by Daniel Lazare
01.13.25
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?
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| AI generated image of Trump and map of Greenland |
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.”
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| 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/.
13 comments:
Bravo for calling attention to this. I belong to the We the People forum (formerly Movement for a People's Party) on Facebook, a group of individuals who are-ostensibly-sincere in their desire for a new, working class party. Yet in recent weeks, many of its members have been hailing the rise, in particular, of RFK Jr. They seem to think he's serious about taking on Big Pharma. When I've made some comments about the true nature of his antipathy to the medical industry, I haven't been banned, but definitely excoriated. It's a disturbing trend indeed.
“1914 redux: Why the Left gets Hamas wrong ... and U.S. imperialism too,” A 'clever' defense of Zionist atrocities. You forgot to tell us what the Palestinians should do to rid themselves of their executioners. I don't recall Lenin condemning the Irish after the Easter uprising failed.(https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/irishmr/vol04/no14/lenin.html). Next, you should tell us What the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising leaders got wrong.
How is "1914 redux" a defense of Zionist atrocities? Where does it say anything remotely like that? The answer is nowhere. As for Lenin, of course he did not condemn the Irish after the Easter uprising. What Marxists holds a the people in general responsible for the actions of a single group? Not that we can't criticize the group in question -- we can. But an entire nation? Ridiculous. In his 1920 "Notes on Nationalism," Lenin stressed the need for "a struggle against the clergy and other influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries" and "the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc." Presumably, Hamas falls into both categories. He also stressed the importance of "a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist coloring to bourgeois-democratic liberation." This means that communists should criticize such movements whenever they behave in reactionary fashion by, for instance, targeting minorities or other ethnic groups. This is all my article sought to do. As for the Warsaw ghetto, the partisans never so much as thought about revenging themselves on Polish civilians. If they had engaged in mass Hamas-style atrocities, then we would no doubt have to see their rebellion in a very different light.
Nice evasion of my request that you tell us what you would have the Palestinians do. It may have escaped your notice, "mass Hamas-style atrocities" are common practices for Israel to the point that they resort to euphemisms to describe them. "Mowing the grass" for example. So, are saying that babies were decapitated, women raped en masse, etc.? Some say these claims are bs, what say you?
Some of the claims are exaggerated, some are not. But two things go without saying -- that the Zionist would do their best to twist the facts to their advantage and that their efforts would never have gotten such traction if Hamas's actions hadn't been so horrendous to begin with. As for what Palestinian workers should do, they should make common cause with their Israeli counterparts, fight for full labor rights (which they desperately need), join Histadrut and demand that it serve as a union for all workers, and / or organize unions of their own that are open to all regardless of religion or nationality. They must form a revolutionary socialist party that demands the overthrow of Zionism and an end to the Hamas dictatorship in the occupied territories. They must campaign against US imperialism, defend Lebanon, Syria, and Iran from US-Israeli attack, and demand equal rights for gays and women. (Hamas, as you know, has an unpleasant habit of throwing the former from rooftops.) Socialists must demand freedom to organize in Gaza and the West Bank without harassment or worse from fundamentalist thugs. They should also form integrated defense committees to ward off pogromists in the West Bank and IDF forces in Gaza. The problem with apologists like you is that they adopt Hamas's bourgeois perspective, which leaves no room for the working class at all.
The last comment by Anonymous is disingenuous. Dan's article from Platypus - which was only referenced here - made no claims to providing a comprehensive solution to the Palestine question but concerned itself with one aspect of that dynamic, namely the nature of Hamas and its reactionary - and for the Palestinian people - suicidal - action on Oct 7. One can turn around the question and ask Anonymous what he/she thinks the Palestinians should do or should have done on Oct 7? (And by posing that question I don't mean to suggest for one second that "Palestinians" are the same as "Hamas".) Now with the bodies of 100,000 residents of Gaza later, does Anonymous think that Hamas provoking the bloodthirsty Netanyahu regime to launch their genocidal campaign was a smart or progressive decision? Of course the leaders of Hamas do not consider themselves accountable to the Palestinian people or anyone else for their murderous folly.
"Disingenuous Anonymous" (DA, hereafter) has zero 'advice' for the Palestinians since he doesn't live with the Zionist boot on his people's throat. DA could not fail to note the pedantry of Daniel Lazare and the ingenuous Alex Steiner who pass judgement on movements based on abstract schemas they dream up in their cmfortable libraries. Ingenuous Alex failed to note that not once was the fact that Hamas was nurtured by the Zionists mentioned in Daniel Lazare's assessment of Hamas, nor the many forms of protests the Palestinians undertook only to be met with blunt force. DA isn't surprised by the lack of seriousness of these compeers. The same 'advice' and condemnation was heaped on the slaves of Saint-Domingue by the 18th century French feminist, Olympe de Gouges. That clever lady's response to the August 1791 slave uprising was: "De Gouges did not approve of violent revolution, and published L'Esclavage des Noirs with a preface in 1792, arguing that the slaves and the free people who responded to the horrors of slavery with "barbaric and atrocious torture" in turn justified the behavior of the tyrants." 233 years later, Lazare and Steiner echo that sentiment.The oppressed should never be 'violent' toward their oppressors. Violence should be the monopoly of the strong. " Now with the bodies of 100,000 residents of Gaza later, does Anonymous think that Hamas provoking the bloodthirsty Netanyahu regime to launch their genocidal campaign was a smart or progressive decision? Of course the leaders of Hamas do not consider themselves accountable to the Palestinian people or anyone else for their murderous folly." DA does not, but he'd be damned if he found it decent to heap blame on Hamas instead of the IDF. Most uprisings end in failure, neither Lazare nor Steiner have crystal balls that foretell the future, I guess, that means they will wait an eternity for the right moment that will guarantee victory.
This is getting silly. None of us are pacifists opposed to violence per se. What we're opposed to, rather, is stupid violence, which is violence that makes things worse. Before a military leader goes into battle, he or she must assess, calmly and soberly, the risks and benefits. Will the operation push back the enemy or provoke a counter-response that will leave his own forces shattered and demoralized? This is what Hamas failed to do. It launched a surprise attack that was highly effective for the first few hours, but which provoked an Israeli offensive that rained down death and destruction for the next 15 months. Not only did the offensive turn Gaza into a lunar landscape, it also caused the downfall of Hezbollah and Assad while weakening the Islamic republic in Iran. It's the greatest anti-Zionist defeat since 1967. Yet as soon as someone tries to figure out what went wrong, DA accuses them of giving aid and comfort to the other side. What nonsense!
"Not only did the offensive turn Gaza into a lunar landscape, it also caused the downfall of Hezbollah and Assad while weakening the Islamic republic in Iran. It's the greatest anti-Zionist defeat since 1967. Yet as soon as someone tries to figure out what went wrong, DA accuses them of giving aid and comfort to the other side. What nonsense!"
DA never claimed you are a pacifist since he doesn't know you. DA is curious to know on what facts your funeral dirge for Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah is based? Iran launched several missile strikes that hit Israel, the Houthis did the same and they are still around. Credit is due to the Zionists for decapitating Hezbollah and Hamas. I draw from these facts these movements were heavily penetrated by Israeli intelligence services. I fail to see any great Zionist victory on the scale of 1967. After 15 months, the hostages are traded for Palestinian captives. Hamas and Hezbollah, like the proverbial hydra, will regrow new heads. Lenin had your type down pat in his description of the detractors of the Irish Rebellion, like the Hamas rebellion, it ended in failure and wasn't led by socialists, it did reveal evrything that's rotten in 'left' formations like Platypus. The funny thing is how old such reactions are! De Gouges would be proud of you. "Yet as soon as someone tries to figure out what went wrong, DA accuses them of giving aid and comfort to the other side. What nonsense!" Apparently, you failed to grasp the essence of my criticism, you figured nothing out. You weren't even able to state what anybody with a cursory knowledge of Hamas knows, i.e. the nurturing of that movement by Israel, the way Bin laden was by the USA. Having left that crucial factor out of your article, I read it as an apologia for the puppet master. Nothing you've written dissuades me otherwise.
First our correspondent attacks me for "heap[ing] blame on Hamas," next he criticizes me for not pointing out that Hamas is an Israeli creation. So should I blame Hamas or defend it? I'm not sure, and I don't think "Anonymous" is either.
Platypus was not a basically healthy Marxist tendency that has suddenly lurched rightward. It has always been an academic, petty bourgeois discussion group. It is basically an intellectual club for disenchanted middle class youth who are looking to find the ideals promised by liberalism elsewhere. Platypus fits the bill: they portray themselves as the most consistent defenders of bourgeois democracy and classical liberalism. Why? Because they say communism means the “sublation” of liberal ideals: “If ideology eclipses promise in capitalism, the task is to find the socialist promise in capitalist ideology. It is not discontinuous with the liberal promise of bourgeois society.” And again: “Bourgeois forms of politics will be overcome through advancing them to their limits – in crisis.”
By this magic spell (once initiates have learned to decode the “philosophical" jargon), they turn materialism into idealism, Marxism into liberalism, and now we find that "the last Marxist" is an imperialist! Their byline is that the left is dead - it died a hundred years ago, and their job is to record and mull over the lessons of the defeats like leftist librarians, so that in some distant future, it will be possible to “reconstitute the left.”The postwar revolutionary upheavals, the anti-colonial struggles, the crisis of capitalism and imperialism are all dead letters to them - they see only defeat and despair wherever they look.
In times of crisis, pessimism always prevails among intellectuals, since they see nothing beyond bourgeois democracy. Trotsky describes their outlook in the following terms: “The revolutionary roads lead nowhere. We must adapt ourselves to the democratic regime; we must defend it against all attacks.” (“Intellectual Ex-Radicals and World Reaction”, 1939) Yet, “The working class is not a corpse. As hitherto, society rests upon it.” The core of the Platypus brand of Marxism is precisely to treat the working class as a corpse.
In times of crisis, pessimism ALWAYS prevails among intellectuals? Trotsky never said anything remotely like this. To the contrary, his strategy was to engage with intellectuals in the hope of winning them away from their milieu. Where his approach was interventionist, Peter's the opposite. He rejects any such effort because he sees the milieu as hopeless in its entirety even though reading groups and the like have long been a source of Marxist recruits. Lenin, Trotsky, Marx -- all began as members of such groups and all profited from the experience.
No one ever said that Platypus was ever "a basically healthy Marxist tendency". Indeed Chris Cutrone had floated the idea that the left should support Trump in 2016 in an infamous piece titled
Why not Trump? He repeated this sentiment in the 2024 election in a bizarre piece, Why not Trump again?, depicting Trump as a victim whose rights must be defended by the left. But Cutrone's latest sally raises the spectre of capitulation to American imperialism and extreme reaction by former leftists to another dimension, and that was largely the point of Dan's article.
But it is also just too easy to dismiss everything about Platypus as a "petty bourgeois discussion group." For a certain period Platypus was almost unique in providing a forum for the debate of different points of view on the left. And while it is true that they were heavily influenced by the Frankfurt School and inherited some of their pessimism, it is important to understand why so many students were drawn to those ideas. It had everything to do with the failure of the left to build anything resembling a viable political movement in the past few decades. Many of those students turned to the Frankfurt School not because they were ready to throw in the towel as far as revolutionary socialist politics was concerned, but because they were not satisfied with the poverty of theory that characterized the activism of protest movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, protests that ultimately fizzled out into a big nothing. While the Frankfurt School could never provide the theoretical foundation for viable socialist movement, its many insights into mass psychology and the forms of ideological domination in contemporary capitalist society are not to be so easily dismissed. There are huge flaws in Critical Theory but to get beyond them requires that you actually engage with those idea and not simply dismiss them as "petty bourgeois".
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