I’m going to join with Patterico in urging a little restraint in the claims of anti-semitism on “BarackObama.com”.
Oh, make no mistake about it – Obama is going to draw a lot of anti-semites to his campaign. Anti-semitism is a key tenet of the radical American left.
But BarackObama.com is pretty much open to all.
How open?
RickDFL, the labor radical you mentioned in your list (Reuther) was a New Dealer (personal friend of eleanor roosevelt!) who supported the Vietnam War. He was a founder of AFL-CIO. Can’t more establishment then that. Also he’s been dead for almost 4 decades.
Andy Stern split the SEUI from the AFL-CIO because it wasn’t as aggressive in organizing as he’d like it to be. If Reuther was a radical, Stern is a radical.
So are you saying you agree with Mussolini’s treatment of labor unions?
What could possibly make you think that I do? And why would I care?
From the Britannica article on the NRA (FDR’s National Recovery Administration)
JPA:
The rankings you cite differ from the one I cited in that yours are based a limited number of scored votes. Change the votes scored and you change the ranking of various members. The ranking I cite is based on all votes taken.
Terry:
So Reuther is both a “fascist”, a “radical” and an “establishment” figure? Is the establishment radical? Is America a fascist county?
My original point was that current labor leaders are less radical than Reuther (who was not a radical – a point I thought was fairly conventional, but which I can not tell if you agree).
BTW, eventually “opposition to the Vietnam War, resulted in Reuther’s leading the UAW out of the AFL-CIO in 1968.”
You think Stern is a radical and you may think he is more radical than Reuther (I can’t tell) but you have not pointed to any issue to justify that claim. Leaving the AFL-CIO over organizing strategy is hardly a clear left/center/right issue.
Why you quote the NRA I have no idea?
RickDFL said:
“Why you quote the NRA I have no idea?”
Which makes your insult comment regarding the intelligence of other people very funny, RickDFL.
OK Troy, what point is the quote about the NRA meant to illustrate or convey?
Is the NRA fascist? radical left? establishment? similar to Mussolini? different from Mussolini? an example of something Reuther supported? or something he opposed?
At this point I really have no idea.
RickDFL:
Was Reuther a radical?
Depends on the period. He was a radical in the early-mid 30’s when he was organizing UAW. By 1947 he was a supporter of taft-hartley and was purging commies from UAW leadership. One of the problems with using a
dead man as an example of a type is that you have a timeline to deal with.
Is Stern a radical?
I say yes, based on the undemocratic way the SEIU is run, Stern’s use of communists as organizers, his use of ‘corporate campaigns’ as an organising tool, and above all his close association with the internationalist SDS.
I posted the NRA article because for a guy with “DFL” as part of his moniker, you seem to be ignorant of a lot of labor history. The NRA was modeled on Mussolini’s idea corporate state fascism.
Terry:
Re: Reuther – He did not support Taft-Hartley, just the anti-communist provisions.
Re: Stern a. whatever your opinion of SEIU’s internal rules, it is hard to see how this bears on the question (is one set of internal rules inherently ‘radically left’) b. name them c. what makes a corporate campaign radically leftist (they could and are easily used for rightist goals), d. Huh?
Re: “The NRA was modeled on Mussolini’s idea corporate state fascism”
I suppose various parts of the NRA were “modeled” (whatever that means) on lots of things and Mussolini spent a lot of effort deceiving people about what he was really doing. But what does that prove? In whatever way the NRA was modeled on Italy, it did not include the suppression of independent trade unions combined with the murder and imprisonment of union members.
RickDFL-
a)Unions where the leadership is not directly elected by the membership is a radicalism enabler. The leadership can pursue radical tactics and strategy without worrying about losing their office. Stern has made it clear that he does not believe in opening SEIU leadership to a referendum by the people that pay their salaries.
b) Moe Foner and Jordan Flaherty (editor of Left Turn magazine) in the US. The SEIU is working through the Chinese communist party to organize Wal Mart workers in that country.
c) A leftist using a radical tool is a leftist radical.
d) Stern developed organizing methods with SDS alumnae Paul and Heather Booth’s ‘midwest academy’.
In the first paragraph you seem to not understand what “The NRA was modeled on Mussolini’s idea corporate state fascism” I write simple declarative sentences. It means what it says. The NRA was purposely modeled on Mussolini’s political theory of corporate state fascism. This theory does not require breaking heads & imprisoning people any more than unionization requires dictatorial gangsters in leadership positions. You say “Mussolini spent a lot of effort deceiving people about what he was really doing.” BS. Mussolini was open and direct about what he was doing. He wrote volumes of political essays and then acted on what he wrote. The “independent trade unions” you describe were fronts for internationalist trade unions that took their orders from Moscow or Trotsky.
Hell, I was only union member for a short period of time fifteen years ago and I still know more about labor history than you do.
Terry
a. I will forgo comment on SEIU’s internal politics to simply point out, no particular set of internal rules “is a radicalism enabler”. The same rules that would allow a radical left leader to thwart the will of a centrist or rightist membership would also allow a centrist or rightist leader to thwart the will of a radical left membership.
b. Moe Foner joined the CPUSA to help fight Franco, he left the party shortly after Stern was born and he had not held a union elected position since 1982, long before Stern was President. Fun fact, Moe helped get Sheri Lewis of ‘Lambchop’ started. I suppose she is a Commie too. It is not clear Jordan is a communist. Is every U.S. businessman working with a member of the CCP to grow their business in China a communist too?
c. What is radical about a corporate campaign?
d. What is radical about Paul and Healther Booth? and if they are radicals how does learning some basic organizing skills from them make you a radical? There is a straight up Stalinist who teaches Latin at the U of M. Is everyone of his students a communist?
This is all a rather pathetic game of guilt by association. You could just as easily paint Stern as a pro-business conservative through as different set of associates, as I pointed out. Lots of perfectly centrist people have far more direct ties to people with more radical backgrounds.
As for Mussolini and the NRA:
a. I don’t understand what you mean when you say the NRA was “modeled” on Italy, because I have no idea what you infer from that fact. That the NRA was fascist? Bad? What? The current U.S. Army helmet is ‘modeled’ on the Germany army helmet of WWII, what does that show?
b. Mussolini wrote a lot, much of it was lies. A lot of the lies he told were designed to convince union members in Italy that he would be more favorable to them than he turned out to be.
c. Given your assumption that Italian trade unions “took their orders from Moscow or Trotsky”, you will forgive me asking again whether you agree with Mussolini’s labor policy. Needless to say, lots of Italians including Filippo Turati and Giacomo Matteotti would disagree with you. I know enough labor history to not slander the names of good men.
RickDFL-
It’s obvious that you will never cede that anyone who holds any position you agree with is a radical.
Lots of communists joined the CP to fight Franco. That has no bearing at all on whether he is or is not a commie. Foner quit the party because he had problems with Stalin, not because he had problems with communism.
It’s clear to me that Jordan is a commie. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . . For some reason you have a hard time believing that an aggresively expanding union led by a man trained in activism by marxists might use marxist organizers. That’s your problem.
Corporate campaigns use paid researchers to look for dirt on corporate board members. They then use this info to blackmail or bully board members into making concessions. If the same technique was used by, say, anti-abortion activists to pressure Planned Parenthood boardmebers. I have no doubt at all you would consider it a tactic of the ‘radical right’.
Paul and Heather Booth are founders, along with Tom Hayden, of the SDS. The weathermen split off from the SDS. The SDS had cordial relations & worked with the Black Panthers. In case you haven’t heard, the Black Panther were a group of racial seperatist terrorists. A mass rally organised by the SDS at UW Madison became a riot that closed UW for several days. In 1968 the SDS organised the largest ‘student strike’ in the history of the U.S.
And you ask “What is radical about Paul and Heather Booth?”
This isn’t guilt by association. It’s guilt by guilt.
I didn’t say that the NRA was modeled on Italy, I said the NRA was modeled on Mussolini’s ideal of a Fascist Corporate State. Your inability to understand clearly written sentences is vexing.
I’ll lay it out for you.
In the Fascist Corporate State the people are organised by the industries they work in or capitalize. The state uses its sovereign power to resolve the differences between the workers and the capitalists. In return for making concessions to the workers the state rewards capitalists by limiting competition with other platers. In the late 30’s Mussolini;s fascist corporate state reached the point where he dissolved parliament and replaced it with a council of industries. Unions were mandated but they had to accept the authority of the state.
The NRA in the US organised the US economy into industrial sectors. NRA bureaucrats set work rules and wages and limited competition between member companies.
The resemblence to Mussolini’s fascist corporate state was not accidental. The architects of the plan knew exactly what they were doing and who they were trying to imitate:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html
Given your assumption that Italian trade unions took their orders from Moscow or Trotsky, you will forgive me asking again whether you agree with Mussolini’s labor policy.
Wrong again! I said the unions that Mussolini did not tolerate unions that were loyal to the state.
Neither Turati vor Matteotti were trade unionists, demonstrating once again your problem with reading comprehension.
Terry:
“Corporate campaigns use paid researchers to look for dirt on corporate board members. They then use this info to blackmail or bully board members into making concessions.” If there is blackmail you should report that to the police. Otherwise, researching other organizations and people is a standard PR tactic in America. It is used by the left, right, and center. If it is radical, we are all radical.
“The weathermen split off from the SDS.” Exactly, it looks like the Booths were involved in the earlier (mostly Civil Rights focused) version of SDS. They were not part of the Weathermen or the Weather Underground.
“It’s guilt by guilt.” But you have not shown that Stern has links to radical leftists deeper or more common than any other person. Everybody has a wide range of connections. As you would expect from someone in his position, Stern has a wide range of connections across the political spectrum.
The NRA was modeled on lots of things. You have not established that the NRA was modeled on anything distinctive about Italian fascism or anything particularly bad. Every political regime since creation has sought to moderate social and economic conflicts within itself. Most importantly, the NRA had very limited to non-existent powers of compulsion and enforcement. It was a far cry from “the state uses its sovereign power to resolve the differences between the workers and the capitalists” (which is not even very distinctive of fascism, Italian or otherwise).
Turati and Matteotti led the Italian Socialist Party which was composed mostly of the members of the non-communist unions. Their members and the unions they belonged to were not taking orders from Stalin or Trotsky. To imply so is to slur the name of good men, far better than yourself.
“Despite the party’s improving electoral results, however, the PSI remained divided into two major branches, the Reformists and the Maximalists. The Reformists, led by Filippo Turati, were strong mostly in the unions and the parliamentary group. The Maximalists, led by Benito Mussolini, were affiliated with the London Bureau of socialist groups, an international association of left-socialist parties”
Just when you think RickDFL can’t get any denser, he kicks it up a notch.
Go RickDFL!