[Marxism] A Retort on the Left and Elections

[Einde O'Callaghan]

milongonsinga wrote:
> Einde O'Callaghan wrote:
> 
> "Making threats of violence is just unacceptable..."
> 
> Once again, after repeated insults, I tried to be respectful to this person. If you don't appreciate my reaction, you should have a discussion with your friend about the way "people on the left" ought to have conversations with each other. I've been attacked, repeatedly, by folks on this list. Not my ideas, but me. I've tried to exercise restraint but I don't appreciate people hurling insults from behind their computers. It's really not ok to say some of the shit some people say on this list. So, if you don't like my reaction, condemn your friend not me. 
> 
I haven't been following your discussion - so I have no idea how your 
opponent treated you. If he used threats too then I condembn him 
unreservedly.

However, I did see you issuing a threat, when I accidentally glanced at 
this thread, which is why I responded as I did. I still think that 
issuing threats is unacceptable as a form of political debate.

I've just being reading a book about the debates in the Russian CP 
during the 1920s, where phsyical threats were part and parcel of the 
struggle against the opposition. It left a very bad taste in my mouth - 
and then I click on your message - and find more of the same unpleasantness.

I don't want to get into te eTrotsky-Stalin debate, but it is a matter 
of record that in the 1920s Stalin and his allies made physical threats 
and then in the 1930s they put them into practice. The left is still 
trying to live that dark period down, which is why I find the 
continuation of that sort of politics so unacceptable.

Einde O'Callaghan