Trotskyite Fourth International Attacks The Nation's 'Right-Wing Campaign' Against Julian Assange

You know this whole radical progressive schism over the Assange rape allegations has gotten out of control when one of the world's leading revolutionary parties is pushing back against the feminist left's charges against the WikiLeaks frontman. See the Socialist Equality Party's, "The Nation Joins the Campaign Against Julian Assange."

This article is just too darn good --- and I hate to admit it because I'm so bloody anti-communist! The writer David Walsh, a top editor at World Socialist Web Site, just hammers Katha Pollitt and her recent piece on the rape allegations. See, "The Nation joins the campaign against Julian Assange." There's a lot to digest, and for a progressive/communist organization, I'm even a little surprised at the not so subtle political incorrectness. More on that below. The introduction is worth sharing first of all:

The Nation magazine in the US, with its publication of “The Case of Julian Assange” by columnist Katha Pollitt (posted December 22, 2010), has joined the right-wing campaign against WikiLeaks co-founder Assange, a campaign directed by the highest levels of the American state.

The sexual assault charges against Assange in Sweden are part of an orchestrated effort to divert public attention from the content of the WikiLeaks exposures—the duplicity, hypocrisy and criminality of American and world imperialism—and bury the important revelations in a pile of scandalous garbage. Pollitt has eagerly lent a hand to that effort.

Such a development was predictable, given the history of the journalist and the publication, but that does not make it any less reprehensible… or educational. The arguments employed by Pollitt shed further light on the politically rotten character of contemporary feminism and identity politics generally.

This is conspiracy theorizing par excellence, which I doubt could be improved upon by anyone to right or left of the author. But notice this as well:

This is not the first time we have noted the alliance of the extreme right and feminism. [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pola-o08.shtml] The latter has assumed deeply reactionary characteristics, misappropriating the movement for women’s rights that at one time was an element of the struggle against oppression.

Pollitt goes on to lambaste Assange’s supporters who have denounced the trumped-up and politically motivated character of the “rape” charges, including Truthout’s Dave Lindorff, filmmaker Michael Moore, MSNBC talk show host Keith Olbermann and feminists Naomi Wolf and Katrin Axelsson. “What's disturbing,” she writes, “is the way some WikiLeaks admirers have misrepresented the allegations, attacked the women and made light of date rape.”

Date rape has nothing to do with it, by the women’s own statements. The case involves consensual relations. Each of the women actively sought a sexual involvement with Assange.

I had to highlight that passage about the "deeply reactionary characteristics" of contemporary feminists. Sounds about right. And that last part about consensual relations is basically what Robert Stacy McCain said with "You buy the ticket, you take the ride" --- although I doubt The Other McCain would enjoy being lumped in with some Trotskyite revolutionary internationalists.

And here's my favorite:

Feminist opinion—as the Assange case and the Polanski affair before it have demonstrated—has become one of the means of legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents, and of changing the subject from the great social issues, above all, class oppression and social inequality, to stale and self-pitying concerns.

That whole thing could be placed in bold, but then none of it would be. I think folks catch my drift, in any case. "The means of legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents" has been the issue I've been exposing here this last few weeks. I'm especially interested in this since radical feminists are among the most fanatical activists you're likely to come across --- and I definitely get my quota of these types online. And clearly Sady Doyle's in a class all of her own. And while I'm getting a kick outta blogging the #MooreandMe campaign, I had to laugh out loud when I noticed that she'd unblocked me on Twittter the other day. Yep, she wants to see me tweets and she wants to read my blog. She won't link, but she's reading. And while of course there's nothing I could say to change any of her views --- considering that for Ms. Sady my effort to document her Stalinism confirms her whole program of Dworkinite feminist machinations (misogyny, blah, blah.) --- it's certainly worth it from my point of view. Some of her acolytes have been making sensational claims puffing up the impact of #MooreandMe to the scale of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Michael Moore really is a god if women today have placed him on par with Martin Luther King, Jr. The flip side is that of course such inflation of accomplishments reveals how little today's feminists have left to achieve. Hey, once you bring down MLK let's go for dethroning the 16th President of the United States from the pantheon of America's greatest leaders. Shoot. Saving the Union from irreparable and violent dissolution? That's nothing compared to getting the Flint Fatso to confess on Rachel Maddow on MSNBC that "every woman who claims to have been raped has to be, must be taken seriously ..." Blah, blah. Gosh. I mean, wow. That has to be Michael Moore's Appomattox. Ms. Sady is the rail splitter of the radical gender feminist contingents! Surrender!

More later ...