[This important warning is posted with the author's permission--Jimmy Higgins]
Anders Behring Breivik is not a fundamentalist Christian, he is something worse
by SKS
The New York Times has repeated the lie that Anders Behring Breivik, the butcher of Oslo and Utøya, is a fundamentalist Christian. He is not.
The New York Times' thesis is that he is somehow a mirror image of Al Qaeda, a disaffected Christian turning the tables on Islamic fundamentalism. He is not.
He is the vivid, brutal, expression of a bubbling right-wing political movement of the post 9/11 era, emerging not from fascism or neo-fascism or from "revolutionary nationalism", but from the unholy marriage of Austrian School economics and paleo-conservative cultural identity Romanticism--think Goethe, Scifi/Fantasy novels, and von Mises spawn a child.
To those of us who follow the right, the real right, the ideological right, not the administrative right or the hooligan right, not a single word of what Breivik wrote in his manifesto or his video comes as a surprise. It is part an parcel of this world-wide scene of pan-nationalists, who decry "hate ideologies" like Nazism, Islam, and Marxism, while speaking of a common, mildly anti-racist, pro-Zionist, politically incorrect world of "European tolerance in isolation"--yet harboring violent fantasies of retribution and domination. Fantasies Breivik has merely acted upon, but are not unique to himself.
A well known, and not by coincidence Norwegian, blogger by the pseudonym of Fjordman has been giving expression to these ideas since the early part of the last decade. He was widely read in those circles, and even quoted by "respectable" figures of the right. His preoccupations were the same as Breivik (multiculturalism, imperialism, islam), and a chilling fact emerges: Breivik's manifesto's title is "2083 A European Declaration of Independence", while a widely circulated Islamophobic article by Fjordman from 2007 is titled "A European Declaration of Independence". I know the connection is hard to make, but give it some thought...
Glenn Beck, in the United States, has used formulations from this scene, in particular when he decries "progressives of both parties" and talks of "political correct multiculturalism" and "cultural marxism" and adopts the liberal-left's misguided ideas on totalitarian equivalencies of Fascism and "Communism" to use them against neo-liberal globalization, "cultural suicide" and multi-cultural nanny states.
The difference between the populist libertarianism of Beck and the ideology which Breivik represents is that in the United States, this movement is indeed fundamentalist Christian, populated by sects of millions that would seem strange to an Europeanist of the sort Breivik is. Those people are the actual mirror image of Al Qaeda, or more correctly the Taliban, and they don't need to go around putting car bombs and driving planes into buildings because they have the US Armed Forces do that for them.
They do find themselves allied against the common enemy of Islam and share economic values to an extent, but are very much different ideologically.
(When going incognito on the right-wing IRC channels and message boards a few years ago, a regular told me that he loved European anti-Islamic sites because "they were liberal[meaning left-sounding] but not pussies against the hajjis" and so "they made for great stuff to go for Christian moderates", when I commented they had nothing against gays, I got a smug "nobody is perfect".)
This is what the New York Times misses, even if it has it right in their face: Breivik self-describes as a moderate Christian.
In this terminology, what this mean is that while he is a believer, he is not a theocrat. The concept would be familiar to Catholics world-wide, because it is the tradition of being a sinner knowing full well that your sins will be forgiven. It is was what allowed Central American death squads to murder a Bishop and then go to mass the next Sunday, for example.
This is a clear break with fundamentalist Christians, steeped in Calvinist theocratic values as they are. Breivik's preoccupation with Christianity is as a force against Islam, who he sees as the main enemy. His Christianity is contingent to its ability to deliver Europeans (and he widely construes the European identity, including Jews and Browns - unthinkable in most neo-fascist circles) from the new horde of Eurabia.
In his video and manifesto, he clearly identifies with the figures of the Crusades, in particular the early figures that actually fought a Muslim invasion of Europe. That is why, even being a Protestant, he calls for Catholicism, not out of religious fervor, but because, last time, the Church of the Pope stopped Islam in its tracks (unlike, say, the Orthodox patriarchs).
He doesn't use fascist imagery, nor does he use any source commonly identified with the far-right. His sources are pedestrian conservative and small business capitalist. He even used the infamous Economist "Eurabia" cover.
This is him telling us: I am not a facist. I am normal. I am you. I have brown friends. I have gay friends. I defended them from bullies. But I am mad as hell, and I can't take it anymore.
He is the crisis of the neo-liberal state and its imperialist project, in its reactionary terrorist expression. He is the voice of the white male who finds himself a minority, and losing not just the perceived privileges of gender and race, but the very real privileges of being in the center of an imperial world.
The New York Times' declaration exposes the failure of social-liberal thought to explain the contradictions of the world. When we need to describe someone as something he is telling us he is not, it usually means that there is not space for that identity in our carefully constructed worldview. The New York Times needs to tells us he is a "Christian fundamentalist" to avoid the real questions his action raises.
Questions such as the emergence of a new reactionary wave in Western countries, the effects of the moving of the centers of economic growth and development from the West to the East and the North to the South, the peril of the White supremacist empires of the 20th century... more importantly, the boogie-man Islam, that sedative that the international bourgeoisie feeds as placebo to its formerly well-fed and pacified working classes so that they don't realize that capital has pulled the rug from under their feet, and all these mythologies about patriotism and common struggle against foreign perils were all lies--the bosses are quitely shipping their capital to what we are told are our mortal enemies.
When a lie cracks open, you can either see it and respond against it knowing it a lie, or we can zealously embrace it against all evidence. Breivik embraced the lie: clearly a smart person, he willfully ignored any other explanation for the ills of the world than Islam and its "Cultural Marxist" enablers, and he embellished this lie with a mythology of knighthood, literally quixotic, and more tragically into a justification for his murder.
And the lie he believes in is no different than the lie many of his generation have killed, maimed, and been killed and been maimed for in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the embellishments are not unique.
Breivik is fighting for the clash of civilization ideas that same system he attacked fed him. The New York Times is, not surprisingly, unwilling to accept its responsibility in that system--in their view only a "fundamentalist" could do such an atrocity in the name of politics--it seeks to continue framing the debate in a modified version of the clash of civilization, one were us moderates have to fight "fundamentalists" of both religions. Yet, Breivik's heinous crime is no different than what the New York Times asked that American soldiers do in Iraq when it beat the loudest drums of war in its history. He is not the chicken coming home to roost. He is the chicken who never left home.
We are yet to see if this iceberg means something world-changing, or if it will remain in the sub-surface only to give us a murderous jolt. After all, I am sure Geert Wilders abhors this crime as much as the next person. What is clear is that the same problems that affect and preoccupy the radical left in the Western world are being felt by the ideological right, and that their response will not always come packaged in the usual packages of State collusion, fringe parties and street hooliganism, but might take forms such as Breivik's, and perhaps even other forms of violence. It is too early to tell if this action will have a cooling effect in this particular ideological space - similar to what McVeigh unwittingly did to the then exploding militia scene - or if it will be a spark that lights a prairie fire. What is clear is that we have to sit down and think long and hard about how to respond to these movements, now that they have shown their teeth...
Sources:
NYT Article (behind paywall if you have reached your free limit)
2083 A European Declaration of Independence (Breivik)
"Fjordman" - A European Declaration of Independence (2007)
(There are unsubstantiated reports that Fjordman is indeed Breivik, but this is in doubt and wouldn't harm my point, as Fjordman has been given so much credence, he even has a long-standing wikipedia page in both English and Norwegian Bokmål.)
July 25, 2011
Norway: A Warning Amidst The Mourning
July 17, 2011
Playing the Piano…
People's Organization for Progress
ups the ante of struggle in NJ
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| POP members, supporters, and community residents honor the 1967 Newark Rebellion at the site of the monument to 1967 at the intersection of Springfield Ave., Irvine Turner Blvd., & 15th Ave. |
There was a time some years back when "playing the piano" was the phrase folks would use to describe carrying out multiple revolutionary campaigns simultaneously. We could, it suggested, have one hand doing one thing while the other did another. With the People's Organization for Progress organized Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice, POP has upped the ante. But with the past week's 44th annual We Remember the Newark Rebellion & its Victims" event, we proved we POP can "play the piano"…
The People's Organization for Progress has held this annual event for more than 25 years, sometimes at the precinct house where the rebellion initially began and often (since the monument to the citizens who died was first placed on the 30th anniversary in 1997) at the monument itself (to see a slide show of Ingrid Hill's excellent photos from this year's remembrance, please click on this link).
On July 12, 1967, Newark erupted in a rebellion against the scourge of police brutality and oppressive racially-biased living conditions. The rebellion prompted a massive police riot and a brutal armed crackdown marked by the National Guard and other police forces occupying the city for several days. It would lead to 39 people, overwhelmingly unarmed Black civilians, getting killed in that dramatic upheaval.
POP's ability to sustain and carry out multiple campaigns simultaneously is a testament to the organization's maturity, both politically as well as structurally!
Thanks to the reader who suggested we track down brother Hamm's speech at CEMOTAP. to view Larry's presentation click on this link. Then go to Drums in the Global Village to see the full speech. Read more!
July 10, 2011
People's Organization for Progress "Daily People's Campaign," Part II
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| People's Organization for Progress daily demonstration attracts community residents as well as POP members. |
Among the issues the campaign will address are a need for a national jobs program, a call to end military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, a call to stand against police brutality, a call to preserve workers rights and collective bargaining, a call for a moratorium on foreclosures, a call for national health care and for affordable higher education, and more.
POP is calling on a broad range of organizations to endorse and participate in the campaign. This is in an effort to contribute to the forging of a progressive united front for social justice for this area. This is a bold and audacious effort in this period, but the response from motorist driving past the Court House shows without a doubt that the campaign reflects the sentiment of the community. Other organizations are beginning to commit themselves to participation. This past weekend, members on NJ Chapter-21 of Veterans for Peace responded excitedly to a call to join the daily pickets in front of the Lincoln Monument at the intersection of Springfield Avenue & West Market Street.
Michael McPhearson, a longtime POP member and former Executive Director of the national Veterans For Peace, interviewed Chairman Hamm about this campaign (click on the video image above or the linked "INTERVIEW" before the parenthesis to watch video).
The daily actions continue daily from 4:30p.m. to 6:00p.m. at West Market Street and Springfield Avenue, near the Lincoln Monument and will take place their everyday for an indefinite period of time.
On Saturdays the actions take place from 12noon to 2:00p.m on corner of Broad and Market Streets in Newark.
On Sundays the action is from 2:00p.m. to 3:00p.m. back on West Market Street and Springfield Avenue, near the Lincoln Monument.
For more information, please call (973) 801-0001.
June 26, 2011
POP begins Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Justice & Equality
Tomorrow, Monday, June 27 the New Jersey-based People's Organization for Progress will begin daily demonstrations throughout the state. As POP's press release announced…
May 18, 2011
May '70: 12. The Forgotten Dead Of Augusta [Updated]
There were six of them, gunned down by the armed force of the state.
I could be talking about the four students murdered at Kent State just seven days before plus the two who would would die later in the week at Jackson State.
But I’m not. I’m talking about six Black men killed in Augusta, Georgia, 41 years ago this week. Each was shot in the back by police shotguns, and their deaths were woven into the fabric of struggle and repression that was growing day by day in May, 1970.
Like many an urban rebellion in the ‘60s, it started with the cops. On May 9, Charles Oatman died in the Augusta city jail. He was 16 and mentally disabled. The police announced that he had died in a fall from his bunk. At the funeral home, his body was discovered to have fresh cigarette burns and bruises all over it. Open wounds from a whipping marred the corpse’s back. His skull was caved in. Changing their tune, the cops moved to charge his cellmates with murder.
On May 11, community activists who had been dealing with police brutality issues for a long time met with officials and left the meeting to find 500 furious community residents outside demanding action. A march was called on the spot and soon erupted into rock throwing and looting which went on into the evening.
The governor of Georgia, a foam-flecked racist named Lester Maddox, swung into action. He ordered out the state police to deal with the citizens he called “communists” and Black Panthers. He gave the cops orders to shoot to kill and even to raze “any building they’re in to its very foundation if necessary to get them out.” Maddox followed up by mobilizing 1,200 troops of the Georgia National Guard, who reached Augusta about 1:00 in the morning on the 12th.
By dawn on the 12th, the “Augusta riot” was over and over 80 people were wounded. Six Black men were dead. Most were young. None had been armed. All were hit in the back by shotgun blasts consistent with police riot guns.
Why do these ugly police murders belong in a series of articles about the campus uprising of 1970? To us at the time, it was obvious. These kids were murdered just like the kids at Kent State. Augusta was, in fact, one of the last of the great urban rebellions against racism that shook the US to its foundations in the ‘60s. Those rebellions had helped form our understanding that of the oppression of African Americans was far broader and deeper than a question of Jim Crow segregation in the south. Around the country, leaflets and posters about the Augusta murders started to appear within hours.
Sure, the riot wasn’t on campus, but the folks in Augusta’s segregated inner city knew that colleges around the country were erupting in protests and had in one case been met with bullets. And how was the Guard able to mobilize so quickly, if they were not already on alert to deal with campus unrest?
But even our steps in solidarity with the Augusta rebellion wound up butting up against the ugly realities of life in a society built on, and shot through with, white supremacy and white privilege. If you went through the month of May in 1970, you will probably always have a visceral response to the names of Sandy Scheuer, Bill Schroeder, Alison Krause and Jeffrey Miller. You may even recall that Philip Gibbs and James Earl Green were the two slaughtered at Jackson State. I hope this piece has jogged your memory about Augusta.
When this was first written in 2010, I was unable to find the names of the six whose lives were snatched from them by the cops forty years before. Now, thanks to filmmaker Banks Pappas, who is working on a documentary on the Augusta Six (video trailer here), I offer for your respect and remembrance:Mack Wilson, Jr.
They deserve to be recalled with the others as young people whose lives were taken in May ‘70 at one of the historic peaks of the long struggle to bring into being a better world...
John (Johnnie) Stokes
William Wright, Jr.
Charlie Mack Murphy
Sammie Larry McCullough
John Bennings
Click here to read this series from the beginning.
Click here to read the next installment.
May 8, 2011
Why Life in High School Is More Absurd Than Ever
New York City high schools have been crazy for the 22 years of my employment as a school social worker. But recently, the convergence of No Child Left Behind, the continuing economic meltdown and “managerial fetishism” have plunged them to new depths of absurdity, despair and destruction of human potential. (Being open-mined and un-doctrinaire, I picked up the term “managerial fetishism” from an op ed by John Podhoretz in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, which is happily provided free at school to enrich everyone’s intellectual development.)
My own post for the past nine years is a small high school in the Bronx —the borough which, except for a few counties on the Texas/Mexico border, is the poorest large county in the U.S. The school is art-themed, so stipulate that for us, the admissions process doesn’t select the book-ish, academically inclined kid but rather the spacey one who likes to doodle or graffiti, and our proportion of teens with special needs is high, around 25%. Over the years, guided by dedicated teachers, our students have produced some excellent art, a few graduates develop real passion and skill and annually go on to art colleges with full scholarships. However, we also have to cover the standard New York state curriculum and as the emphasis on test scores has ratcheted up, student engagement has plummeted.
Over-Testing and Disengagement
For many working class and poor students of color in NYC, disengagement begins with the third grade citywide tests. Children learn that these arbitrary exercises are something they will be judged on and that success on them is, in fact, the whole point of school. Most conclude after a couple of rounds that this is not a game they can win.
So by the time they get to high school, it’s already a recovery mission to interest and motivate them. Many students tell me, “I don’t do homework” and/or “I don’t study.” With study, they’ve concluded that they don’t remember the material anyway when the test comes, so why bother? With homework, they don’t see the return on it, they’re sick of school by 2:30 and don’t want to go home and think about school.
Besides, once puberty hits, their own world of interpersonal drama is so intense that nothing can compete with it—except possibly something that would lead to a job, an income and a future. Parents are often at work, if they have jobs, and overwhelmed and depressed if they don’t. A fair number have failed at school themselves, so don’t enforce homework completion.
Despair About Earning a Living
If the U.S. economy is improving, it sure hasn’t reached the Bronx yet. The effects of this are predictable but nonetheless tragic—and mainstream discourse never seems to draw a link to how young people perform (or don’t) in schools. Students tell me about relatives who had stable jobs, lost them from 2008 onward, and haven’t found another job since. One student reported of his mother, “She hasn’t found a job since she finished college.” More people are losing houses that the family once owned, or apartments that they rent, doubling up, becoming homeless. It’s been well documented that increases in parental income and financial stability positively affect student academic performance, so I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that decline in parental income and stability might have the opposite effect.
Just in the past couple of months, more students are reporting deaths of friends, usually 16- and 17-year-old young men, in gang violence, as paths to prosperity, achievement and social acceptance are extinguished. These are small and very locally based crews, not the nationally known ones, with shocking levels of violence—like taking a young man’s body out of the casket, in church, and shooting it up again.
A few years ago, when I’d ask students what kind of jobs they saw themselves doing as adults, I’d often hear stuff like veterinarian, forensic pathologist (obviously CSI, NCIS, Bones etc. are big), lawyer, architect--jobs that were not perhaps the most realistic possibilities for teens with low grades and reading levels. But at least they represented aspirations, and an opening for discussion, and one could get other jobs in those fields. Now I hear a sullen “I don’t know,” “ I never thought about it.” Making it more concrete, asking “Is there anybody you know, like in your family or friends, who have a job that you could see yourself doing,” I get “No.” Colleagues in other schools report similar conversations. In freshmen advisories, when teachers raise questions of college or careers, students now often say: “What’s the point of even getting a diploma? There’s no jobs out there.”
Terrorized Teachers
If students are not doing school work (because they don’t see school success leading to jobs), their teachers are working like maniacs-- because teachers have jobs and don’t want to lose them. Beyond their daily extra hours of planning lessons and grading papers, teachers are constantly bombarded with data (usually scores on various tests) that they are supposed to be reading on all of the 32 students they have in most classes. This is supposed to enable them to “differentiate instruction” for kids with various learning disabilities, and widely divergent reading levels etc.
This all intensified a few years as principals agreed to be judged on statistical indicators such as number of courses passed and four-year graduation rates, and transmitted that performance pressure to teachers. The managerial fetishism comes in with rising numbers of principals and even heads of school systems who have no prior experience working in public schools, based on the notion that a good manager can manage anything. A bunch of retired NYC teachers summed up the absurdity of that when they showed up at Hearst Publications to apply for the job vacated by Bloomberg’s chancellor appointee, Cathie Black (now, happily, resigned).
Note that I haven’t mentioned superintendents, the previous leaders of school districts in NYC. One reform under Chancellor Joel Klein was to separate the functions of supporting school development (i.e. professional development for staff at all levels) from monitoring/accountability, which are now based primarily on performance measures. So the presence of superintendents is not very evident and it’s not clear to most staff what they do. Principals complain that there’s no one organizing gatherings of principals to share best practices, and therefore principals are more isolated than ever. I heard of one principal saying to his secretary, upon hearing that his superintendent was on the line, “Take her name and number and tell her I’ll get back to her.”
Demoralized and Passive Students
Incidents of principals pressing teachers to raise Regents scores, or teachers giving test answers to students, have been documented. But what’s not well known is the perverse effect that the pressure on teachers and administrators has on students. Sensing that the staff are doing the worrying about whether they pass, students seem less motivated than ever. This is understandable on a human level, since there are few positive consequences (like job prospects) attached to doing well in school and, for students who are already used to school failure, no real negative ones. I was told by a 9th grader who received special education serves and had failed several classes: “I failed three classes but then I had credit recovery after school and the success academy at the end of the semester. I never thought high school would be so easy.”
This culture of declining student effort is also fed by the increased presence of 18- and 19-year old super-seniors who have actually given up on school, but often can’t admit this to themselves. In a better job market, they would have dropped out of school and gotten some kind of job. Now, they come to school but don’t go to most classes, get their free meals and Metrocard, hang out in hallways and bathrooms, and generally model bad behavior. They spend the day socializing with their friends. It sure beats hunting for non-existent jobs every day, or sitting around home getting yelled at by parents to go out and get a job.
What Is to Be Done?
It’s hard to talk about solutions for all this stuff, because they go way beyond the school system. I don’t believe that most public school officials and reformers have consciously elitist intentions. But structurally, in a hierarchical society, school failure serves to justify or legitimize why some people are jobless, or relegated to wage levels that nobody can actually live on. The almost universally acknowledged growth of inequality in income, wealth and life chances is a problem that pervades US society and permeates schools. Only in Lake Woebegone can all the children be above average.
So meaningful school reform, for the average urban student of color with whom I work, has to be tied to creating more jobs at a living wage. It’s unrealistic to expect 14-year-olds who have long turned off to school to become motivated to acquire knowledge for its own sake. School work has to have some connection to a future job and income. Creating those living wage jobs will require self-organization and mobilizing on the part of students, parents, communities--all of us.
April 24, 2011
A Seed Catalog Must-Read on Food, Farming and Socialism
It's early spring planting time up at Dody's in the Northwest corner of Connecticut and we've been putting in lettuces, radishes, peas, carrots and on and on, and piling some lovely aged manure from Jay's cows around the garlic which went in last October and is now about 8" tall. It's work, serious work, and it demands serious experience and skills (which I am do not, unfortunately, yet possess).
Late winter/early spring is also time for seed catalogs, which farmers and gardeners flip through until they are dogeared. They are written to appeal to the senses. Johnny's Selected Seeds of Winslow, ME, has lovingly photographed vegetables that literally make the mouth water.
Fedco, also Maine-based, prints theirs, all 138 pages of it, on newsprint and eschews photographs ("We assume, however, that you will want to spend your money for high quality seeds rather than high quality pictures..."). However, their verbal descriptions are equally sensuous: delicious, firm, luscious, young, tender, deep, yielding, juicy, thick, hard, long, sweet, wild, musky, slender, creamy, &c.
But I digress. Never mind the appeal to the senses. These catalogs have some crucial lessons for revolutionaries and socialists. Our small forces are concentrated in urban areas, our organizing efforts in workplaces, on campuses, inside communities of color, among immigrants in cities and the denser 'burbs, and, alas, within a too-often inward facing left. As Dody often and forcefully reminds me, we are dangerously blind to--or worse, dismissive of--a critical component of any serious effort to create revolutionary change in this country, the folks in rural communities across the US.
Let's take the two companies mentioned above. For starters, Johnny's proudly bills itself as a employee-owned enterprise. Fedco is equally emphatic about being a cooperative. Both are relentless opponents of the soil-depleting, petroleum-dependent, antibiotic-reliant, gene-patenting monster that is capitalist agribusiness and both are part of the burgeoning, yeasty movement toward organic, sustainable, locally-based farming and eating.
Organic Growers Supply is a part of the Fedco enterprise focused on providing farmers and gardeners with non-cropseed inputs--ground cover seed, tools, irrigation systems, fertilizer, books. David Shipman, OGS coordinator, opens their section of this spring's Fedco catalog with a five paragraph introduction that I wish I could make required reading for 2011.Life is a communal activity. Mycorrhizae in the soil entwine with the roots of plants bringing water and minerals to the plants and being fed in return. The insects and worms in the soil break matter down, releasing nutrients for all to use. Bacteria and fungi colonize the roots and leaves of plants and protect them from disease, all the while feeding themselves and thriving. Far from being a competition where every winner means that someone else has lost, the world of the soil embodies the ideal of a mutual-benefit society. But perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into how nature works when trying to understand people. It often leads to some pretty far-fetched theories. However, I can’t resist comparing the “nature red in tooth and claw” outlook of social Darwinism, which seems to be making a resurgence, with the advances in discoveries about soil-web ecology and the role that cooperation plays in biology and botany.
A few points on this piece. First, let me just stipulate that I find Shipman's concessions to anti-immigrant sentiment pretty dicey, to put it politely. That said, he takes a broad argument to a sharp conclusion in a very short space, and does so in language far clearer and more accessible than that found in too many left publications.
A list of the 400 richest people in America was released recently showing that those few people controlled 1.4 trillion dollars. In a time of 10% unemployment and rising poverty, their wealth grew by 8% last year. These same people are fighting to retain the outrageous tax breaks they got during the Bush years, using their surrogates and lackeys on Fox News and in the Tea Party movement to vilify and smear President Obama. The furor over the Islamic Cultural Center in lower Manhattan, the ravings that global warming is a hoax, that marriage is under assault, phony issue after phony issue, all trotted out to distract us from the reality that our lives and prosperity are being sacrificed to increase the already obscene and pointless wealth of the few.
It’s time to take our country back. Our roots are planted in our communities and to be nourished we must provide nourishment to others, not junk food and junk politics. People are angry because they are frustrated and hungry. When we are frustrated we often act irrationally (see Tea Party, above). We use junk ideas and junk food to try to make ourselves feel better. People need real nourishment, both mental and physical. Our communities and farms can provide it.
So what do we do? Provide food: food for thought. When people want to send all the undocumented workers back say, “OK, but you’d better start a garden, because nobody will be picking vegetables in California.” Point out that when the processing plants that hire undocumented workers get closed down, people better start producing more local meat and poultry because there won’t be any meat in the grocery stores. Provide real food as well. Expand your garden, start that farm you’ve dreamed about, plant another community garden, organize a farmers market. Don’t sling mud, hand out heirloom tomatoes. Instead of Twinkies and Kool-Aid, cider and whole grain bread.
Socialism has become a dirty word, but Marx’s “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” seems like common sense to me. Building the soil and building a just and sustainable society take time, patience and a willingness to work together for the benefit of all. We took a long time to dig the hole we’re in, but let’s fill it with the compost of good ideas and right living even if it takes a while to get back to level ground.
Another reason for the editors of the Monthly Proletarian Vanguard or whatever to eat their hearts out: Fedco mails out many tens of thousands of copies of their catalog, and sharing (at least four people have perused Dody's copy) plus visits to their website push their readership well into the six figures.
Finally, dear FotM reader, while this is likely news to you, it has not escaped the attention of the forces of darkness and ignorance. Several right wing blogs have comment threads with titles like "Fedco seed company promotes Marxism" full of foam-flecked denunciations and calls for boycott.
Think maybe we should be spreading this useful message ourselves?
