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inqilabi · 4 years ago

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sorry maybe i misunderstood but in one of your posts when you said "Stalin and Mao killed millions" was propaganda, what did you mean? like did you mean Stalin's repressions/purges/ethnic clensings weren't real or...?? cos i'm Russian and there's hardly a family here that wasn't affected by that, including my own. It's all still in living ppls memory, it's not something we're just told by the government lmao. It's actually extremely insulting to suggest otherwise. Like literally ask a person from an ex-USSR country and 9 times out of 10 they'll tell you of an ancestor/relative that was executed/sent to gulag/forced to flee the country/etc during Stalin's rule. Esp if you ask a jewish or other ethnic minority person.

Not sure if you’re genuinely interested in the perspective, if so I can provide resource reccs. I don’t think it’s insulting to ask people to consider that the history they have known may be entirely wrong and to question the common narrative/claims they hear.

Especially considering the fact that CIA was literally created to fight USSR first and foremost, and then any other emerging socialist states thereafter. And the fact that Britain had been at it long before that. The Allies literally supplied troops for the ‘White Army’ to as Churchill put it “strangle the [Bolshevik state] at its birth” in 1917/1918. Formation of NATO itself is an alliance of capitalist anti-communist states. Not to mention that post WW2, when CIA formed, it absorbed existing Nazi and fascists into its CIA & NATO operations to terrorize any leftists orgs in Eastern Europe (Operation Gladio) because of how great they were at terrorizing, infiltrating and sabotage. And in the USA itself, Ukrainian fascists were incorporated into various intelligence orgs. A NSC directive (4A, 1947) stated the following:

The campaign against the Soviets would include “primarily media related activities, including unattributed publications, forgeries, and subsidization of publications. Political action would involve exploitation of displaced persons and defectors, and support to political parties’ paramilitary activities, including support to guerillas and sabotage”

It is in this context that I understand the USSR. I may have criticisms of the CPSU, though it wouldn’t matter now. For us now, even though the exact conditions that the USSR faced will not be repeated again- I think it is necessary to learn from the successes and failures of the first socialist state founded amidst WW1, fall of Tsarist rule/semi feudalism/civil war, rise of Nazism and being surrounded by fascists, WW2 in which America & Britain both directly and indirectly let Germany destroy USSR as much as possible before getting involved, and the USSR was also dealing with a Japanese invasion threat in the east. To me its a feat that the people rallied behind its foundation, that there was fervor of the masses at that time- I can’t imagine it today. There were nearly 2 million party members in 1930. Some 3-4 million people enrolled to take classes with the communist party in 1933.

Yes the repressions, Yezhovshchina & reallocation of people were real. Repressions of the Kulaks and other class enemies was real. And to define class enemy, the kulak case is an interesting one: we’re talking about a class who regularly exploited peasants, & when a drought reduced the grain harvest, raised grain prices so the soviet government couldn’t afford to buy the grain to feed people (and this is where the rationing came from). The government in response encouraged peasants to form collective farms (kolkhoz), which was actually a youth peasant movement and grain harvest from these kolkhoz was soon as much as the kulaks. The kulaks then realizing that they can no longer control the markets, started murdering people in these kolkhoz. And this is the point where the Soviet gov decided to seize the kulak wheat, expropriate kulak land (dekulakization program as is known in the west) & give the land to the kolkhoz. In response, the kulaks burned their wheat, and killed their own livestock in the millions. And despite this, most of them were only exiled, forced to reallocate or sent to the gulags. Also, forced reallocation of probably millions of people from the east to prevent Japanese invasion, and from the western region as Germany was invading did happen.

Yezhovshchina of 1937-1938 was excessive. Here they replaced their normal voting process (e.g, Trotskyites were voted out with a vote of 700,000 against to 6000 for) with a 3 person tribunal who just handed out sentences like candy- in this period alone, I think there was some 300,000 sentences handed out. Though they were responding to Nazi infiltration among their party. Eventually the party committees got a handle of it, overturned half of the sentences. Many of the remaining sentences were never carried out because there wasn’t that much infrastructure to do so. But certainly innocent people were caught in the cross fire here. But imo the typical perception in the west that this purge was to eliminate any political opponents or to consolidate power is not true. It was primarily to eliminate Nazis in the party and any other counter-revolutionary who would have essentially handed USSR to Germany. There were definitely executions. There’s a quote from Ludo Martens on his study of the USSR that indicates a bit how unequipped USSR was to handle sentences of Yezhovshchina:

"Grigorenko, a well-known Rightist general who defected to the West, stated that, to escape the Purge, it suffice to simply relocate to another city."

There’s also interesting notes from Hitler (via Goebbel’s journal)and Churchill’s WW2 memoir that Hitler had hoped to take advantage of these antagonisms, defeatist tendencies and fascists sympathizers within the Red Army, but Stalin had succeeded in making sure via purges that the Red Army could not be taken advantage of.

But to address what is actually your main point: to assess history based on lived experience. What you stated is not reconcilable with the following examples:

Frankly I think the further breakdown of the 35+ would yield even more interesting insights. Also its expectedly low in Lithuania, Estonia & Latvia. What do we know about the history of these three countries that would help us understand that? There’s also this interview and this one specially about Stalin & the gulags, which sounds different from the experiences of your family.

Here is a quote from Ludo Martens book:

‘But how is it possible', asked a friend, `to defend a man like Stalin?' There was astonishment and indignation in this question, which reminded me of what an old Communist worker once told me. He spoke to me of the year 1956, when Khrushchev read his famous Secret Report. Powerful debates took place within the Communist Party. During one of these confrontations, an elderly Communist woman, from a Jewish Communist family, who lost two children during the war and whose family in Poland was exterminated, cried out:

`How can we not support Stalin, who built socialism, who defeated fascism, who incarnated all our hopes?'

And also, Normal Finkelstein stated that his parents, both of whom survived concentration camps, would refuse to listen to any criticism of Stalin and called anyone who criticized him a traitor.

So how do we parse through these different lived experiences? What helps us understand the differences in these lived experiences?

#the answers here are based on getty martens furr #either way regardless of your political beliefs one must study & examine ww1 ww2 cold war #as it is necessary to understanding the current stage of capitalism & therefore necessary to understanding anticommunist currents #asks #communism 101 #propoganda #us empire #stalin

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rohan-shetty · 4 years ago

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You go in a Journalist ..

You come out a Hero !!!

From the outset let me make it clear that the title of this article are not my words but words quoted by eminent lawyer Harish Salve. These words are exactly what has happened in the case of Republic TV's owner, editor in chief and journalist Arnab Goswami. What we have learnt over the past week is that free press, free speech and democracy cannot be trampled upon till the time our institutions are strong. This is what we saw, where our Supreme Court through its judgement made sure that democracy is still alive. The people of India also played their part because without their support for truth this victory of democracy would not have been possible. Having said that , there are many other Arnab's in this country who have given an opinion that was not liked by power and are still languishing in jail for cases that have no teeth. We might not agree with their opinions and there will be times where they say things they should not, for that there is a provision of filing a defamation case if that individual has made defamatory remarks against someone. I hope governments learn from this incident and become more tolerant to different views because that is the essence of our democracy.

What this case also did is expose those who keep lecturing the country on free speech, free press, intolerance and democracy. They return their awards saying democracy is in danger and go to the United Nations or the US complaining about India's democracy. All these people had their mouths sealed on this issue which shows that they will take stands only when it suits their political agenda. These are the same people who took part in a media trial when the Gujarat 2002 riots happened and are now saying how wrong it is for Arnab to do a media trial through his channel. In this case, Arnab too is no saint where one can say he is doing independent journalism or is not doing a media trial but what he has done is given the Lutyens Delhi gang a taste of their own medicine. So the next time you see these so called independent people trying to lecture on free speech and free press, you can remind them of Arnab Goswami.

Now going beyond politics, as I had mentioned before it is important for us to uphold the sanctity of our institutions like our judiciary, media, parliament, government, election commission, army, police etc. It is these institutions that will make our democracy stronger. We can have different political ideologies or opinions and can voice our opinions freely knowing very well our institutions will uphold an individual's liberty. What the Supreme Court has done is given a landmark judgement and made sure that other Governments regardless of the political party don't use this case as an alibi to shut free press or free speech. It is unfortunate that the Indian media rather than uniting and supporting one of their own, was either celebrating or staying silent on a journalist's arrest.

Another interesting thing I have observed over these past few months is similarity of certain individuals who have become a hero of the public, be it Modi, Arnab, Kangna and even Sushant Singh Rajput who garnered a lot of public support. The things that are similar among all these individuals is that they all come from a humble background, they all have broken the status quo and whether one agrees with their style of functioning or not they are all self made people. These kind of personalities connect with people especially the youth because they are where they are because of their competence and not because they belong to a family or a group which believes it is their right to rule the people and tell them what is right for them.

What we have also seen over the past few months is the rise of the rightist journalists. Over the years we have seen the leftist journalists dominating the media space but now the rightist journalists have turned the tables. They believe in promoting nationalism, they are proud of their Indian culture and criticise those who in the name of secularism want to appease one community. This has made the leftist journalists very uncomfortable who used to mainly run the narrative through Lutyens Delhi but now have journalists giving a counter narrative and garnering lot of public support. I realised this especially when I was streaming my youtube recently where Republic TV had 40k people watching them live as compared to a India Today and NDTV where 800 and 600 people respectively were watching them live.

To conclude I just hope governments don't make more heroes and let journalists be journalists. I hope they focus on Governance and Development rather than wasting their time on fixing journalists. There is a corona pandemic war that still needs to be won and it requires both Centre and States to work together to defeat the enemy. For the journalists, free speech and free press is their right as per our Constitution but they also should try to show some restraint when it comes to language and avoid media trial that we see on prime time television. It is for the media to decide regardless of whether they lean to the left or to the right whether they want to become a voice of the people or become noise for the people.

Jai Hind !!!

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 5 years ago

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The Moon Organization and the KCIA – ‘Privatizing’ covert action

from Lobster, May 1991

Dr. Jeffrey M. Bale

Faculty Professor in the Graduate School of International Policy and Management at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS)

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‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1)

Introduction

If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government – in this case the core of the executive branch’s national security bureaucracy – to circumvent Congressional restrictions regarding the conduct of certain important aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Information that has surfaced in the course of both official and unofficial investigations of this affair has not only revealed the widespread use of ‘proprietaries’ and dummy companies by U.S. intelligence and military personnel – a long-standing practice – but also the fact that numerous formally independent organizations have willingly engaged in operations that were blatantly illegal, not to mention immoral.(2) In a few instances this aid may have been provided solely for financial or narrow political gain, but in most cases it also resulted from a convergence of the rightist political aims of both the ‘private’ groups and factions within the national security apparatus created by President Ronald Reagan and his advisors. Among the groups that have participated in these activities are the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), the Air Commando Association (ACA), the National Defense Council (NDC), Refugee Relief International (RRI), Civilian Military/Material Assistance (CMA), and Sun-Myung Moon’s cultic Unification Church (UC), to name only a few.(3) Herein I examine some of the covert and clandestine political connections of the last of the above-named organizations.

The vast majority of the existing literature on ‘cults’ falls into one of four categories: journalistic exposes; personal accounts by former members, their relatives, or their friends; social science analyses; or theological assessments. In all of these categories save the last, attention is normally focussed on the techniques used by particular cults to recruit new members and subsequently control their behavior, if not their very thoughts. This focus is somewhat understandable, for it is precisely the systematic use of these techniques – selective recruitment of vulnerable targets, initial deception concerning group affiliation and purposes, extreme forms of peer-group pressure, isolation from mainstream society, sensory overload, sleep and protein deprivation, constant surveillance, enforced lack of privacy, and ideological indoctrination – that serve to set cults apart from more ordinary organizations in modern industrialized societies.(4) And it is precisely because they are so extraordinary that they elicit such widespread personal and professional fascination. Yet this almost exclusive focus tends to distract attention from other potentially significant aspects of cult behavior, including their political interaction with the outside world.

This is especially unfortunate in the case of the Unification Church, or ‘Moonie’ cult. While most cults both engage in disreputable political activities (at least on the local level) and have noticeable totalitarian propensities and ramifications,(5) the UC has long had an explicitly political agenda. As Moon, the Korean evangelist who founded the church, has said, ‘we cannot separate the political field from the religious … segregation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most.’(6) Given such an orientation, it is clearly necessary to consider Moon’s political activities in order to properly evaluate the role and functioning of the UC.

Many people have examined aspects of Moon’s political work; but they have often done so from an overly traditional political perspective, one which narrowly concerns itself with explicating the Church’s overt attempts to influence political decisions and policies in the countries within which it operates. Thus, for example, Moon’s attempts to support Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate crisis, raise money for a variety of anti-communist causes, and influence Congressional votes through lobbying are reasonably well known; (7) and due to the extraordinary efforts of the House Subcommittee chaired by former Minnesota Representative Donald Fraser (Democrat), some of the more sordid activities of the ‘Moon Organizations’ have also been exposed to public view.(8) Nevertheless, despite these suggestive and important findings, the general view of the Moonies remains one of either bemused distaste for a bunch of ‘religious kooks’, or, at most, fear of the UC’s purported ‘brainwashing’ abilities.(9) The degree to which Moon has been able to mislead the public and conceal the UC’s authoritarian political agenda behind a religious image – however ‘heretical’ or unconventional – is best exemplified by the amount of support he has garnered from mainstream church spokesmen in the wake of his prosecution for tax fraud. Even liberal and left-leaning ministers, as well as certain American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) officials, have adopted his view that his incarceration for illegal financial activities was a case of ‘religious persecution’.(10)

To counter this deceptive imagery, which is sustained by systematic and extensive propaganda of the most transparent sort, some of the lesser-known political activities of the organizational complex run by Moon and his right-hand man, ‘former’ Korean Army colonel Bo-Hi Pak,(11) must be sketched. It should then become clearer that Moon’s actions geared towards external social control, backed as they are by extensive economic and political resources, constitute the most serious threat posed by the UC. When compared to this external danger, the internal social control mechanism of the ‘Moonie’ cult pale into insignificance – except, of course, to the individuals it recruits and subjects to ‘thought reform’.(12)

In this study I will only cover two of Moon’s many covert political operations. First, the links between the UC and the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) will be explored. This will necessarily involve a discussion of the early history and structural features of both organizations, particularly the establishment of joint front groups. Second, the intimate connection between the UC and the World Anti-Communist League, an international umbrella organization encompassing numerous extreme right and neo-Nazi groups, will be revealed. Both of these interconnections are indicative of Moon’s authoritarian political agenda, but they by no means exhaust the range of UC covert and clandestine operations.

The Unification Church-Korean Central Intelligence Agency connection

Of the topics to be covered herein, the links between the UC and the repressive Chung-Hee Park regime in South Korea have received the most publicity. Congressional investigations of the so-called ‘Korea-gate’ scandal, which involved both overt and covert efforts by the Republic of Korea (ROK) government to manipulate U.S. policy toward Korea, generated hundreds of articles throughout the world. Yet despite all the media attentions and the thousands of pages of Congressional hearings, the precise nature of those links remains difficult to untangle. One reason for this is that the House Subcommittee’s data are incomplete in some crucial areas; another is that sensationalized media accounts often suggested more than the evidence warranted. I do not pretend to definitively answer all of these questions below, but I hope to clear up some of the major misunderstandings that have arisen about Moon’s relationship with the Park regime.

Perhaps the best starting point is provided by the rash of eye-opening newspaper articles that appeared in mid-March of 1978, which the following headline in the 16 March Washington Star perfectly summarized: ‘Moon’s Church Founded by Korean CIA Chief as Political Tool, Panel Says’. These articles were all based on an unevaluated U.S. CIA report released by the Fraser Subcommittee and dated 26 February 1963. This report stated that ‘Kim Jong Pil organized the Unification Church while he was director of the ROK Central Intelligence Agency, and has been using the church, which had a membership of 27,000, as a political tool.’(13) This has been interpreted by some conspiratorially-minded people to mean that the UC was founded by the KCIA as a bogus front group. This is obviously false since, as will soon become clear, the UC has formally existed since 1954 and in fact predates that year in some form by almost a decade.(14) But this fact alone does not absolve the UC, for it does not vitiate the second claim regarding the KCIA’S ‘use’ of Moon’s organization.

In the beginning

To come to grips with this issue, the social and political context within which the UC developed must be considered. When World War 2 ended, the Korean peninsula was in a state of political confusion, social disruption and economic chaos.(15) The lifting of the repressive hand of the Japanese colonial administration, the traumatic division of the country into communist and non-communist halves, and the underdeveloped condition of the economy (particularly in the south) combined to create a psychological climate of insecurity and desperation. In such conditions, millenarian religious movements tend to flourish, and indeed numerous ‘Newly Risen religions’ (Shinhung Jonggyo) arose throughout Korea in the decade following Japan’s surrender.(16) These religions were characterized by charismatic leadership; syncretistic beliefs which combined ancestor worship, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, magic, divination, astrology, Christianity and shamanism; extreme nationalism which might take political forms; and this-worldly attempts to create an ideal society in which ‘no poverty or social classes will exist and the thoughts of all men will be uniform….. All the world will become one true family’.(17) This earthly orientation and the promise of success in the here and now led these movements to emphasize organization and business acumen along with fervor and discipline.(18) All of these characteristics were to apply to the UC as it developed.

With this background, it is possible to place the early history of the UC and its founder in its proper milieu. As Rudiger Hauth has pointed out, the accounts of Moon’s early life are ‘a mixture of legend, truth, fantasy and saint-worship’.(19) Nevertheless, the basic outlines of Moon’s career can be reconstructed.(20) He was born on 6 January 1920 in a rural province of northwest Korea called P’yong’an Pul-do. His family converted to a millenarian brand of Presbyterianism when he was ten. Upon finishing at a technical high school in Seoul, he studied electrical engineering at [evening classes at a Technical High School associated with] Waseda University in Japan [ref. Michael Breen, Sun Myung Moon’s ‘Autobiography’ page 66, et al], though it is unclear whether he officially graduated.(21) [He did graduate from the High School on Sept 30, 1943. He did not graduate from Waseda University because he did not study there. During the day he was working to pay his way through school.] When the war ended in 1945 [he was working in Seoul], he returned to northern Korea [for a short visit] and attempted to found a small community church near Pyongyang, without much success. He then [in October 1945] joined a mystical sect in the southern Korean province of Kyong Ki-do called Israel Suo-won [led by Baek-moon Kim], whose tenets foreshadowed both his later theological principles, particularly in their emphasis upon the imminent appearance of a Korean messiah, and his ritual practice of ‘blood purification’ via sexual intercourse (pikareum).(22) Six months later [in June 1946] he returned to Pyongyang and began preaching, but complaints about his missionary practices (including pikareum) by other, established religious groups led to his excommunication [from the Presbyterian Church in 1948] and to two arrests by the North Korean authorities, [the first was in August 1946,] the second of which occurred on 22 February 1948.(23) The charges against him are alternately listed as adultery and polygamy, or – according to one ‘official’ UC source – espionage; (24) but in any case he was incarcerated at Heungnam prison camp until being freed by advancing United Nations troops on 14 October 1950. He then travelled by ship [Ref Michael Breen, Sun Myung Moon, the early years, et al. The corroborated narrative is that he walked with a communist friend, Jong-bin Moon, to Pyongyang. From there he walked to Seoul with two disciples, Chung-hwa Pak and Won-pil Kim, and then on] to the South Korean port of Busan [arriving only with Won-pil Kim after a train ride from Ulsan]. [H]e performed manual labor and initiated new missionary activities [in Busan].

After gathering a small circle of followers, he moved his parish to Seoul. In May of 1954, he officially founded a religious association called T’ong-il Kyo (Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity). This later became known as the Unification Church. ...

Read more HERE

______________________________________________

Jeffrey M. Bale Lobster #21.

http://www.8bitmode.com/rogerdog/lobster/lobster21.pdf

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Gifts of Deceit – Robert Boettcher

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

Allen Tate Wood on Sun Myung Moon and the UC

Politics and religion interwoven

Robert Parry’s investigations into Sun Myung Moon

“Moon used to play golf regularly with Kim Jong-pil”

L’empire Moon – Jean-François Boyer

#Jeffrey M. Bale #KCIA #Sun Myung Moon

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wionews · 7 years ago

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BJP ambitious to gain majority in CPIM's Kerala

Spurred by the spate of recent electoral victories, the Bharatiya Janata Party has become audaciously ambitious. It has begun to not just enter enemy territory with new-found confidence and aggression but also march into enemy strongholds within that forbidden territory.

On October 3, party president Amit Shah launched the Jan Raksha Yatra (March for People’s Protection) in the Marxist bastion of Kerala — and from Kannur district which has been the centre of political violence. If the BJP’s opponents thought this was another symbolic show to remind the people of the party’s presence in this southern state, and no more, they were soon disabused of the notion when Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath arrived on wednesday to participate in the high-profile event.

Amit Shah claimed that more than 84 BJP-RSS workers had been killed in Kannur alone since 2001 by Left-supported individuals and organisations.

The message is clear. The BJP will play every card to enhance its footprint in Kerala. If the politics of polarisation needs to be resorted to, so be it. But polarisation does not happen in a vacuum; a context is necessary. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) rule has created a fertile ground for deep disaffection among large sections of the populace in the state and the BJP (along with the RSS which has had a strong presence for years) is set to exploit the situation.

Amit Shah claimed that more than 84 BJP-RSS workers had been killed in Kannur alone since 2001 by Left-supported individuals and organisations. One can quibble over the figure or the counter-claim that right-wing activists too have participated in political violence. But there cannot be a denial of the ground reality that the major victims have been the Rightists.

The Jan Raksha Yatra is arguably the BJP’s most determined effort so far in Kerala.

The BJP believes that by ratcheting up public sentiment against such killings and other forms of violence, it can eventually create a conducive electoral environment in its favour. That is to be seen; for now, State Assembly elections are far away. But the Lok Sabha poll will be held in less than two years and the party hopes to harvest some advantage from its counter-aggression. To that end, the Jan Raksha Yatra is, arguably, the BJP’s most determined effort so far in Kerala.

The Marxists have been dismissive of their opponent’s drive, and they have been especially critical of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister’s presence, advising him to mend governance in his home state before condemning the Left rule in Kerala. But there is no doubt that the Left is worried.

Unlike the BJP which is ruling most parts of the country either on its own or with the help of allies, the Left Front, and especially the CPI (M), is facing an existential crisis. It has been driven out from its one-time stronghold, West Bengal, by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. This was bad enough, but worse has followed. For all practical purposes, it’s not even the main opposition there; the BJP has occupied that spot. Given that it has been marginalised in a state which it once ruled for three uninterrupted decades, the CPI (M)’s salvation lies in Kerala where, in any case, it cannot presume invincibility since the Congress has been breathing down its neck. But the Congress is a friendly opposition when compared to the BJP.

The BJP’s game plan is simple enough. Exploit the anger among the people over political violence against its people and the larger Sangh family, attribute such violence to the Marxists’ ideology of intolerance, link the incidents to minority appeasement politics of the Left, and arouse passions in the name of majority-victimhood. The more it can do this the more it would push the Left into the anti-majority-community trap. Yogi Adityanath is a perfect candidate to further this strategy in the deep south. He is charismatic and a crowd-puller. It helps that he is also considered a ‘Hindu mascot’.

If the BJP manages to enhance its presence in Kerala, it will be as much due to its perseverance as it will be on account of the Marxists’ obstinacy to change with the times.

There is something to be said in favour of striking when the iron is hot. Not only is the CPI (M) battling for political relevance, but it has also been facing embarrassment from within. A gentleman named Ritabrata Banerjee has been doing his bit in this regard. Once the blue-eyed boy of the Marxists and a Rajya Sabha MP, the highly visible Banerjee was expelled from the CPI (M) last month for “grave anti-party activities”. He claimed to have fallen foul with the senior leadership after he began to speak out in party forums against the ‘Kannur cabal’ comprising among others, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and senior leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.

In interviews to television channels, Banerjee gleefully tore into the Marxists, saying that he had been targeted by the party leaders for, among other things, saying “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. He added that certain party leaders whose wish prevailed had problems with his lifestyle — including the apple watch he wore and the foreign trips he undertook!

There is of course little need to make a martyr out of him or take all that he has said as unadulterated truth. Nonetheless, he seems to have underlined the basic problems the Marxists are confronted with, and are increasingly failing to effectively address: That the CPI (M) has lost its connection with the aspirations and demands of the new voter who not just abhors retributive politics but also frowns at dated ideological positions and defers with the party on issues of ‘nationalism’. If the BJP manages to enhance its presence in Kerala, it will be as much due to its perseverance as it will be on account of the Marxists’ obstinacy to change with the times.

There are two primary reasons for the BJP’s focus on Kerala. The first is simply that it’s a hard nut to crack — and Amit Shah enjoys nothing better than meeting such challenges head-on — even if it entails the use of techniques in the book and outside of it. In southern India, the party has a fighting chance in Karnataka where the Assembly election is due next year. It rules in alliance in Andhra Pradesh, and is contemplating various combinations to unlock Tamil Nadu. But whereas it’s at the mercy of regional allies, both current and potential, to be relevant elsewhere in the south, in Kerala it hopes to be a dominant player, even if it stitches deals with regional outfits.

BJP may yet have a long road to traverse in Kerala.

The second reason stems from its own electoral performance in the past few years. In the 2016 Assembly election, the BJP-led NDA received over 14 per cent of the votes; it won one seat; and finished second in six others. Compare these to the five per cent vote-share in 2001, under five per cent in 2006, six per cent in 2011 — and a little less than 11 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, and the cause for the BJP’s optimism becomes obvious. A CSDS-Lokniti survey done for a leading national daily soon after the last Assembly poll informed that the BJP had cut into the support base of both the Left and the Congress. Interestingly, the party also managed to win over a small segment of the Christian votes.

While these should cheer, and have cheered, the Rightist party and its supporters, the BJP may yet have a long road to traverse in Kerala. The moot question is: Will the party resort to dangerous social divisions to succeed electorally or moderate its stance and bank on inclusivity?

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clubofinfo · 7 years ago

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Expert: The period 1945 to the 1970s was one both of extremely high capital accumulation worldwide and the geopolitical hegemony of the United States. The geoculture was one in which centrist liberalism was at its acme as the governing ideology. Never did capitalism seem to be functioning as well. This was not to last. The high level of capital accumulation, which particularly favored the institutions and people of the United States, reached the limits of its ability to guarantee the necessary quasi-monopoly of productive enterprises. The absence of a quasi-monopoly meant that capital accumulation everywhere began to stagnate and capitalists had to seek alternative modes of sustaining their income. The principal modes were to relocate productive enterprises to lower-cost zones and to engage in speculative transfer of existing capital, which we call financialization. In 1945, the geopolitical quasi-monopoly of the United States was faced only with the challenge of the military power of the Soviet Union. In order to ensure its quasi-monopoly, the United States had to enter into a tacit but effective deal with the Soviet Union, nicknamed “Yalta.” This deal involved a division of world power, two-thirds to the United States and one-third to the Soviet Union. They mutually agreed not to challenge these boundaries, and not to interfere with each other’s economic operations within their sphere. They also entered into a “cold war,” whose function was not to overthrow the other (at least in a foreseeable future) but to maintain the unquestioned loyalty of their respective satellites. This quasi-monopoly also came to an end because of the growing challenge to its legitimacy from those who lost out by the status quo. In addition, this period was also one in which the traditional antisystemic movements called the Old Left – Communists, Social-Democrats, and National Liberation Movements – came to state power in various regions of the world-system, something that had seemed highly improbable as late as 1945. One-third of the world was governed by Communist parties. One-third was governed by Social-Democratic parties (or their equivalent) in the pan-European zone (North America, western Europe, and Australasia). In this zone, power alternated between Social-Democratic parties that embraced the welfare state, and Conservative parties that also accepted the welfare state, only seeking to reduce its extent. And in the last region, the so-called Third World, national liberation movements come to power by winning independence in most of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and promoting popular regimes in already independent Latin America. Given the strength of the dominant powers and especially the United States, it might seem anomalous that antisystemic movements came to power in this period. In fact, it was the opposite. In seeking to resist the revolutionary impact of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, the United States favored concessions with the hope and expectation that they would bring to power “moderate” forces in these countries that would be willing to operate within accepted norms of interstate behavior. This expectation turned out to be correct. The turning point was the world-revolution of 1968, whose dramatic if short-lived upsurge of 1966-1970 had two major results. One was the end of the very long dominance of centrist liberalism (1848-1968) as the only legitimate ideology in the geoculture. Instead, both radical leftist ideology and rightist conservative ideology regained their autonomy and centrist liberalism was reduced to being only one of three competing ideologies. The second consequence was the worldwide challenge to the Old Left by movements everywhere that asserted that the Old Left was not antisystemic at all. Their coming to power had changed nothing of any importance, said the challengers. These movements were now seen as part of the system that had to be rejected in order that truly antisystemic movements take their place. What happened then? In the beginning the newly-assertive Right seemed to win the day. Both U.S. President Reagan and U.K. Prime Minister Thatcher proclaimed the end of previously dominant “developmentalism” and the advent of production oriented to world market sale. They said that “there is no alternative” (TINA). Given the decline of state income in most of the world, most governments sought loans, which they only received if they accepted the new terms of TINA. They were required to reduce drastically the size of governments and eliminate protectionism, while ending welfare state expenditures and accepting the supremacy of the market. This was called the Washington Consensus, and almost all governments complied with this major shift of focus. Governments that didn’t comply fell from office, culminating in the spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union. After some time in office, the compliant states discovered that the promised rise in real income of both governments and most workers did not occur. Instead, these compliant states were suffering from the austerity policies imposed upon them. There was a reaction to TINA, marked by the 1995 Zapatista uprising, the 1999 successful demonstrations against the attempt in Seattle to enact mandatory guarantees for so-called intellectual property rights, and the 2001 founding in Porto Alegre of the World Social Forum in opposition to the World Economic Forum, long-standing pillar of TINA. As the Global Left regained strength, conservative forces needed to regroup. They shifted from exclusive emphasis on market economics, and launched their alternative socio-cultural face. They initially spent much energy on such issues as anti-abortion and insistence on exclusive heterosexual behavior. They used such themes to pull supporters into active politics. And then they turned to xenophobic anti-immigration, embracing the protectionism that the economic conservatives had specifically opposed. However, supporters of expanded social rights for everyone and “multiculturalism” copied the new political tactics of the right and successfully legitimated over the last decade significant advances on socio-cultural issues. Women’s rights, first Gay rights and then Gay marriage, rights of “indigenous” peoples all became widely accepted. So, where are we? The economic conservatives first won out and then lost strength. The succeeding socio-cultural conservatives first won out and then lost strength. Yet the Global Left seems nonetheless to flounder. This is because they have not yet been willing to accept that the struggle between the Global Left and the Global Right is a class struggle and that this should be made explicit. In the ongoing structural crisis of the modern world-system, which began in the 1970s and will probably last another 20-40 years, the issue is not the reform of capitalism, but its successor system. If the Global Left is to win that battle, it must solidly ally the anti-austerity forces with the multicultural forces. Only recognizing that both groups represent the same bottom 80% of the world’s population makes it likely that they can win out. They need to struggle against the top 1% and seek to attract the other 19% to their side. That is exactly what one means by a class struggle. http://clubof.info/

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clubofinfo · 8 years ago

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