Socialist Equality Party??
- Thread starter Shevek
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I smell sinister ICC cult member
Oh, Butchers has got a wiff of the swamp about him.... 
I like the inclusion of sinister though, I haven't heard that for some time.
To be clear, I was not trying to defend or attack any tradition or group just making a general, and really quite banal, point - the worst 'crime' most of these groups are guilty of is being boring. Accusing them of being 'nutters' doesn't help us understand anything.
I like the inclusion of sinister though, I haven't heard that for some time.To be clear, I was not trying to defend or attack any tradition or group just making a general, and really quite banal, point - the worst 'crime' most of these groups are guilty of is being boring. Accusing them of being 'nutters' doesn't help us understand anything.
Squatticus
for an armed populace
Correct line.
JHE
.
1. Now that the old Baathist brute is dead, whose victory do you 'call for'? Not the Yanks or the regime they support, I imagine. How about those nice 'slamist nutters who blow up markets full of people who are deemed to adhere to the wrong type of Islam.
2. Why do Trotlets only ever 'call for' military victory these days? Why don't you do any of the fighting, killing and dying that you 'call for'?
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
Saddam started out as a CIA stooge just like Bin Laden. How it is socialist to back such a frothing tyranical loon is totally beyond me. Supporting the right to resistance of the Iraqi people is not the same thing as hoping a despot succeeds. Saddam is not and was not synonymous with the Iraqi people. To act as if he was would be to fall for cult of personality politics, I believe you are more progressive than that.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
Yes, but during the earlier Iran-Iraq War the Trots were calling for Victory for Iran (of the Ayatollahs) on the grounds that Iran was more anti-imperialist than Saddam's Iraq. They're just a joke if taking sides like this in wars wasn't egging on workers to kill each other.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
The SWP =/= "the Trots".
audiotech
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The SWP never gave support to the ayatollahs in the war with Iraq. The support was for the Iranian people against US imperialism, who were backing Saddam in that war of aggression against Iran.
During the turmoil of the Iranian revolution in 1978, when the ayatollahs were imprisoning, torturing and murdering the Iranian left (who actively supported the revolution), I met a few Iranian leftists in the UK who were in exile and given support by the SWP. I also marched in London at the time along with the Iranian left against US involvement.
During the turmoil of the Iranian revolution in 1978, when the ayatollahs were imprisoning, torturing and murdering the Iranian left (who actively supported the revolution), I met a few Iranian leftists in the UK who were in exile and given support by the SWP. I also marched in London at the time along with the Iranian left against US involvement.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
If you check I think you will find that they (the RCP) did take a "defeatist" position, as proclaimed in banner headlines of their paper The Next Step at the time:
The SWP took a similar position that "every socialist and trade unionist . . . has a direct interest in the defeat of the British forces."
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
In other words, the SWP was in favour of the Ayatollahs regime sending hundreds of thousands of Iranian workers and peasants to their deaths over which state - Iran or Iraq - should control the exit to the sea for their oil exports.
Here's another Trotskyist group, the League for a Fifth International, expressing support for "Iran's right to nuclear weapons". No doubt he, too, will argue that he's not supporting the ayatollahs' but the Iranian people's "right" to develop these weapons of war and mass destruction (which of course represents an enormous waste of resources in a world where millions are starving, homeless and without health care).
According to this, another Trotskyist group has gone even further in its support for the Iranian regime. I don't know what it's all about, but perhaps someone else here will have the courage to plough through these 105 pages of Trotskyist in-fighting. All I noticed was a comment that there are worse enemies of Trotskyism than the "Taafeites".
audiotech
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Thatcher would have been out on her arse if a defeat had occurred that's for sure.
audiotech
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I doubt the "in favour" bit, but I remember an article in Socialist Review at the time, by SWP'er Phil Marfleet, arguing the case for 'military support' to the Iranian regime (a bizarre position), which I was against and said so in a meeting quoting Lenin: "a plague on both their houses". It didn't go down well and I was accused of being 'anti working class'. This was one of the main reasons I left the SWP. Turned out later that the US, in there duplicitous ways, were supporting both Iraq and Iran in that bloody war, that ended up with a million dead. In military terms it was like the first world war, using trench warfare and mustard gas.
...
JHE
.
Yes, I expect she would. Two other consequences:
- The Falkland Islanders would have been left under military occupation by the forces of a grim Argentinian dictatorship
- The grim dictatorship and its head brute, Galtieri, would have been much strengthened by the victory over Britain and the poor Falkland Islanders
Now, let's leave aside fantasy history for a moment. The reality is that British forces liberated the Falklands and, following the failure of his shitty little military adventure, the old brute Galtieri was removed.
You could say that whichever country lost militarily would get rid of a bad ruler. I think that's true. Noting that, however, should not lead us to ignore the rights of the Falkland Islanders or the fact that, though Thatcher was a bastard, she was not in the same league as the murderous Galtieri.
Squatticus
for an armed populace
JHE
.
You don't think the Yank-killers are the same 'slamist gits who blow up markets?
You sell newspapers and magazines, but very very few.
Grandma Death
Reconfiguring & Reconstructing
I wouldnt have anything to do with them. They're splitters.
Squatticus
for an armed populace
Squatticus
for an armed populace
JHE
.
But you'll cheer-lead for them just the same!
It really doesn't help any US policy in Iraq to have mass murder and mayhem, you silly sausage. The US wants a stable, war-free Iraq, from which the US can withdraw with as little ignominy as possible. They don't want inter-communal slaughter.
Squatticus
for an armed populace
There you go again. Who is 'them'? You consistently argue as if armed Iraqi groups are a homogeneous mass. Was it sectarian in 2005, when al-Sadr's Shia Mahdi army delivered practical solidarity to the Sunni defenders of Falluja? Surely you haven't forgotten...
No, the point is that resistance to the occupation is worthy of support, even if some of those resisting are not.
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