Neo-Nazis welcomed by anti-immigrant protesters in Phoenix : AZ IMC

A few dozen counter demonstrators showed up at the Arizona State Capitol on May 1 to show their opposition to the 15,000-strong immigrant rights march in Phoenix, part of a nationwide day of marches and other actions. The protest was organized by United for a Sovereign America, the pet project of local car dealer and hedonist Rusty Childress, and featured free apple pie and ice cream.

Although the pie tasting was not officially organized by the better-known Minutemen, the group was well represented at the event. In fact, one of the the most prominent banners in the crowd of anti-immigrants was "Minutemen Civil Defense Corps - Now Recruiting". Apparently, now that Minutemen Arizona Chapter President Stacy O'Connell has resigned to run for Phoenix City Council, the group is having trouble finding warm bodies to show up to protests. Perhaps that's why they're scraping the bottom of the barrel and openly working with neo-Nazi skinheads.

Although the anti-immigrant movement has always claimed to disavow racists in their midst, this time there was no attempt to hide the cozy relationship between the "mainstream" anti-immigrant crowd and the out-and-out white power racists at the event. These pictures show skinheads mingling with other protesters and even helping them hold their banners. The neo-Nazis--decked out in combat boots, well-known racist symbols, and "White Pride" tattoos--may have been lured by the promise of free pie, but it was the shared camaraderie and hatred for brown-skinned immigrants that had them coming back for seconds.

(Of course, it's entirely possible that none of the organizers or other attendees noticed or recognized the prominently displayed neo-Nazi symbols, the characteristic skinhead dress, or the words "White Power" tattooed across the chest of one of the racists wearing a tanktop. But if that's the case, how can the anti-immigrant movement claim that they don't work with racists if they can't even recognize open neo-Nazi skinheads in their very presence?)

For more information about the symbols displayed by the neo-Nazis, go here, here, and here.

Skinhead displaying neo-Nazi symbols at May 1st anti-immigrant protest

Skinhead displays Thor's Hammer, a well-known neo-Nazi symbol

The Tiwaz Rune and Celtic Cross, symbols commonly used by neo-Nazi skinheads

Skinhead displaying neo-Nazi symbols mingles with more "mainstream" anti-immigrant protesters

Neo-Nazi skinhead mingles with anti-immigrant protesters and argues with passing marchers

Good article. Here's some more info on Rusty Childress. Phoenix Insurgent scooped the New Times by more than a year. The PI piece linked below analyzes the immigration movement's relationship to rich white scum like Rusty Childress and attempts to explain just why white working class folks defend him while attacking the non-white segment of the working class.

Also, check out out these two links about Childress' huggy bear racist sidekick, JT Ready. Ready, a failed politician and (thankfully) a bad shot, has recently been exposed as a member of a white supremacist social networking page. For more on JT, check out this backgrounder.

Hey Godless-
There was a guy there who was wearing a Thor's Hammer, and someone took a picture of him, and he was also wearing steel-toe jackboots and rolled up jeans, but...
the guy you identify as wearing a Thor's Hammer is not! That's a labrys, or double axe. Thor's Hammer, Mjolnir, looks like a thick upside down capital 'T'. I'll see if I can get the person who took the photo to post it here.
Solidaridad,
!Torbellino!

Upon closer inspection, the pendant around the neo-Nazi's neck appears to be a Celtic axe, rather than a Thor's Hammer. But given his fondness for racist symbols co-opted from Pagan mythology, I think it's a safe bet to assume that he's not there to recruit for the St. Patty's Day Parade committee.

Another interesting thing I noticed was the slogan "Hail Victory!" on his shirt, below the logo for something called Buell Fighting Systems. This appears to be a PHoenix-based ultimate fighting club (http://www.bfsaz.com). You can see the full shirt that he's wearing at this link.

The slogan apparently comes from the final album of the well-known White Power punk band Skrewdriver. It is also the name of a lovely song by Russian White Power band Kolovrat, featuring lyrics such as "The bloody Nordic banner flies/Skinhead prints a step" and "For the freedom of the Native side/Skinhead-patriot raises a sword".

Nice work on exposing the nazis. The "we're not racists, really, we're not!" nativists need to have their feet held to the fire.

Insurgent, you might be interested to know the guy who owned newsaxon, which no longer exists, was arrested in Florida for cheating elderly racists out of their savings in a fraudulant "whites-only" township land deal.
http://niksnest.blogspot.com/2007/03/busted-finally.html#links

May Thor strike me down in a hail of thunderbolts. I posted that correction before I saw your comment. I thought I had seen a Thor's hammer on at least one of those boneheads. It would be nice to get a picture up.

I assumed the axe was a Celtic symbol, but according to the ever-authoritative Wikipedia, the labrys was used by Greek fascist youth in the 1930s and 40s. I knew there had to be a fascist connection in there somewhere.

I think the guy in jack boots and rolled pants is the one in the last picture. He's hiding his pendant in that one, but you can still see the string around his neck.

if you watch the right side of the video, you should see the guy in the plaid hat doing a sieg heil briefly. you can see more of the people in the above photos. i didn't shoot much video.

the organizers of the event meeting up the saturday before at the state capitol lawn.

"should we serve just vanilla ice cream, or will that be construed as racist?"

one of the organizer's vehicles

That's buffalo rick galeener's truck on the bottom photo.

I'm pretty sure obscuring your license plate like that is ILLEGAL! Get your ducks in a row, anti-immigrant klan man.

I notice that you target pre-christian european pagan symbols as used by white nationalists as somehow "racist". Why don't you do the same for Aztlan oriented Mayan, Incan, Aztec, and Anastazi emblems sported by latino racists? Are you only anti-white racists? Please be honest here. All pagan symbols are important and sacred to various cultures. Including the swastika used by Vikings, Navajo, Indians, Persians, Buddahists, Aryans, and Celtics alike.

I happen top know that man and he is very nice. I resent you labeling him and saying that the ancient Thor's hammer is a hate symbol. If that's the case, then so is the Mexican flag. So is the Virgin of Guadalupe. So is the Aztlan phrase La Raza. Shall I go on?

Your bigotry is rife!

Those skinheads and white-surpemacists are doing far more to protect America than the entire US military is in Iraq at a cost of more than $500 billion. Give them the money and support instead. The pro-illegal activists constitute a criminal conspiracy against the laws of America. The real extremist hate groups are the ADL and the SPLC.

I'm pretty sure that the guy with the light shirt and shorts in the second photo posted by Larrea was the one I saw wearing the Thor's Hammer, though you can't see it in this photo. (He's the one with the "RACIST MURDERER" sign pointing at him.) I myself am Pagan, and have had Asartru friends who were not racist but who revered the Thor's Hammer. However, within the context of wearing steel-toe jackboots and supporting the Minuteklan, I'd bet the farm that this guy is a white supremacist. It's all about context! And yes, I do find myself getting a little uncomfortable with ceremonies and such that honor Aztec heritage without acknowledging their role as a conquering empire that practiced massive daily human sacrifice of unwilling victims.
Be that as it may, having debated and discussed immigration with numerous Minuteklans-men and -women at protests and such, it is evident to me that their real motivation is fear of a perceived threat to "white" hegemony in North America. It is also evident that twelve million people don't just up and choose to relocate their lives in a different country on a lark. The massive influx of migrants from Mexico and points south in the last thirteen years is a result of the devastation of the Mexican economy wreaked by NAFTA, which was forced on the Mexican people by rich elites in both countries. They are NAFTA refugees! Rich elites want no borders to their ability to exploit people economically, but they think borders to human migration are just fine because they enable exploitation north and south of the border. The question before us as working people in North America is, which side are we on? Do we stand in solidarity with workers all over the world, or do we cling to some myth the bosses have foisted on us of some US citizen privilege at the expense of workers elsewhere?
By the way, the Celtic Cross on the black shirt of the guy in Godless's fourth photo is part of the logo of Buell Fighting Systems, and I haven't been able to find any evidence that BFS is white supremacist; the Tiwaz rune patch is rather telling, though, IMHO.
Solidaridad,
!Torbellino!

There is no equivalence between La Raza, etc, and white power symbols and organizing for one simple reason: behind white power is a system of white supremacy. It grants privileges and advantages to white people while denying them to non-whites. Being white is not a disadvantage in this country. That's because there is a system - an entire white dominated power structure - behind white power. That's why they're different. It's really not that hard to understand.

As Turbo above has rightly said, context is important. Those skinhead and white-supremacists in this conetxt are DEFENDING America's immigration laws. If they wear, steel tipped boots that is still legal also. If, on the other hand, we allow and even encourage the flagrant abuse of America's laws on immigration, why respect any laws at all? We could save ourselves so much money and Joe Arpaio could be let go, and the legislatures with their humungous overheads could be permanently dissolved as well. Is anarchy what Turbo wants? I think it is.

Thank you Turbo for providing some dialogue without all the typical extremist leftist rhetoric and third grade name calling I usually encounter from your side. It is refreshing to have differences, yet remain at least somewhat civil in the context of discussing those nuances.

It is fascinating to me that most of my detractors have been so violently against me when they apparently have never taken the time to even listen to my positions. Even leftist were invited to my highly successful and nationally noted mexican consolate rallies. To finally stand in solidarity against the real enemies of the people. The mexican cartel government and corporate american politico-economists. Yet, they railed on and on about racism and other such fringe issues instead of seeing my staunch opposition to corporate exploitation of the poor foreign worker pool. And they totally dismissed my call for the ousting from power the corrupt mexican elite in bed with the cartel and the US government.

Many times, war makes for strange bedfellows. And we are in a terrible cultural war. And this can boil over hot anytime. I know that I have my AK's, AR's and various other accoutraments oiled and loaded for bear. And I am quite sure your side does too.

So my real question for you is this: Do you think that Aztlan revolutionaries and anarchists battling Skinheads and Minutemen in the streets is going to beneficial to the working class? Or more likely just further exploited by the international bankers and money changers as a pretext to take away more liberty in their global conquest of total proletariate slavery?

The last thing the international bankers want is for the various factions (both left and right) to see through the smokescreen of emotionally charged rhetoric and team together to go after the real culprits.

Sincere thoughts minus the hatred and communist vitriol much appreciated. I will reserve my colorful perjoratives as well.

First of all, law is just not a very good way of determining what is right and wrong. A lot of the time, in fact, the law is a good way to determine what is wrong. Unless you really like the people who write laws (politicians) and the people who pay for laws (rich people), I see no reason to hold the law up as some mythical and beautiful thing. For instance, segregation laws were wrong, and people broke those laws until they were changed. Further, because law is at best a flawed tool, regular people break the law all the time. So, I really don't think legality is a good way to have the immigration debate. It really offers us nothing in terms of clarity, especially since legality is really just an accident of geography anyhow.

As to JT's point, I would agree on a level. Unity is what the ruling class fears. The problem is that the minutemen are not offering unity (nor is JT). They do not defend the rights of people of color in this country. They do not support Black and Latino families when they are abused by the police. They do not fight for equal housing and schooling opportunities. They do not fight for reparations. Their rhetoric may be unity, but their practice is division.

Because, in fact, the minutemen are one element of the working class (a section of the white working class) that is attacking other sections of the working class (Latino and immigrant). This is not unity. That is, in fact, doing the work of the rich, white elite here by refusing the genuine unity which would come from supporting the struggles of immigrants and people of color. Further, they get their funding and support from rich folks like Rusty Childress. So, in fact, it is the minutemen who are fighting to maintain the division in the working class.

As for the question of Mexico, folks on what JT calls the left have supported and continue to support revolutionary movements in Mexico. Supporting revolution in Mexico and supporting immigrants here are two parts of the same struggle. As with their total lack of support for people of color in the US, the minutemen also fail to support revolutionary movements in Mexico. There are plenty to choose from these days. Again, when we compare the rhetoric to their actions, what we see is that the are just a racist organization.

Unity with the minutemen is not possible.

JT, if you regard my last post to be level-headed and more or less accurate, then I can only be horrified by your position, which, in fact, I am. That's why I was out demonstrating solidarity with immigrants on May Day, and even, (I don't think I'm giving the MiunteKlan too much credit here) the reason why there had to be a massive immigrants' rights demo in the first place.
I grew up here in AZ- in fact, I'm a fifth generation Arizonan. My family arrived here in 1884; this area was "stolen" from Mexico during my great-great-grandfather's boyhood, just a few short decades before he moved here with his family for health reasons. (I use quotation marks because Indigenous land claims, which are of an entirely different nature from European-derived notions of land tenure, lead me to doubt the legitimacy of Mexico's legal claim to this land. Of course the US government continued the Mexican government's practice of stealing land from Natives.) Anyway, in the treaty by which the US acquired, like, half of "Mexico", the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, a provision was agreed to by both signatories that the language, religion, and culture of the Mexican residents would remain on an equal legal footing with those of the Anglo-Americans. Thereafter for almost a hundred years, there were no laws restricting migration across the border. Consequently, the Mexican contribution to Arizona's culture and economy were and are inestimably huge.
At this point I think it merits mentioning that it's no accident that the majority of the people born north of the US-Mexico border are "white", while those born south of the border are mostly Mestizo; the difference originates in the different ways the areas were colonized. Spaniards and Portuguese colonizers tended to establish feudal estates and interbreed with Indigenous folks and Africans, whereas the English tended to want to kill Natives outright or at best push them further west.
So fast forward to NAFTA. JT seems to acknowledge that yes, indeed, the twelve million people who have immigrated since NAFTA's ratification are actually economic refugees, victims of the predations of US corporations and their elite counterparts in the Mexican Quisling/Comprador government as well. (Remember that NAFTA was ratified by Vicente Fox's PANista ruling clique, who were and are a front for the clandestine right-wing Catholic cabal El Yunque.) And what have those millions of NAFTA refugees been doing here? For the most part they have been working hard at jobs at the bottom of the ladder, as migrant farm workers, landscapers, cleaning and janitorial workers, food service, etc. And how do we as workers who are US citizens respond to the plight of our fellow workers from Latin America? Do we stand in solidarity with them, helping them to achieve a normalized legal status so they can expect the same protection from workplace safety, minimum wage, and right-to-organize laws as we do? (To do so benefits us as well, as it establishes a higher baseline and prevents employers from circumventing these laws by hiring immigrants without papers.) Or do we stand with ruling class corporate elites in persecuting those with the "misfortune" to have been born on the wrong side of an imaginary line in the dirt, thus relegating them to a permanent underclass status, whether here or in Mexico? Having discussed the issue at length with numerous MinuteKlans-men and -women, I think they act as they do because they fear what they believe to be the threat of a demographic invasion of North America. And what is a "demographic" invasion? It is cultural influence, and it is most especially sexual enticement. JT Ready secretly fears that his "white" granddaughters will be seduced by Mexican men, that he will have Mestizo great-grandchildren. Is this likely, in the long run? I would say it is inevitable. Mutant albino skin is, after all, a recessive genetic trait, an adaptation only useful in arctic climates, and elsewhere (like, for example, here in AZ) disadvantageous. So, do we identify with human rights and worker solidarity, or do we cling to white skin privilege?
All this brings me to what Thinger wrote in her/his post, "The thing is". My understanding is that "La Raza" was a concept originating in the 1920's, that refers to the people of Latin America as the Cosmic Race, whose heritage draws on the best from their Native American, African, European, and Asian heritage; that is, "La Raza" is the Mestizo, or mixed race. I hold that idea in high esteem. Celebrating Aztec culture, on the other hand, I find objectionable; the two are neither synonymous nor interchangeable. The Aztecs were a conquering empire who engaged in huge volumes of involuntary human sacrifice. Contemporary "Mexico" is full of living Indigenous as well as innovative spiritual traditions that, in my opinion, are far more worthy of honoring than the bloodthirsty proto-conquistadores from Tenochtitlan.
Lastly, I'd like to address FP Berg's post, "Pro-Crime Conspiracy": Girl, are you sniffing glue or what? Do you really think opposing immigrant rights somehow redeems neo-nazi white supremacist skinheads? It is rather, entirely within their neo-nazi white supremacist aims to be active in anti-immigrant groups. There they can find like-minded folks to recruit to their cause, they can get training in working in a paramilitary unit, terrain reconnaissance, etc., and maybe, if they're lucky, they can make life harder for some folks with darker skin than theirs. The very first border patrols were started by David Duke when he was Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan! THAT is the heritage you are celebrating, and, frankly, it makes me sick.
Anyway, sorry everyone for the long-winded post, I was just so mortified by the embrace of the MinuteKlanfolk that I was irresistibly induced to type and type and type until I could be completely certain that no one could have any doubts about where I stand on these issues.
Solidaridad,
!Turbo!

I just found out that NAFTA was developed, ratified, and implemented under the PRIistas Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, NOT the PANistas agents of El Yunque. But I still suspect they were corrupted by US corporate and foreign policy elites to betray Mexico's maize farmers, forcing a mass migration from the land into the cities, and from the cities into the US. I mean, if you had to feed your family and suddenly your economy collapsed, what would you do?

I am sure the elites are loving the lack of union seen here. I offer an olive branch, and get splattered with false accusations. Nice. What progression we have achieved.

Funny, you should claim that because I advocate secure borders, I somehow never fight for the down trodden. Check the records to see who stood before the Mesa City Council and lambasted them for exploiting illegal aliens. Check and see who lambasted them for encouraging a shadow class who is thrown away like old pieces of farm equipment when they get injured on the job. Check who wrote an op/ed lambasting corporate moguls for facilitaing a modern slave trade on desperate people like the cotton plantation owners of the 1800's. Yep, JT. Your self-chosen nemesis.

But the hatred you harbor against me because of the color of my skin is what fuels your blindness. Your anti-white prejudice is what contributes to your ignorance. Your vitriol and foaming at the mouth at anything I say or do even remotely positive is what divides us. Not my "racism". Or your myriad other false claims upon me.

As for David Duke being the first to patrol the border, this is laughable at best. The first contemporary figure to patrol the border for "wetbacks" and illegals, cracking their heads with ballbats in a line of blood, would be left to the dubious honor of Ceasar Chavez, amigo. Before that, army patrols and various citizens on both sides of the border patrolled this contested territory.

And the oldest remains on North America, South America, and China have been caucasianoid pal. But I suppose that this supressed archeaological evidence doesn't jibe well with your anti-white revisionist history. Nor your perverted dreams of mongrelization of the entire white race. Which of course is lock step in tune with the globalist masters whom you claim on the surface to be at odds with.

Then again, most of you pawns don't follow the money trail so well. If you did, you would realize from whose coffers funding for most of the freakish leftist organizations eminate from. The very tax exempt foundations and multi-national corporate conglomerates who these radical fringe groups supposedly oppose! Why? Because bolshevist oligarcs have long been masters of the "pincer movement". Like in the Battle for Seattle where loads of freaks poured into the streets protesting the WTO. Meanwhile, the main organizers of this event and others like it were in fact on the payroll of filter organizations funded by the WTO leadership corporations themselves. You fools. You are being paraded out into the streets to make middle America more readily side with the elites than your own radical agendas.

Philisophically, many of our views may be the same or similar. And certainly you make some valid points when you can harness your hatred long enough to write, talk, and act sensibly. But your harsh tactics and your grotesque appearance as a movement beguiles the fact that you are being used by the elites themselves. Don't get me wrong. Groups on my side are being exploited every chance they get as well. This is why I am vilified at the highest echelons of the pyramid. Not just by the pierced and sandle wearing rejects either.

Because I am actually trying to unify various factions to think deeper. To look at the WHO is behind the problem instead of just the what of addressing the problems facing us. To seek out the real culprits instead of just slinging arrows at one another. And in coming up with realistc, yet simple and effective solutions to problems instead of just regurgitating the same tired rhetoric we have all been force fed in public indocrination camps. Or braindrained in the mass media with.

But if you would rather cast stones and curse me than work together, here I am. I can sling a few hot lead ones back too. I am not going to be pushed into the grave for harboring my valid views. And I choose to battle ideas with better ideas. First. Instead of name calling, street fighting, and revolution. But don't mistake my kindness for weekness. That aint me bro.

first of all...the image entitled "Thor's hammer" is that of a Viking battle axe. it is not a Thor's hammer. however if it where a Thor's hammer I think it best to clarify it's meaning as a protective symbol of Norse divinity. similar to that of a christian wearing a crucifix. why is it these symbols are depicted as skinhead "hate" symbols? they are the symbols of a forgotten culture of Germanic pre-christian tribes and clans. and it's curious to me as to why the tiwaz rune is depicted yet not explained. it is a warriors rune. one of the symbols of the pre-christian Norse alphabet. wow, I wonder why it would be found on the arm of a fight gym t shirt. that's odd isn't it? if these people are so harmful to our society why is it there where no incidences at this event or any other events put on by so called "dangerous" white supremacists? don't these people have the right to voice their opinion about their political stances in a peaceful manner without being slandered on the internet about their purpose. perhaps you should take some time to have a conversation with such people before jumping to conclusions about why they may be in attendance. after all, that is supposedly what you're trying to combat when it comes to skinheads right?

if you watch the video i was pointing...with my left hand...to a memorial archway which read (ironically) "FREEDOM IS NOT FREE" at which i was attempting to show a friend of mine said archway. you can watch in this video as he looks at me and then up to where i am pointing at. it's rather easy for you to interpret this however you may like especially since you decided to leave the archway out of the shot. i was not giving a salute. take your propaganda elsewhere.

I think it's obvious who the real haters are, JT. If you're so concerned about the plight of undocumented workers, and so interested in realistic solutions, why not support normalization of their legal status, rather than mass deportation? Why no humanitarian aid for those economic refugees who are dying in the desert because of the militarization of the border? Why the MinuteKlan and not No More Deaths? The answer is patently clear- you fear what you describe as my " perverted dreams of mongrelization of the entire white race".
I don't 'hate the white race', I recognize race to be a social construct, and in the US and around the world, the white identity was built on genocide, slavery, conquest, colonization, segregation and apartheid. If someone wants to have pride in their Irish or Viking or French or whatever ancestry, that's cool, I guess. But when people form armed militias to patrol an imaginary line in the dirt, to keep out the suffering economic refugees who are just looking for a better life, in order to protect the 'white' character of the US, then I see those actions as being another sordid episode in the ugly pedigree of the construction of white identity.
Regarding 'my side's' tactics, I think it's interesting that you chose the November '99 Battle in Seattle against the WTO as an example of failure. From my perspective, that protest was an early exemplar in a wave of massive street protests around the world against Neo-liberal "free" "trade" "agreements". (These terms are obvious misnomers.) Other earlier antineo-liberal protests include Madrid in 1994 and the Carnivals Against Capitalism in London, Koln, and Eugene OR in June '99, and the whole movement pretty much started with the Zapatistas rebelling against NAFTA starting in January 1994. I guess the Zapatistas were pretty accurate in their assessments, n'est pas? These protests and actions succeeded in forcing the governments of South America to become much more responsive to the needs of their peoples, rather than being tools of continued exploitation by the global "investment community". Currently, this wave is right now in the process of ending the stranglehold the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization have held over the economies of developing nations for the last sixty years. And that is just what the movement was started to do.
And how was the Battle in Seattle exemplary of successful tactics? It was a huge coalition of environmentalists, organized labor, socialists, anarchists, indigenous rights acitivists, church groups, human rights advocates, etc., who were able to agree to respect A DIVERSITY OF TACTICS. Yea diversity! Yea for coalitions!
The anti-immigrant movement is another example of a successful grassroots movement, albeit one I oppose. My perspective is that there is a hardcore racist vanguard within your movement who have skillfully manipulated public opinion to make people hate and fear immigrants, as well as Latin Americans generally. I'm not talking about the skinhead shitheads who are probably interested in using your movement to recruit like-minded idiots, I'm referring to groups like the Pioneer Fund, the Council of Conservative Citizens, the Carrying Capacity Network, and the Charles Martel Society. It has of course been necessary for these racist puppeteers behind the scenes to disguise their racist agenda because racism as an ideology has been thoroughly discredited in our society, though it still profoundly affects our law enforcement/legal system, as well as US foreign policy. Now, JT, if we can agree on the root causes of the recent mass migration to the US from the south, and if our interests are truly humanitarian, and if we want to do something about the situation, then we must of necessity consider what strategies are likely to be successful. Here are a couple of campaigns I'm watching with interest right now: Root Force ( http://www.rootforce.org ), opposes neo-liberal infrastructure projects that will displace millions of indigenous and campesinos and pave the way, literally, for continued economic and ecological exploitation of Latin America by the US; and the campaign ( i69news.bee-town.com ) against I-69, which is part of the planned Trans-Texas Corridor connecting with the highways of Plan Pueblo Panama in Mexico to facilitate neo-colonial depredations, as well as probable (gasp!) human smuggling. So, JT, (and friends,) if you're truly against the kind of involuntary waves of human migration that NAFTA set off, here are a couple of campaigns you can support that will prevent more such waves in the future. And while you're at it, may I suggest that you make the extra effort to fill up your tanks with Citgo gas? Citgo gas from Venezuela helps to support the autonomous economic development of Latin America, and, given the robust improvements in their economies and the ultimate baselessness of ours, who knows? Future generations of starving North Americans might be heading south in search of a better life. If that ever happens, I sure hope there won't be some stupid wall in their way.
Regarding the citizens' border patrols, I always heard it was David Duke who started them, when he was Grand Dragon of the KU Klux Klan. I'm not familiar with the patrols you impute to Cesar Chavez, and would be very interested to learn of your sources. I've also never heard about purported evidence of earliest 'Caucasianoid' (sic) migration to the Americas, other than from the Mormons, so I'd appreciate your elucidating us on your sources. I have always been skeptical of the Bering Strait theory of the human settlement of North America and am genuinely interested in whatever evidence you might have. Of course, some people say Africans from Egypt founded the Olmec civilzation of Meso-America; who knows?
One more thing I'd like to mention: As an activist, I've never received anymoney from any big foundations or corporate donors. I work, I pay my own way, I do my activism during my free time, and such is the case with every radical anti-racist activist I know. That's what 'grassroots' means to me. If I could get paid for my activism, it would raise a red flag for me that I'm probably not being radical enough. I know no one was paying the twenty thousand people who marched in Phoenix on May Day for immigrants' rights. So there.
Viva Zapata,
!Torbellino!

Oh, JT, JT. It's too bad you didn't list "intellectual dishonesty" as one of your turn-offs in your New Saxon profile (http://www.newsaxon.com/Viking_Son). Blaming the economic troubles of the world on a shadowy cabal of "international bankers" is hardly the same as the reasoned and well-stated critique of NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements posted by Turbo (excellent job, btw!). You know as well as I do that "money changers" and "international bankers" are simply code words for "Jews". This is the same kind of language used by Henry Ford in his anti-semitic tracts and by Pat Robertson's ghost writer in <i>New World Order</i>, who lifted whole passages from another writer decrying the financial schemes of Jews and simply replaced the word "Jews" with "European bankers". You talk about revealing "WHO is behind the problem", but you can't even be honest about who you <i>really</i> think is behind it all. Perhaps I'm wrong, and if so, please let us know precisely what you mean by "money changers" and "international bankers". Also, please inform the gentle reader about your choice of "eaglesnest_usa" as your email handle. Could this be a reference to the famed Eagle's Nest retreat of Adolph Hitler?

I think it's important to point out the veiled references and symbols used by white supremacists because the general public is generally not aware of the codes used by these groups. But those on the inside can easily recognize their brethren and sistren by these signifiers.

At least "F P Berg" is slightly more honest in acknowledging the racism of his/her fellow travelers. One question: Is this the very same Friedrich Paul Berg--two-bit Holocaust denier (http://codoh.com/berg/berg.html)--or simply a fan?

As far as the pagan symbols worn by the neo-Nazis at the rally, once again there is a great deal of intellectual dishonesty among these noble and proud people. "not_impressed" was right in pointing out my mistaken identification of the battle axe as a Thor's hammer. I corrected this mistake in my later comments, and was further corrected by Turbo. But there was at least one person at the rally wearing a Thor's hammer. Now, if I had seen a Norse battle axe or a Thor's hammer or a Celtic cross at the Renaissance Faire, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. But given the context, these symbols have a clear meaning to those on the "inside". Along with the jackboots, haircuts, and other accoutrements, they clearly have a racist meaning. By your own admission, the swastika can have many different meanings. But a swastika at a Nazi rally has an obvious meaning entirely distinct from one on an ancient Tibetan temple. Likewise, the symbols worn by these fellows have taken on new meanings, far removed from those originally intended. Please don't patronize us with your rationalizations to the contrary.

Turbo pointed out the possibly benign use of the Celtic cross on the Buell Fighting Systems shirt. However, given that the slogan scrawled across the bottom of the shirt is "Hail Victory!", I have a sneaking suspicion that this is yet another thinly-veiled signifier to other racist skinheads. That slogan just so happens to be the name of the most recent album by well-known White Power punk band Skrewdriver, and is also the name of a song by the Russian white supremacist band Kolovrat (http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Kolovrat/Hail-Victory.html). Again, given the context, I think it's safe to assume that the slogan and symbol are meant as racist signifiers. (The entire shirt can be seen here: http://www.bfsaz.com/tshirt.html)

But this discussion really misses the whole point. I have presented very clear evidence that white supremacist skinheads were present and out in the open at the May 1 immigration counter-protest. And so far, none of the organizers of the event or other attendees have repudiated their presence. Instead, we get weak rationalizations and contradictory denials. I take this as tacit approval of the fact that open racists are now welcome at events put on by the local anti-immigrant movement. This is a significant development, as in the past the organizers would have been quick to distance themselves from these proud Aryan folk. But in a way, it's also refreshing to see the movement finally embrace their more extreme allies. After all, they share the same fundamental tenet: the hegemony of "white culture" (whatever that is) in the USA is threatened by an influx of people with darker skin and "foreign" customs.

I thought the post by "Emma Goldmann" (one "n", please) deserved further comment. S/he referred to the a man in one of the pictures as "very nice". I'm not sure exactly to whom "Emma" was referring, but I assume it was the angelic-faced lad in picture 1 and in larrea's comment.

This very nice man is none other than Dana Arnold, darling of the local White Power music scene. He performs under the name "Noble Son" (http://www.noblesonmusic.com) and was featured at local hate festival Eurofest AZ, which won him rave reviews on the (now defunct) neo-Nazi National Vanguard website. He will also have a starring role as Thor in a skit at this year's Winterfest (an orgy of hate attended last year by our very own JT Ready!).

Speaking of National Vanguard, this is also the same Dana Arnold who acted as a spokesman for the group at a "White Pride Worldwide" rally in downtown Scottsdale back in March. See the story in the EV Tribune here: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/86296

Dana has a profile on New Saxon, the white supremacist alternative to MySpace, under the name "SkrewRemorse", where he seeks women with "pretty faces and pretty feet" (http://www.newsaxon.com/SkrewRemorse/). He's also a member of the Nazi and White Power social groups at the site, where he's sure to run into other really nice fellas with a thing for feet.

You can email him at folkish14@hotmail.com to pick up a copy of his CD.

Once again, I can't avoid the opportunity to point out yet another coded signifier used by neo-Nazis to signal to their movement brethren. The number 14 in Dana's email address is widely used in white supremacist circles to stand for the "14 words" in a slogan coined by imprisoned neo-Nazi David Lane: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children". This number is also featured on his New Saxon profile along with the number 88, which stands for Heil Hitler (H being the 8th letter of the English alphabet).

Then again, maybe Dana just set up his email account when he was 14, and he really is a "very nice" man after all.

Nice to see they share a common goal, the deportation of all illegal beaners back to their homeland.......

I didn't realize you were a Nazi. Creep, maybe, but Nazi? Man you've lost it.

What I have realized from personal experience with the WN movement is that it's basically like a circular firing squad. You become so concerned about culture and heritage, yet the reactionary heritage of the movement spawns an irrational hatred toward Communism- the only solution to these problems. Someone already hinted at it before, but let me rehash it one more time:

WHY do masses of people immigrate to other countries? Immigration is a pain in the ass. I live in Russia, and I can't even get Russian citizenship even though I'm of total European descent. It's a pain in the ass to relocate to another country even when you're personal situation isn't as bad as someone from Africa or Mexico. These people aren't coming to "take back their land", they are coming because they need to survive- and that situation is beneficial to the rich rulers of Mexico and America.

WNs like to focus on non-white immigration, but the same thing happens in Europe for example. Ukrainians or Modolvians have lower living standards so they try to immigrate to Russia, Poland, Slovakia, etc. Human traffickers take advantage of this and many young girls end up as sex-slave prostitutes. Clearly conquest or 'changing the racial make-up' has nothing to do with this issue.

We have this problem because mankind has developed a system based on sharp exploitation, both domestically and internationally. Capitalist must exploit labor and powerful countries must exploit the smaller ones. Only by doing away with this decrepit and miserable system can we build a society where nations can stand as equals and there will be no need for immigration as we know it today.

The problem is that while leftists in America do sometimes point out that they are also on the side of the white working class, they aren't doing a very good job of that. People become WNs because of what they perceive, and when someone isn't putting out the right message or countering the go-nowhere identity politics of modern society, you leave many working class whites no choice. They'll either job on the Fox News mainstream conservative bandwagon or they end up in the WN movement.

What I don't see is left-wing or Communist organizations making enough efforts to clamp down on the La Raza "This is OUR land" bullshit. First of all, Mexicans are not Aztecs(which were themselves as someone pointed out, conquerers as well). Mexicans have Spanish heritage and therefore they share a lot in common with Europeans. Second, while the Mexican War was indeed a dirty trick, what happened has happened. Why should any Mexican be lulled into thinking that he or she would be better off living in a slightly bigger Mexico that is still run by the corrupt Mexican ruling class?

White nationalism is succeeding because American leftists aren't opposing Mexican nationalism. What the hell did you expect?

various racists/anti-immigrant people have no problem with getting all their information from other racists and anti-immigrant people about what mexicans supposedly want from the u.s.

they make tons of shit up about mecha and other chicano groups and the racists eat it all up. just like the made-up statistics about how many u.s. citizens die each day because of undocumented immigrants.

for one thing, mexican immigrants are highly diverse. many of them are indigenous. mixtec and triqui from oaxaca, and various peoples from all over the country- and we mustn't forget that people who come through mexico and are brown and come across illegally are not from mexico, but perhaps from guatemala or el salvador, etc.

but if we're just talking about mexicans, i highly doubt that many, if any, would support the mexican government taking back any u.s. territory. they know that the mexican goverment is corrupt, and anything considered nationalism such as waving a mexican flag is not necessarily support for the mexican goverment (just like waving the american flag does not necessarily mean support for the u.s. government, as many anti-immigrant bush-haters know). if the mexican goverment is making efforts at retaking the land or combining with the u.s. as one nation (as many conspiracy theorists seem to think), it would be for the increased exploitation of labor and for more free trade, not for any sort of power given to mexican peoples.

from what i've read of aztlan, it has little to do with mexico, it has to do with people wanting freedom. but of course, there's stuff written about aztlan and chicanos all over written by whitey who construes it any which way they want. nonetheless, i won't claim that it's they don't want to drastically change society here- but i agree with most of them in what they want as far as self-determination, freedom, the end to exploitation of labor, giving the land back to those who work it, the celebration of art and culture, etc. we mustn't forget too that many undocumented immigrants are not even familiar with the concept of aztlan except when they're yelled at by minutemen. i think that's kinda funny.

I agree with you, Slavyanski, that the contemporary phenomena of human migration and the racist/nationalist/nativist anti-immigrant backlash are best understood in a global context. I also agree with you that the Aztlán nationalist rhetoric is irrelevant to the vast majority of Mexican immigrants, concerned as they are with insuring their own and their families' survival. (By the way, for those who don't know, Aztlán was the mythical northern homeland of the Aztecs before they migrated to the Lake Texcoco region.) I must take exception, though, to the repeated confusion between 'La Raza' and Aztec nationalism.
The phrase 'La Raza' is short for "La raza cósmica", the cosmic race, or "La Raza de bronce", the bronze race, concepts introduced by the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos in 1925. He conceived of La Raza as a new, fifth race of humanity, a mixture of Amerindian, European, African, and Asian races that had developed in Latin America. His purposes in developing this theory anticipated the ideas of Frantz Fanon, namely, that colonialism and racism rely on a psychological sense of subjugation within the minds of the oppressed, and to decolonize, it is necessary to combat psychological colonization by (re-)introducing a sense of pride in their heritage in the minds of the oppressed. As such, 'La Raza' is a celebration of mestizaje, or racial mixture, to combat the lingering effects of The elaborate Spanish colonial system of caste based on one's ancestry. 'La Raza', as traditionally used, didn't exclude those with only indigenous, or only Iberian, or only African ancestry; it just sought to change the focus of racial identity from pride or shame in one's mixed or unmixed ethnic heritage, to pride in the commonalities of all the people of Latin America. Along with the school of anthropological thought developed by Franz Boas, Vasconcelos was among the first to recognize the then-current Social Darwinist ideas of race to be social constructs that served to justify inequality and economic exploitation, as well as other atrocities.
My understanding is that the Aztlán nationalism of, say, MEChA, (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán") was developed to serve the same Fanonian purpose, and has enjoyed considerable success in doing so. Furthermore, MEChistas are not entirely incorrect in seeing Mexico as a direct heir to the Aztec empire. The Aztecs were actually divinely prohibited from calling themselves Aztecs, instead referring to themselves as Mexicas, from which the name Mexico derives. However, the Aztecs themselves were a conquering colonizing empire. What's more, they never conquered this region, or even Sonora, south of here! They were successfully fought off by Yoeme (Yaqui), O'odham (Pima and Papago), Mayo, Opata, and numerous Pueblo peoples. Later, the Spaniards, and later still, the Mexicans were confronted with continual armed resistance to their putative claims to these lands from the peoples mentioned, as well as the Apaches, spanning over centuries, and the struggle continues to this day. That's why the Zapatistas have asked the Yoeme (Yaquis) to host the Indigenous Intercontinental Summit at Vicam, Sonora, near Guaymas in October 2007.
I don't think anyone takes Aztlán nationalist rhetoric very seriously, though, except for the MinuteKlan, for whom it's a real hot button issue. When it comes to mobilizing American working class opposition to immigrants, the MinuteKlan are forced to rely on bogus economic arguments about immigrants being a drain on tax dollars, or stealing jobs, tapping into the irrational scarcity-mindedness on which any competitive economic system must ultimately be based. I think the lack of solidarity American workers feel with workers elsewhere is due to the fact that everyone in America enjoys an artificially high living standard owing to the status of the US as a neo-colonial superpower. Deep down inside, Americans know that, at least in the short term, they have more to lose from challenging the global economic status quo than they stand to gain. Fortunately for humanity, though, that situation is reversed for the vast majority of people in the world, and people seem to be waking up to that reality.
As to Communism, if by that you mean a centralized planned economy, I think humanity also knows by bitter experience that such an economic system is nearly as bad as capitalism at meeting human needs, insuring personal freedom, protecting the environment, etc. I personally am very excited by the experiments in voluntary grassroots socialism being carried out in South America right now. Ultimately, I'm in favor of an economic system of inter-relating cooperatives along the lines of Michael Albert's ParEcon, or participatory economics. Anyway, Ciao for now,
Viva Zapata,
!Torbellino!

If MEchA is being misrepresented, or the views of the majority of Mexicans are being misrepresented, then more needs to be done to bring their real views out into the open. I lived most of my life in 'barrios' in West Phoenix and Glendale, and I can tell you there is a feeling of exclusion. So you can understand how so many working class 'whites' are easy prey for the kind of propaganda that is being put out.

Turbo, I suggest you do some serious research into Communism. Communism is a system that is based on filling human needs, and while the first attempt at Communist revolution made some serious mistakes, the widespread death and destruction that capitalism has wrought compels us to learn from those mistakes and make another attempt, armed with decades of experience as well as new technology that makes economic planning far more feasable. Capitalism might meet your needs very well in the US, but for the vast majority of humanity(including many Eastern Europeans) it does not.

This is because capitalism is not meant to serve human need, it is meant to serve a profit motive and nothing else. I know this seems like going off topic but that is really what this whole immigration debate is really about. Immigration exists because the dominating mode of production demands it, and racialists can't figure that out because their ideological heritage prevents them from making a real critical analysis of Marxism. All these major issues that we see are the product of a larger system.

Ultimately, capitalism is a failure because it has brought into being the technology which could solve virtually all of the world's major problems, but it will not simply because doing so would not be profitable. It seeks to hold mankind in a state of perpetual misery to preserve the power of a few. I predict that it will either be defeated by Islamic fundamentalism(a demon it created during the Cold War) or the more desirable result- socialist revolution and Communism.

Rant over...

It is unclear by your post whether or not by Communism you mean a centrally planned command economy, though the title 'rebuttal' seems to suggest that you feel you have something to defend. Now I'll freely admit that Marx was motivated to write and to theorize by a desire to improve the lot in life of the common human. However, there were critiques of his ideas made by, for example, Bakunin, within Marx's lifetime, that successfully predicted some of the failings of Marxism as it manifested itself as a centrally planned command economy. (This is not to say that some of Marx's ideas are not useful.) You seem to acknowledge Marxism's failings when you refer to mistakes Communism has made. So let us charitably say that Communism has not succeeded in attaining the goals it has set for itself. From the very beginning there have been alternative ideas about how to achieve an equitable society, based on grassroots, bottom-up, voluntary socialism, manifesting in different forms such as cooperatives and workers' councils. In my opinion, the most eloquent recent spokesperson for such ideas is Michael Albert, in his book 'Parecon: life after capitalism'. I feel pretty familiar with Communism as it has manifested itself amongst humanity so far; are you familiar with Parecon? If so, what do you think about it? If not, why not?
Viva Zapata,
!Torbellino!

Ok before we get into anarchism vs. Communism, let us not forget that anarchism has a 100% failure rate whereas Marxism-Leninism was at least able to create a very advanced society which was able to defend itself from the largest land invasion force in modern history(strongest power in Europe at the time). The accomplishments of the socialist Soviet Union(1924-1956) are too numerous to list here without going way off topic. But I'll use the words of that second-only-to-Hitler anti-Communist Winston Churchill: "Stalin came to Russia with a wooden plow, but left it with nuclear weapons."

The problems with that socialist state were not due to inherent flaws in Marx's philosophy, seeing that Marx only gave a broad framework for what the movement or socialist state should be like. If anarchists have a beef they ought to take that up with Leninism(as they usually did), since most anarchist's tend to attack concepts like a vanguard party and such. While we can critique the mistakes of the real socialist states we must also take into account the historical factors and separated short-sighted mistakes from bad policies.

The Soviet model could have indeed worked, but it was rather precarious, and as it happened it succumbed to the rise of a new bourgeoisie. We can now see some of the reasons for this- most notably having enterprises run often by one person. During the socialist era, the party did indeed rule in favor of the working class by placing limits on the power of enterprise directors. What it failed to do however, was work toward the goal of bringing the workers up to the level of management and doing away with directors. Thus the first major economic victory for revisionism came when the new bourgeoisie merely removed the limits that the socialist state had placed on them.

So what we can objectively say about the original Soviet model is that it could have worked, but that it was very vulnerable, especially considering what they had to work with. Modern technology as well as experience allows us to make a far greater leap after a socialist revolution, and go much further in terms of eliminating classes. But until this happens, and ultimately until Communism replaces capitalism, there will always be the necessity for a state.

Anarchism is hampered by idealism and a refusal to acknowledge its own shortcomings. Every time anarchists are asked to account for why they failed here or there, it's always the Communists' fault, and if they need to back that up they tend to run right to the capitalist press for the propaganda they need. How revolutionary and anti-capitalist is a movement that needs the capitalist propaganda mill to pin its own failures on another movement?

Voluntary socialism? Who will convince people on any significant scale that this is necessary? You must remember that there are many benefits or at least perceived benefits for even the lowest working class people in places like the US. If nothing else, at least they have no responsibility for running their own life. Some kind of front would have to be organized to wake people up and help them take back their lives. That will take leadership- broad leadership is preferable, but it is leadership nonetheless.

Then of course there are anarchism's internal problems. Now let's stop and pretend for a second that the seizure of private property by workers wouldn't prompt an immediate response by the most advanced military in the world, just for the sake of argument. How is society going to be when the people who happened to work at the silicon chip factory get paid far more than those who unfortunately worked at the pencil factory in the same city or commune? Would you equalize wages? If so, on what basis, and how? If you simply equalize wages, the technical or more advanced workers will become a threat. If you don't equalize wages, the lucky workers will become a ruling class. Who will balance it out? And that's just in ONE city. What happens when a larger territory is run in such a manner?

That's merely the tip of the iceberg, and that's WITHOUT considering the swift response of the military. Of course when faced with that many anarchists I have debated with simply say "guerilla warfare". Their lack of understanding about military history and strategy aside, what are the great names in the history of modern guerilla warfare? Tito, Mao, Vo Nguyen Giap, Kovpak, Kim Il Sung, etc. All at one time or another Communists with the goal of seizing state power for the benefit of the proletariat. All with some form of either outside support or a state, all with organization and discipline.

Anarchism places chains on the advance of progress and technology. Capitalism is condemned because it does the same at some point, but it has taken the productive forces far beyond what anarchism could ever provide, which is why people will at least settle for it despite all the horrors it produces. If anarchists could maintain a community without being crushed so quickly(which would be only in such a case where they proved no threat to the existing capitalist order), they would over time revert to capitalism. As Mao said, "tools speak through people."

I do support the idea of communal living, a more radically socialist state than what existed in 1924-1956, and a greater leap toward Communism without the need for a police force or standing army. However, analysis tells me that the state cannot simply be done away with in one fell blow, and neither will capitalism be overthrown by the spontaneous uprising of "voluntary socialists". If such a movement could spring up to the point where it actually became even the slightest threat to the capitalist establishment, it would be stamped out practically overnight.

Thanx for explaining what you mean by Communism. I wasn't sure whether you were pinning your hopes on a centrally planned command economy brought into existence by an armed revolution led by a vanguard party, and now I know that's exactly what you meant.
Sorry I can't go along with you though, Amigo. I treasure too much the freedom to associate with whomever I like, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, etc. I also don't believe that all the technological 'progress' made in the last 150 years is environmentally sustainable. Further, I strongly believe that shitting out nukes is a crime against humanity, so I don't see how trading one's wooden ploughs for nukes is anything less than monstrous.
To me, the funny/sad thing about this discussion is that, left to themselves, people are innately capable of figuring out how to live in balance with each other as well as with the larger-than-human environment. Like for example, here in the Sonoran Desert, the O'odham and Yoeme peoples governed themselves by means of consensus and their distribution system was a gift economy based on voluntary mutual aid, for centuries. That's why I'm really excited about what's going on in Latin America right now. From the Zapatistas, who have successfully defended their autonomy from the Mexican government for thirteen years and elaborated a consensus-based society while developing ties of solidarity all over Mexico, the hemisphere, and the world; to the popular assemblies that are popping up and taking over ranging from Argentina to Oaxaca; to the Landless Peasants' Movements occupying huge tracts of hoarded land in Brazil and elsewhere; to workplace takeovers back in Argentina; as well as the trade/barter network that replaced the collapsed economy there, until undermined by (?CIA-backed?) counterfeit scrip; to the huge popular movements that have brought Chavez, Morales, and Correa to their countries' presidencies, and which continue to hold their feet to the fire. Yes indeed, it looks like US hegemony over Latin America is coming to an end within our lifetimes, and people are creating a new just and sustainable world there from the bottom up. Throughout the hemisphere, it seems that people have given up on the idea of a centrally planned command economy in favor of horizontalism and autogestion, and abandoned the idea of an armed revolution directed by a vanguard in favor of direct action and the general strike.
It sounds like you've got religion, Amigo, so I seriously doubt I'm going to make any headway in convincing you that your concept of Communism is a dead end. Fortunately for humanity and the planet, though, that is the emerging consensus, and so whether or not you are convinced is irrelevant.

First let me clarify something about the nuclear weapons quote. I too oppose nukes, but I did not want to have to delve into the details of all the Soviet Union's accomplishments during its socialist period. I could have easily pointed out the free health care, education, etc. I could have pointed out that even after the socialist period of 1924-1956, many of these benefits continued to last even though the socialist economy was being rapidly dismantled by the revisionists. What I was simply trying to point out is that the Soviet Union's rise to an international superpower was one of history's greatest accomplishments, taking place quicker and under more difficult conditions than Japan's ascent, which took about 80 years.

I'm sorry but I'm not impressed by the Zapatista's or people like Chavez. For one thing, this uprising against US hegemony is being led by states, parties, and organized groups. Second, this last century has shown us that there are many pseudo-socialists out there, and perhaps Chavez is one, who end up either failing or betraying their people. Take a look at Indonesia for example. They had one of the largest Communist parties in the world, and they made the mistake of putting nationalism ahead of Communism, allying with Sukarno. Once they gained power, Sukarno liquidated them, to the point where some say that rivers in Jakarta were clogged with corpses.

I am not satisfied with these movements you speak of. They are only successful now because the focus of the imperialists is currently elsewhere. When the time comes, the US and its allies will shatter these "resistance" movements one by one, primarily by buying off many of its supporters.

Now on to the far more important issue of freedom. It is a credit to the bourgeois ideologues that they have made people put concepts like "freedom of speech" or "freedom of religion" on a pedestal, while something like the "freedom to live" or the "freedom to eat" is not even mentioned. Let us discard "freedom of religion" at first. Everyone should have the right to delude theirself with whatever myth they like, so long as it is a personal matter.

Let's look at freedom of speech. Both you and I have marched at anti-war rallies I presume, perhaps we were at the same rally and didn't know it. You know probably more than I about the strength of the US anti-war movement, and yet with all that excercise of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, it has yet to remove even ONE soldier from Iraq. It has not halted the construction of US bases in Czech Republic or Poland. The only demonstration I know of which has actually stopped a government action was the protest in Fedosia on the Crimean peninsula, which led to a USMC excercise being cancelled before it began. Who led it? Communists.

Freedom of speech is useless without the means to disseminate that speech. The more resources and money one has, the more weight their speech carries. Thus in terms of freedom of speech, while we can say that we all would like to say what we want to be able to speak freely without being jailed, beyond that freedom of speech is really useless if you don't control the means to disseminate viewpoints. And we Communists merely aim to transfer those means to the proletariat.

We must put the most basic human needs forward as the most important rights. The right to eat, the right to live, is far more important than the "right to free speech", something that the majority of people in many nations can't physically excercise to any significant measure(although the internet has changed this somewhat).

Now as for a centrally planned economy, modern technology has made this far more feasible, and in fact a system for economic planning was in the development stage in Chile under the Allende government, using some of the most advanced technology of its time. Unfortunately, Senor Pinochet literally burried that project. Central planning is essential for two reasons:

1. It can harness the most advanced technology and industry, and generally advance the tools of production to their fullest potential.

2. It can stave off the effect of regionalism, compensate for naturally occuring inequalities(based on geography, resources etc.).

Even though the central planning system of the socialist Soviet Union was not the best form, what ruined the Soviet Union was decentralization, which led to the various enterprises going 'blind' with nothing to link them. When the planning system was restored under Kosygin, it was a merely a facade and the plan had little to no bearing on the economy at that point.

The problem with all these autonomous 'horizontal' communes and such, is that they can be easily crushed not only by outside force. It is only natural that some peasants live on rich land while others live on poorer land. If you are an imperialist power like the US, you have two easy options for breaking any resistance.

1. Play on the fears of the richer peasants. They will come to understand that with resistance they will get nothing, while if they play ball, they will at least keep their favored status. This is why nationalist movements tend to fail over time. Even the Vietnamese NLF succumbed to nationalism and look at them today- a source of mail order brides, cheap labor, prostitution, etc.

2. Play on the wants of the poor peasants. They have little to lose, and the imperialists can promise them the property of the rich ones.

I leave you with this. Marxism is not a religion, it is a historical materialist analysis. It in itself is not truth, it is a methodology for finding objective truth- just like science. And also like science, a person applything this method will not necessarily find objective truth, just as a scientist not having all the relevant information cannot reach the truth he is searching for. However, we have in the last 100 years learned a lot of truths. We know what works, and what doesn't work.

I feel that anarchists are making a cult of resistance, lauding movements that are little more than a diversion. We Communists fight not for a world where peasants can keep their tract of dirt and be left alone for a while, but rather where they collectively own their own nation. Anarchism would limit mankind's potential because it puts absolutist and unrealistic interpretations of "freedom" ahead of practical concerns.

Ultimately, our end goals would look very similar. The difference is that Communists are willing to take into account the time and measures that are necessary to reach that goal.

It is entirely consistent with your Marxist-Leninist ideology that you are not impressed with the achievements of indigenous folks and campesinos in Latin America by way of securing their own autonomy and self-management. M-L has always been willing to sacrifice the petty lives and lifeways of the little people on the altar of technological progress. For example, in the "Soviet" Union, the Bolsheviks consolidated their power by suppressing the soviets, or workers councils, as well as the Russian village Mir and the Ukrainian peasant uprising. Minority languages and populations were suppressed, oppressed, transferred, etc. When a genuine people's uprising threatened "Soviet" hegemony in Hungary in 1956, the USSR sent in the troops. Nor have Latin American subsistence farmers been spared the rod wielded by would-be M-L rulers. Sendero Luminoso butchered tens of thousands of peasants in Peru, the FARC continues to run a protection racket and traffic in cocaine in rural Colombia, and both groups have also been ruthless in suppressing rival tendencies within the left, as M-L has always been. And although you say that our ends are the same, no M-L state has ever "withered away", though I do have high hopes for Cuba after Castro. Cuba, by the way, is a unique case. Sure enough, the Communist Party there consolidated their power by doing away with dissenting voices, as well as criminalizing and deporting queer Cubans, among others. But when the techno-socialist rug was pulled out from under Cuba with the collapse of the "Soviet" Union, they were forced to revert to self-managed agrarian cooperatives and organic agriculture!
You're wrong about states being the leaders of the new egalitarian movements in Latin America, by the way. All the movements I mentioned in my last post are strictly grassroots, and, make no mistake, Chavez, Morales, Correa, and Kirchner hold presidential power strictly at the pleasure of the popular movements. (Lula in Brazil is a little more complicated.) Your cavalier dismissal of religion as self-deception is also completely out of place when studying South America, where religion, even dissident Catholicism in the form of Liberation Theology, has proven itself quite capable of liberatory potential. When it comes to the argument that the US will re-establish hegemony, of course, only time will tell. From my perspective it looks like the current ruling clique in Washington have bet all their chips on trying to control the Middle East and Central Asia, and they are losing. The US is certainly showing more signs of imminent collapse than the "Soviet" Union ever did before its fall.
When it comes to freedom, you seem to hold the same typical Marxist-Leninist viewpoint that freedom of dissent and widespread economic security are mutually exclusive, i.e., you can't have them both. The only other political position that shares this belief is fascism, so I don't think it's worth spending too much energy refuting. I will say, though, that while real dissent in both the "Soviet" Union and the West is mostly underground, like 'zines and blogs in the West and Samizdat in the "Soviet" Union, the "S"U used to jail, torture, and kill its dissidents, which isn't really the case in this hemisphere, except maybe in Colombia. Largely what has put a stop to it in Latin America is grassroots solidarity, which is why these freedoms will never be given up for the sake of 'the revolution'.
Regarding the purported superiority of central planning, first, it has become clear that capitalist and state-capitalist ("Communist") industrial technology is not, in the long run, environmentally sustainable. If anything, the environmental devastation of "Communism" is worse because of the suppression of popular dissent. Second, when you speak of 'advancing the tools of production to their fullest potential', I can't help remembering that M-L's have always regarded human labor to be one of those tools of production. Sure enough, M-L's have always advocated for Stakhanovism, that is, for everyone to work as hard as possible, work oneself to death even, for the revolution. Subsistence farmers, artisans, craftspeople, and pretty much everyone else with self-respect instead of a martyr's complex reject such slavedriver's whip-like exhortations, whether they come from the IMF/World Bank, the preacher, or the Central Planning Committee.
And therein lies the true difference between our positions. As a good Marxist-Leninist, you believe only a few smart people should be given the power to make all the important decisions and plan everything for everyone, at least to begin with. I, on the other hand, don't pretend to be smart enough to make everyone's decisions for them. The best I can do is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with everyone else who wants to take control of our own lives and communities back from those who claim to be our betters.
!Venceremos!
!Turbo!

Turbo, you say we have freedom of dissent in this hemisphere? What about Rod Coronado, an indigenous activist who faces the prospect of going back to prison for demonstrating the use of a destructive device? What about Sherman Austin? He just did time for a link he had on his website. How bout the SHAC 7 who are imprisoned for trying to exercise free speech quote-unquote rights to oppose animal torture? And what about Homeland Security going all COINTELPRO and infiltrating anti-war groups? Also what about the mass arrests at protests in Eugene, Seattle, New York, Miami, Denver, and the most recent police brutality at the peaceful immigrant rights demonstration in L.A.? What about Mexico's recent wars on dissent in Oaxaca and Atenco? They did all the things you mentioned... jail, torture, and murder. I agree that freedom to dissent is what we want, but don't get all smug like we actually GOT IT.

As usual, the "anti-capitalist" "revolutionary" anarchists RUN to the bourgeoisie for propaganda information to explain why anarchism failed and Marxism-Leninism is supposedly evil and "totalitarian". The Ukrainian peasant uprising was not some kind of expression of dissent or yearning for freedom. The peasants had been allowed to continue in a capitalist manner since the NEP, and this was causing havoc across the country. It could not sustain the industrialization that needed to take place. These heroic peasants you speak of were so intent on getting a higher price for their grain(speculation) that they thought nothing of starving millions of people in the cities.

Supression of national languages? Are you kidding? Thanks to the socialist government, many peoples obtained a written language for the first time in their history. The state funded the printing of publications, newspapers, books, and other material in national languages, and classes were taught in national languages as well.

You also prove your dependency on bourgeois myth by referring to the uprising in Budapest as a "genuine people's uprising". This is sickening; Hungary was a former Axis state which assisted in the invasion of the Soviet Union- something that ultimately led to the death of 8 million Soviet civilians alone. In 1944, Admiral Horthy attempted to make peace with the Soviet Union and was overthrown by the Germans, replaced with Ferenc Szalasi of the fanatically fascist Arrow Cross party. This party forced the Hungarian people to fight one of the bloodiest battles of the war when they could have simply surrendered almost a year earlier.

The uprising in 1956 was a reactionary and nationalist uprising- but the fault lies with Khruschev for making it all possible. And since Khruschev was a revisionist and imperialist, naturally he suppressed it with tanks as an imperialist would. Remember that Khruschev destroyed socialism in the Soviet Union mainly by stating some of the same lies you have parroted here. In fact, even the most anti-Communist propagandists have obtained their "facts" about Stalin from Khruschev, though they always insist we cannot trust Communist sources.

The Budapest uprising can be laid at the feet of the revisionists, but also nationalists who were empowered by Khruschev's political pressure on the people's democracies. Keep in mind that in you "people's uprising", some of Budapest's remaining Jews were lynched because nationalist ideology linked them with the Communists.

You say no Marxist state has ever withered away? Well no anarchist society has ever come into being. The closest thing you can site is some ancient native American tribes. Yes we all know that mankind existed for thousands of years in a primitive state of Communism without exploitation, but this was not an idyllic paradise- it was the result of necessity. As I said before, how do you expect your movement to be some kind of threat to capitalism when it can only offer the majority of people a lifestyle that is primitive compared to the rest of the modern world? You can only do so with idealism.

The idea that Chavez or any of those people you mentioned prior base their power solely on grassroots is naive and short-sighted. Chavez has for quite some time commanded the police and army of a large state. That is the base of his power. Many leaders like him put on the socialist mask to get attention and support, but do not forget that there is more than one imperialist power in the world, and Chavez and many like him are simply playing to a new ruling clique- namely Russia and China. Who Chavez truly serves will be borne out in time, as it always is.

Next, when did I ever say that economic security and freedom of dissent are mutually exlclusive? Your whining about freedom of dissent is clearly based on an anti-Communist, pro-capitalist view of Soviet history- something that is being totally reviewed now that the Soviet archives have been opened. The myth of people being locked up in the middle of the night because they made a crack about Stalin is just that- a myth. GULAG records show that political prisoners always made up a small minority of the entire GULAG population(which was not only prisons but also minimum security work colonies), and political prisoners were mostly sentenced for less than 5 years. It is important to remember that "political prisoner" didn't mean someone caught making jokes about Lenin or complaining about some policy in public. Crimes like "treason", "espionage", and "sabotage" were considered political crimes and classified as such. All in all, the entire GULAG population throughout the entire Stalin era(1924-1953) actually held a smaller percentage of the adult population than the US prison system holds TODAY!

This of course, does not mean that during the struggle many innocents were not arrested or even shot; but one has to remember that this was a struggle, a struggle in a country that is used to such barbarity I might add. We got lots of people in Russia today who think it's ok to kidnap women, rape them in various ways, and then sell them as slaves to other countries. What should we do with them? Should we listen to their dissenting opinions and respect their property rights? Or should we send them to the wall? Even more difficult: What do we do with businessmen, police, or even simple private individuals who might not be directly connected to this practice, but individually contribute to it in clear ways?

Those are some hard decisions that come up when you have a revolution- decisions that anarchists are too afraid to face because their idealism hems them in. So they would rather point to some primitive commune somewhere and laud a people's "self-management" that exists only because the state is not threatened by it at the time. And where there is guerilla resistance going on in the world- do you think those people allow free dissent? Does Commandante Marcos not expect his orders to be followed without question when matters of life and death are at hand?

Your last paragraph is too full of distortions to even address. Communism is not state-capitalism, period. That is why real Marxist-Leninists acknowledge that the Soviet Union ceased to be socialist from either 1956 or 1963- depending on whether they consider the transformation being 'in spirit' by the political change in 1956, or only the economic changes started in the 60s'. You speak of technology not being environmentally sustainable. That may be true in the short-term but the alternative you are offering to the world is a primitive existence. How can you offer squatter communes to people who live in Europe, Canada, South Korea, USA, etc? Of course many people(and sadly many Communists) assume that the revolution will not be lead by those people of imperialist countries who constitute a sort of "labor aristocracy". Well it is possible but certainly not if all you can offer these people is dirt farms.

Even in small communes you can't possibly have the kind of freedom you dream of. There will be differences and contradictions which will restrict peoples' ability to excercise their freedoms. Then you got the fact that self-managing some kind of enterprise takes discipline, and orders will have to be given and followed. After all that you have the fact that if your "resistance" is ever more than a minor nuisance to any state, they will crush you like a bug.

Lastly let me point out that the Leninist concept of a "vanguard" party does not mean "people who are smarter than everyone else". It simply means those most dedicated to the revolution. This means selfless people, idealistic people, and yes- sometimes people that just happen to be very intelligent or perceptive. Personally I think a party of full-time revolutionaries is in retrospect, not as desirable. A real vanguard party is more effective if it is made of workers who serve the party as something beyond their everyday duties. Central planning is not about "making other peoples' decisions for them". It is about going from a society based on commodity production to a use-value producing society; in other words, a society based around filling human need.

As I said before, the Bolsheviks made their share of mistakes, which are of course always more clear in hindsight. However, I do not intend to let the fascists and bourgeois paint a picture of Soviet society that is contradicted by objective reality, contemporary eyewitnesses, and documentary evidence. I will not ignore the eyewitness accounts of people like Anna Loise Strong or George Bernard Shaw in favor of the 10th grade Trotskyite fantasy of George Orwell. Lastly, Marxist-Leninists understand that the change of society from one form to another does not move in a linear fashion. The original socialist state and the central planning system worked, but in hindsight it had many vulnerabilities. In addition to this, the technological conditions exist today that allow us to take a far greater leap toward the higher form of Communism, and with that- a far more meaningful democracy as well.

Slavyanski, I can't decide whether you're just a troll looking for someone to argue with, or whether you're the last living soloist from the Old Joseph Stalin Hallelujah Choir. If you're just a troll, then I can no longer justify taking time away from my friends, my life, my activism, and my dog for this pointless back-and-forth. If the latter is the case, then you are a third-rate debater who is thoroughly brainwashed by thoroughly discredited propaganda from, like, more than fifty years ago. Anyone with access to Google and Wikipedia can readily see for themselves the ridiculousness of your Stalinist apologist assertions.
Regarding the Ukrainian peasant uprising, I was referring to the peasant-based Makhnovshchina who valiantly fought off the Ukrainian nationalists during the revolution of 1917-1921, only to be ruthlessly crushed by Russian Bolshevik forces led by Trotsky and Dzerzhinski. By the way, my source for the Makhnovshchina is Yves Fremion's "Orgasms of History", and his sources are all first-hand accounts, such as Ossip Tsebry's "Memoirs of a Makhnovist Partisan", Piotr Archinov's "History of the Makhnovist Movement", and Nestor Makhno's own writings, "Struggle against the State and Other Essays". The gentle reader can refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhno for more info; please feel free to check out the 'talk' page, as the neutrality of this article has been challenged. I'm surprised that you mistakenly thought I was referring to the Holodomor, or Ukrainian Genocide of 1932-1933. First, I'm surprised because it certainly wasn't a peasant uprising. It started as underground resistance to enforced agricultural collectivization by seasoned peasant farmers who were able to accurately anticipate the drastic reduction in productivity that would inevitably result from collectivization. I'm also surprised you would even want to talk about this horrifying incident; Stalin's response to the resistance was genocidal, resulting in massive famine in the Ukraine. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor for more info. The neutrality of this Wikipedia article has not been challenged, so I guess you can take it to the bank.
Regarding "Soviet" repression of minority language, religion, and culture, the classic examples are the ethnic cleansings of numerous peoples by Stalin, including the Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, and Meskhetian Turks, as well as Poles, Ukrainians, Koreans, Volga Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, Letts, Lithuanians, Estonians, Romanians, etc., most of whom were exiled to Siberia. More detail is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_settlements_in_the_Soviet_Union . The neutrality of neither of these articles has been challenged. With respect to minority linguistic suppression, the most striking examples are the Turkic and Persian languages the "Soviet" Union inherited from the Russian Empire, including Tatar, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Azeri, and Bashkir. In the 1920's, their speakers were forbidden from writing their languages in the Arabic script in which they had hitherto been written. A synthetic alphabet was devised, based on the Turkish and Roman alphabets. Then, in 1939-1940, that alphabet's use was forbidden and use of the Cyrillic alphabet was mandated. What effect do you suppose that has on a culture's literacy, let alone its literature and its cultural continuity? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification for an article whose neutrality is undisputed as of this posting. With regard to cultural and religious destruction, I think the saddest cases are the indigenous peoples of Siberia, such as the Nganasan, Nenets, Khanty, and Mansi, most of whom are near extinction owing to the "Soviet" Union's outlawing of their traditional religion, rapine of their lands, kidnapping of their children, and persecution of their shamans and tribal elders as "kulaks". There are undisputed Wikipedia articles on each of these peoples for those who are interested.
My source of information on the Hungarian uprising of 1956 is not, in fact, the bourgeois press, but rather, once again, Fremion's "Orgasms of History: 3000 Years of Spontaneous Insurrection", published by AK Press in 2002. Fremion's sources were Bela Liptak's "A Testament of Revolution", as well as Andy Anderson's "Hungary 1956". The curious can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 an undisputed article, for more info. What you fail to mention, Slavyanski, is that the "Soviet" puppet government established hegemony by muscling out a democratically-elected parliamentary government; and that the 1956 uprising was led by socialist students and workers who toppled Stalin's statue as a protest against "Soviet" imperialism before being crushed by a "Soviet" invasion. Yeah sure, Hungarian right-wingers participated, but they had no influence at all in the political position of the uprising, which was unquestionably socialist.
Speaking to your assertion that my advocacy of pre-industrial technology is unrealistic/idealistic, I think it is industrialism and the notion of progress that are unrealistic and idealistic. You see, subsistence gardeners and farmers have one single imperative: they must get more energy out of their crops than they put into them. Not to do so means death. For the last hundred years, industrial society has been able to fudge on this simple accounting equation because of the free energy at its disposal in the form of petroleum. Think industrial fertilizers, industrial pesticides, industrial harvesting equipment, etc. Here in the Sonoran Desert water is a striking example. Before industrial technology, O'odham farmers relied on rain run-off water for their agriculture, to which their quickly ripening drought-tolerant seed strains were specifically adapted. Nowadays, industrial agriculture in the Sonoran Desert is entirely reliant on fossil water deposited aeons ago being brought to the surface at a far higher rate than replenishment, using fossil fuels to do so. The ability to continue such agricultural practices is rapidly coming to an end. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just this month issued a statement that the entire world needs to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avert climate disaster ( http://www.ipcc.ch/ ). Not only food production, but also food distribution, and indeed everything distribution relies on petroleum. Consequently, the only realistic plan for the future seeks to put into place greater decentralization and more regional economic independence, and fast. Is this an anti-technology stance? No, it is merely asserts that the very first criterion by which we evaluate every technology is, is it sustainable? And more positively, seeks out simple, more regionally-decentralized technologies. Permaculture has undertaken this very endeavor, as well as developing systems that get more output with less input. You should check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
Don't believe the Madison Avenue hype; not only is it impossible for everyone to live like Americans or Europeans, it is becoming impossible for Americans and Europeans to continue to live as they have been.
As to whether Chavez will betray the people, who knows? At this point he is politically unable or unwilling even to suppress the rich powerful right-wingers who backed the 2002 coup, and Venezuela's political situation is unique inasmuch as the rank-and-file of the military seem pretty radically simpatico with the people, which is how Chavez was re-instated after the coup. Ultimately I think if he does betray the people, they'll throw him out, but really that's just conjecture, as are your opinions. Who knows? We'll see.
And when, you ask, did you suggest that freedom to dissent and economic security are mutually exclusive? In your post "Anarchism", you said:
"Now on to the far more important issue of freedom. It is a credit to the bourgeois ideologues that they have made people put concepts like "freedom of speech" or "freedom of religion" on a pedestal, while something like the "freedom to live" or the "freedom to eat" is not even mentioned...
Freedom of speech is useless without the means to disseminate that speech. The more resources and money one has, the more weight their speech carries. Thus in terms of freedom of speech, while we can say that we all would like to say what we want to be able to speak freely without being jailed, beyond that freedom of speech is really useless if you don't control the means to disseminate viewpoints. And we Communists merely aim to transfer those means to the proletariat.
We must put the most basic human needs forward as the most important rights. The right to eat, the right to live, is far more important than the "right to free speech""
and even in your last post, you characterize me as whining about the freedom to dissent, and claim that I'm deluded by anti-communist and pro-capitalist propaganda. All this was in the context of defending the "Soviet" Union's repression of dissent, which you claimed was no big deal. C'mon now, Slavyanski. Are you defending the imprisonment of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Eduard Kuznetsov, Yuli Daniel, Andrei Sinyavsky, Alexander Ginzburg, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Yuri Shikhanovich, Pyotr Yakir, Victor Krasin, Sergei Kovalev, Alexander Lavut, Tatyana Velikanova, and Alexander Voronel, among many others too numerous to mention? They were all imprisoned for violating such unlovely laws as Article 70 of the RSFSR Penal Code, which forbade "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". Most of them became known through the underground distribution network of dissident literature known as Samizdat ( see the undisputed entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat ). This was at a time when the KGB was monitoring every printing press, every mimeograph and copier, even every typewriter! So much for 'transferring the means to disseminate one's viewpoint to the proletariat'.
Speaking more abstractly about freedom to dissent, I must concur with Julia that we don't have as much as we want here in the US, either. Sure, the Bill of Rights supposedly guarantees freedom of speech, but that guarantee was completely useless to protect dissenting speech for about the first 150 years of the republic. Right-wingers like to claim that American GI's fought and died for our free speech rights, but really, as you probably know, they fought and died for US business interests, with the partial exceptions of WWII and the Civil War. The truth is that the right to dissent was secured by the civil disobedience of my fellow workers in the Industrial Workers of the World, starting in 1909 in such places as Spokane, Aberdeen, and Everett, WA, Fresno and San Diego, CA, and Sioux City, IA. My Source is Thompson's and Bekken's "The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First 100 Years", but you can read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_fights . Another reason why we enjoy greater right to dissent is the tireless litigation of the American Civil Liberties Union. And how effective is dissent at manifesting social change? Well, I already mentioned the environmental movement. The US developed one, The U"S""S""R" never really did, because there was no freedom to dissent there. Let's look at the example you mentioned, anti-war dissent. I think most people would agree that massive popular dissent was one of the three big factors in ending the Vietnam War, along with effective guerrilla warfare and resistance/refusal/rebellion amongst US troops. And how am I currently using my right to dissent to oppose the war in Iraq? Me and my compañer@s oppose military recruiting by going to local high schools and talking with students about the downside to enlisting in the military. Remember, this is what Big Bill Haywood and Eugene V. Debs were imprisoned for during WWI, and now it's an accepted right! Not only does counter-recruitment hamper the war machine; It also provides a platform to introduce young people to thinking critically about the government, the lack of economic opportunities that drives people into the military, and building a society based on voluntary cooperation instead of coercion and exploitation.
Next you wrote, "And where there is guerilla resistance going on in the world- do you think those people allow free dissent? Does Commandante Marcos not expect his orders to be followed without question when matters of life and death are at hand?"
Well, first of all his title is Subcomandante Marcos, because the Commandantes are all Indigenous men and women from Chiapas. Second, the Zapatistas have effectively practiced non-violent civil disobedience and building grassroots solidarity almost exclusively for over ten years. And lastly, they always sought to preserve the right to dissent. For example, before even their first military campaign, they explicitly defined the right of the people to resist any unjust actions of the EZLN. This was further elaborated by urging the population to "acquire and possess arms to defend their persons, families and property... against the armed attacks committed by the revolutionary forces or those of the government." In other words, if we try to tell you what to do and you don't like it, feel free to shoot us. How's that for assuring the right to dissent? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EZLN for more info.
You next attempt to reject the label 'State Capitalism', but the phrase is actually Lenin's, as in "Socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people", which he wrote in "The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It." By this he meant that socialism was be realized by the state claiming and exercising monopoly proprietary rights over all the means of production in the name of the proletariat, in order to industrialize society and maximize production. The problem with this program is when industrialization and the maximization of production conflict with the short and long term interests of the people- see my earlier critique of Stakhanovism. The interested reader can learn more at the undisputed entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union
The root of the problem I mentioned is the people giving up decision-making control to some centralized bureaucracy, whose orders one must obey on an 'or else' basis. Contemporary China is the apotheosis of state capitalism. Chinese workers are still exhorted to work their asses off in the name of some 'socialist' revolution, meanwhile the coordinating class is bankrolling world capitalism! There is hope, though, in a huge and growing independent grassroots dissident workers' movement in China.
Regarding your denial that your vanguard party is supposed to consist of those (who consider themselves to be) smarter than everyone else, allow me to quote Lenin, who is reported in his Collected Works, Vol. 27 p. 466, to have told the trade unions that "there are many...who are not enlightened socialists and cannot be such because they have to slave in the factories and they have neither the time nor the opportunity to become socialists". Don't worry about the thinking, boys, we've got it covered. All you need to do is slave away in the factories like we told you. No thanks, Boss-man.
In conclusion, I'd just like to observe that it's pretty easy to make bald Stalinist assertions without citing any sources while impugning the reliability of the sources of others when one is writing on some obscure comments page. However, Slavyanski, since your point of view diverges so widely from the historiographical consensus, why don't you take up the debate with the community of real scholars, both professional and amateur, who contribute to Wikipedia? As you no doubt know, anyone can contribute to Wikipedia. Don't bank on being able to pull the wool over anyone's eyes for long, though. And better yet, why don't you abandon your dusty old tomes of old Russian history that no one really cares about, and with good reason, and join us in the twenty-first century? You know, the real difference between you position and mine is that Stalinism has a past, while horizontal grassroots voluntary socialism has a future.
!Venceremos!
!Torbellino!

Once again folks...those "revolutionary" anarchists run to their mamas of the bourgeois press(even fascists or fascist-sympathizers) every time they are challenged...

First let me give you a VERY helpful piece of advice. Never, ever accuse someone of "ignorance" and then tell him that he needs to use Google and Wikipedia. See I get my knowledge of history from studying the works of scholars and comparing them, and on these subjects I spend a great deal of time going over various studies of the Soviet secret archives. The ability to use Google or Wikipedia does not put us on an equal level in terms of understanding Soviet history- no matter how much you wish it would. Lastly on that point- it is sheer ignorance to think that Wikipedia can ever be useful for anything other than basic trivia. In regards to political and controversial historical issues it is totally unreliable. Of course I'm sure you probably support it because it is "grassroots" or something like that.

First, let's talk about Makhno. There is a huge gap between Makhno's claims and reality. In reality, he was a drunk, and his people showed very little regard for the working class, happy to let them starve rather than organize a system of currency. Makhno's army shot people without trial, and the Maknovschina created numerous authoritarian organs for various reasons- while giving them non-authoritarian names to conceal the facts. Makhno' actions were irresponsible and lead to thousands of deaths due to his refusal to deal with real economic problems, most likely because it would require the creation of certain organs, the authority of which would be too hard to conceal.

For more information on Makhno's incompetance go to:

http://www.isreview.org/issues/53/makhno.shtml

I should point out that this publication is in fact Trotskyite and thus not in agreement with my views- yet it's historical information on Makhno is clearly verified. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Now let's talk about the Holodmor, where you begin repeating the lies of Hearst, Hitler, and various reactionaries throughout history. First of all, there is no such thing as the "Holodmor" outside of the bizarre minds of Ukrainian nationalists- many of them emigres. Holodmor means basically "Death by Hunger", and it is said to be the "Ukrainian genocide". The name gained popularity when Ukrainian emigres wanted to compete with the Holocaust for attention, beginning in the 80s. To do this they had to revise their earlier arbitrary death toll to 7-10 million first. These groups had a great deal of CIA backing as well.

The famine of 1932-33 was not "man-made". If it is "man-made" and "genocidal", then we would have to also cite the government of France for causing famines in its West African colonies(1931) or in Indochina(1944). Studies of archival material show that the harvest of 1932 was in fact very small, contrary to previous claims. A number of unfavorable climatic factors have been recorded- most notably drought.

In addition to this there is the government's response to the famine, once it became fully aware of the problem. The government drastically lowered the 1932 quota to its lowest level in the entire decade, and cut its exports as well. Where it proved to be more efficient, some collective farms were temporarily decollectivized at the farmers' request. Procured grain was actually returned to the peasants in many cases. In addition to this, massive resources including tractors and seed were sent to the Ukraine- and all of this is recorded and documented. Nowhere, repeat, NOWHERE, is there any documentation suggesting a calculated effort to starve certain ethnic groups- and the famine even affected party members in places like the Moscow region. Lastly I might point out that there are comparable documents of a conspiracy to starve entire populations- namely those relating to the Nazi Generalplan Ost, so it is not as if we simply can't find an official order to starve people. There is simply nothing to show such a plan.

On your bizarre theory that the Ukrainian peasants somehow "knew" that collectivization would lower production, I have to inquire as to what you have been inhaling? Ukrainian and Russian agriculture had been backward for hundreds of years, and at that point people were still using wooden plows and seeding by hand. Please tell me how such people would come to believe that mechanization(one of the reasons for collectivization in the first place) would LOWER production? The records show that after the process was complete and the war over- famine was all but eliminated in a country where it had existed for centuries. Even so, there is documentary evidence to show that where decollectivization proved temporarily more efficient(during the famine years), it was approved by the government.

Please do not insult my intelligence by trying to lecture me with a story that originated as Nazi propaganda, and since then has been used by capitalists to this day. Funny how you praise Makhno for fighting Ukrainian nationalists, but then regurgitate their propaganda when necessary. I guess sometimes Ukrainian nationalists aren't so bad are they? I should also point out that as a person of Ukrainian descent, the attempt to lecture me with such sources is even more of an insult- because I have dealt with these people before and lying about the nature of a natural famine is not nearly a stretch for them.

For actual documentary evidence about the famine of 1932-33, see the studies on archival documents done here:

http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/soviet.htm

(See, that's what a real source looks like- it doesn't have Wikipedia in the URL)

As for that long list of nationalities, you actually believe these people were all deported en masse to Siberia? This is a reductionist argument that relies on ignoring the details and pretending that people were jailed because of who they were as opposed to what they did. The fact that the Soviet Union gave alphabets to those who had no written language, and that they allowed and encouraged nationalities to use their native languages, is indisputable.

As for the rest of that nonsense you posted, the fact that you wrote THIS...

"There are undisputed Wikipedia articles on each of these peoples for those who are interested. "

...speaks volumes about your actual knowledge in these subjects. But hey, it's "grassroots" so who cares if the information can't be backed up? And what were you saying abou "my ignorance"?

Then you go on to speak even more nonsense about the Hungarian revolution, claiming that it was "socialists" and the right-wing elements had no influence. First of all, the toppling of Stalin's statues was due to Khruschev's slanders against Stalin, and his pressure on the People's democracy to support that line. He degitimized the Hungarian government. In addition to this, the traitor Tito was also helping to organize the counter-revolution in Hungary as well. Stalin was a target for the Hungarian right-wingers because it was Stalin's USSR which defeated Horthy and the fanatical Ferenc Szalasi.

Now as for your claims about people not being able to live like Americans or Europeans- I agree in the sense that Americans and Europeans(and a lot of Asians as well) have a lot of unnecessary crap that they consume only because of Madison Avenue and marketing. However, everyone can have clean water, mass transit, access to communication, etc. Of course they cannot have this under the system you propose, because it has been and always will be too weak to stand on its own unless it is so primitive and marginal that the ruling class decides to ignore it.

Alternative fuels can be found, and environmentally safe procedures can be developed- but only under socialism, where profit-motive is not the main factor. This cannot take place under anarchism because anarchism is too weak and incoherent to create a society that can manage the technology to develop those things. Well of course that's thinking too far into the future- anarchy usually can't maintain a society for months without getting overrun.

Again, you admire Chavez but you admit that part of his power rests on the army, which is a non-democratic force. Chavez does not represent "grass-roots" power. He happens to serve the needs of many people, but in order to do so, he uses the organs of state. Nothing inherently wrong with that for the time being.

As for the jailing of dissidents- let's take the first one, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. Why is he popular in the first place? Because Khruschev fished him out and used his bullshit to slander Stalin. Solzhenitsyn made numerous claims about which he couldn't possibly possess information. He claimed death tolls that are laughable in the face of demographic records, and it is well-known that he went on to being revealing his anti-Semitic and pro Vlassovist views after being exiled. In short, he was a nut.

You speak of the bourgeoisie's beloved "dissidents"(though they deserted Solzhenitsyn pretty quickly when they learned more about his views), but what about the suppression of ideas and back-stabbing that the revisionist clique engaged in against Marxist-Leninist allies? When Albania had suffered a drought and needed to buy 50,000 tons of grain, the Khruschevites would only sell them 10,000, only for gold- all because the Party of Labor of Albania maintained its Marxist-Leninist stance at the conference in Bucharest prior.

Now on to the Vietnam War. Let's talk about who agrees that "popular dissent" led to the end of the war. Two groups come to mind: Unrealistic pacifists or leftists, and Hardcore Right-wingers. The former because they actually believe that their demonstrations matter in a bourgeois democracy, and the latter because they refuse to believe that their beloved war machine could be defeated on the battlefield. But honest studies by US tacticians show that the military was indeed defeated by the Vietnamese people and their tactics, all of which could not have been possible without the direction of a central party which helped standardize training and organize the NLF and PAVN.

Plus studies by people like Noam Chomsky show that protests against the war, and media criticism of the war- were not as common as most people assume. Americans became increasingly anti-war as the war dragged on, just as they are now. Americans expect a quick victory and when it doesn't happen they start to get pissed.

As for the Subcomandante, his edicts to the people aren't the heart of the matter. The fact is that in a military, you follow orders, period. So he agrees to the right of the locals being allowed to shoot at his soldiers- fine. Are we to believe that they won't shoot back? ELZN should be commended for their resistance and their accomplishments, but these accomplishments can only go so far. More importantly, no matter how popular a movmement is, that does not make it "grass roots". Organized movements imply leadership- popular leadership indeed, but still leadership. Interestingly enough, the "Stalinist" Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania also kept the people armed.

Then you go on to attack socialism for being centrally planned(with the ubiquitous Wiki article of course). Tell me how various communes are to get the resources they need to fulfill all the needs and wants of their communities? What will regulate exchange? What body will keep people informed on a national scale? You make claims about the population's short term needs(which anarchism did not meet in Russia), but ignore the longterm needs.

And what is this about China? China is a capitalist country and has been for quite some time. China is capitalist in everything but name only, kind of like how anarchists have historically created elements of a state but labelled them something else to conceal the reality. You will not find me defending China or the revisionist Soviet Union.

Your misinterpretation of Lenin's quote is also par for the course for an anarchist. Lenin is simply commenting on an objective reality- that many people simply do not have the time to consider things beyond there own meager existence(whose fault is that?), or at least that was the case back then. But then again, anarchists aren't really known for their ability to grasp inconvenient truths.

For your last paragraph I have to go back to the subject of this reply, being ignorance. You refer to my sources as "dusty", as though they are outdated, while you cite propaganda that originated from the press of Fascists like Hearst. You have the audacity to accuse me of ignorance and then begin citing sources from WIKIPEDIA, a source so unreliable that many professors worldwide flat out refuse to accept citations from them. To add arrogance to the mix, you qualify your "sources" by saying there are undisputed, and invite me to edit them.

Here is the problem with that: On Wikipedia, if enough people agree on something, it becomes truth. That's not the way history works sadly. What I have cited here on the famine for example, is based on archival evidence that was first released in 1991. To that point, all manner of claims were made about a "famine-genocide", with death tolls ranging from 2-15 million, without a shred of evidence to support not only those death tolls but also the claim that the famine was man-made.

You talk about coming in to the 21st century? How about you put down the Nazi propaganda and figure out that since 1991(and this is really the only good thing about the counter-revolution) the Soviet secret archives have been open, and lies that lasted decades- repeated by capitalists, fascists, Trotskyites, and revisionists- have been utterly destroyed.

The fact is that your ideology has nothing to offer the working class but a primitive and marginal existence, while the capitalists are far more powerful and able to bribe millions even in developing countries. Your dogmatic absolutist ideals prevent you from creating a stable society that can lead to a better society and the overthrow of capitalism.

Anarchism is an ideology of idealism, hypocrisy, short-sightedness, and incoherency. Anarchists are all too well known for idolizing resistance and dissent without any consideration for actual victory.

In the future, heed my advice not to refer to others as ignorant while relying on Wikipedia as a credible source.

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