If we're supposed to take historical analysis seriously, then the defeat of the Black Panther Party and the failure of the Rainbow Coalition reveal they were the exceptions that proved Sakai's rule

The irony of all these Sakai strawmans is that the western left operates as if it already lives in the worst possible version of Sakai's world, the constant doomerism, de facto segregated orgs, the sectarian squabbles, the constant infiltration of opportunists, the lack of national organizational unity, the inability to sustain political capital without wedding revolutionary sediments to Keynesian conceptions of the economy....

And agree or disagree with his interpretation of American Labor history, the man and politics described in that article are not the man or politics described in this interview, there's always this tinge of hysterics surrounding critiques of Sakai that I've found suspicious and more than a little over the top, legit the fuckin guy basically just took Matt Christman's take on yeoman American consciousness and treats and made a book about it...in the shadow of the Reagan revolution, shit really ain't that deep