Re: Yoshie: “dialogue” takes listening on your part, too
On Jul 12, 2006, at 2:52 PM, Eric Beck wrote:
[I can’t read everything that goes by, but I’ve read enough of
Yoshie’s writings on Iran to know that I disagree with them. And I
find it distressing to see a branch of MR, a publication with a
long history of secularism and Marxism, be used as a transmission
belt for apologetics for a reactionary theocratic regime. Yeah, so
it’s sweetened with a bit of populist economics, but populist
economics are mostly pretty dodgy, as most Marxist economists
would be eager to show.]What happened to Yoshie? Politically, she’s always irritated the
hell out of me, but that was because of major philosophical
differences. Back in the day, at least her by-the-book Leninism was
by turns interesting, provacative, or harmless. But this Green
Party-populist turn she’s taken in the last couple years–which,
probably not coincidentally, has been accompanied by a severe
moralizing streak–is very creepy. Her embrace of the Iran regime,
however “critical,” gives me the shivers…. I want to spin some
cautionary tale about how easily statist-socialist politics can
warp into statist-reactionary politics, or about how for many on
the left principled anti-racism, -sexism, and -imperialism is a
disguise for/must take a backseat to anti-Americanism. But that
would be churlish and not in my character.
I think she got Americanized - not only the greenish/populist stuff,
but also the subordination of interest in domestic politics to
foreign politics. If we can’t get much done here, we can
phantasmically project our political desires onto foreign movements
and figures. It’s sad, because despite some differences over the
years, I’ve always admired her intelligence and rigor.
Doug