Re: <nettime> Left is wrong on Iran

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Let there be no question that the left attacking the left is
always more scintillating when the techniques of the right
are deployed. As if the left has never studied closely how
the right attacks and wins adherents. Or, worse, as if the
left has understood the successful techniques of the
right and have adopted them without attribution. What the
right does so well is never shade the truth, never equivocate,
never show doubt or mercy. Force gray issues into black and
white, demand to be either with us or against us, brook no
middle positions, berate those who ask for greater understanding,
churn out rock-headed bumper sticker slogans, vaunt
celebrated, credentialed spokespersons over the anonymous
hoi polloi (that term a favorite put-down).

A kind-hearted person of the left advocating deeper grasp of
political issues is a slow-thinking weakling, a neo-Kantian, when
a neo-Calvinist predestinator is needed, everybody who is
anybody knows that, both left and right, indeed, why pretend
there is a difference in matters of least importance such as
photogenic street demonstrations begging for sharp-focussed
recognizable leadership of the mouth, prose and pose.

Left against left is right against left, make no mistake, whether
by narcissists or by agents provocateurs.

Can there ever be a true leftist in academia? Probably not,
not with the generous benefits way beyond the hoi polloi.


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