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On 5/31/13 9:48 PM, Adam Turl wrote:
It seems to me the problem with the original article (Fowler's) was that in trying to write an article that combined a class and gender analysis of the issue she ended up counterposing them in a pretty crude and undialectical way, unleashing a good amount of rhetorical ammo on a celebrity (rather than the actual structures of power).
If every group on the left that had more than a hundred members or so decided to launch a campaign against "objectionable" material on CP, there would be ongoing trench warfare that would make the Battle of Ardennes look tame by comparison. I go nuts over the Syria articles from all the usual suspects but would never entertain the idea of severing my relationship with CP.
Unlike the ISO or any other "Leninist" group, CP is not a party organ. Writers develop a relationship with Jeff St. Clair based less on their "line" than on their ability to write compelling prose. Whatever else you want to say about Ruth Fowler, she has that ability in spades.
CP's Alexa rating in the USA is 8,602. My own blog, which gets about 50,000 visits per month, is 485,154. That should give you an idea of CP's influence.
I have had a long relationship with CP going back to when it was launched by Ken Silverstein. In one of the early issues, I was interviewed by Ken about a mass firing in Goldman-Sachs's IT department. It is an amazing resource that is essential to the left. The wide variety of writers that appear in it is a testimony to the continuing determination of the left to put up the Good Fight.
It is unfortunate that the ISO decided to pick a fight with CP in this fashion. When I used to write an attack on one of Alexander Cockburn's global warming denialist articles, he could laugh it off. But when you have a group of over a thousand people circulating open letters condemning CP, quantity turns into quality. A better approach would have been for Sharon to write a letter to Jeff taking a different tone but sadly--as we know so well--groups operating in the "Leninist" tradition like to adopt a pure as the driven snow stance as if upholding "revolutionary continuity". Bollocks, I say.
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