Daniel Lazare
01.13.25
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| AI generated image of Trump and map of Greenland |
When word got out last
week that Chris Cutrone was writing an article about Donald Trump’s threats
against Canada and Greenland, it seemed reasonable to assume that the Platypus
founder would open up with both barrels. After all, the Platypus Affiliated
Society, with its many student clubs and discussion groups in the US, Europe,
Australia, and New Zealand, is broadly Marxist in orientation. So
isn’t it the first task of Marxists to oppose imperialist aggression?
So one might think, but
one would be wrong. The article – “The Future Belongs to
America. So should Greenland” – is a full-throated endorsement of
Trump’s policies.[1] Cutrone
is not the clearest of writers. His endorsement of Kamala Harris in
the Platypus Review last November laid on the irony so thick that it was hard
to know if it was serious or not.[2]
But his January 9 essay
in a rightwing Catholic outlet known as Compact Magazine was a model of
clarity.
“The US-Canada border is
the frontier of the American Revolution,” it declares. Noting that
Benjamin Franklin wanted to take over Canada in the 1780s and that Republicans
wanted to do the same after the Civil War as payback for British support of the
Confederacy, the article describes Canada as “the frontier of the
counterrevolution after both American revolutionary wars” and adds: “It remains
the European part of the Western Hemisphere. This has not been a
good thing.”
The
solution? Do what China would like to do to Taiwan, which is to fold
Canada and Greenland into an immensely powerful neighbor known as the USA
whether they like it or not.
“Trump’s promise to make
America Great Again begins with making America America again,” Cutrone
writes. “Making Greenland and Canada American is part of this
initiative. ... This is not imperialism, but a reminder of the
Empire of Liberty that Thomas Jefferson declared the mission of the new United
States. It is an evergreen promise. America is
revolutionary or it is nothing. The United States of America
liberated the world twice – three times with the Cold War. Its
mission continues.”
It’s not imperialism
because Jefferson – a kidnapper and serial rapist who sold his own children
into slavery – said so. Cutrone goes on: “Trump ... represents the
‘hope and change’ that was merely a marketing slogan for Obama before him. ... Where
others now see a barren wasteland, Trump finds not only possibilities but
necessities – the necessity for American growth and change.”
Then comes the
conclusion:
“In this and other
fields, Trump sees the need for a broader American
future. Approaching the quarter-millennium of the American
Revolution, perhaps the borders of the Empire of Liberty are set to be revised
again.”
Despite Trump’s threats
to make Canada the 51st state, take back the Panama Canal, and
deport 11 million migrants, Cutrone’s advice is thus to lay back and enjoy
it. Since America equals freedom, US conquest must equal
liberation. Expansionism is therefore all to the good. Today
we have the United States, tomorrow the world. What can go wrong?
Not that Cutrone is
entirely unique. A growing number of ex-leftists are making
overtures to the right as the change of government nears. With
funding by both George Soros and Peter Thiel,[3] Compact
has begun publishing erstwhile leftists who now argue on behalf of RFK Jr. and
Kash Patel, the hard-right hitman whom Trump has named to head the
FBI. Its website features a piece by Slavoj Zizek noting – not
unhappily – that the left has reached “its zero point” thanks to Trump’s
election and another praising Wolfgang Streeck, a New Left Review contributor
with a pronounced nationalist streak, as a “prophet of left
conservatism.” Elsewhere in the journalistic firmament we find the
leftwing cartoonist Ted Rall informing readers of the Wall Street Journal that
“[s]ome of us are optimistic about some of Mr. Trump’s personnel picks and
policy priorities” because they promise to be more dovish than Biden.[4]
Tell that to Denmark,
Greenland’s nominal owner, as it beefs up defenses in response to Trump’s
threats. Or Iran as it hunkers down in anticipation of a combined
US-Israeli strike. Or Gaza following JD Vance’s vow “to knock out the
final couple of battalions of Hamas and their leadership.”
 |
| JD Vance |
But where people like Zizek are cautious and tentative, Cutrone goes whole hog. Not only does he want Trump to bully the north into submission, but he also wants him to subdue the rest of the hemisphere too. As he puts it: “...the revolution cannot be undone. The question is how Greenland or Canada or Panama or Mexico or the rest of the Americas – the rest of America – might still follow and not oppose it.”
US control must extend
from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego. Rather than opposing
Trump’s Anschluss, Cutrone applauds it.
How did Platypus reach
such a parlous state? There are any number of good things about the
movement, which is why many Marxists have written for the Platypus Review since
its founding in 2007 or participated in its public panels. In
contrast to the formulaic exchanges that characterize so many leftwing
discussions, the Platypus approach is different – irreverent, wide ranging, and
provocative. As a UK socialist outlet known as the Weekly Worker
noted:
“It is rare in the
present to see a supporter of the US Revolutionary Communist Party shouting at
a representative of the Communist Party of Great Britain over their differing
positions on Libya and imperialism. To see a panel of supposed Marxists
and academics asked questions that make them shift uncomfortably in their seats
is an enthralling sight. ... To observe the complacent leaders of
ostensibly revolutionary groups or ‘parties of one’ claiming to have the Marxist
perspective being asked questions they would not normally be asked in an
academic or political setting is something that those of us living under the
chorus of the ‘death of communism’ have never previously experienced.”[5]
Thanks to such
freewheeling ways, this writer was able to confront the anti-Zionist Norman
Finkelstein at a Platypus panel at NYU last March over his uncritical support
of Hamas and to present a Marxist analysis of the American Revolution at
another Platypus event at Boston College in October – an analysis very
different from Cutrone’s own. With all too many leftists tailing
abjectly after the so-called “Islamic Resistance,” it also allowed me to
publish an article comparing Hamas with a Serbian terrorist group known as the
Black Hand whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 led to World
War I and the devastation of much of Serbia as well.[6]
But freewheeling
discussions are one thing, hosannas to Trump quite
another. Platypus’s troubles begin with an unstable ideology that
combines elements of Trotskyism – Cutrone, who teaches at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, passed through the Spartacist Youth League in the 1990s –
with the Frankfurt School via Theodor Adorno. It also lathers on a
layer of social patriotism that adds to the general
combustibility. As Cutrone explained in 2020:
“My old comrades in the
Spartacist League had a slogan, ‘Finish the Civil War!’ ... More
than 50 years later, we can say that the task is more simply to complete the
American Revolution. Former President John Quincy Adams (the son, not
the father), speaking before the United States Supreme Court in the Amistad
case advocating the freedom of slaves who rebelled, foresaw the future US Civil
War over the abolition of slavery and called it the last battle of the American
Revolution.’”[7]
All of which is both
ahistorical and un-Marxist. While the American Revolution indeed saw
a proto-democratic uprising among the sans-culottes of Boston, Philadelphia,
and other urban centers, it also saw a revolt by southern planters determined
to protect slavery against British interference. It was a profoundly
contradictory event, which is why the polity it gave rise to would explode some
four score years later. Pace Adams, the Civil War was a
correction that overthrew the slaveholders’ republic of 1776 just as a
socialist revolution will be a correction that overthrows the
industrial-capitalist republic that emerged in 1865. Rather than
more of the same, it will be a departure in an entirely new direction.
Cutrone’s failure to
grasp such ABC’s of Marxism leads to a fantasy world in which slavery, Jim
Crow, and repeated bouts of anti-communist hysteria pale in comparison to
the pure light of freedom that shines as brightly today as it did in
1776. American freedom is eternal and unchanging, above history
rather part of it. Hence, Canadians, Danes, et al. should be
grateful now that Trump is preparing to usher them into the light too.
Adolescent prattle like
this is bad enough under ordinary circumstances, but absolutely intolerable now
that the US is entering into a period of rightwing authoritarianism and mass
corruption that makes the Gilded Age seem like an episode of minor pilferage. If
Cutrone really cared about safeguarding American democracy – what little is
left of it, that is – he would be alerting his followers to the dangers that
Trump represents. Instead, he is egging him on.
This presents Platypus
members with a choice. Do they sit back and watch as Cutrone
transforms Platypus into the left wing of Trumpism? Or do they
mobilize against the new administration by repudiating Cutrone’s views as
forcefully as possible? The options are clear: fight Trump or lose
themselves in increasingly arid discussions as the rightwing drive intensifies
outside the classroom windows.
With that in mind, this
writer hereby declares a boycott of his own. Unless Platypus takes a
strong stance against Cutrone-style social patriotism, I will cease
participating in Platypus discussion groups or writing for the Platypus Review
and will instead do my best to expose the fraudulent politics at Platypus’s
core. I call upon all socialists to do the same. We must
not stand idly by as Marxism is twisted into an ideology of passivity and
accommodation!
[1] https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-future-belongs-to-america-so-should-greenland/.
[2] Chris
Cutrone, “Why I want Kamala to win,” Platypus Review 171 (November 2024), https://platypus1917.org/2024/11/02/why-i-want-kamala-to-win/.
[3] Chris
Menahan, “Report: Soros Funds Sohrab Ahmari’s ‘Conservative’ Outlet Compact
Magazine,” Information Liberation, Oct. 25, 2024, https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64709.
[4] Ted
Rall, “Optimism about Trump on the Left,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 1,
2025, https://www.wsj.com/opinion/optimism-about-trump-on-the-left-policies-war-peace-business-markets-2593e0db.
[5] Corey
Ansel, “Dissecting the Platypus,” Weekly Worker 963 (May 23, 2013), https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/963/dissecting-the-platypus/.
[6] Daniel
Lazare, “1914 redux: Why the Left gets Hamas wrong ... and U.S. imperialism
too,” Platypus Review 171 (November 2024), https://platypus1917.org/2024/11/01/1914-redux-why-the-left-gets-hamas-wrong-and-u-s-imperialism-too/.
[7] Chris
Cutrone, “The American Revolution and the Left,” Platypus Review 124 (March
2020), https://platypus1917.org/2020/03/01/the-american-revolution-and-the-left/.
