[Marxism] (no subject)

[Fred Feldman]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/klein
I think Obama has an unprecedented chance to win, given his current level of
ruling class and popular support and assuming he gets the Democratic
nomination. My assumption is he will win Texas and come close eno8ugh in
Ohio to make Clinton look unrealistic as a candidate.

But it must be clear to everyone on the left that he will face an
unprecedented campaign of race-baiting, red-baiting, peace-baiting,
patriotism=-baiting, Muslim-baiting, immigrant and immigrant's children
baiting. This will make the campaigns against Gore and Kerry look like
measured criticism.

The whole campaign will be racist to the core, but we should take note that
this will revolve in part around the real (not figments of racist
imagination) differences reflecting elements of class polarization between
Blacks (and, to varying degrees) other oppressed nationalities or victims of
discrimination( and white people. 

The Left -- including Black Agenda Report -- must prepare to oppose this
brutal campaign with great intensity, even while supporting candidates other
than McKinney.  I will be supporting McKinney who I think will do a good job
of doing this in a way that will deepen respect for independent left and
working people politics against the imperialist parties.

This will be even more important, because of the depth of the issues posed,
than opposing the reactionary campaign to impeach Clinton over the Lewinsky-
Whitewater nonsense.

Of course Obama can help fight this by being a little less willing to
retreat cautiously in the face of this kind of criticism. He has to learn to
retreat less rapidly and stand a little more firm when one of his positions,
supporters or whatever is used to trump up a scandal. This and the Farrakhan
incident both highlight this tendency, though in both cases he strives to
retain a certain dignity and right to his own views.  IT is wrong for
anyone, certainly the lying critics but also Obama, to denounce Farrakhan
for his former statements on the Jews (which were anti-Senitic in my
opinion( without noting that he has not only not repeated themn but
repudiated them.

The tendency to retreat in the face of attacks will mean rout when the 
Republican full-court press begins. Win or lose (and I think he has quite a
good chance of winning, in the current atmosphere where the policies of the
neoliberal era (domestic and foreign) have clearly come acropper. But Obama
will lose the fight if he responds, triangulation style (Hilary's grave
error was her gut and bone assumption that triangulating positions must
always aim at placating the right rather than those who reject it or are
p8lling away from it. The latter are a quite large group right now.

Democratic rights will be a big issue in the campaign.  The Republican
campaign promises to be a crusade against thinking for yourself on just
about any significant issue.  Can they panic US voters into voting for the
status quo overtly.

I actually doubt it.  But it is not impossible. Democratic panic in the face
of these attacks could make it happen.
Fred Feldman

Lookout by Naomi Klein

Obama, Being Called a Muslim Is Not a Smear [from the March 17, 2008 issue]

Hillary Clinton denied leaking the photo of Barack Obama wearing a turban,
but her campaign manager says that even if she had, it would be no big deal.
"Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has
visited and had those photos published widely." 

Sure she did. And George W. Bush put on a fetching Chamato poncho in
Santiago, while Paul Wolfowitz burned up YouTube with his antimalarial
African dance routines when he was World Bank prez. The obvious difference
is this: when white politicians go ethnic, they just look funny. When a
black presidential contender does it, he looks foreign. And when the ethnic
apparel in question is vaguely reminiscent of the clothing worn by Iraqi and
Afghan fighters (at least to many Fox viewers, who think any headdress other
than a baseball cap is a declaration of war on America), the image is
downright frightening. 

The turban "scandal" is all part of what is being referred to as "the Muslim
smear." It includes everything from exaggerated enunciations of Obama's
middle name to the online whisper campaign that Obama attended a
fundamentalist madrassa in Indonesia (a lie), was sworn in on a Koran
(another lie) and if elected would attach RadioShack speakers to the White
House to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer (I made that one up). 

So far, Obama's campaign has responded with aggressive corrections that tout
his Christian faith, attack the attackers and channel a cooperative witness
before the House Un-American Activities Committee. "Barack has never been a
Muslim or practiced any other faith besides Christianity," states one fact
sheet. "I'm not and never have been of the Muslim faith," Obama told a
Christian News reporter. 

Of course Obama must correct the record, but he doesn't have to stop there.
What is disturbing about the campaign's response is that it leaves
unchallenged the disgraceful and racist premise behind the entire "Muslim
smear": that being Muslim is de facto a source of shame. Obama's supporters
often say they are being "Swiftboated," casually accepting the idea that
being accused of Muslimhood is tantamount to being accused of treason. 

Substitute another faith or ethnicity, and you'd expect a very different
response. Consider a report from the archives of this magazine. Thirteen
years ago, Daniel Singer, The Nation's late, much-missed Europe
correspondent, went to Poland to cover a hotly contested presidential
election. He reported that the race had descended into an ugly debate over
whether one of the candidates, Aleksander Kwasniewski, was a closet Jew. The
press claimed his mother had been buried in a Jewish cemetery (she was still
alive), and a popular TV show aired a skit featuring the Christian candidate
dressed as a Hasidic Jew. "What perturbed me," Singer wryly observed, "was
that Kwasniewski's lawyers threatened to sue for slander rather than press
for an indictment under the law condemning racist propaganda." 

We should expect no less of the Obama campaign. When asked during the Ohio
debate about Louis Farrakhan's support for his candidacy, Obama did not
hesitate to call Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments "unacceptable and
reprehensible." When the turban photo flap came up in the same debate, he
used the occasion to say nothing at all. 

Farrakhan's infamous comments about Jews took place twenty-four years ago.
The orgy of hate that is "the Muslim smear" is unfolding in real time, and
it promises to greatly intensify in a general election. These attacks do not
simply "smear Barack's Christian faith," as John Kerry claimed in a campaign
mailing. They are an attack on all Muslims, some of whom actually do
exercise their rights to cover their heads and send their kids to religious
school. Thousands even have the very common name Hussein. All are watching
their culture used as a crude bludgeon against Obama, while the candidate
who is the symbol of racial harmony fails to defend them. This at a time
when US Muslims are bearing the brunt of the Bush Administration's assaults
on civil liberties, including dragnet wiretapping, and are facing a
documented spike in hate crimes. 

Occasionally, though not nearly enough, Obama says that Muslims are
"deserving of respect and dignity." What he has never done is what Singer
called for in Poland: denounce the attacks themselves as racist propaganda,
in this case against Muslims. 

The core of Obama's candidacy is that he alone--who lived in Indonesia as a
boy and has an African grandmother--can "repair the world" after the Bush
wrecking ball. That repair job begins with the 1.4 billion Muslims around
the world, many of whom are convinced that the United States has been waging
a war against their faith. This perception is based on facts, among them the
fact that Muslim civilians are not counted among the dead in Iraq and
Afghanistan; that Islam has been desecrated in US-run prisons; that voting
for an Islamic party resulted in collective punishment in Gaza. It is also
fueled by the rise of a virulent strain of Islamophobia in Europe and North
America. 

As the most visible target of this rising racism, Obama has the power to be
more than its victim. He can use the attacks to begin the very process of
global repair that is the most seductive promise of his campaign. The next
time he's asked about his alleged Muslimness, Obama can respond not just by
clarifying the facts but by turning the tables. He can state clearly that
while a liaison with a pharmaceutical lobbyist may be worthy of scandalized
exposure, being a Muslim is not. Changing the terms of the debate this way
is not only morally just but tactically smart--it's the one response that
could defuse these hateful attacks. The best part is this: unlike ending the
Iraq War and closing Guantánamo, standing up to Islamophobia doesn't need to
wait until after the election. Obama can use his campaign to start now. Let
the repairing begin. 

Postscript: Ari Melber criticized this column, citing a video the Obama
campaign has been circulating featuring a minister of Obama's church who
makes it clear that while Obama is not a Muslim, there would be nothing
wrong with it if he was. I had the same clip sent to me directly from the
Obama campaign and wrote this in response: "What I am suggesting needs to be
said can only be said by the man himself, just as he has taken brave stances
against racism directed at Latinos under the guise of fighting illegal
immigration. Do not underestimate the message that his silence is sending,
not just in the U.S. but around the world." 

One more thing: now is the time when candidates are most open to pressure.
For instance, Hillary Clinton just announced that she will co-sponsor
legislation to ban the use of private military companies--exactly one day
after my Nation colleague Jeremy Scahill revealed that both Clinton and
Obama were poised to let the mercenaries stay in Iraq even if the troops
come home. Pushing candidates on the issues during a campaign can have a
real impact, so can we please move beyond superfandom? I have also heard
from people who think that saying Arabs and Muslims are worthy of exactly
the same rights and protections as other minorities is just too high-risk a
position for Obama during the campaign. If that's the position, so be it,
but don't pretend the campaign is doing something it is not. It is precisely
because he has been so strong on other issues of discrimination and racism
that his trepidation on this issue leaps out.