I'm writing you because I'm disgusted by your conduct since you stopped being a sympathizer of the ICL, and your "Spartacist Watch" website in particular. I'd like to make clear that I'm not writing in any official capacity related to the Trotskyist League - as you know and found out somehow, I ceased to be a member of the Spartacist Youth Club some time ago now (although not for programmatic reasons - I have no programmatic differences with the ICL).
Perhaps the most hypocritical and vile of your actions is to claim to support disabled rights and the oppressed, but yet embrace the Bolshevik Tendency and Bill Logan in particular. You claim that Bill Logan was witch-hunted. Yet this is a man who tried to force a woman to have an abortion, and when that failed, to put her baby up for adoption. This particular woman was driven to attempt suicide.
But Logan's crimes don't end there. He forcibly separated couples, and pressured members of the organization to enter into relationships that they didn't want to enter into, solely for Logan's own satisfaction. Logan sneered at oppression, and manipulated the most oppressed members of the organization for his own twisted pleasure. This only begins to describe Logan's crimes against the workers' movement. These crimes took place in Australia from 1972-1977, and also in Britain in 1978.
As you must know, having apparently read the The Logan Dossier, Logan was given an international trial for all of these and other crimes. The trial body included future members of the BT, and also included a non-member Trotskyist from Sri Lanka, Edmund Samarakkody. Logan was found guilty of all those crimes by everyone present at the trial body - including both the future members of the BT, and the non-member from Sri Lanka.
If you actually read the Logan Dossier (or for that matter, the three previous bulletins on the Logan Regime), you would find ample documentation and proof of Logan's crimes. And now, Bill Logan is the leader of the BT.
How can you claim to stand for the oppressed and disabled and defend such a revolting monster as Bill Logan (even going so far as to say that he was witch-hunted)? Furthermore, how can you support such a reactionary group as the BT (of which Bill Logan is leader) and claim to be in favor of the working class? Are you familiar with the BT's positions? I'm quite sure that you are, since you read and talked about them when you were a sympathizer of the ICL. In case you are not, I'll refresh your memory.
In Canada, the Bolshevik Tendency opposes independence for Quebec and issued a leaflet (in English only) calling to vote "no" in the referendum on Quebec independence. In fact, the BT was invited to attend a mass chauvinist national Canadian unity rally in Montreal opposing Quebec independence. The BT's anglo-chauvinism was so obvious at this time that its only Quebecois member quit, protesting the BT's de facto bloc with its own bourgeosie.
In Britain, the British section of the BT refused to call for British troops out of Northern Ireland. In the first years several of the BT's existence - and even now - it has hardly written at all about the Black question in the United States. Not only that, nowhere in its most recent issue of its journal 1917 does it call for unconditional military defense of the remaining deformed workers' states of China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam. Indeed, it barely even mentions them. In general, they're a tail on the liberal left.
Michael, is this the sort of organization you support? If so, and you do, you have no right to call yourself a Trotskyist, revolutionary, Marxist, Communist, or supporter of the oppressed. Do you really support the BT as the BT, or simply because it's against the ICL? In another words, because you feel that you were allegedly mistreated by some member(s) of the ICL, are you running to the BT as revenge simply because you know that the BT is a deadly opponent of the ICL? If so, you are making a pact with the devil - a group that sneers at oppression and exists mainly to destroy the ICL, the only revolutionary organization in the world. I strongly encourage you to openly and publicly retract your support to the BT and appologize to the ICL for your behaviour.
Now, I wanted to address your position on Robert Latimer's killing of Tracy Latimer. I wanted to let you know first of all that I don't know if the ICL has any official position on this case. Secondly, I wanted to let you know my own opinion, as a non-member of either the SYC or TL.
I don't know enough details to say whether Robert Latimer should be defended against the state for what he did. I do know enough to say that you are wrong to call it a "lynching" or fascistic act of terror against the disabled. First of all, it is undeniable that Tracy Latimer suffered horribly from her condition. She was quadriplegic and in constant, excruciating pain.
Whether or not the killing of Tracy Latimer was a crime (from the standpoint of the working class) is something I don't have an opinion on either way, since it is not clear to me. In general, voluntary euthanasia to me would depend on the individual in question's decision. I think Tracy Latimer's death is a murky situation since, to my knowledge, it is not even clear whether she would even have been able to make a decision whether or not to live or die.
What is clear to me, however, is that Robert Latimer's actions were not intended as an act of terror against the disabled. I think that Robert Latimer took his daughter's life because he wanted to end her indisputable suffering. If he truly did it because he was bigoted towards the disabled, why didn't he kill his daughter at birth? Why did he wait 12 years? And why did Tracy's doctors say that her parents' care of their daughter, up to her death, was generally good?
It's true that, for their own sick reasons, some of Robert Latimer's supporters include fascists. However, it does not follow from this that Robert Latimer is himself fascist or fascistic, nor that he necessarily even invites their support. The fascists support Robert Latimer because they support eugenics and the killing of disabled people in general to fulfill their goal for "racial purity."
Fascists will sometimes also for their own hypocritical reasons criticize Israel's crimes against the Palestinians, but that is not out of any genuine concern for Palestinians, but rather because the Hebrew-speaking nation in Israel is predominantly Jewish, and fascists are anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers/supporters. According to the logic that you use vis-a-vis fascists and Latimer, because fascists are against Israel, Israel's crimes against Palestinians must be acceptable. Secondly, I would also add that many of the opponents of Robert Latimer are also reactionaries; many of them are religious bigots, oppose abortion and/or are against euthanasia on principle.
Michael, I think you need to seriously consider your political trajectory since you stopped being a sympathizer. Support of the BT puts you outside of the workers' movement. If you have problems with the way you were treated as a sympathizer by the Trotskyist League, I suggest you first of all retract your disgusting defenses of the BT and Bill Logan, and then ask to sit down with the TL to discuss your differences and problems with the way you were treated.
Andrew Malieni
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