It's illuninating to see the difference between the attitude on this list to the magazine Jacobin's glorification of Dolores Ibárruri during the Spanish Civil War and that displayed somewhat earlier towards Trotsky's glorification of the Emperor Haile Selassie during the struggle against Italian aggression and occupation in the 1930s (the Second Italo-Ethiopian war).
No one says that, since Dolores Ibárruri opposed Franco, criticism of her role means support for Franco. Yet criticism of glorification of Selassie is repeatedly taken to be opposition to the struggle against Italian aggression and occupation. It is understood that the failure to proclaim the national rights of the Moroccan people helped undermine the Spanish Civil War, but there is silence about how the oppressive stand of the Ethiopian emperor towards the Eritrean, Oromo, Tigrayan peoples, etc., weakened the struggle against Italian fascism. The issue of Selassie would have had to be handled delicately during the struggle against fascist and imperialist Italy. But simply glorifying Selassie had bad effects. For one thing, the solidarity movement with the Ethiopian people seemed to have collapsed with the collapse of the official Ethiopian armies; the continuing partisan war of 1936-1940 was ignored, even by C.L.R. James, also by Trotsky. Indeed, the oppressive stand by Selassie toward subject peoples resulted in years and years of bloody fighting among the local peoples, and continued to resonate after the collapse of the Ethiopian monarchy in 1974; indeed, it still resonates in the current fighting in Ethiopia. There is talk about the revolutionary surge in Spain, but quiet about the desire for reform among the Ethiopian Patriots during the partisan war. The suppression of the left in Spain during the Spanish Civil war is denounced, but the suppresion, upon Selassie's return to Ethiopia and with British help, of the movement for reform is ignored. If one really stands for the strengthening of the movement and the improvement of revolutionary theory and tatics, one cannot close one eye's when it is inconvenient or embarrassing. African lives and experience matter! -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#4825): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/4825 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79195367/21656 -=-=- 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. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
