Condemn “Ultra-ism”!

Whoever is responsible for the terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center today has done a great disservice to working people everywhere. No thoughtful organization of progressive people would have done it. It was done by “ultralefts” or “ultrarights.”

“Ultraleftism” does not refer to being “more left” than progressives. It refers to “an infantile disorder” in politics whereby thoughtless people take minority action that actually hurts the long-term chances for unity of the working class and its allies.

An example was the burning of an important government building in Germany in the early 1930s. An ultraleft person or group may have been responsible, but some historians think that Hitler’s forces did it themselves in order to justify the taking of dictatorial powers. Either way, it was a disaster that changed the course of history in a profoundly negative way.

Ultralefts try to justify their actions with moralistic pronouncements, but there is nothing moral in taking innocent lives and giving an anti-worker government like the Bush administration an excuse to cancel democracy and strike out against far more innocent victims at home and abroad.

                                                            --Jim Lane 9/11/01

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