Against Exceptionalism

It’s been a month and a half since I released my statement about Fire This Time. A number of articles have since been written on right wing blogs, the online ‘youth’ edition of the Macleans magazine, and elsewhere that seem to perceive an opportunity in the release of this statement. Far from illuminated by new information presented by my statement, these writers have leapt upon what they misunderstand as a point of vulnerability, a weakness, through which they can attack the anti-war movement and progressives, and especially revolutionary and Marxist ideas and organization.

There are a number of problems with the articles and with the writers who have penned them, and no less the publications that have run them. Not least of which is the problem that has the most to do with Us, the progressive community. The very idea that an honest and open discussion of problems in our or any community is a ‘weakness’ is absurd. A willingness to openly discuss problems and mistakes is a sign of confidence and strength in a community or organization. For example to the contrary, it is not necessary to look any further than the governing party in Canada; the Federal Conservatives. Faced with a recent scandal where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was accused of being accessory to the bribing of an independent member of Parliament to change his vote while practically on his deathbed, Harper went silent. Not only did he refuse to discuss the issue in public or in the House of Commons, he threatened to sue those who brought the issue forward. Call me simple, but to me this is a clear sign of insecurity in the government. I have limited myself to an example of an inner party scandal; it would be possible to draw much more compelling examples from cases of the legal responsibility of government to the public, such as the assassination of Dudley George in Ontario or the transference of prisoners to be tortured in Afghanistan; and so on.

An even more obvious example could be found in Fire This Time’s zero response to my statement. Faced with the spectre of open criticism and discussion of differences from my statement and the comments and statements of more and more others, have they leapt on the opportunity to explain their side of the story or admit wrongdoings? No, they’ve hidden behind a mask of silence. Unfortunately, what I read in their silence and secrecy is a further organizational ‘tightening up’ where they define their friends and enemies within harder and thinner lines. Yerevani hopes to be able to limit his explanations to selected people who can be manipulated and pressured, and/or who may be willing to give him and FTT the benefit of the doubt because they have a previously existing investment in one of FTT’s front groups. Yerevani’s insistence on controlling which sources of criticism are legitimate (his own) and which are illegitimate (everyone else’s) is a mark of FTT’s internal weakness and vulnerability. He is afraid, most of all, of the thoughts of his own cadre. Woe to the ‘friends’ of Yerevani.

I adamantly insist upon the importance of openly and honestly discussing our problems in our progressive community. Even at this very basic level our integrity should stand publicly as an example against Rightists and other reactionaries of how We are different. Let them gloat and point fingers.

From the mistake of reading honest discussion as weakness flows another mistake held in common by all these recent self-proclaimed experts on the left; they misconstrue criticism of Fire This Time as criticism of the left. Far from representative of the left historically or even taking the contemporary in abstract, FTT is a deviation from all the best examples of what progressive movements are and have been. Those moments in history that revolutionary movements have stumbled into traps of bureaucratic prisons and/or had their visions obscured by concrete monoliths and personality cults have immediately followed moments of defeat. That is, historically, when revolutionary movements have suffered defeats, their stagnation or driving back has resulted in corrupt bureaucracies, often armed with personality cults, taking over leadership from the mass movements that had previously given the movement in each instance definition and life.

Unlike capitalist society, which depends upon the stagnation of social life for the motion of the economic and the minority of individuals, anti-capitalist revolutions (and therefore revolutionary and progressive movements at every level of development) depend upon the mass motion of people within the overall picture of social relations. When, as we are now, faced with a long period of downturn in social struggle on a mass scale, the sicknesses associated through all history with periods of stagnation or defeat come to the surface. Fire This Time is a localized but none the less acute symptom of this stagnation. Because FTT is a symptom of a bigger problem, it can be helpful for activists and thinkers in the small living and struggling left to drag these symptoms out to the light of day to diagnose the sickness; which I still believe is, in the final analysis, capitalism.

I don’t think these right wing columnists manage to break anyone from opposing the occupation of Afghanistan or union busting with their tirades against the left, even if only because they don’t generally make any arguments whatsoever. However, there is one sad and tragic result from their attack pieces; they further the stranglehold that Yerevani has over the membership of Youth Third World Alliance and the FTT frontgroups. The people who are members of these groups are, practically without exception, well intentioned activists who function under the sincere belief that they are helping to build a better world. Without this belief, none of their sectarian actions nor suppressions of doubt would be possible. Central to Yerevani’s logic for the cult-like secrecy and closed-ness of his group is the idea that the rest of the left is corrupt and, In The Final Analysis, in league with the Capitalist Ruling Class. According to his rationale, criticism of FTT will always end up a weapon in the hands of the capitalist propaganda machine to attack and weaken the group and therefore the revolution in Canada. For a month and a half, dear pro-war correspondents, Yerevani has been thanking you before he falls asleep at night and thanking you again each morning as he wakes for the proof of this rationale that you have provided him. Do not doubt that he is using your barbs as ammunition against his troops to further consolidate his hold over them and their doubts.

Within the common right wing attack, there are approaches particular to each article. Out of space and time concerns, I’m only responding to the most significant examples; criticism of the others, mostly obscure right wing and racist blogs, is best covered by the umbrella raised here.

1) Erin Millar

In an article syndicated in the Capilano Courier under the title “A Campus Cult” and the Macleans online campus edition under the title “That revolution thing? My bad…” Erin Millar uses my statement to smear anti-war activism as inherently Marxist-revolutionary, and Marxism as inherently cultist. The article finds its way into each publication with slight differences, but in each, the theme remains the essentially the same. The most marked difference between the two is that the Cap Courier version includes a line drawing of Yerevani (for some perplexing reason), and the Macleans version concludes with the outright statement “perhaps some day [Drury will] change his mind about [the need for revolution], too.”

It is really quite amazing that Millar possesses such confidence in her ideas that she is able to deride the anti-war movement and Marxism with a single wave of the hand without ever substantiating her accusations or explaining what she offers as an alternative. What is she saying? Does she support the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq? Only one or the other? Does she believe that capitalism is clicking along just fine and that its opponents are whiny and immature brats who need to grow up? Certainly that can be read in the “some day” that she wishes upon me. Why doesn’t she state what she believes? Left in the dark about Erin Millar’s political / ethical / moral stances, we’re left to assume that her sympathies lie with the Macleans school of the uber-Canadian right wing.

Millar cites sources such as J.J. McCullough, the editor of the Douglas College newspaper The Other Press who also writes a regular hard-right-wing column for the same newspaper. Blind to his own political alignments, McCollough “describes MAWO members as ‘hard-line communists of the old sort — extraordinarily dogmatic, non-compromising.’ He believes that a MAWO member was ‘assigned’ to his [sic.] newspaper […]. ‘She was an agent of theirs. She openly tried to co-opt the paper’.”

With such a jump, Millar extends the criticism of FTT’s sectarian and cultish behavior and theoretical bases to a blanket condemnation of leftists who seek to publicize their views in campus newspapers. This is hypocrisy to the n’th degree. What is the difference between a left wing political line being carried into student newspapers, by MAWO or anyone else, vs. a right wing political line being carried into student newspapers by McCullough and countless others like him? Millar’s implied argument is that leftists are inherently duplicitous because they consciously enter the arena of college print journalism to put out their ideas. While leftists and progressive people are forced to organize consciously, as an opposition and minority in the world of corporate controlled media, great spaces are made for people like McCullough by the same media and the unconscious status quo that they represent in the “common sense” of hegemonic social ideology. Millar herself provides the best evidence of capitalism’s hegemonic control of media and mass consciousness: when was the last time 2,000 words of space was made available for an article about the anti-war movement in Macleans magazine? How convenient.
2) Terry Glavin

Terry Glavin is a regular columnist for the online progressive publication “The Tyee” and his articles appear often in Vancouver newspapers as mainstream as the Vancouver Sun. He keeps a blog where he posts most of his articles as well as posting shorter articles on a more regular basis.

In the days immediately following the release of my statement on FTT, he posted a number of times to his blog celebrating my turn, saying “I told you so”. A couple days later he expanded his attack to include the NDP’s support of the peace movement.

This blog post was expanded in an article published in the Vancouver Sun, “Taliban Jack”.

In his Vancouver Sun article Glavin doesn’t evoke my statement as proof of his thesis that the anti-war movement is made up of “countercultural narcissists” obsessed with “cultural relativism”, and a “crude anti-Americanism” that has led to the “fashionable radicalism of the liberal elites” and “the pseudo-leftism of the radical chic.” Instead, he sits comfortably where Erin Millar is headed and proves MAWO’s ‘extremism’ through the group’s own anti-war and anti-imperialist position: “[MAWO’s] position on Afghanistan goes like this: ‘Wherever Islam is fighting against imperialism, ‘The Left’ must join with Muslims in this fight . . . the Muslims of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine who are fighting on the front lines against imperialism.’”

Glavin represents a more destructive and poisoned trend in intellectual circles than Erin Millar currently does. He is part of the Euston Manifesto group, and the tag for this international mishmash of what some call the Cruise Missile Left is prominently displayed on his blog. Like others of the left wing of Euston, Glavin’s politics are those of a former leftist-progressive who’s been overrun by the Islamophobic propaganda machine of the imperialist war machines. His international politics are those of a rigid modernist who has zero sense of global or historic orientation. He insists that modernist bourgeois democracy must be the practical end goal for every society, if he even recognizes that there are different societies in the world with unequal relations between them. And he is completely scornful of any society, country, nation, people who do not share this goal along with him. His is an unashamed White Mans Burden armed with equally unashamed military might.

The Euston Manifesto calls for the left to stand by universal “traditions” and “values” against the “fascism” of Islam. Apparently, universal freedom is best delivered at fifty-thousand feet. Glavin carries that into context in Canada (here he applies context) by forming the “Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee” which, along with “Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan” argues that “Troops Out = Pro-War”. To stretch the mind into such contortions it is first necessary to believe that Canada is “peace” itself; a cerebral gymnastic effort of its own.

Against right wing opportunism

Self-criticism, in a radical and social manner and in the interests of growth and development, is a concept completely alien to the right wing. That they mistake such criticism for weakness is a strike against them, not us.

Criticism of the left, and especially of sectarian groups that construct caricatures of the left, is important. I believe it is possible to carry out these criticisms, for the most part, as discussion amongst friends in the interest of making the left stronger, smarter, and more cohesive. Since I released my statement on my time in FTT I have received more than a hundred and fifty emails from people across Canada giving me feedback on this statement. All of these notes and comments have been educational for me, and have filled me with hope that it really is possible to overcome the recent history of division and sectarian squabbling over territory in the left. The capacity to openly discuss, learn and grow is, I believe, the greatest strength of the left, progressive, and revolutionary movement.