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My response to “An Open Letter to Maria Svart”
I am pretty late to this party. On May 22, 2021, David North of World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) published this open letter to Maria Svart, National Director of Democratic Socialists of America. (Please read it first if you haven’t already, for context.)
This is my response:
You all know I love DSA. But even those we love make big mistakes. This is a valid criticism and I am unable to defend people who celebrate the assassination of Trotsky. I also often correct those who sanctify Trotsky, or, as recently happened on Facebook somewhere, blame Stalin for things Trotsky actually did. None of these people are perfect — Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, Marx, Engels, Michael Harrington, Norman Thomas, Maria Svart, the WSWS, the DSA NPC, the leadership of our own chapter, me, or even Alexandra Kollontai! Perfectionism, dualism, hagiography, sectarianism, and willful ignorance should be our enemies, and not anarchists, labor organizers, working people or other socialists, living or dead.
The point of having a big tent is not to provide a rainproof shelter for members to enact occasional fratricidal violence on each other or reenact fruitless historic struggles.
