RE: [OPE] Rosa Lichtenstein

Hi Dave Z:
 
My impressions are rather different. Hence the need for a study to
get beyond anecdotal impressions.
 
For instance, you suggest that this phenomena is related to the 'young
student radical' but my impression is that the worst offenders are from
many different generations. Indeed, I'd have to say my impression is that many
of the worst are middle-aged baby boomers - products of the radicalization and
mass movements of the 1960s and early 70's.
 
I am not impressed with Cockburn's quote. He seems to me to be falling once again
into a fallacy of division trap. Nor do I believe that he was forthcoming with
his real political agenda - support for the Democratic Party in the previous
election. That, imo, was the reason why there was such a harsh blowback by some
on the Left concerning the claims of those who were critical of the official,
conspiracist narrative re 9/11.
 
In solidarity, Jerry
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
> I can only speculate here based on anecdotal evidence.
>
> While any forms of anti-establishment, whether Left or Right, will always attract some eccentric personalities I think the fraction of noise generators of the whole population is fairly constant. The problem is rather that, for various reasons, there has been a growing gap between active leftists and mass movements in the advanced capitalist countries.
>
>
>
> Alexander Cockburn summarizes the net result of this:
>
>
> "These days a dwindling number of leftists learn their political
>
> economy from Marx via the small, mostly Trotskyist groupuscules.
>
> Into the theoretical and strategic void has crept a diffuse,
>
> peripatic conspiracist view of the world that tends to locate ruling
>
> class devilry not in the crises of capital accumulation, or the
>
> falling rate of profit, or inter-imperial competition, but in locale
>
> (the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg, Ditchley, Davos) or supposedly
>
> "rogue" agencies, with the CIA still at the head of the list. The
>
> 9/11 "conspiracy", or "inside job", is the Summa of all this
>
> foolishness."
>
> In contrast to the Left intellectuals of the past generation who were actually involved in mass movements, the noise generators have tended to be more active on the internet, thereby amplifying the noise. It is symptomatic that a young student radical in the West today would be more likely to read Alex Jones than Tariq Ali._______________________________________________
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Received on Fri Sep 11 08:51:51 2009