JS: Well, more generally, you talk about the possibility of concentration camps and martial law.
NW: I think we have gone very far down that road. I met Muslim immigrants in Brooklyn who were swept up in 9-11 raids, held in abusive conditions, beaten, denied rights. That’s how things started in Germany. Guantanamo was modeled after what Stalin developed for the Gulag. Why are we engaged in psychological denial that it’s not a concentration camp? In terms of martial law, my god. Since the book came out they deployed a brigade in the U.S. and suspended the Posse Comitatus Act. There is no question that it’s something to take seriously. People have a histrionic view of what martial law will look like.
I’m not worried that tomorrow there will be a battalion outside your Greenwich Village apartment. I’m worried about things like the McCain Liberman bill that would define enemy belligerents so loosely it would include Americans, which is just like Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini. If Obama tries people with military tribunals, setting that precedent, that is what a military state does. That is what martial law looks like. From a constitutional point of view Bush passing through the Patriot Act is no worse than Obama renewing it.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Naomi Wolf: A Liberal I Can Respect
There's a fantastic interview with Naomi Wolf on Alternet. Here's an excerpt:
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She is obviously not aware that the "Gulags" were a continuation of the Katorga system of the Czarists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katorga
This is important because...?
Because it totally destroys the notion that "gulags" were somehow a communist invention.
It changes the entire discourse.
I don't see how.
Because it changes the way communism is viewed.
And this is relevant to Naomi's interview because...
It is not irrelevant, because since she is not educated, she is far from a good representative of the left or liberalism.
Sorry...what is she wrong about?
About being a liberal. She's not, because she is not honest. Those who lie to themselves are not liberals.
She doesn't call herself a liberal.
I call her a liberal.
I'm glad we're 11 comments into this and I'm still not quite sure what your point is, and how its relevant to the interview.
"She doesn't call herself a liberal.
I call her a liberal.
I'm glad we're 11 comments into this and I'm still not quite sure what your point is, and how its relevant to the interview."
My point is that she is ignorant.
"My point is that she is ignorant."
...this is where you provide support for your point.
I already did. The gulag existed well before Lenin. It existed as a way for the landed class to protect their property from the bourgeoisie revolutionaries and the usual power usurpers of the throne.
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