Printed recently in that bastion of sensible socialist thought – The Morning Star – Neil Clark provides a list of heroic leftist leaders who “did not betray the people and who, despite enormous pressure from international capital and their political emissaries, stayed on the progressive path”.
Some of those on his list get the Paintbrush thumbs up. Clem Attlee, Salvador Allende, and Olof Palme, for sure. I’m surprised that Clark is so enthusiastic about Attlee considering that it was his government that developed Britain’s nuclear deterrent and signed up to the Korean War at the behest of the US.
Anyways, others on Clark’s list are thoroughly vomit-inducing. Take Slobodan Milosevic. Serbian nationalism is progressive! Overseeing years of ethnic slaughter demonstrates care for the plight of the workers! Since the US did not approve of him he must be ok! Ousted by popular protests and put on trial for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide, Slobodob cowardly snuffed it before a verdict could be reached.
This sort of freaky thinking, this fetishising of the enemies of human rights in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’, is insulting to the socialist creed.
Tags: Lunacy on the Left
Frank Owen's Paintbrush 
September 24, 2009 at 8:50 pm
That is one hell of a curate egg he has there front and centre but where’s Gaddaffi on his list?
I’d have thought he would be part of his pantheon.
September 24, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Ha! I also thought that Gadaffi (that mixture of Michael Jackson and Mussolini) would also have got approval, but then I remembered the Libyan proclamation that they were no longer interested in building WMDs and instead wanted more trade with the West. Sell out!
By the way, I’ve only just noticed your question about Robert Tressell and the Labour Party. It is an interesting one and deserves further research! I think I remember references in TRTP where the anti-socialist workers moan about the alleged laziness and corruption of Labour MPs, but it’s a topic that deserves its own post one day.
September 27, 2009 at 4:00 pm
And, rather oddly, Clark left out the Taliban. You know, that heroic bunch well-known for their progressive views who are currently engaging in a valiant Che-Guevara like resistance against the Imperialist Capitalist Neo-Con Zionist forces in Afghanistan!
September 30, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Two points of fact. Milosevic wasn’t exactly a nationalist and he died after he was denied the treatment he required by the tribunal itself. Hardly cowardly, after he had spent the previous 4 years defending himself from the dock with very limited resources.