Letters From the Third-World
GW College Socialists Respond To "A Lack Of A Workers' Party."
Patrick Ford
3/6/07 | Correspondence
As you may have expected, the GW College Socialists feel obliged to comment on your article [“A Lack of a Workers’ Party” November 2006] in the GW Patriot regarding the College Socialists meeting you attended. Given the unprofessional smear journalism that is so characteristic of the publication, we want to congratulate you on your article in meeting precisely those standards. And despite your assurance that the GW Patriot was not out to bash the College Socialists, we assure you that there was no amount of surprise on our end when your article proved otherwise.
If the article was supposed to be a rebuke of socialism, it is ultimately unclear how the size of the meeting is relevant to this, being more a reflection of the political pulse at the George Washington University than of the merits of socialism. Nor is it clear what the perceived personal demeanor of individual members at the meeting has to do with repudiating socialism, but most readers will probably find those observations you made to be perfectly appropriate within the realm of such quality smear journalism. Speaking of smear journalism, “name calling” is a rather peculiar charge to levy against the College Socialists and our “whacky” ideas, as you call them.
On the one hand it is obvious that you were – to say the least – unimpressed with Michele’s participation in the protest against the Minutemen (a group that recruits members directly from the neo-Nazi National Alliance but somehow one that you apparently feel avoids racist scapegoating) at Columbia University, but you were also troubled at “how many DC students are being denied their already poor public education” as a result. Certainly it is unheard of for teachers to take a day off - perhaps as unheard of as is the truth within the pages of your publication, particularly given the fact that Columbia students protested the Minutemen in New York City, while Michele is a resident of Maryland, and was not present in New York at the time of that protest. That is something your readers would have known had you cared to actually write what you actually heard at our meeting, as opposed merely making things up. Given the laughable absurdity in this “argument,” it is probably safe to say that the only *one* at the meeting left with this question was Hunter Paterson. And after reading this article, rational thinkers will more likely be left questioning the legitimacy of the GW Patriot and its staff of esteemed writers (as opposed to College Socialists), finding it impossible to take the GW Patriot seriously.
You also slanderously insinuate that we espouse an ideology “responsible for the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of people.” Assuming you are referring to the bloody repression committed by Stalin, we remind you that we denounced Stalinism at length at our meeting and thoroughly debunked his wrongfully ascribed Marxist credentials. Perhaps you weren’t paying attention to statements that couldn’t be used to discredit the College Socialists, or the bulk of that discussion occurred after your premature departure 30 minutes before the meeting’s conclusion. Stalin was a ruthless dictator – a political opportunist who used the rhetoric of Marxism to further his thrust into power. He deceptively displayed his totalitarian designs under the banner of socialism and a failure to recognize this fact signals a failure to recognize the glaring incongruity between Stalinist governance and actual Marxist theory. Also, in your defense of capitalism, you are in an odd position to be talking about “the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of people.” We shouldn’t need to remind you that modern capitalism emerged in a Europe whose industrialization was sustained by the raw materials extracted from the Americas by virtue of the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of Africans and indigenous peoples.
Lastly, we want to thank you for reiterating some of our assessments of the capitalist system: indeed, our literature, books, banners and shirts are a product of capitalist production, just as your education, the food you purchase, the entertainment you enjoy, and the clothes you wear are all provided for you by individuals laboring under the yoke of capitalist property relations. The point of Marxism isn’t to “avoid” the capitalist economy. The point of Marxism is to be able to understand and grapple with, in all its complexity, the evils of a social system whereby the production of the most magnificent literature, clothing, books, etc., etc., is always and everywhere hampered, undermined, and degraded by the exploitative and unequal conditions under which such commodities are be produced. To argue that, without the war, poverty, racial and sexual oppression which everywhere capitalism has produced and requires to satisfy the interests of its bourgeoisie we would be without books, banners, and shirts, is utter nonsense.
We recommend to the author of this failed attempt at journalistic reporting and analysis an urgent visit to the GW writing center where he can be briefed in detail upon such topics as “libel”, “mis-qouting”, and “slander”. To be most effective this should be combined with a regiment of weekly conversations with actual Black, Latino, and Arab people, who we presume would be best qualified to discuss the content of their own experiences with the state of racism in America.
As a petty and relatively juvenile pupae of bigoted, right wing propaganda, we do not feel it is worth our time to go through the cost and effort of suing your paper for libel or slander. However, for the offenses shown, we do hereby formally challenge your politics and ideology to the following political duel: A moderated public debate, before an audience of GW students and anyone else who is interested in attending, to be held on campus on any weeknight after classes end (say, 7pm or later) that pits any speaker of your choosing against any speaker of our choosing, to debate the following topic: “Socialism VS Capitalism”. Failure by cowardice of yours to comply with this formal challenge means you will be automatically disqualified and we will win the debate by default. We will also in such a case politically cement our victory by covering the campus with highly visible flyers drawing attention to your lack of confidence in your own professed politics.
Your reply can be sent to us at either of the two addresses at the bottom of this email. We also look forward to reading the apologetic retraction of this article in the next issue of the GW Patriot.
Sincerely,
Brian Tierney, btier@gwu.edu
and
Christian Wright, cawright@gwu.edu
GW College Socialists- International Socialist Organization
To Which The Patriot Replies:
The Patriot editors would like to thank the GW Socialists for their letter, written in response to the piece “A Lack of a Worker’s Party” by Hunter Patterson. And before we respond to them, we would also like to apologize for an error in Mr. Patterson’s piece. Patterson recalled a story about Michelle, a DC school teacher, and wrote, “She started off her rant bragging about how she led a protest to stop a ‘Racist Vigilante’ Minuteman from speaking at Columbia University and how proud she was of that protest. One was left questioning how many DC students are being denied their already poor public education just so this teacher can fight for ‘immigrant rights.’” Patterson reported incorrectly that Michelle was personally involved in the protest at Columbia. Apparently, when Michelle used the pronoun “we” to speak in solidarity with her comrades who were actually denying an individual’s free-speech rights at Columbia, Patterson misunderstood whether she was physically present. We apologize for this confusion and retract that statement.
As amusing as it would be to get sued for libel, we hope this retraction satisfies them. We would, however, like to encourage Brian Tierney and Christian Wright to follow through on their threat of suing The Patriot for slander. Since slander is spoken, not written, we are fairly certain this publication can beat the rap. No doubt they were a bit upset about the content of Mr. Patterson’s article, as was expected. It didn’t take long for them to break into their usual nonsense, as they write that “capitalism emerged in a Europe whose industrialization was sustained by the raw materials extracted from the Americas by virtue of the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of Africans and indigenous peoples.” Did we miss something? Where did The Patriot defend slavery and murder? The belief in individual freedom upon which capitalism is based is just as antithetical to slavery as it is to the brutal tyrannies of socialist regimes. We’re glad that they find Stalin’s slaughter of forty million to be a bit unseemly, but what about the massacres committed by Castro, Guevera, Mao and Pol Pot? Apparently the veritable encyclopedia of stories of failed economies, gulags and killing fields is not a sufficient to debunk socialism for Tierney or Wright.
What was completely lost on the young revolutionaries was the main point of Mr. Patterson’s article—that the GW Socialists are a wholly illegitimate organization and are, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. Patterson was not greeted at the club meeting with the usual pompous, verbose, and pseudo-intellectual rhetoric typical of university professor types. Instead, he encountered the angry, revolutionary strain—the type of socialist that giggles while citing Noam Chomsky and Fidel Castro in conversation and wears black army boots to demonstrate their revolutionary kitsch, all the while feeling just fine about wearing clothes produced by laborers in third-world countries. In other words, they are living, breathing stereotypical hypocrites.
These defenders of the proletariat really were “name-callers” and “race-baiters” in every sense of those phrases. In being an organization that feels more comfortable quoting Hugo Chavez than George Orwell, the ideology they espouse is exactly the type that Patterson refers to as being responsible for the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of people.
Regarding Tierney and Wright’s demand for a debate about socialism and capitalism, we’re a little bit skeptical of the debate’s relevance. Some might find it as ridiculous to debate socialism seventeen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall as it would be to debate fascism in 1962. There are, thank goodness, no GW Fascist groups to provide the socialists with a counterpart (although fascism and socialism are really two sides of the same authoritarian coin), so it looks like classical American conservatives and libertarians are the only ones they can look to for a fight.
So, we’re open to the idea of debating the socialists. But regardless of what happens with the debate, please poster the campus with fliers about The Patriot. We are strapped for cash and in desperate need of all the free advertising we can get.
On behalf of the humbled GW Patriot editors,
Patrick Ford
Senior Editor
If the article was supposed to be a rebuke of socialism, it is ultimately unclear how the size of the meeting is relevant to this, being more a reflection of the political pulse at the George Washington University than of the merits of socialism. Nor is it clear what the perceived personal demeanor of individual members at the meeting has to do with repudiating socialism, but most readers will probably find those observations you made to be perfectly appropriate within the realm of such quality smear journalism. Speaking of smear journalism, “name calling” is a rather peculiar charge to levy against the College Socialists and our “whacky” ideas, as you call them.
On the one hand it is obvious that you were – to say the least – unimpressed with Michele’s participation in the protest against the Minutemen (a group that recruits members directly from the neo-Nazi National Alliance but somehow one that you apparently feel avoids racist scapegoating) at Columbia University, but you were also troubled at “how many DC students are being denied their already poor public education” as a result. Certainly it is unheard of for teachers to take a day off - perhaps as unheard of as is the truth within the pages of your publication, particularly given the fact that Columbia students protested the Minutemen in New York City, while Michele is a resident of Maryland, and was not present in New York at the time of that protest. That is something your readers would have known had you cared to actually write what you actually heard at our meeting, as opposed merely making things up. Given the laughable absurdity in this “argument,” it is probably safe to say that the only *one* at the meeting left with this question was Hunter Paterson. And after reading this article, rational thinkers will more likely be left questioning the legitimacy of the GW Patriot and its staff of esteemed writers (as opposed to College Socialists), finding it impossible to take the GW Patriot seriously.
You also slanderously insinuate that we espouse an ideology “responsible for the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of people.” Assuming you are referring to the bloody repression committed by Stalin, we remind you that we denounced Stalinism at length at our meeting and thoroughly debunked his wrongfully ascribed Marxist credentials. Perhaps you weren’t paying attention to statements that couldn’t be used to discredit the College Socialists, or the bulk of that discussion occurred after your premature departure 30 minutes before the meeting’s conclusion. Stalin was a ruthless dictator – a political opportunist who used the rhetoric of Marxism to further his thrust into power. He deceptively displayed his totalitarian designs under the banner of socialism and a failure to recognize this fact signals a failure to recognize the glaring incongruity between Stalinist governance and actual Marxist theory. Also, in your defense of capitalism, you are in an odd position to be talking about “the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of people.” We shouldn’t need to remind you that modern capitalism emerged in a Europe whose industrialization was sustained by the raw materials extracted from the Americas by virtue of the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of Africans and indigenous peoples.
Lastly, we want to thank you for reiterating some of our assessments of the capitalist system: indeed, our literature, books, banners and shirts are a product of capitalist production, just as your education, the food you purchase, the entertainment you enjoy, and the clothes you wear are all provided for you by individuals laboring under the yoke of capitalist property relations. The point of Marxism isn’t to “avoid” the capitalist economy. The point of Marxism is to be able to understand and grapple with, in all its complexity, the evils of a social system whereby the production of the most magnificent literature, clothing, books, etc., etc., is always and everywhere hampered, undermined, and degraded by the exploitative and unequal conditions under which such commodities are be produced. To argue that, without the war, poverty, racial and sexual oppression which everywhere capitalism has produced and requires to satisfy the interests of its bourgeoisie we would be without books, banners, and shirts, is utter nonsense.
We recommend to the author of this failed attempt at journalistic reporting and analysis an urgent visit to the GW writing center where he can be briefed in detail upon such topics as “libel”, “mis-qouting”, and “slander”. To be most effective this should be combined with a regiment of weekly conversations with actual Black, Latino, and Arab people, who we presume would be best qualified to discuss the content of their own experiences with the state of racism in America.
As a petty and relatively juvenile pupae of bigoted, right wing propaganda, we do not feel it is worth our time to go through the cost and effort of suing your paper for libel or slander. However, for the offenses shown, we do hereby formally challenge your politics and ideology to the following political duel: A moderated public debate, before an audience of GW students and anyone else who is interested in attending, to be held on campus on any weeknight after classes end (say, 7pm or later) that pits any speaker of your choosing against any speaker of our choosing, to debate the following topic: “Socialism VS Capitalism”. Failure by cowardice of yours to comply with this formal challenge means you will be automatically disqualified and we will win the debate by default. We will also in such a case politically cement our victory by covering the campus with highly visible flyers drawing attention to your lack of confidence in your own professed politics.
Your reply can be sent to us at either of the two addresses at the bottom of this email. We also look forward to reading the apologetic retraction of this article in the next issue of the GW Patriot.
Sincerely,
Brian Tierney, btier@gwu.edu
and
Christian Wright, cawright@gwu.edu
GW College Socialists- International Socialist Organization
To Which The Patriot Replies:
The Patriot editors would like to thank the GW Socialists for their letter, written in response to the piece “A Lack of a Worker’s Party” by Hunter Patterson. And before we respond to them, we would also like to apologize for an error in Mr. Patterson’s piece. Patterson recalled a story about Michelle, a DC school teacher, and wrote, “She started off her rant bragging about how she led a protest to stop a ‘Racist Vigilante’ Minuteman from speaking at Columbia University and how proud she was of that protest. One was left questioning how many DC students are being denied their already poor public education just so this teacher can fight for ‘immigrant rights.’” Patterson reported incorrectly that Michelle was personally involved in the protest at Columbia. Apparently, when Michelle used the pronoun “we” to speak in solidarity with her comrades who were actually denying an individual’s free-speech rights at Columbia, Patterson misunderstood whether she was physically present. We apologize for this confusion and retract that statement.
As amusing as it would be to get sued for libel, we hope this retraction satisfies them. We would, however, like to encourage Brian Tierney and Christian Wright to follow through on their threat of suing The Patriot for slander. Since slander is spoken, not written, we are fairly certain this publication can beat the rap. No doubt they were a bit upset about the content of Mr. Patterson’s article, as was expected. It didn’t take long for them to break into their usual nonsense, as they write that “capitalism emerged in a Europe whose industrialization was sustained by the raw materials extracted from the Americas by virtue of the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of Africans and indigenous peoples.” Did we miss something? Where did The Patriot defend slavery and murder? The belief in individual freedom upon which capitalism is based is just as antithetical to slavery as it is to the brutal tyrannies of socialist regimes. We’re glad that they find Stalin’s slaughter of forty million to be a bit unseemly, but what about the massacres committed by Castro, Guevera, Mao and Pol Pot? Apparently the veritable encyclopedia of stories of failed economies, gulags and killing fields is not a sufficient to debunk socialism for Tierney or Wright.
What was completely lost on the young revolutionaries was the main point of Mr. Patterson’s article—that the GW Socialists are a wholly illegitimate organization and are, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. Patterson was not greeted at the club meeting with the usual pompous, verbose, and pseudo-intellectual rhetoric typical of university professor types. Instead, he encountered the angry, revolutionary strain—the type of socialist that giggles while citing Noam Chomsky and Fidel Castro in conversation and wears black army boots to demonstrate their revolutionary kitsch, all the while feeling just fine about wearing clothes produced by laborers in third-world countries. In other words, they are living, breathing stereotypical hypocrites.
These defenders of the proletariat really were “name-callers” and “race-baiters” in every sense of those phrases. In being an organization that feels more comfortable quoting Hugo Chavez than George Orwell, the ideology they espouse is exactly the type that Patterson refers to as being responsible for the enslavement and murder of hundreds of millions of people.
Regarding Tierney and Wright’s demand for a debate about socialism and capitalism, we’re a little bit skeptical of the debate’s relevance. Some might find it as ridiculous to debate socialism seventeen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall as it would be to debate fascism in 1962. There are, thank goodness, no GW Fascist groups to provide the socialists with a counterpart (although fascism and socialism are really two sides of the same authoritarian coin), so it looks like classical American conservatives and libertarians are the only ones they can look to for a fight.
So, we’re open to the idea of debating the socialists. But regardless of what happens with the debate, please poster the campus with fliers about The Patriot. We are strapped for cash and in desperate need of all the free advertising we can get.
On behalf of the humbled GW Patriot editors,
Patrick Ford
Senior Editor
Be the first to comment on this story