In times crying out for a robust resistance, it seems that all we have are vacuous, me first, non-profit professionals and their corporate-foundation-funded, no-membership-voting-rights groups watering down (crushing, if they can \u2014 claiming credit, if they can\u2019t) any grassroots efforts to effectively confront the slate of dire problems resulting from our fat cat-driven\/earth-consuming\/perma-war industrial society.<\/p>\n
Elites claiming to be the \u201cresistance vanguard\u201d criss-cross the continent on tar sands oil-fueled jets holding confabs, attending board meetings in exotic locales, staging vanity protests, sloganeering, hanging banners, posting fund-raising letters on social media thrice daily and pimping corporate Democrats\u2026 all while cashing their foundation pay-offs\u2026 er, grants.<\/p>\n
The People\u2019s Front of Judea vs the Judean People\u2019s Front<\/b><\/p>\n
And, then there are the ludicrous, time-sapping internecine battles \u2014 two recent ones being perfect examples of self-marginalizing due to the scourge of \u201cidentity politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recently, a tiff broke out between \u201canarchist,\u201d \u201cradical\u201d environmentalists from\u00a0Derrick Jensen<\/a>\u2019s Deep Green Resistance group and environmental activist transsexuals. The sordid details are here to\u00a0read<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0\u00a0And\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n I truly like Jensen\u2019s writings \u2014 his and the superb cartoonist\/graphic artist\u00a0Stephanie McMillans\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0As the World Burns<\/i>\u00a0is excellent, as I wrote\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0I was entertained, yet somewhat appalled the one time I saw him speak. And, now I am rather perplexed at the disconnect resulting in his and his close allies inability to walk their talk.<\/p>\n When I saw him speak that time, he kept inciting the young audience members to \u201cpick up the gun\u201d as, according to him,\u00a0\u00a0there was no other choice left to counteract\u00a0Terracide<\/a>. Jensen, in a university setting,\u00a0\u00a0even asked for a show of hands as to how many had an AR-15 tucked away at home \u2014 as if! One friend noted, \u201cI know some young people who followed similar advice from (Earth First! Co-founder) Dave Foreman. They went to prison. Dave didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n The DGR basic argument is that born-male transsexuals are bullies using their \u201cmale privilege\u201d \u2014 to do just what I cannot fathom \u2014though, one DGR sympathizer bizarrely claims they become transgendered so that they can continue to rape women! I assume the objection has to do with what they see as how once-male females will instinctively act out of a position of dominance in all interactions with women-born-women \u2014 that having\u00a0ever<\/i>\u00a0packed a penis marks one as a dreadful misogynist for life. The recipients of DGR\u2019s hostility have labeled this misguided \u201cfeminism\u201d\u00a0Transphobia<\/i>. Another Earth First! Co-founder Mike Roselle noted, \u201cThese writers make me think being a man is an incurable disease.\u201d<\/p>\n Then again, transsexuals, who, baited by all this, went off on people at a recent eco-resistance conference, need to just calm the fuck down. But, consider the hypocrisy of DGR and Jensen and his top lieutenants\u2019 autocratic takeover of DGR after some\u00a0local chapters<\/a>\u00a0quickly faulted the anti-transsexual position \u2014 a top-down consolidation of power after long-standing pontificating on decentralized, democratic, communitarian principles. Just who has \u201cmale (class, really) privilege\u201d issues here?<\/p>\n Instead of going after allies (and there have been transgendered people in Earth First! since 1979) and using trumped-up accusations of misogyny as a cudgel, maybe DGR should do some analysis of cults of personality. They should listen to the folks from their own chapters who disagreed, instead of pulling a raw power grab in response\u2026 and realize how all this undermines citizen-based movements. But, more importantly, it undermines any achieving of the changes necessary for Gaian survival, or at least lessen the impact on other innocent species, that such groups ostensibly are formed to achieve.<\/p>\n Jolie\u2019s Choice<\/b><\/p>\n But the one squabble that has me most worked up is the one between CounterPunch and the International Social Organization (ISO).<\/p>\n Its origin is the actress Angelina Jolie\u2019s recent New York Times\u00a0op-ed<\/a>\u00a0in which she detailed her preemptive double mastectomy due to her finding out she carried a gene known as an indicator of susceptibility to getting breast\/ovarian cancer.<\/p>\n CounterPunch published a\u00a0piece<\/a>\u00a0by Ruth Fowler that I found vicious in its contempt for Jolie. I let the editors know I didn\u2019t like it and found it very unfair and that I thought Jolie\u2019s Choice should be used as a springboard to address all the issues of Cancer, Inc. Jolie clearly was trying to address in her op-ed. Last weekend, at a gathering of the Monkey Clan, my female friends were all talking about if they\u2019d have their own tits removed and my guy friends responded by considering if they\u2019d have their balls (uh, oh; did I just use some banned words?) cut off preemptively if they got a DNA readout indicating their susceptibility to testicular cancer. Jolie deserves credit for getting people talking about it.<\/p>\n Others, led by the \u2014 yes, they still exist \u2014 Trotskyites at the ISO, also did not like Fowler\u2019s piece. ISO is ineffective (except at shaking down college kids), cultish and dogmatic like DGR \u2014 everyone speaks the same kind of language\/idioms and they likewise claim to be the \u201cvanguard of the forthcoming revolution.\u201d Sharon Smith of ISO wrote a\u00a0response<\/a>\u00a0and numerous follow-ups exchanges that accused CP of being a misogynistic teenage boys\u2019 club and demanded \u201cCounterpunch owes women an apology\u201d because they would not force a woman writer to change one certain word in her sub-head.<\/p>\n Smith, like me, decried that \u201cJolie has been singled out for such scorn\u201d since she \u201cneither created nor can resolve the health care crisis.\u201d The entire first half of her response focuses on CP\u2019s \u201cBoob Jokes\u201d and \u201csexualizing cancer.\u201d It\u2019s only after she gets that off her chest that she addresses just what Jolie has done. That first half of Smith\u2019s rant is all about condemnation over the use of one word \u2014 that word was \u201ctits.\u201d That word, rather than Cancer, Inc., just as quickly became the leitmotif of the entire spat; and, as with DGR, a large dollop of demonizing male sexuality, consecrating female sexuality and self-hatred thrown in.<\/p>\n In a\u00a0piece<\/a>\u00a0that read like he was channeling his good buddy, the late, great Alexander Cockburn \u2014 himself no stranger to left infighting buffoonery (and yet another cancer loss) \u2014 CounterPunch co-editor Jeffery St. Clair wrote a brilliant, funny rebuttal and take-down of identity politics and the vast distraction and harm it has done to popular movements \u2014 a piece that stands on its own regardless of tit-gate. It\u2019s as if these groups are completely infiltrated and allowed to exist just to keep these distractions going.<\/p>\n St. Clair, like Cockburn before him, can certainly hold his own in this arena (another\u00a0recent piece<\/a>\u00a0of his on the sorry state of the \u201cleft\u201d has also provoked an overdue discussion.) And, he has a legion of like-minded\u00a0supporters<\/a>. The Internet is abuzz with comments from both sides on Tits and Trannies. As St. Clair noted, it\u2019s become a Facebook War.<\/p>\n Cancer, Inc.<\/b><\/p>\n Again, I found Jeff unfair to Jolie \u2014 I don\u2019t like that, but I can accept it \u2014 we just disagree. Also again, Jeff doesn\u2019t address cancer itself much (though the on-going personal impacts revealed bear notice). But, also again, that slight of the underlying medical issue here is a main reason why I see this identity politics stuff as being so distracting, at best; and a dishonest, self-serving truncheon wielded on anyone one disagrees with, at worst. St. Clair\u00a0had<\/i>\u00a0to address the \u201ctits\u201d and apology demand controversy and I want to see Cancer, Inc. and the idea\/efficacy of preemptive surgery take center stage (my buddy Mark Ottenad sees it as \u201csubmitting to the knife before the knife is called for\u201d). CP has published many pieces on Big Cancer in the past; even this\u00a0one<\/a>\u00a0by Sharon Smith, herself.<\/p>\n My grandmother, my mother, four aunts and a sister-in-law have all died of the same cancers that took Jolie\u2019s mom Marcheline Bertrand \u2014 by all accounts a remarkable, good-hearted woman \u2014 the inspiration for Jolie\u2019s many attempts (admittedly misguided at times) to do good in the world. Jolie\u2019s concern is not something to do with her \u201cprivileged lifestyle.\u201d It has to do with personal experience in losing people close to you to this insidious industrial\u00a0disease<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Marcheline\u2019s sister, Angelina\u2019s aunt Debbie Martin, died of breast cancer less than two weeks after Jolie revealed her medical choice.<\/p>\n Sure, Jolie was born to two actors. Sure, Jolie was going to auditions since she was a baby.\u00a0\u00a0Sure, she is a highly-paid celebrity in our celebrity-obsessed culture and couldn\u2019t live a \u201cnormal\u201d life no matter how hard she\u2019d try. Sure, she can use her celebrity to get space on the restrictive, elitist NYT Op-ed page. But, it has little to do with that \u2014 it\u2019s about losing your mom, ferchrissakes,\u00a0and<\/i>having children yourself and wanting to be there for them. While I\u2019m completely suspicious about the efficacy of what she\u2019s done medically, I find Angelina\u2019s intent admirable.<\/p>\n And, just so you, DGR and ISO know, it was Marcheline\u2019s dear\u00a0male<\/i>\u00a0friends Jackson Browne, John Trudell, Quiltman and the incomparable American hero Willie Nelson who held a series of benefits for the Women\u2019s Cancer Research Center in her memory\/honor.<\/p>\n MICHAEL DONNELLY<\/strong> is angered by the industrial toxin-caused cancer epidemic that has cost him so many relatives and friends and the lack of corporate accountability \u2014 a lack only worsened by diversions like identity politics oneupsmanship.\u00a0He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n