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].

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