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Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

500 marchers in a CP-style demo? Are you sure you weren't wearing two pairs of glasses? Saturday my study group (go ahead, laugh) met to discuss Doug Henwood's new book Wall Street (I missed this session because I hadn't read the book) and at lunchtime they went to a demonstration in Union Square, that was supposed to be of Latino sweatshop workers, and came away reeling: maybe fifteen people, mostly ancient sectarians and a few young ones, all full of the old rhetoric (a moment of silence followed by a "moment of rage" with raised fists but some people didn't know how to do it, memories of the black athletes' stand at the Mexico City Olympics having faded). The last demo I went to (with this same study group, so clearly we are picking up the wrong leaflets) was the same: tiny, futile gatherings of people who, whatever their ages, are living in l933. There are a lot of weirdos on the sectarian left, as on the right--and as the left collapses, those weirdos get even weirder. I certainly have never heard anyone say the Ukrainians killed themselves (in the collectivizations of the 20s and 30s, I assume you mean). The view I have heard, not exactly a political program, more like an ethnic slur, is that (fill in the blank) Eastern European ethnic group deserved whatever the Soviets dished out because they were anti-Semitic Hitler-friendly thugs.

But you know, Andrew, there is an anti-Leninist left, that believes in workers' councils and other localized forms of ownership, that opposes vanguard parties and state power left and right. There are more than two perspectives here.

Cheers,
Katha

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