Como diz Raimundo, o ponto não é que existem NeoCon que são secretamente Trotskistas (o que seria ridículo) mas reconhecer o padrão daquilo que defendem supostamente como conservadores (mas talvez haja algo de positivo, talvez um atitude, talvez uma dialética, no fundador do exercito vermelho. Quem sabe? Estamos sempre a aprender).
Outra ponto que deve ser referido é que muitos dos que se possam sentir próximos da actual toada NeoCon, nada têm que ver com a questão do passado trotskista de muitos dos fundadores neocons. Seguramente que acreditam sinceramente nos argumentos e mesmo na necessidade de se estender o braço que pune (ou põe lanças) em Estados Nações terceiros sem que a legitima defesa ou a "Guerra Justa" possa objectivamente ser evocada. É a tal teoria sobre o appeasement de Hitler, Muniche, etc e tal que tudo faz para esquecer as raízes do fanatismo Nazi: os erros cometidos por todas as partes, mas em especial a dos "aliados" do Estado terrorista da Sérvia (Rússia, a França) na Grande Guerra, e ainda o intervencionismo desastroso do idealista Woodrow Wilson.
Por sinal, falta lembrar aos global democrats que Hitler concorreu em eleições e ganhou apoio pelo seu exarcebado combate anti-comunista (razão pela qual se possa pensar que não fosse a declaração de guerra da França e Inglaterra quando da invasão da Polónia, talvez este não se tivesse virado para Oeste mas sim para Estaline, podendo ambos os regimes ter caído na luta mutua - não é que tenha grande interesse especular sobre o assunto). Falo nisto, porque também é sinal de marca dos neocons ex-comunas, o exarcebado anti-comunismo durante a Guerra Fria que quase convenceu a opinão de algumas elites que um confronto directo e nuclear com a União Soviética era necessária para a salvação do mundo - e "guess what", não era. Felizmente o "better all dead that some people red" não se concretizou. Mas pelo caminho o Warfare State aliado a um hiper-moralismo democrático e de imposição de valores universais fez o seu percurso e agora...encontramo-nos aqui.
Eu que fui um Reaganista (saudades), reconheço agora a influência que tiveram os primeiros democratas NeoCons a migrar para o partido republicano, na sua atitude: a argumentação usada contra a União Soviética raramente era a propriedade privada mas sim a democracia, porque se pretendia demonstrar à esquerda o seu erro nos seus próprios termos (tal como Bush pretende combater no Iraque usando argumentos de esquerda - exportar a democracia and all that). E assim ficou a direita americana e os seus conservadores reféns duma filosofia internacionalista e idealista, quando na sua génese e ethos, sempre teve a defesa estrita da propriedade privada, a desconfiança absoluta do crescimento do Estado Federal - incluindo o Warfare State, e a neutralidade e isolacionismo, condição necessária para manter a liberdade at home e servir de exemplo abroad.
Speculation as to whether ex-commie turned neoconservative David Horowitz reads the junk he posts on his website before it goes up is rife with the appearance, the other day, of Greg Yardley's "The Trotsky Two-Step," the latest installment in the "Trotsky-con" debate.
An article by Jeet Heer in the National Post, pointing to the Trotskyist past of leading neocons – and suggesting that they have merely updated Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution" on behalf of "democratic" globalism – has the Right in an uproar. Heers quotes blabbermouth Stephen Schwartz, another ex-Trot-turned-neocon, who proudly proclaims the "relevance" and "continuity" of Trotsky's thought for today. Ex-Stalinist-turned-neocon Arnold Beichman went ballistic at Schwartz's indiscretion, and now one Greg Yardley has taken up the question of whether Trotsky's ghost is currently haunting us, in (where else?) David Horowitz's Frontpage. The ex-Trotskyist credentials of leading war birds – influential Iraqi exile Kanan Makiya, Christopher Hitchens, Schwartz, Irving Kristol – are just a coincidence, says Yardley.
Oh, and, by the way, he too is an ex-Trot, a former member of the Communist League of Canada:
"Although both the Communist League and the Socialist Workers Party began quietly dropping the Trotskyist label around 1990, the other members reassured me repeatedly that this was merely a tactical issue. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they felt that they could claim the sole mantle of Communism for themselves, and avoid confusing a working class that had never heard of Trotsky. And make no mistake – Trotskyism is a variant of Communism. This shouldn't be glossed over; ex-Trotskyists like myself are ex-Communists. But let me also make this clear - the transformation from Trotskyist to conservative involves a fundamental break with the main tenets of Trotskyism. By suggesting that a conservative can remain in some way a Trotskyist, the isolationist right traffics in oxymoron, and their conspiracy theories fail bitterly."
To begin with, I have never claimed, as Yardley avers, that neoconservatives are "secretly Trotskyists." The purpose of digging up the neocons' leftist roots is to point out that the content of their ideology may have changed, but the form – the clear pattern – remains all too constant.
Yardley cites anti-Stalinism and adherence to orthodox Marxist economic theory as the hallmarks of Trotsky's thought, but surely this could describe any number of non-Stalinist leftists, from anarcho-syndicalists to Bukharinites. What distinguishes Trotskyism from all the other variants of Communism is the theory of "permanent revolution."
Trotsky believed that socialism in one country could not long survive, and that the encirclement of the Soviet Union by the capitalist powers would soon bring the "workers fatherland" to its knees. According to the Trotskyists, communism had to be exported to other countries, by force if need be: anything less amounted to a betrayal of the revolution. The crux of their opposition to Stalinism was their militant internationalism.
The same militant internationalism is central to neocon ideology, with the goal of world communism abandoned for global "democracy." To pursue the phantom of "democracy in one country" is the mortal sin of "isolationism" – to hear the neocons tell it, the U.S. government has a duty to "liberate" the oppressed peoples of the earth. Anything less is a "betrayal" of American ideals. Their project to democratize the Middle East rests on the premise that democracy in one country, or region – the West – is unthinkable, on account of the existence of radical Islamism. Their answer to the terrorist threat is securing our "national security" via world conquest. It is Trotskyism turned inside out.
(…)
Yardley doesn't confide when he joined the SWP/CLC, but, writing under the pseudonym "Brian Sayre" – I'm assuming Yardley and Sayre are the same person, unless Horowitz has roped in two former Fidelistas who both happen to live in Canada – he states elsewhere on Frontpage:
"I began my career as a communist radical in Toronto in 1996, when I joined an organization called the Communist League of Canada. The Communist League was oriented towards factory workers; when I decided to go back to university in 1998, I left it and joined a mostly student communist organization called the New Socialists. Both of these groups were split-offs of split-offs, tracing their lineage back trough the 1960s left to the heyday of American communism. Although small in numbers, thanks to their activity they and other groups like them had a great deal of influence over the broader left. While in these groups, I helped organize and participated in many protests – demonstrations against "globalization," demonstrations against war, and demonstrations against the government. As a communist, I used people as simply means to an end. I discarded people as they ceased to be useful, and came to my senses only long after I was discarded in turn."
As a neocon, Yardley won't have to make much of an adjustment.
Ruthless, manipulative, power-hungry, and blinded by dogmatism: that's the neocons, alright. Although Yardley does make vague reference to having been "discarded" – perhaps in one of the periodic purges that routinely convulse the Barnes group – as a former member of an authoritarian cult, his transitioning from neo-Trotskyist to neo-conservative seems to have been relatively effortless.
Is Yardley such a humorless ideologue that he fails to see the irony of his own position? After all, here is someone converted to Communism in the year 1996, fer chrissakes, lecturing longtime conservatives on who is and is not a conservative. One might as well ask a former phrenologist to address a convention of brain-surgeons.
...
My spies inside Cato tell me that a recent purge of a prominent anti-interventionist scholar was not enough for the neocons: they want more heads. The neocon takeover of what was once a venerable libertarian institution – founded and named by the late Murray N. Rothbard – started with the addition of Rupert Murdoch to Cato's board of directors in 1997, but was never complete. This latest smear campaign is the signal that the neocons are moving in for the kill.
– Justin Raimondo
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário