The ISO officially ignored our protest statement on their physical attack of one of our supporters for many months. However we received an email note from the perpetrator of the attack in late summer. (Reprinted below) The e-mail was not a joke but in fact contained a collection of politically disturbing “justifications” for the attack. We sent an official letter from our organization to the ISO pointing this out; not to our surprise the ISO hasn’t responded or repudiated their comrade’s conduct or email. Our letter to the ISO follows.
League for the Revolutionary Party
October 19, 2000
Dear International Socialist Organization:
We recently received the enclosed email note from the perpetrator of a physical attack on an LRP supporter outside of your summer school in Chicago. Since for months we had received no response from your organization to our letter protesting the attack, we are writing to inquire whether the ISO endorses or repudiates this reply from a member of your organization. While nominally denying the attack, the author provides a grab bag of politically disturbing “justifications” for this attack.
He calls us “useless dweebs” and “stank breath virgins” who should “get lives, get laid.” Such expressions denote the mentality of a macho frat boy, not a revolutionary socialist. Your comrade also notes, in Stalinist fashion, that “I would not be surprised if HUAC planted people like you into movements during the times of McCarthy.” That is, he practically labels us government agents!
Given the email’s frenzied hostility, no one reading it could think that the author believes the attack on us was not justified. He is his own worst defense.
We are familiar with the ISO’s practice of refusing to deal with the politics of opponents to its left. You routinely teach your members blind hostility to opposition tendencies, based on absolute ignorance of their real positions and activities. Nor is thuggery by the ISO anything new; the attacks are motivated by your desire to wall off your membership from genuinely revolutionary views.
Perhaps all [his] email demonstrates is that some of your members take this training to heart. But in the hope that you have not yet sunk so low as to officially approve of this conduct, we offer you the opportunity to repudiate your comrade’s email and behavior on this matter publically.
With communist greetings,
Evelyn Kaye
for the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP)
To: lrpnyc@earthlink.net
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 22:33:29 -0100
Subject: Tell the truth you unstable weirdo’s.
I did not drag Joseph down the street by his neck, nor did I in any way
respond to the provocation of the female LRP. I can pretty much
guarantee that the composition of your organization is middle class.
How
else would you be able to get all 5 or 6 of your members out to a
conference which none of you are wanted at.
Finally, GET FUCKING REAL! I welcome political debate, but not by
useless
dweebs who’s only purpose is to divide the workers movement.Nader will
create an opening for revolutionary politics in a way “STOP POLICE
TERROR” or some other rambling rag never could.You are not part of the
workers movement,your organization is a grouping of mentally unstable
,white,middle class,stank breath virgins that shout off the wall
slogans
from the sidelines of the real workers movement.
If you actually get anything accomplished, it usually involves
alienating
people from progressive ideas.
I would not be surprised if HUAC planted people like you into movements
during the times of McCarthy.
GET LIVES, GET LAID, GET POLITICS, AND GET THE HELL OUT OF THE SPECTRUM
OF MATURE, REALISTIC, REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE.