Moar like Absurdo, amirite?

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Fol­low­ing the mis­sile strike on Shayr­at in West­ern Syr­ia last Thursday, a wave of protests broke out across the United States. These proved something of a mixed bag, as one might ex­pect. In ad­di­tion to those who sup­port the Free Syr­i­an Army but op­pose fur­ther Amer­ic­an in­ter­ven­tion, a num­ber of un­sa­vory sorts also showed up. Por­traits of Putin and As­sad could be seen along­side yel­low signs put out by the AN­SWER Co­ali­tion. A few flags fea­tur­ing the mod­i­fied or­ange tor­nado-swastika of the fas­cist Syr­i­an So­cial Na­tion­al­ist Party or SS­NP, a close ally of the Ba’ath­ist re­gime, also ap­peared at the demon­stra­tions. Some or­gan­izers took a more prin­cipled stand, however, re­ject­ing calls for a heightened US mil­it­ary role while at the same time re­fus­ing to march with As­sad­ists.

While I’m heartened by such un­equi­voc­al de­clar­a­tions of prin­ciple, we are still all too ready to for­give those who make ex­cuses for re­ac­tion­ar­ies. Marx­ists must do more to dis­tance ourselves from bour­geois na­tion­al­ists, re­li­gious fun­da­ment­al­ists, and oth­ers who present false al­tern­at­ives to for­eign dom­in­a­tion. Even more so, we must stop giv­ing a pass to those who dis­cred­it the an­ti­war move­ment through ca­su­istry and mor­al equi­val­ence. Un­der the crude lo­gic of “the en­emy of my en­emy is my friend,” any­one and every­one who chal­lenges Anglo-European he­ge­mony is viewed as a po­ten­tial ally. Clif­fites, like the So­cial­ist Work­ers’ Party (SWP) in Bri­tain or the In­ter­na­tion­al So­cial­ist Or­gan­iz­a­tion (ISO) in the US, lend their “crit­ic­al but un­con­di­tion­al sup­port” to openly an­ti­semit­ic groups such as Hezbol­lah and Hamas against Is­raeli ag­gres­sion in­to Ga­za. Gio­vanni Scuderi of the Marx­ist-Len­in­ist Party of Italy (PMLI) re­cently called on his fol­low­ers to unite with the Is­lam­ic State against West­ern im­per­i­al­ism.

Of course, it’s far easi­er to skew­er ob­scure sects with barely a hun­dred mem­bers than it is to do the same to be­loved Marx­ist aca­dem­ics. Domen­ico Los­urdo, for ex­ample, en­joys the repu­ta­tion in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world of a di­li­gent and wide-ran­ging in­tel­lec­tu­al his­tor­i­an. Richard Sey­mour was among the first to her­ald his work, opin­ing in 2007: “Los­urdo is, if you ask me, the best crit­ic of cap­it­al­ist ideo­logy writ­ing today.” His ar­gu­ments were cited fre­quently, moreover, in the 2010 study Fan­at­icism: On the Uses of an Idea by Ba­di­ou trans­lat­or Al­berto To­scano. Mean­while, the mono­lin­gual Hegel schol­ar Har­ris­on Fluss praises Los­urdo’s re­search to the rafters, Ishay Landa laud­ing him for his “mas­terly dia­lect­ic­al style” [meister­hafte dialekt­ische Art]. Speak­ing just for my­self, I find his book on Hegel and the Free­dom of Mod­erns (1992) to be his strongest work, though his cri­tique of Aren­dt on to­tal­it­ari­an­ism and over­view of Heide­g­ger and the Ideo­logy of War: Death, Com­munity, and the West (1991) are also pretty good.

Glan­cing at some of the PCI philo­soph­er’s past polit­ic­al po­s­i­tions, however, one is shocked to learn that he’s con­sist­ently sought to re­hab­il­it­ate both Sta­lin­ist dic­tat­ors from the age of “ac­tu­ally-ex­ist­ing so­cial­ism” as well as na­tion­al­ist strong­men whose in­terests happened to run counter to US geo­pol­it­ic­al aims in the post­com­mun­ist era. With re­gard to the lat­ter, of these, a couple of cases suf­fice to make the point. Back in the 1990s, Los­urdo was an out­spoken apo­lo­gist for Slobodan Milošević, go­ing so far as to pre­face a pamph­let in de­fense of the dis­graced Ser­bi­an lead­er as late as 2005. Milošević was sus­pec­ted of in­cit­ing vi­ol­ence against Al­bani­ans earli­er in the dec­ade as well as sub­sequent eth­nic cleans­ing cam­paigns in Bos­nia, Kosovo, and Croa­tia. Yet Milošević is not the only na­tion­al­ist strong­man Los­urdo has sup­por­ted since the fall of com­mun­ism in East­ern Europe. He earli­er de­fen­ded the Ro­mani­an premi­er Nic­olae Ceau­ses­cu, in power for dec­ades, from charges of gen­o­cide ar­ti­fi­cially con­cocted by the “lie in­dustry” [l’in­dus­tria della men­zogna] — i.e., the West­ern me­dia — which Los­urdo con­siders an “in­teg­ral part of the im­per­i­al­ist war ma­chine” [parte in­teg­rante della mac­ch­ina di guerra dell’im­per­i­al­ismo].

1989 sup­posedly marked a turn­ing point after which the in­flu­ence of the lie in­dustry (he might as well say Lü­gen­pres­se) over daily life be­came total. Los­urdo grounds these para­noid ram­blings in De­bord’s the­ory of the “so­ci­ety of the spec­tacle.” In re­cent years, he main­tains, the lie in­dustry’s fo­cus has turned to Syr­i­an pres­id­ent Bashar al-As­sad, whose re­gime the West is hop­ing to over­throw at any cost. Dis­miss­ing claims that either As­sad or Putin could be “war crim­in­als” in any sense of the word, Los­urdo in­sists that the real war crim­in­als in Syr­ia are the mas­ter­minds in Is­rael and the US, who want to destabil­ize the re­gion. He is there­fore skep­tic­al of al­leg­a­tions that Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment or Rus­si­an forces have com­mit­ted at­ro­cit­ies against ci­vil­ians caught in the con­flict. Spe­cific­ally, Los­urdo denies that bar­rel bombs or chem­ic­al weapons have been de­ployed by the re­gime. The Au­gust 2013 gas at­tacks were staged us­ing a “pho­tomont­age” tech­nique. “By mak­ing the most of its over­whelm­ing mul­ti­me­dia fire­power and new ma­nip­u­la­tion tech­no­lo­gies thanks to the In­ter­net, the West por­trays the Syr­i­an crisis as an ex­er­cise of bru­tal and gra­tu­it­ous vi­ol­ence against peace­ful and non-vi­ol­ent demon­strat­ors,” Los­urdo hy­per­bol­ic­ally wrote in a 2011 art­icle for the 9/11 truth­er Voltaire Net­work. “There is no doubt that Goebbels, evil min­is­ter of the Third Reich, has gained a fol­low­ing… One can­not but re­cog­nize that his dis­ciples in Wash­ing­ton and Brus­sels have even sur­passed their un­for­get­table mas­ter.”

Just in passing, it should be noted that Los­urdo has con­trib­uted more than fifty art­icles in sev­en dif­fer­ent lan­guages to Voltaire Net. Even his biggest fans would likely be dis­turbed by this fact, giv­en the kind of ma­ter­i­al one finds else­where on the web­site. Laurent Guyénot’s art­icle “Septem­ber 11: In­side Job or Mossad Job?” is typ­ic­al of the an­ti­semit­ic filth they reg­u­larly pub­lish. Con­spir­acy the­or­ies abound not only here but on oth­er sup­posedly left-wing ven­ues such as Coun­ter­punch, where au­thors like Is­rael Shamir and Gil­ad Atzmon are fre­quent con­trib­ut­ors. (Shamir, like Los­urdo, has also come out in de­fense of Pol Pot. Pol Pot’s ca­reer began with “a bril­liant na­tion­al-lib­er­a­tion struggle,” ac­cord­ing to Los­urdo, so it is a shame things ended so badly. Where­as Shamir con­tests the scale of vi­ol­ence in gen­er­al, Los­urdo looks to dis­place blame onto the United States. Nix­on and Kis­sing­er’s sat­ur­a­tion bomb­ing of Cam­bod­ia in the early sev­en­ties doubt­less con­trib­uted to the crisis later, but these were hardly the de­cis­ive factor. Here Los­urdo for­gets that the US ac­tu­ally helped prop up the Kh­mer Rouge in the United Na­tions as part of its deal with China, when the killing was most in­tense. Re­gard­less, re­spons­ib­il­ity is again laid at the feet of la «grande» presse d’in­form­a­tion for this por­tray­al).

But the theme of fab­ric­ated news stor­ies (fake news?) shows up throughout all of Los­urdo’s work, even his most schol­arly texts. In War and Re­volu­tion, for in­stance, he writes that “today we know that the testi­mony, state­ments, im­ages, and stills doc­u­ment­ing the at­ro­cit­ies of Wil­helmine Ger­many were the res­ult of skill­ful ma­nip­u­la­tion, to which the nas­cent US cinema in­dustry, shoot­ing scenes in New Jer­sey of the sav­age, bar­bar­ous be­ha­vi­or of Ger­man troops in Bel­gi­um, made a splen­did con­tri­bu­tion.” Los­urdo con­tin­ues: “We can now un­der­stand the ar­gu­ments of his­tor­ic­al re­vi­sion­ism, so-called ‘neg­a­tion­ism.’ For why should the sys­tem­at­ic ex­term­in­a­tion of European Je­w­ry at­trib­uted to the Third Reich not it­self be a myth? Are we just deal­ing with a new, more acute for­mu­la­tion of the charge of ritu­al murder laid against the Ger­mans, con­sum­mated in the Holo­caust of a people blessed by the Bible?” To be sure, Los­urdo does not be­lieve that the Holo­caust was fab­ric­ated of whole cloth. He does, however, re­gard such a view as un­der­stand­able giv­en the per­vas­ive real­ity of me­dia dis­tor­tion. Cer­tainly, a de­gree of skep­ti­cism is war­ran­ted when it comes to de­vel­op­ing stor­ies where the facts aren’t yet known. Pseudo-crit­ic­al ques­tions such as “cui bono?” or “who be­ne­fits?” can lead to the wack­i­est de­clar­a­tions that such and such must be a “false flag” by con­spir­acists both Left and Right. Zion­ists of­ten brush aside video evid­ence of Is­raeli sol­diers mis­treat­ing Ar­abs by say­ing they’re all just act­ors em­ployed by “Pal­i­wood.”

One need only look at the 2008 tome Stal­in: The His­tory and Cri­tique of a Black Le­gend for an ex­ample of how Los­urdo op­er­ates in ex­on­er­at­ing the fallen her­oes of state so­cial­ism. It swiftly be­comes ap­par­ent from read­ing ex­tracts trans­lated in­to Eng­lish that he is little more than an Itali­an ver­sion of Grover Furr. Al­though Los­urdo’s sub­jects of in­quiry vary a bit more than those of his Amer­ic­an coun­ter­part, the two men an­nounced their mu­tu­al ad­mir­a­tion in 2013 through an ex­change of let­ters com­mend­ing each oth­er’s work. Furr was im­pressed by his col­league’s de­fense of the 1939 Mo­lotov-Rib­ben­trop pact, while Los­urdo found him­self per­suaded by Furr’s ar­gu­ments about “peri­od­ic Rus­si­an fam­ines.” When the Itali­an edi­tion of Khrushchev Lied came out, Los­urdo vo­lun­teered to write the pre­face. Like Furr, Los­urdo blames Stal­in’s over­whelm­ingly bad repu­ta­tion in the West first of all on ma­li­cious ru­mors spread by Khrushchev at the ⅩⅩth Party Con­gress of the CPSU. Sid­ing with Mao in dis­ap­prov­al, Los­urdo re­proaches Stal­in’s suc­cessor for “de­mon­iz­ing those who pre­ceded him in hold­ing power.” Yet the un­in­ten­ded irony of the line that im­me­di­ately fol­lows can­not be lost on any­one fa­mil­i­ar with the ju­di­cial trav­esties that oc­curred dur­ing the Great Purges: “On this basis, a truly grot­esque tri­al [!!] against Stal­in de­vel­ops.” Though he doesn’t both­er try­ing to ex­on­er­ate the Krem­lin high­lander for every in­dis­cre­tion, Los­urdo re­jects the in­cid­ence of mor­tal­ity re­por­ted in West­ern stat­ist­ics over­all as “greatly ex­ag­ger­ated.”

So how should the crimes and mis­deeds of past re­volu­tion­ar­ies be dealt with, then? “Deng Xiaop­ing un­der­stood how to push along change without im­it­at­ing Khrushchev’s mod­el of desta­lin­iz­a­tion,” sug­gests Los­urdo. “The enorm­ous his­tor­ic­al con­tri­bu­tions Mao made… are not to be for­got­ten.” Many who had been sup­port­ive of the PRC un­der Mao re­garded the coun­try’s re­in­tro­duc­tion of mar­ket re­la­tions as a be­tray­al of the 1949 re­volu­tion, but Los­urdo ap­plauds Deng’s re­forms for their prag­mat­ism. Warn­ing that “to speak of a res­tor­a­tion of cap­it­al­ism in China would be view­ing the prob­lem too su­per­fi­cially,” he ac­know­ledges that the move away from the hard Maoist line was im­port­ant. At the same time, however, it was im­per­at­ive not to lower Mao’s prestige in the eyes of the people. “Her­oes are ne­ces­sary for the trans­ition from ex­cep­tion­al con­di­tions to nor­malcy,” as­serts Los­urdo, so the fond memor­ies of the Great Helms­man must be up­held even while dis­mant­ling his polit­ic­al agenda. It could be ar­gued, of course, that Khrushchev be­trayed his pre­de­cessor only in word while re­main­ing loy­al to him in deed, where­as Deng re­mained loy­al to his pre­de­cessor only in word while be­tray­ing him in deed. Nev­er­the­less, Los­urdo re­gards post-Maoist China as faith­ful enough to its ori­gin­al goals to still be “the cen­ter of the struggle of co­lo­ni­al and former co­lo­ni­al peoples.” Chinese of­fi­cials were thus fully jus­ti­fied in gun­ning down stu­dents at Tien­an­men Square in 1989, as Los­urdo fig­ures they were US State De­part­ment em­ploy­ees any­way.

Re­sponses to Los­urdo’s ef­fort to ab­solve Stal­in have been less than fa­vor­able on the whole. Back in 2014 the tankie theo­lo­gian Ro­land “fuck­ing” Bo­er de­scribed it as a “well-reasoned and elab­or­ately re­searched book,” but out­side the Marx­ist-Len­in­ist party press few seem to have ap­pre­ci­ated it. The Itali­an Trot­sky­ist Ant­o­nio Mo­scato pub­lished a scath­ing po­lem­ic in 2011 against the “ob­ses­sions” of Los­urdo. Mo­scato, a spe­cial­ist in So­viet his­tory, took par­tic­u­lar aim at his men­dacious meth­od of deal­ing with facts (which he else­where calls “the com­par­at­ive ap­proach”). Un­cov­er­ing nu­mer­ous ana­chron­isms in Los­urdo’s timeline, Mo­scato then goes on to con­front his blatant mis­char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of Trot­sky’s stance on Rus­sia. Es­pe­cially force­ful is his vin­dic­a­tion of charges of an­ti­semit­ism leveled against Stal­in, which seem all the more per­spic­a­cious in ret­ro­spect giv­en that the most egre­gious in­cid­ents of this pre­ju­dice only came after World War II. An even big­ger shit­storm fol­lowed the re­lease of Los­urdo’s book in Span­ish and Por­tuguese. Chris­toph Jünke in Ger­many cri­ti­cized the “neo-Sta­lin­ism” of Los­urdo in a 2000 piece pub­lished by the Rosa Lux­em­burg In­sti­tute, mock­ing the “cyn­ic­al count­ing game” [Spiel bis zur zyn­is­chen Erb­sen­zäh­le­rei] of com­par­ing the num­bers killed by Stal­in to the num­bers killed by Roosevelt, Churchill, and oth­ers.

The loom­ing threat of a “red-brown” (i.e, com­mun­ist-fas­cist) al­li­ance over geo­pol­it­ic­al con­flicts is wor­ri­some, to say the least. Los­urdo is right, of course, to point out that Hitler and Stal­in were not twin broth­ers but mor­tal en­emies. However, as Mo­scato coun­ters, this enmity did not pre­vent them from hav­ing a mu­tu­al re­spect for each oth­er’s ac­com­plish­ments. Nor did it keep them from hold­ing a joint vic­tory parade in Brest-Litovsk, to cel­eb­rate their (re)par­ti­tion of Po­land in 1939. Bud­ding fas­cists like Richard Spen­cer, Colin Lid­dell, and Greg John­son are long­time ad­mirers of na­tion­al­ist strong­men like Putin, As­sad, and Gad­dafi — not least for their de­fi­ance of Is­rael and the US, the two coun­tries sup­posedly most re­spons­ible for “glob­al­ism” around the world. Even left­ish pop­u­lists like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela hold great ap­peal for right-wing na­tion­al­ists who still hold onto the aut­ark­ic ideal des­pite the real­ity of the world mar­ket. Kerry Bolton of Counter-Cur­rents thus ex­claimed “Viva Chávez!” back in 2013. As Marx­ists, we must not al­low our le­git­im­ate op­pos­i­tion to US mil­it­ar­ism or the ex­pan­sion of set­tle­ments in Is­rael al­low us to make com­mon cause with re­ac­tion­ar­ies.

Vul­gar anti-im­per­i­al­ism such as Los­urdo’s is far too close to the isol­a­tion­ist rhet­or­ic of eth­non­a­tion­al­ists for com­fort. While this hardly dis­qual­i­fies all his in­tel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions, it would be equally mis­taken to think that there is no con­nec­tion between the bad polit­ics of Los­urdo and his the­or­et­ic­al out­look. “Char­lat­an­ism in sci­ence and ac­com­mod­a­tion in polit­ics are in­sep­ar­able,” as Marx put it, speak­ing of Proud­hon.