistakes 
or doesn't, they're on our side and one-sidedly dismissing the positive 
examples just plays into the other side's hands.

- Sophia



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 Original Message 
Subject: [Marxism] Black Bloc killed Occupy?
Local Time: February 7, 2017 6:19 AM
UTC Time: February 7, 2017 2:19 PM
From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
To: Sophia Burns 

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The SF Chronicle article (SF Chronicle, Feb. 5 2017
Anarchists who helped kill Occupy worry anti-Trump activists
By Kevin Fagan and Michael Bodley)
is essentially a right wing hit piece masquerading as an objective
journalistic feature. Black Bloc did not kill Occupy. The police state
did. While there are certainly issues with the Black Bloc, the tendency
to dismiss them as spoiled bourgeois brats who have no political support is
the liberal left's version of the right wing's redbaiting of more
mainstream protests. Those who do so obviously have little or no actual
knowledge of who makes up most of the Black bloc around the nation.
The bulk of them are not provocateurs or informants. Indeed, many of them
have years of protest activity under their belts that began when they were
teens or young adults. Are their politics extreme? Yes, but mostly
because they believe that other political approaches are too
accommodating. They have a point.

Raising awareness is one thing. Overthrowing capitalism is another.
it's time we organize for the latter. The Black Bloc believes their
tactics are the right ones.If you don't like their actions, get out and
organize (like you keep telling them to do) mass protests with a radical
program that can actually do something besides make us feel good. Don't do
the bossman's work and spread the idea that some of us protesters are good
and some are bad. If you disagree with the Black Bloc, spend your energy
organizing something more effective.
ron j

Re: [Marxism] protests

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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"Let's hope some organic multi-issue grassroots assemblies - as well as
formal united front arrangements at the top which the former can push -
come out of this."

https://neighborhoodaction.info/

https://portlandassembly.com/

There's others that have been popping up, too; those are just the two I'm most 
immediately familiar with.


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 Original Message 
On Jan 30, 2017, 3:21 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote:

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That is indeed the $64 question. One sign of hope is the rapid succession
of mushrooming movements - from Wisconsin teachers to Occupy to BLM to
women's march to #nomuslimban - each growing for weeks before fading, each
solidarizing with the prior one - but not yet any natural organizational
and political links. Thus the continued absence of almost any organization
banners or placards at these events.

Let's hope some organic multi-issue grassroots assemblies - as well as
formal united front arrangements at the top which the former can push -
come out of this.
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Many Arrested Inauguration Day Protesters Will Face Felony Rioting Charges, Prosecutors Say « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

[Sophia Burns via Marxism]

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Black Blocs can be done in an extremely counterproductive and wrong-headed way, 
sure, and they can be targeted by immensely harsh state repression even when 
they get very little done. Same goes for boycotts, strikes, outreach campaigns, 
political discussions, union drives, mass demonstrations, and sit-ins.

I agree that when Black Blocs smash windows just so they can feel the high of 
"being revolutionary" for an evening, they're doing more harm to the cause than 
good - not just by alienating ppl, but also by reinforcing the toxic masculine 
notion of heroic violence as the most radical type of activity. At the same 
time, when there were neo-fascists confronting the mass demo I was at on 
Friday, I was damn grateful that there was a Black Bloc willing to use their 
bodies to physically shield the other protesters. Same goes for situations 
where riot cops are getting out of hand (and even when a Black Bloc is behaving 
poorly, it's virtually always the police that initiate violence). It's 
necessary to have people volunteering to take the punches so everyone else 
doesn't have to, and at their best that's precisely what Black Blocs are.

Best not to fetishize a tactic through either unconditional praise or one-sided 
dismissal.

- Sophia



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 Original Message 
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Many Arrested Inauguration Day Protesters Will Face 
Felony Rioting Charges, Prosecutors Say « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth
Local Time: January 23, 2017 1:56 PM
UTC Time: January 23, 2017 9:56 PM
From: marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu
To: Sophia Burns 

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The problem is, Jeff, that the crafty capitalist legal system has gotten ahead 
of you. It may be true that all 230 charged are not guilty of arson, but they 
can also be charged with the equally felonious conspiracy to commit arson, the 
kind of blanket charge which has imprisoned many a Leftist. Wythe



 Jeff via Marxism  wrote:
>  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.
> *
>
> On 2017-01-22 21:34, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
> >
> > Black bloc tactics now have very high risks for the perpetually low
> > payoff.
>
> I think Louis' remark introducing an article about mass arrests was
> unfair (in that context) and wasn't very well thought-out. Although some
> property damage took place in Washington, I doubt that the police
> actually have evidence of such actions by most of the 230 they arrested,
> or that anywhere near that number were directly responsible whether the
> police had evidence on them or not. When the police arrest demonstrators
> under any pretences, the last thing we want to do is lend credence to
> the validity of police charges without a clear picture of what happened
> and why. I'm sure Louis recognizes that principle and wasn't thinking
> when he paired the above remark with an article about mass arrests.
>
> I do think Trump's inclination to use greater police repression is a
> great threat. But of course cases of police using repressive tactics and
> false arrests occur frequently enough regardless of the president. After
> all, this is usually the local police acting under orders of their local
> department, and prosecutors who do not answer to the national president.
> Trump will certainly shift things in the wrong direction, but there will
> still be greater differences between localities. For instance, I don't
> think there were arrests in San Francisco even though there was property
> destruction.
>
> There are lots of points that can be made about black block tactics and
> the organization of united actions. But don't casually equate police
> violence and mass arrests with the presence of the "black block" or
> other identifiable groups, especially in public statements. Arrestees
> deserve the presumption of innocence as is technically professed by the
> law. In most cases police violence and arrests are political rather than
> responses to any "criminal" behaviour, and we shouldn't suggest
>