That Newsnight spat over Cuba between Peter Hitchens and Tariq Ali made perfect sense if you knew that one was a veteran of the International Socialists while the other was a veteran of the International Marxist Group.
Those factions' differing Trotskyist analyses of the Soviet Union of the Brezhnev years were being applied to Cuba before our very eyes, but in highly exaggerated form.
Thus, to Hitchens, the state capitalist entity had no achievements whatever.
While to Ali, the degenerated or deformed workers' state was degenerated or deformed no more, with no human rights abuses at all.
It was an astonishing thing to have witnessed on the BBC in 2016.
I am told that, back in the day, there were Romeo y Julieta romances between the IS and the IMG at many a university.
But you crossed the line if you took up with member of the Communist Party.
But you crossed the line if you took up with member of the Communist Party.
You have seen this perfectly, this is exactly what it was. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you make of the fuss over Trudeau's condolences?
It contrasts sharply with the reaction, or lack of it, to those of Stephen Harper when King Abdullah died. The Governor General of Canada was sent all the way to Riyadh to convey them.
DeleteThe United States, meanwhile, sent no fewer than 29 people to King Abdullah's funeral, including the President, the Secretary of State, the House Minority Leader (a woman, for pity's sake), and the Director of the CIA.
Hitchens was just comical at times, even denying Castro had brought down Batista, as if the withdrawal of American arms supplies had been unconnected to the impending victory of the 26th of July Movement.
ReplyDelete