Word: leninist
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True to their Marxist-Leninist orientation, the Sandinista leaders make no secret of their "moral support" for the Salvadoran leftists. Still, they adamantly deny charges that they are channeling arms into El Salvador, although most objective observers are convinced that at least some weaponry is coming through Nicaragua. The considerable Cuban influence in Nicaragua is increasingly resented by the populace. There are now about 6,000 Cubans in the country, including teachers, doctors, technicians and advisers to the armed forces and state security apparatus. At a suburb outside Managua last week, a local resident pointed to some comfortable-looking villas...
...remind the world what almost all of us knew that the soviet system was impermeable to decency, incontrovertible in its evil. In the same way, Sontag's formulation of "the essentially despotic nature of the Communist system (that is, a country any country ruled by a I Leninist Party)" is useful as a reminder of what happened to those who were shouting "Two, three many Vietnams" in 1969 Come 1990. We don't want to have to be explaining away some Sandinista atrocity or another there is very little in past history to give much credence to the dream that...
Sontag, in other words, is correct in what she says But there is a lot left unsaid Which is a far cry from saying that there aren't sides to be taken it is entirely likely that El Salvador, should the revolution prevail, will be ruled by a L. Leninist party (especially if the U.S. continues its carefully concerted plan to drive the rebels into the arms of Moscow). Still Sontag says she "passionately supports" their cause, and so should the rest of us. Sandinista Nicaragua is no waystation on the road to nirvana: still and all, there are considerably...
...discount Sontag's motion that communism is a monolith, pretty much the same wherever it rears its unchained head. As she herself eloquently proves, North Vietnamese communism circa 1968 is not the same as North Vietnamese communism criea 1980; certainly out of hand condemnations of the Sandinistas --increasingly a Leninist party, and hence a part of Sontag's menance--can be debated in ways that out of hand condemnations of Jaruzelski's Poland or Hoxha's Albania (or Garica's Guatemala...
...THOSE OF US who never carried cards, or even knew anyone who carried card, Sontag's words are more useful as reminder than as revelation It's not too hard to understand why some well intentioned people were reluctant to let go of the myth of communism. The Leninist formulation promoted promised not only paradise, but inevitableparadise, and so the intellectual struggle to achieve justice was reduced to watching for the signs of impending worker's revolution. Like those fervent believers who point to the rise of the Common Market and the establishment of Israel and say armageddon approacheth...