[Marxism] A letter from my boss

[Louis Proyect]

DCQ:
>Which is to say: while we are investigating the incident, we have 
>already determined the guilty party. This is not surprising, and 
>neither is the right's attempt to cry "censorship" and "violence." 
>(The same pattern plays out again and again--just think of Seattle 
>where peaceful protesters were attacked by cops, who then turned the 
>incident into an example of the dangers of "violent protesters.") 
>But the tape shows the order of events pretty clearly.
>
>1. Protesters mount the stage peacefully (expecting to be escorted 
>away, as they have before).
>2. Enthusiastic members of the audience, disgusted by Gilchrist's 
>racism, jump up on stage as well (this is the "rushing" or "storming" part)
>3. They chant for a few seconds.
>4. A big College Republican goes ballistic and physically attacks 
>the protesters.
>5. Gilchrist is ushered away by the CRs (or security...it's a little 
>unclear there)
>6. The majority of the audience erupts in euphoria that Gilchrist no 
>longer has a platform.
>(7. CTV immediately gets a College Republican on record--who first 
>has to make sure "whose side" the reporter is on--but doesn't bother 
>to talk to the many protesters.)

Lenin (not Richard the blogger) was right when he referred to 
ultraleftism as an infantile disorder.

The campus left has to fight for the right to be heard. The big 
issues at Columbia have been keeping the MEALAC department from being 
censored, preventing Nick DeGenova from being fired, fighting for the 
right to hear Ahmadinejad, protecting the late Edward Said's right to 
throw a symbolic right, etc. This fixation on stopping a meeting for 
a Minuteman from taking place is dead wrong. It reflects a confusion 
over tactics and principles. There is no principle involved with 
keeping Gilchrist from speaking. Madeline Albright was the architect 
of mass murder and a visiting scholar at Columbia University. Why not 
have a sit-in at her classroom?

I must once again call attention to the fact that the president of 
the Chicano Caucus, the group that sponsored the protest, has taken 
exception publicly to what the ISO did. If you are going to organize 
this kind of intervention, you'd better have your act together. If he 
disassociated himself from the banner incident, what would the 
average liberal student think? Or maybe that doesn't matter.