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In the photo below, dated March 15, 2020, you will see a group of mostly
senior citizens defying the call for social distancing. Who could they
be? Rightwing Christian evangelists? Libertarians standing up for liberty?
Nope. Instead, you are looking at members of the Socialist Workers Party
at a memorial meeting for one of their members who died last month. The
Militant newspaper reported that more than sixty people were in
attendance. That’s probably about half the membership, and 1,900 less
than when I was a member back in the 1970s. What happened to all these
people, including me? Most either drifted away or became victims of a
purge in the early 1980s when they fought to preserve the party’s
Trotskyist heritage. Over the past decade, the dropout rate accelerated
mostly as a result of the party adopting increasingly peculiar
positions. Of the remaining 100 or so, their activism mostly consists of
going door to door like Jehovah’s Witnesses peddling the books and
newspapers of what most would view as a cult.
Was there some sort of death-wish at work in this March 16th memorial
meeting? If you are a typical member, there might be some relief in such
an outcome. Many have jobs at Walmart despite college degrees and
professional past. That in itself does not earn them brownie points with
the long-time cult leadership that lives in Manhattan high-rises even
more pricey than my own. Under social pressure, members must send in
“blood money” to sustain the SWP. Such donations come from the paltry
bonuses they receive at Walmart and other low-paying venues. Maybe, in
the back of their minds, an end-run on a ventilator would be welcomed as
euthanasia.
full:
https://louisproyect.org/2020/04/10/the-swp-and-social-distancing-a-study-in-abnormal-political-psychology/
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