{"id":379794,"date":"2018-10-05T19:13:17","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T18:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/unthinkable-operations-dissident-voice\/"},"modified":"2018-10-05T19:13:17","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T18:13:17","slug":"unthinkable-operations-dissident-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/unthinkable-operations-dissident-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Unthinkable Operations | Dissident Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>In the preface to his remarkable three-volume <em>History of the Russian Revolution<\/em>, Leon Trotsky, writing in 1930 about earth-shaking events in which he was a key actor, explains his view of writing history. He cites reactionary French historian Louis Madelin, who wrote that \u201c\u2026the historian ought to stand upon the wall of a threatened city, and behold at the same time the besiegers and the besieged\u201d in order to achieve a \u201cconciliatory justice.\u201d Trotsky then scoffs that if Madelin himself\u00a0 \u201cclimbs out on the wall dividing the two camps, it is only in the character of a reconnoiterer for the reaction.\u201d In contrast Trotsky, vowing to draw on historic documents, \u201cnot fallible personal memory or anecdote,\u201d promises to write with a \u201cscientific conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies \u2014 open and undisguised \u2014 seeks support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the causal laws of their movements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2018\/10\/unthinkable-operations\/pent\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-85105\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-85105\" src=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/pent-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/pent-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/pent.jpg 331w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a>Ron Ridenour, a veteran journalist and author, former member of the US Communist Party, dedicated anti-war activist and a self-described revolutionary socialist, like Trotsky (though no Troskyite himself) writes from a perspective of outside the city wall. In his latest book, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0996487069\/dissivoice-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pentagon on Alert: The Russian Peace Threat<\/a><\/em> (Punto Press, New York, 2018), he does an admirable of job of it too, providing an abundance of readily accessible citations (hot-linked in the book\u2019s online&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2018\/10\/unthinkable-operations\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the preface to his remarkable three-volume History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, writing in 1930 about earth-shaking events in which he was a key actor, explains his view of writing history. He cites reactionary French historian Louis Madelin, who wrote that \u201c\u2026the historian ought to stand upon the wall of a threatened city, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-379794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}