The Left Forum is an annual conference held in NYC that draws socialists of the Bernie Sanders kind from around the world. The conferences were always excruciating for me to attend & I stopped going after attendees went rah-rah for “humanitarian intervention” into Bosnia under Clinton. For an antiwar activist, it was like being at the vampire’s ball or among the pod people.
The closing plenary this year will be co-chaired by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now & Slavoj Zizek, the jester-philosopher who forum organizers say is considered by many as “the most dangerous philosopher in the West.” How do they consider a blithering racist who wipes his nose on his sleeve to be dangerous to anyone? Certainly not to the status quo.
Color me sectarian, but there’s no way in hell I would touch that conference with a ten-foot pole, share a platform, or attend a lecture by a man so hateful to refugees. If he represents the international left, you can see why it’s in such disrepute these days. If the forum organizers consider him a suitable keynote speaker, there’s no hope & no future for them in transformational politics.
If you don’t stand with refugees & resolutely against Islamophobia & war, your brand of leftism stinks to high heaven.