I haven't looked much into him yet but he checks a lot of good boxes.
Is he someone that leftists could back?
Is there any dirt that people have dug up that I'm not aware of?
If we wanted to champion him, could the leftist orgs unify and help him?
Do I sound like a dirty reformist(God pls no)????
Thoughts? Opinions?
"Ronald Reagan was a freedom fighter in terms of supporting our Jewish bros & sis in the Soviet Union & opposing vicious forms of communism" - West
He's not wrong in that. The USSR did some Nazi-esque shit to Jews. Just at a slower pace.
- Show
Imma use this every single time comment like this pops up
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
While the USSR certainly didn't target Jewish folk as aggressively as the Nazis, that's not really the bar for being horrible.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism/534/
I recommend this, heavily.
Soviets ended the holocaust.
In pushing into half of Poland, they saved over 3,000,000 Jews from the Nazi war machine.
In this piece, there are touching quotations from Jewish anticommunists and sympathizers alike saying that they could never hate the USSR. Soviet soldiers spoke Yiddish to them, told them their nightmare was over. They cried and hugged them.
In the Soviet Union, antisemitism was illegal and punishable by death.
addendum from the source
Show
Show
Did you read the first link? Stalin especially disliked Jews and used euphemisms to target them domestically for placement into gulags. Yes the Soviet Union's military might, manpower and resolve were critical to stopping the Nazi menace. Credit where credit is due.
But there were several dynamics that led to Jews being persecuted (obviously less severely than they would have been under Nazi rule) in the USSR pre and post war and especially post war under Stalin. The wiki article does a good job of describing those dynamics.
I do not respect Wikipedia as a source on these matters, and neither should anyone.
Digging through the linked references, we find dead links, snippets of articles with no named authors, and proven propaganda.
As @sicaniv@lemmygrad.ml alluded to, I would recommend looking into the U.S. state department's relationship with Wikipedia (and reddit, for that matter) if you are still committed to using them as a source.
What exactly are you arguing? That the USSR under Stalin didn't target organized religion? Or just that it couldn't have been as bad as the Nazis so Cornell West is a tankie for calling it out?
The goalposts just shifted, and I definitely noticed.
We were talking antisemitism, a specific hatred of Jews and Judaism that has a horrible historical precedent beyond simply being attacked under the umbrella of "organized religion". The USSR cracked down on Church authority, but did not specifically target Jews [or Muslims, for that matter -- I recommend giving Lady Idzihar a watch, she is a Muslim communist woman who shares fascinating (well-sourced) histories regarding Soviet respect for Sharia and so on] on the basis of their ethnicity or religion, or ethnoreligion.
Regarding the USSR's antireligiosity in general, Parenti quote.
The USSR was far ahead of its time on the so-called Jewish question, as it were especially given its temporaries... yes, I am saying the Nazis were far, far worse, and it shouldn't be considered fallacious whataboutism to critically examine these nations within the confines of their material circumstances -- including "the times", as it were.
The USSR, incorrectly in hindsight, were a major proponent for the creation of the state of Israel, deeming it necessary to create a sanctuary for Jewish folk after witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust. They immediately flipped the switch when Israeli settlers started massacring Palestinians, of course, and collectively understood the ramifications of the Zionist settler project. Was this ideological pivot a case of a resurgent Soviet antisemitism? Or are we missing the forest for the damn trees, here?
I consider Cornell West more of a comrade than any so-called communist who does not incorporate meaningful anti-imperialism into their praxis. Still, I do not devote much time thinking of him, beyond my dismay at the understanding that this is almost certainly a losing strategy.
I am first and foremost thinking of the vicious slander levied so frequently against the saviors of Europe (and, according to some, JEWS!) and the existence of contrary truths. I am hoping to enlighten some readers with a small history regarding Jewish people in the USSR. I am hitting back against what I perceive as intellectual injustice.
There were human beings living in the USSR, plenty of them antisemitic - many of them fascists, enemies of the state! That was never the party's line, never the worker's line, never the theorist, the farmer, the people's line. The people and the party (and thusly the state) practiced material opposition to antisemitism, meaningful opposition to antisemitism. The kind where open antisemitism was punishable by death, if deemed necessary.
How the fuck does the U.S. protect Jewish people? By spending billions propping up its puppet state in a strenuous effort to keep the Arab world divided? By having lawmakers who support the creation and expansion of Israel on the basis that it will bring about the end times?
The quote
In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
-- Michael Parenti, Blackshirts And Reds
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I'm not USian, so take this with a tablespoon of salt. My understanding is that he had some awful takes about AES countries in the past (seems to be better in some respects now, but I'm not sure to what extent). He seems like the least bad candidate by a wide margin (although that's not saying much), but I'd still be cautious about investing too much effort into electoralism -- of course, an anti-imperialist is not going to be allowed to win, so it all depends on whether the movement surrounding him can be used to prepare for revolution, e.g. if it's going to work with indigenous movements, the African People's Socialist Party, etc.
I have many disagreements with him, but he is the best candidate in the current election by a mile. I don't think I will be a US citizen anymore by the time (assuming the US finally lets me renounce) the election rolls around, but if I were I would probably throw my vote his way.
There's no chance he would win, even though he is far to my right he is far too left for the establishment to tolerate. If nothing else, I hope he represents a "gateway" to people getting more interested in actual left thought. People realizing there is a choice outside the two colors of the same party. I know a few comrades who started as liberal Bernie supporters, and then sprinted left from there. They would never support somebody as rightwing as Sanders now, but he was at least the first step for them.
I ultimately don't think the US can vote itself into an actual socialist government anyway, that would take an actual revolution.
