In recent weeks, the high-profile Socialist Unity blog in Britain (ranked 420,070 by Alexa; by comparison Lenin’s Tomb is number 363,494 in traffic) has featured articles that attempt to salvage the reputation of Winston Churchill within the context of commemorating the WWII “people’s antifascist coalition”.
My first reaction to this effort has been disgust but on a deeper level I have to wonder what would explain this retrograde development. To an extent, it might be a kind of knee-jerk reaction against the Socialist Workers Party in Britain. Since Socialist Unity has a deep animus toward these comrades, one wonders if they are simply putting a plus where their chief bogeyman puts a minus. If Alex Callinicos vilifies Churchill, then why not find nice things to say about the British imperialist warlord? It should be stressed that the valentines to WWII and Churchill have been written by Andy Newman, who is responsible for most of the original content on Socialist Unity—for better or for worse. I have been told that Newman was a member of the SWP for a brief time (along with possibly half of the people living in Britain) so maybe we are just dealing with the case of the embittered ex-member. I for one have trouble understanding this as a political-psychological reaction. As an ex-member of the dreadful American SWP and one of its harshest critics, I am less inclined to take a position 180 degrees opposed to their own as a matter of principle. For example, if the Militant newspaper denounces the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, you won’t find me supporting it. And so on. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/winston-churchill-nostalgia/ ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
