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 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 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.