DISQUS

mpbuchwald · 1 year ago

Re Barack Obama
I have read that Zbigniew Brzezinski, the arch enemy of international Socialism (and architect of the downfall of Communism in Eastern Europe) is foreign policy advisor to the Obama campaign. What will our comrades in the former Soviet Union think of us if we supoort such a candidate? No Socialist in good conscience can support a candidate who takes advice from one of history's most doctrinaire opponents of Socialism. The foundation of the New Left was in the principle that foreign peoples must have the right to choose Communism over Imperialist Capitalism, a principle of which Brzezinski is a main opponent. We must ask the question, if Brzezinski opposes Socialism overseas, how much more does he oppose it in the USA, and how will he influence Obama against it? If we must vote, let's vote for a Socialist candidate instead.

Guest · 1 year ago

Every step forward in American history has been rife with contradictions. Purity in politics doesn't exist. We could hold our nose high and vote for the Socialist Party candidate... and thereby abandon the movement and the millions of working Americans for whom an Obama presidency will make a very important difference in their lives. Or we can support the independent grassroots movements that exist now and work for the day when they will throw their weight behind socialist and communist candidates that have more than a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

sdelgado80 · 1 year ago

Brzezinski? LMAO! Wow talk about still chasing the shadows of the cold war. I think you give way too much weight to Brzezinski. He is probably 325th on the totem poll of Obama advisers. (Obama has hundreds of advisers by the way.)

mpbuchwald · 1 year ago

Brzezinski is no joke. He was the main anti-Communist ideologue of the post Viet Nam war era, and in many ways much worse than Kissinger, who inspired one of the bloodier protests of the Viet Nam war era in New York. For those of us who lived through the period, a candidate is fairly judged by the company he chooses to keep. The Left has been betrayed too many times not to beware of men like Brzezinski.

brad · 1 year ago

Does anyone really believe that a capitalist candidate- Obama or otherwise- can abandon imperialism and/or befriend socialism? I would suggest not. Much less realistic is it to expect a capitalist presidential candidate to disassociate from those with foreign policy "experience," which in an imperialist country is PRECISELY imperialist foreign policy experience.
Mpbuchwald asks how Brzezinski (and presumably others) will "influence" Obama "against" socialism, as if the future leader of the CAPITALIST world needs to be INFLUENCED in such a way. I don't believe that we in the CPUSA harbor any illusions that Obama supports socialism (see his remarks on Cuba as exhibit A)...but to isolate ourselves from this progressive upsurge based on such an insistence is 1) the textbook definition of sectarianism, and 2) inconsistent with the Party's understanding of the Road to Socialism, which posits the defeat of the ultra-Right as the order of the day. This Brzezinski talk may be interesting (I'm well aware of the negative role he played during the Carter administration)...but how does dwelling on it advance the current stage of struggle? How does sitting out this election year in a spirit of self-satisfying ideological purity advance working class interests? Is it not, rather, a divisive distraction from the central goal at this moment?

Guest · 1 year ago

right on. Supporting Obama requires a political maturity lacking among so many of the so-called "left".

Matthew Buchwald · 1 year ago

History is most relevant here. Obama associates former President Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski gave predominantly Muslim Indonesia the weapons that were used to exterminate one third of the population of Catholic and Socialist East Timor, probably on the theory that Timor was the next domino to fall after Indochina. Not too long ago, the US government again approved military aid to Indonesia. Barack Obama is undoubtedly an expert on Indonesia, having been raised there, and surely knows every detail of just how deadly his associates are when it comes to Socialism taking root on foreign soil. We can't predict when or where another Communist movement may get started, but there is certainly a risk that if Obama were elected president with an advisor like Brzezinski by his side, he would act militarily against future attempts to instate Communism on foreign soil, particularly in Indonesia, and possibly anywhere else in the world. Maybe that's the reason so many middle of the road Democratic Party hacks support him. I'd rather not vote at all than put in office another phoney like JFK who talks up civil rights while subverting Socialism.

Guest · 1 year ago

That's true... there's definitely that risk. But isn't that risk 100 times greater under a McCain presidency? Obama, at least, promotes dialogue and diplomacy. McCain just wants to "Bomb, bomb, bomb... bomb, bomb Iran"