[Marxism] "demo-green" paranoia and slander: in response to xxx

[David McDonald]

Mark Lause:

So, too, the coherent, monolithic Demo-Green leadership is a 
hallucination.  If you break down the term to figure out what it means, 
it has so many different (and contradictory) trends that it would be 
misleading ourselves to see a common, coherent strategy.

David McDonald replies:

I believe Mark is correct in this assessment. There was tremendous 
confusion about this during 2004, and we are now 4 years down the road 
and into new territory.

I can say from immediate personal experience that one of the people 
excoriated by John Murphy in his Counterpunch screed was instrumental in 
getting Cynthia McKinney up to Seattle for her speech on the Jena 6 at 
New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, so much so that without her help the 
meeting would never have happened and we would not be about to launch a 
Washington State Power to the People Campaign (I'm keeping my fingers 
crossed) that will be very different in racial composition from the 
Green Party as it now stands. So go figure. I am not going to dignify 
Murphy's further assertion that McKinney is a stooge of the demogreen 
faction with a response, except to note that had McKinney the slightest 
inclination to be anyone's stooge she could still be sitting pretty in a 
lifetime congressional seat in Georgia as a real Democrat.

I am for McKinney not because I think her political positions are so 
much better than Ralph Nader's. I have no reason to think that they are. 
I actually think that almost all of us have agreement on the 
fundamentals of the formal politics -- no war, social justice, save the 
earth -- but because her candidacy  poses an opportunity to try to get 
at what Joaquin keeps talking about: a broad formation that reaches 
across all the old divides of the mini-revolutionary parties and merges 
with, or at least for a while works with, a layer of African-American 
activists that frankly usually do not have the time or inclination to 
engage with silly white people. It is a chance to work with very serious 
people on issues vital to communities that we (the white left) are 
usually totally outside of. This is one of those times when what is 
called for is less analysis and more action. Regardless of why anyone 
might be supporting McKinney, members of this list can support her for 
the right reasons.

Real politics is going to be just this confusing, icky, full of 
conundrums and taking our chances from right now to clear to the end. 
Might as well get used to it.