Once Again-For the Umpteenth Time There Really Is No Honor Among Thieves -Just Ask Robert Mitchum A Guy Who Should Know-Jane Greer And Robert Mitchum’s “The Big Steal” (1949)-A Film Review

Once Again-For the Umpteenth Time There Really Is No Honor Among Thieves -Just Ask Robert Mitchum A Guy Who Should Know-Jane Greer And Robert Mitchum’s “The Big Steal” (1949)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Big Steal, starring Jane Greer, Robetr Micthum, William Bendix, 1949

This film review of The Big Steal, an encore performance by Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum who lighted the screen on fire in their dance of death in the film adaptation of Out Of The Past (along with a young Kirk Douglas as the fall guy, or at least the guy who fell-first) was supposed to go to Seth Garth who did the original review of the latter film and was to compare the energies of the two filmed performances. After we, Seth is something like my mentor even though I have my by-line now after taking down old-time film reviewer Sam Lowell a peg or two, and site manager Greg Green watched this film one evening Seth told us that perhaps I was better able to write this one since he would be in mourning for his lost youth when this pair were as likely to kill each other as to go under what he called “the silky sheets” and what I called having sex. Seth said he knew that Jane and Robert had gone soft after their last set-to and while he liked this film, he had some psychological energy committed to their being star-crossed lovers for eternity.     

I could see what he meant if I didn’t fully understand why since he has written tons of reviews of films where things got switched up in the sequels or another film. But I liked the film, liked the fast-paced energy that seems to be missing in many of today’s action-adventure pseudo-noir productions. Before I go on though Seth insists that I explain quickly what he couldn’t face doing the review. Simply put in that Old Of The Past  which also passed through sunny Mexico as here Jane and Robert became lovers, lovers who should have gotten the hell out of Dodge when old Kirk came looking for them, came wondering a little why he was the fall guy, why he big-time mobster was made to look like a chump when they fled without him getting what he wanted from Robert whom he hired to track Jane down and bring her back to Reno. But the biggest problem was that Seth couldn’t get over Jane’s outstanding performance there as a gun-simple femme fatale who shot first and asked questions later.

The reader does not have worry about Jane here as sedate and street smart Joan shooting every guy in sight since while she starts out not trusting Duke, yeah, Duke Halliday, you may have seen the headline where he got robbed of an Army payroll and looked to be the patsy to take the fall. He will get well by recovering the dough and meting out a little rough plebian justice while doing so. See the Army, the Army in the person of an officer named Bill Bendix who had spent a career cleaning up the Army’s messes, thought that Duke, beautiful broad-shouldered and barren-chested Duke with the jutted jaw that drove my mother crazy when she used to go to the Saturday matinees to see Robert Mitchum what she called strut his stuff, had been part of the scam, had been involved in the payroll robbery.  

That premise sets everything else in motion down sunny Mexico way where Duke to save his hide has gone looking for the bad guys who did him wrong. Mainly a guy named Jim Fiske who from one report was from one of the branches of the 19^th century robber baron Fiske family and so an armed robbery or two didn’t seem that out of the ordinary. This Fiske though was a slippery character and led Duke a merry chase. Had led dear Joan up a tree as well with some scam he ran on her to get some dough for whatever reason con artists use to grab dough. So that sets up the paring of Duke and Joan looking to get a little rough justice in the world on their own. Set them off across Mexico in pursuit of Fiske in the meantime and dodging and being followed by Bill Bendix. See Fiske is looking to get well by unloading his cash on a fence out in some isolated desert who will give him a percentage of the value no questions asked and that would be that.

Here is where the “no honor among thieves comes in.” Duke was slated to be the fall guy, the guy to take the big step-off if necessary, since Bill Bendix was in cahoots with Fiske. Nice right. Nicer still is that the two confederates didn’t trust each other and rightfully so since hard-pressed Bill facing some cheapjack pension and nothing more wanted the whole bundle for himself. As if Brother Fiske. No go, Joe. After he blasted Fiske Duke and he tussled, and he lost. And Duke and milady Joan walk off into the sunset holding hands. That has to be better than Robert taking two or three quick gun-simple slugs from an irate Jane when she realized that Robert has called copper on her in Out Of The Past. Still a good film although looking at a photograph from that film Seth showed me after I took this assignment when he wanted to show why he didn’t want of Ms. Greer looking very sexily provocative makes me see his point a little better.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –

As The 100^th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –

By Seth Garth

A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100^th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100^th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.

Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath    

By Lenny Lynch

I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20^th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios. 

I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.         

Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding,  would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.

Pittsburgh Stands United With Tree of Life - Unite to fight Anti-Semitism and The Far Right Socialist Alternative

Pittsburgh Stands United With Tree of Life - Unite to fight Anti-Semitism and The Far Right

Socialist Alternative<newsletter@socialistalternative.org>

10/31/2018 1:58 PM

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View this email in your browser Pittsburgh Stands United With Tree of Life Unite to Fight Anti-Semitism and The Far Right Read Online: https://goo.gl/hFu97e On Tuesday, October 30, after this article was first published, Trump visited Pittsburgh. Tens of thousands gathered in Squirrel Hill to protest Trump, even diverting his motorcade. The main message of the organizers was “Words Matter” pointing out Trump’s encouragement of racism, homophobia, and violence. Other signs included “President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all immigrants” and “Trump, you have blood on your hands.” On Saturday morning, October 27, a man shouting anti-Semitic slogans opened fire at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the historically Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Eleven people were killed during the morning shabbat service and during a bris, a ceremony welcoming a baby to the Jewish community. This horrific shooting is part of an unmistakable, steady rise in the expression of open anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and white supremacist ideology in the United States, albeit by a small minority. This trend has accelerated since 2016 and the election of Donald Trump, and is linked to an increasing number of hate crimes against religious minorities, LGBTQ people, people of color, women, immigrants, as well as activists and other targets. Trump’s response to this recent hate crime in Pittsburgh has been to blame the victims, to argue that arming your place of worship to the teeth leads to “far better” results. However, terrorist acts such as this are enabled and encouraged by the attacks on working and oppressed people by Trump and by his far-right supporters. They are a logical extension of the anti-Semitism, white supremacy, and other hateful ideologies perpetuated by the ruling class for centuries to divide and pit ordinary people against each other. The corporate media and the right wing are seeking to paint the left as the source of anti-Semitism. Kellyanne Conway blamed “anti-religious sentiment” for the Pittsburgh attack. Activists who oppose the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians are given the label of anti-Semitic. However the Pittsburgh shooting shows that anti-Semitism comes overwhelmingly from the right wing. Trump bears responsibility for enabling anti-Semitism. It is not anti-Semitic to oppose the policies of the Israeli government and we reject those claims as well as the fraudulent attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour Party, of being “anti-Semitic.” Historically, it is the working class and socialists that have fought anti-Semitism and fascism. While many of us may be shocked to see the diseased ways of thinking of the past century flare up again today, this kind of rot in our world today is present because of the same decaying social system that gave rise to the horrors of the 20th century including two world wars, fascism and the Holocaust. Capitalism rests on a foundation of genocide and oppression, and feeds on racism, sexism, and xenophobia in order to divide and disenfranchise us while delivering prosperity to a wealthy minority. To crush anti-Semitism and white supremacy, we must not only defeat the dangerous ideology of the far-right, but also dismantle the system which gave rise to it. Trump’s Right-Wing Populism Fuels Hate While Trump pursues a pro-corporate agenda designed to further enrich the big-business elite, he distracts from it by sowing division and stoking fears along lines of race, immigration, and religion. This right-wing populism is a feature of politics in many countries as big business continues with brutal attacks on workers’ rights and funding for social services, even as the vast majority of the “recovery” since 2008 has gone to the richest 1%. Trump’s recent embrace of his “nationalist” label is incredibly telling. His victory in 2016 which was based in part on fomenting open racism, xenophobia, and misogyny clearly emboldened the most despicable elements of the far-right. This culminated in the white nationalist mobilization in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, which resulted in the death of Heather Heyer. The far-right was delivered a serious blow by the protests at Charlottesville and after, showing that mass movements are effective against their hate. Another World Is Possible We cannot limit our resistance to the ballot box; we cannot rely on the corporate-dominated two-party system to stand up for all working and oppressed people. The Republican Party enables anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, and xenophobia when not outright stoking it, while the Democratic Party offers little resistance to the right’s vicious agenda. In fact, their failed centrist, establishment politics of the past several decades have been the soil in which right-wing extremism has taken root. There is a growing mood to fight back against racism, sexism, and homophobia. Recent struggles like the McDonald’s workers’ strike against sexual harassment and the millions led by high school students who walked out against gun violence this year show that more and more people want to fight through collective action. The solidarity vigil held in Pittsburgh on Saturday brought out 2,000 people and was called for and led by high school students in the neighborhood who felt it was important to act immediately. As socialists we’re incredibly encouraged by this, and fully believe that a mass movement of people standing against the rise of bigotry and far-right violence can win. The most effective way to fight the far-right is not through isolated actions or street fighting, but through mass mobilizations against them. The response in Boston to the Charlottesville massacre – a demonstration of over 40,000 that shut down and drowned out an alt-right “free speech” rally – pushed the far-right back into internet forums. Unions and anti-racist organizations have a critical role to play in mobilizing the broadest forces possible against the far right and their hate-filled agenda. The same mobilizations are needed to fight back against Trump and his agenda. On Tuesday, he plans to visit Pittsburgh, and will surely be met with large demonstrations of people who refuse to allow him to twist this tragedy he helped create for his own purposes. As society continues to polarize amidst a deepening social and political crisis, we must build mass movements of working and oppressed people; we must unite in the streets, on campuses, and in our workplaces against racism, sexism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism. The Muslim community of Pittsburgh has already set a powerful example of solidarity through fundraising for Tree of Life and offering support and protection to the congregation going forward. Socialist Alternative stands in solidarity with the Tree of Life congregation and the Jewish community. We must do everything in our power to shut down this system that encourages white supremacist violence. Please check SocialistAlternative.org regularly for the socialist analysis, strategy, and tactics needed to build movements to defeat the billionaire class. Our pages build on the proven strategies that won two historic victories for Kshama Sawant in Seattle. Our editorial team brings the experience of leading the fight for $15 to its first major victory in the nation in Seattle in 2014 and then in Minneapolis last year. Subscribe to receive our print or electronic newspaper. Donate Today Copyright © 2018 Socialist Alternative, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up for updates from Socialist Alternative. Our mailing address is: Socialist Alternative PO Box 150457 Brooklyn, NY 11215 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

In Boston - Cosehcha protest 11/17 in defense of caravan

Cosehcha protest 11/17 in defense of caravan

DAVID KEIL<bmdc@lists.riseup.net>

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https://www.facebook.com/events/1001323993408270/

Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx-From The Archives- The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx

Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx-From The Archives- The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx

Workers Vanguard No. 1134	18 May 2018

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx

(Quote of the Week)

May 5 marked the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth. The excerpts below are taken from the beginning and conclusion of the Communist Manifesto, a seminal work that Marx co-wrote with his lifelong comrade, Friedrich Engels.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes....

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat....

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers....

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

In Honor Of The 150th Anniversary Of The Publication Of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” (1868)-A Book Review

In Honor Of The 150^th Anniversary Of The Publication Of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” (1868)-A Book Review

Book Review

By Alden Riley

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, Roberts Brothers, 1868

I thought things were supposed to change around here with the changing of the guard, otherwise known at least among the younger writers as the purge and exile of the previous site manager Allan Jackson and his replacement by Greg Green after a bitter internal fight with no holds barred and no prisoners taken in the fall of 2017. The idea was to let the younger writers spread their wings, learn to fly and not do dreary pieces like the 24/7/365 1960s nostalgia hippie revival regime under Jackson.  And for a while there was a breath of fresh air around the place, around the formerly hostile water cooler which drives the social life of many operations and this one is no exception. Then Greg, I think to show he was his own boss, his own operator came up with the silly, silly even to Will Bradley who originally presented idea before thinking better of it, that to appeal to a younger, eventually non-existent audience, that the publication would feature film reviews of Marvel/DC comic book characters gone to screen, serious analysis of rap and pop music, and review graphic novels.  Over the top silly stuff since that phantom audience wouldn’t touch a high-brow publication if they were paid to do so and even then it would be Seth’s six, two and even that would rouse them. They get their ideas, information, style elsewhere.

We younger writers in our turn rebelled at that fantastic imposition and Greg retreated mostly gracefully under the blowback and let us do our own thing. Then Allan Jackson whom we all though had perished, gone to pot, dope pot, was working for Mitt Romney out in Utah Mormon country, running a whorehouse with an old flame in East Bay or living with an old former hometown corner boy turned “out” drag queen in San Francisco depending on which rumor you believed at the moment, showed up to do a series of encore presentations of material he had produced over the years in order to get back that older audience which had sustained the publication through good times and bad. Invited by Greg via old geezer Sam Lowell and the Editorial Board. Something has happened to Greg since Allan’s return, maybe he is under the Svengali influence of the man but now we are all expected to write “outside the box” meaning material that we know damn little about and could care even less about. Hence I have been assigned to do a book review of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women in honor of the 150^th anniversary of its original publication.         

There is where things have gone awry with Greg’s I am sure Allan-inspired approach. The only thing I knew about Louisa May Alcott, and this second-hand through Sandy Salmon when he was Senior Film Editor and I was his associate editor was that her father, Bronson Alcott, was a wild man, had run amok at Brooks Farm, the holy of holies in the pre-Civil War Transcendentalist movement, you know Emerson, Thoreau and other Buddha-like figures who ran around Cambridge, mainly Brattle Street telling naked truths naked. Bronson has run through whatever dough he had from his inheritance and had fathered, some say illegimately, a bunch of children by various female denizens of that isolated farm including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife and had had an affair with Herman Melville’s brother. Such things are hard to pin down but all I know for sure is that he claimed Louisa May and three other young women as his children. Lacking DNA testing who knows. So old Bronson was a certified wild man no doubt but that was hardly enough knowledge to help ‘the hook” of this famous book which in its time was a best-seller and a standard for young girls and young women’s bedside reading.

Here is where things get weird though Sandy who knew Allan Jackson when they both were much younger and had worked the free-lance stringer racket we all go through before getting our so-called cushy by-lines at American Film Gazette asked him what sources I should go to for a look at the lingering influence of the book on modern girls and young women. Told Sandy to tell me to ask my sister, Ellen, when she had read the book and what she had thought of it. Here is the honest truth Ellen had never heard of the book, didn’t know who or what I was talking about and when I told her the outline of the story she laughed, smirked and laughed saying “are you kidding” who had time to read such old-time melodramas. Failing there I figured that I would work my way back so I mentioned the book I was reviewing to my mother who told me that my grandmother had read her the book at night before bed but she didn’t remember much except there were four sisters who grew up and got married or something like that and were good wives except one who died young of some strange disease. She said ask my grandmother. Bingo. Grandma quoted me chapter and verse without hesitation until I asked how the book influenced her. She told me those were different times, more restrictive times even against her growing up times in the 1930s so she would have to pass on the influence question. She was only a little shocked that my sister knew nada about the book and my mother only a little more. So I am going to take a stab and say as a 150^th anniversary honor-women you have come a long way since those homebody marriage child-rearing times.   

I had to think awhile, had to ask Seth Garth who is good at this kind of question and his old flame Leslie Dumont, both fellow writers here what was it about the novel that would have appealed to young girls and women up at least until my grandmother’s growing up times. And why when I later asked some other female contemporaries they came up as blank as my sister on even having heard of the book. Leslie said it best, or at least better. Those were male dominated times and so even the least amount of spunk, independence  by say Jo, who is the character in the book who pretty much represents Louisa May’s profile was like a breath of fresh air even to young girls and women who knew the score, knew they would be driven back into the cave if they got too brave. Seth, who was more than willing to defer to Leslie’s judgment took a more historical approach saying there was nothing in the plotline that dealt with eternal truths so that such a novel would have a limited life-span except in the groves of academia where a couple of generations of Ph.ds could get worked up about the social meaning of it all.   

That is about it except to briefly trace the story line, or lines since there are actually two main threads, the almost universal family-centered expectations for women and Louisa May’s struggle to get somebody to survive into strong independence co-managership of the family along with a thoughtful husband. Oldest sister Meg is pretty conventional, beautiful and domestic preaching to the younger sisters’ choir about the need to be civilized and good God-fearing wives. Jo, Louisa May’s character is strong-willed and thoughtful and will make the marriage that Alcott thought should be appropriate for her times and class. Beth is something of a cipher, musical but early on sickly who dies young from the after effects of horrible scarlet fever so no real lesson can be drawn from her life. (Funny how these Victorian novelists, male and female, have to have some frail sickly female character hovering in the background.) Amy, the youngest, is the closest to the character that let’s say my daughter could relate to if she ever finished reading the book which she adamantly refused to finish after reading about a third of it and declaring the thing  utterly boring even the Amy character who struggle for artistic self-expression is very similar to her own feelings about what she wants out of life. As Sam Lowell has stated on many occasions-a slice of life circa the 1860s-that is the “hook.”      

*The Greensboro Massacre 1979- Never Forget

Click on title to link to a YouTube film clip of some of the events of that day in 1979 when various right-wing paramilitary thugs murdered five communist workers.

Commentary

This is the 29th Anniversary of the heinous crimes of 1979 against communist workers in Greensboro, North Carolina

This is a repost of last year's commemorative commentary. The struggle remains the same. As does the message- Never Forget!

REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON, SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER



For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident commemorated here this is a capsule summary of what occurred on that bloody day:

On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result. The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.

This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a no free speech platform for Nazis and fascists (see below) and argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature of and political motivation for these murders in Greensboro by some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftists should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate with this kind. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards. The Greensboro massacre is prime evidence that any other way is suicidal for militants. No more Germany, 1933's. No more Greensboro, 1979's. Never Forget Greensboro.

REPOST FROM SEPTEMBER 15, 2006

In a recent blog (dated, September 4, 2006) this writer mentioned that one of the Klan groups in this country held a demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery over the Labor Day 2006 weekend around a list of demands that included bringing the troops home from Iraq in order to patrol the borders. Symbols mean a lot in politics and the notion that Klansmen were permitted to demonstrate at a key symbol in the fight to end slavery and preserve the union raised my temperature more than a little. As I said then Gettysburg is hallowed ground fought and paid for in great struggle and much blood. At that time the writer posed the question of what, if any, opposition to the demonstration leftists had put together to run these hooded fools out of town. In response, this writer was raked over the coals for calling for an organized fight by labor to nip these elements in the bud. Why? Apparently some people believe that running the fools out of town would have violated the Klan's free speech rights. Something is desperately wrong here about both the nature of free speech and the nature of the Klan/fascist menace.

First, let us be clear, militant leftists defend every democratic right as best we can. I have often argued in this space that to a great extend militant leftists are the only active defenders of such rights- on the streets where it counts. That said, the parameters of such rights, as all democratic rights, cannot trump the needs of the class struggle. In short, militant leftist have no interest in defending or extending the rights of fascists to fill the air with gibberish. Now that may offend some American Civil Liberties Union-types but any self-respecting militant knows that such a position is right is his or her 'gut'.

In the final analysis we will be fighting the Klan-types on the streets and the issue will no be rights of free expression (except maybe in defense of ours) but the survival of our organizations. A short glance at history is to the point.
One of the great tragedies of the Western labor movement was the defeat and destruction of the German labor movement in the wake of the fascist Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In the final analysis that destruction was brought on by the fatally erroneous policies of both the German Social Democratic and Communists parties. Neither party, willfully, saw the danger in time and compounded that error when refused to call for or establish a united front of all labor organizations to confront and destroy Hitler and his storm troopers. We know the result. And it was not necessary. Moreover, Hitler's organization at one time (in the mid-1920's) was small and unimportant like today's Klan/Nazi threat. But that does not mean that under certain circumstances that could not change. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.