Norman Finkelstein: "Why isn't Angela Davis asking herself: 'why am I getting all these hysterical warm receptions from all of these filthy rich crooks'?"
I quite like Norm, and M-Ls in general, but I think it's a sick joke to denigrate abolitionism as "not on the historical agenda," and then back that up with a fucking quote from S&R. Yeah, stageist theories of revolution are lookin real fresh a hundred years on from the revolution. They still pumping plastic through Lenin's carcass or has that program been cut to fund the war effort?
I don't even think he's wrong to criticize Davis' recent popularity with the "progressive" elite, or her (supposed) position that abolition is a policy proposal rather than a revolutionary demand, but that's not what i'm hearing Finkelstein say. looking at a system of mass torture and control on an unprecedented scale -- not in Lenin's day, and not ever in the history of the world except perhaps Nazi Germany and, as Davis regularly points out, occupied Palestine -- and saying "no, we can't seek to destroy that until we've run down Comrade Vlad's Handy Dandy Full Communism Checklist" is not just callous, but oblivious. Reading between the lines, I sense that his real gripe is that a revolutionary communist was mildly critical of Bernie, a social democrat.
I quite like Norm, and M-Ls in general, but I think it's a sick joke to denigrate abolitionism as "not on the historical agenda," and then back that up with a fucking quote from S&R. Yeah, stageist theories of revolution are lookin real fresh a hundred years on from the revolution. They still pumping plastic through Lenin's carcass or has that program been cut to fund the war effort?
I don't even think he's wrong to criticize Davis' recent popularity with the "progressive" elite, or her (supposed) position that abolition is a policy proposal rather than a revolutionary demand, but that's not what i'm hearing Finkelstein say. looking at a system of mass torture and control on an unprecedented scale -- not in Lenin's day, and not ever in the history of the world except perhaps Nazi Germany and, as Davis regularly points out, occupied Palestine -- and saying "no, we can't seek to destroy that until we've run down Comrade Vlad's Handy Dandy Full Communism Checklist" is not just callous, but oblivious. Reading between the lines, I sense that his real gripe is that a revolutionary communist was mildly critical of Bernie, a social democrat.