My Falling Out with The Trotskyist League: The Sparts Bullying, Ableist Bigotry and Defence of Lynchings and Child Murder

Dear BT,

Hi my name is Michael. For nearly three years I had been a sympathizer for the Trotskyist League of Canada, the Vancouver section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). I just wanted to say that in my experiences with them I found them demeaning and bigoted. I am a high-functioning autistic, have mild psychosis, anxiety and depression. My family has a history mental illness.

I met a member of the Trotskyist League by the name of Tynan in June 2005. My initial experience was not negative but as I quickly had a number of unpleasant run-in in particular with a cadre by the name of Andrew, an electrician from Ontario (I don’t know his last name). I was expected to seize being friends with anyone affiliated with any other political organization. He would often get verbally aggressive with me. He would often shout at me without explaining what I had done.

Around late fall 2005, I found out that I would not be recruited into the party due to my psychological condition. This made no sense to me since. I responded quite well to medication and was functioning well in society.

As time went on I noticed many of the party’s cadre were highly intolerant of the people with mental illnesses. Remarks like “that person is nuts”, “don’t talk to that person their psychotic”. They even had an article where they denounce a group as being “senile and demented”. Having a grandmother who suffered and died from Alzheimer’s (a form of dementia, she refused to be treated for it) I found these remarks extremely offensive.

The party likes to laud itself as defending “all oppressed people” yet I have not found a single article devoted to the mentally ill, mentally disabled or mentally challenged.

I was continually excluded from party activity. After working with the party for over a year, I was barred from helping the party intervene in events, from postering from selling their newspaper. One cadre Andrew from above blew me off on several occasions. He for a while had seemed to have an axe to grind with me. If I made any mistakes he would lash out at me and wouldn’t explain what I did wrong. He has always struck me as having a short fuse.

I recently had been looking into an incident of a man Robert Latimer who murdered his mentally challenged daughter with cerebral palsy. His daughter Tracy was not terminally ill, not brain-dead, nor was their any evidence of her ever wanting to die or consenting to being killed. Robert Latimer claimed he did what he did to “relieve Tracy of her pain”. However, Robert Latimer’s wife Laura, who supports her husbands action, kept a diary of Tracy’s life and made very little mention of her being in pain.

Tracy Latimer’s life was not “nothing but pain” she smiled and laughed a lot, enjoyed going camping, she liked going to the circus, and smiled when horses went by. When people came to the house she would smile and be happy to see them. There were points where she was in agony but her life had meaning and value. Many people with her condition choose to go on living.

Robert Latimer describes his action as being a “mercy killing”. I did some research, “mercy killing” what Hitler called what he did in “The Final Solution”. The first people killed in the gas chambers were the disabled. This was soon extended to the Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Blacks, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, Social Democrats etc. Involuntary Euthanasia, or “mercy killings”, was also advocated by eugenicists who target the disabled, the mentally ill, the mentally challenged as well as various racial and ethnic minorities, gays etc.

I sent a great deal of information on the Tracy Latimer case to the Trotskyist League. I compared what Robert Latimer did as being “lynching”. I should probably point out that there is no indication, at least that I’ve come across, that Robert Latimer is an outright fascist which the KKK, who lynch blacks are. Fascism is the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) mobilizing the petty-bourgeoisie (middle-class) and the lumpenproletariat (unemployed) to decimate the proletariat (working class). Acts of violent bigotry towards the oppressed from what I understand are acts of terror but not fascist.

Anyways, I receive a call from who I thought was a close friend from the party, Tynan, who lashed out at me accusing me of “trivializing lynching”. He claimed that Robert Latimer was a “victim” and this act had nothing to do with bigotry. Trying telling that to anyone with a disability. He argued that Tracy Latimer was in “continual agony” (I assume that means non stop agony, which was not the case with Tracy Latimer). He also argued that what Robert Latimer did was acceptable because Tracy was mentally challenged.

I should probably point out that this view on the Tracy Latimer case is shared by outright fascists. The rhetoric and language of outright fascists on the Tracy Latimer case is very similar to the rhetoric of mainstream Robert Latimer supporters as well as some people I have spoken to in the Trotskyist League.

His argument I felt was basically “explaining the issue away”. He continually chanted a handful of phrases “Tracy Latimer was in continual agony”, “this was not an act of terror”, “they (Robert and Tracy) are both oppressed”, “they suffered together”. I brought up points refuting many of these claims but they made no difference.

He then went to argue that Robert Latimer never called himself a bigot. So what! There are plenty of groups that terrorize the oppressed that aren’t that don’t own up to it! There are white supremacist groups that claim they are fighting for “civil rights for white people”! The cops who terrorize homeless people, natives, minorities and immigrants, they don’t openly say we are for terrorizing the oppressed! They say things like “fighting crime”, “law and order” etc.

I have sent dozens of email to the party of the Tracy Latimer case and I feel I am falling on death ears. They have not at this point tried to refute my arguments in public (in their paper or otherwise). They have always told me that when political groups can’t refute people’s arguments they resort to censorship. This seems to me what they are doing.

Considering their bigoted attitude toward the disabled they are in no position to claim to be fighting for “ALL oppressed people”.

Comradely,

M.G.

P.S. To learn more about the Tracy Latimer case check out my blog http://thebigotedmurderoftracylatimer.blogspot.com/ I have plenty of links to both viewpoints.