From rws@comserver.canberra.edu.au  Sat Apr 19 11:16:13 1997
From: rws@comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 20:16:13 +1000
Subject: M-TH: Dehumanizing opponents
Message-ID: <199704190914.TAA27586@comserver.canberra.edu.au>

G'day Chris!

>Yes I agree strongly it is "wrong" and counterproductive
>to dehumanize opponents. 

[C'mon comrades.  You'd think a Goebbels was morphing Jews into rats or a
Capra making monkeys of Japanese people again!  No such thing has happened
here, and everybody bloody well knows it.]

I also think Paul has a valid point
>to assert that a particular group of people should not be
>criticised by a place name in an arbitrary fashion that
>lumps others together. I would not more wish to be called 
>one of the Londoners any more than all posters from New York 
>would like to be lumped together.

[Does 'the Frankfurt School' say anything, to *anyone*, about the
likelihood of a given Frankfurter being a critical theorist?  What are we
wasting bandwidth on here?]

>But I wish to see the members of RMC and their supporter(s)
>take responsibility also for the way they charged onto this
>stage with the intention to confront, shock and dramatise 
>what they see as a valid confrontation of ideas. They are not
>so innocent of stigmatizing, ridiculing and dehumanizing others.

[Ruthless critique may or may not be necessary for meaningful left-unity -
I dunno - I've seen plenty of ruthless critique and precious little unity
at Spoons.  Where can I find a marxian list that ruthlessly critiques
*capitalism*?]

>Their theatricality may be essential to their theory, 

[All it does is get in the way.  I'm with Christi-Ann, Doug and Caroll here
(and my mis-spellings, if any, are, as always, mistakes and nothing but
mistakes).  The bits of that initial anti-conference post I understood
seemed unnecessarily pretentiously written.  Consequently I now don't know
why I didn't understand the other bits: was something good being said
badly, was I just being dense, or was the content just bad?  At least I
understood *Democracy Against Capitalism*!]

Cheers,
Rob.




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