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I was neither "urging support for Ron Paul" nor defending "Larouchite thinking."
I was suggesting that it was wrong to dismiss Paul's position - and that of his
considerable following - in opposition to the war, the bailouts, and the drug
war - on the charge that he had formerly committed the Unforgivable Sin, racism.
I was suggesting something like what Chomsky said recently:
"...there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left,
to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those
people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances.
I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of
suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people
who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my
sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think,
'I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white,
I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to
do. And I'm getting shafted.' And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years
their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the
children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody
must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush
Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the
government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you -- they
just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists
and so on.
"Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but
rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones
that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh" - or Ron Paul.
On 5/22/11 12:55 PM, John Obrien wrote:
In response to the email by galiher in urging support for Ron Paul with a
script that
appears to come out of the Larouchite thinking, I would like to add my thoughts:
Some comrades on this list might not be aware that U. S. Congressman Ron Paul
(R - Texas),
was on the board of the John Birch Society for two decades, before he decided to
run in the U. S. Libertarian Party for president, beating Russell Means for
that party's
nomination, many years before he finally decided to run for U. S. president in
the
Republican Party in 2008.
The anti-Marxist John Birch Society took a surprising position against the U.
S. war
against Iraq in 1991 and became official isolationists. This was fueled mainly
by their
anti-semiticism and their belief that Israel was the beneficiary of this war.
The Birchers
and their political ideological supporters, such as U. S. television
commentator Patrick
Buchanan, held the same position after September 11, 2001, with the U. S. War
on Iraq.
These Birchers (Ron Paul, Phyllis Schlafly being the most prominent long time
Birch
Society members) and their political thinkers (Pat Buchanan and his Sons of the
Confederacy members) ARE racists and anti-labor and right wingers. Their views
are not a contribution to Marxist thinking, just one of a side show of
ideological
supporters of Capitalism. They join the U. S. Larouchites and some other
smaller
political grouplets, in being current opponents of U. S. militarist expansion to
control strategic minerals and remain a dominant empire in the world.
These U. S. right wingers oppose close U. S. partnership with Israel and
Britain,
BUT FAVOR capitalism. Since they are NOT Marxists they do not understand the
logic of U. S. militarism being used to control these minerals and spheres of
control.
These right wingers believe instead the U. S. military wars are done just for
Israel
or Britain, because of a Jewish conspiracy and not the U. S. capitalist empire
leaders objectives, which the U. S. international partners comply with.
There are similar groups holding this philosophy throughout the Arab world,
such as the SSNP (Zawbaq Party) in Lebanon and the list goes on. They all
are reactionary anti-Marxist, with different stages of pro-fascist elements,
that
try to appear to be populist while not in power, but they would in power be a
classical fascist movement, and continue capitalism in their nations, including
in
the United States, such as under the Birchers, like Ron Paul.
Due to lack of political awareness, many Ron Paul supporters do not know his
long time connections to the John Birch Society, or even what the John Birch
Society is.
I believe Marxists need to be aware, to not blur the differences between those
who might oppose a particular war or government and those that really are
progressive and want a different economic system, run by and for working people.
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