Peter Boyle Thinks He's Funny - so does Imre Saluzinsky

By Bob Gould, bob@...

Peter Boyle and others are clearly having difficulty addressing the
political issues I've raised in recent posts. They've responded in two ways,
essentially. One way is simple verbal abuse. The other way is constant
falsification of what I've just said. Why they should think that immediate
falsification of what I've said does them any good is a bit beyond me. The
reader can read what I said, and actually see them falsifying what I've
said, so unless Boyle and Co think their readers are very dopey, I don't
really understand what they hope to achieve by proceeding in this way.

It would be tedious to go through every detail of these falsifications, I'd
just ask the readers to carefully read what I've said, and then read what
Boyle et al say that I've said. This exchange is getting pretty weird.

This falsification of my views proceeds also by way of an attempt at humour.
Probably Boyle, under another persona, kerrvert83 (the two styles, Boyle and
Kerrvert83, are functionally identical), wheel out an extended story, in
which they put their own words in my ostensible mouth. The problem with this
'humour' is that its an extended, systematic falsification of my views
passed off as humour. It gets even more eccentric, when the Boyle persona
starts conducting a mock discussion with the Kerrvert83 persona. It is a bit
funny, but not at all in the way Boyle-Kerrvert83 intend.

Literate Sydneysiders are already quite familiar with the Boyle-Kerrvert83
school of 'humourous' falsification. An equally pretentious right-wing
ideologue by the name of Imre Saluzinsky, did the same kind of thing for
quite a while in The Australian, though it has thankfully now stopped,
obviously because it was so un-funny that it didn't help The Australian's
circulation. Saluzinsky's method was similar to Boyle's, he would invent
dialogue which suited him, ostensibly out of the mouths of people of the
liberal left, and then ridicule his own literary invention, with an attempt
at 'humour'.

Boyle-Kerrvert83's 'humour' has a similar farcical quality, and is clearly
an attempt to evade the political issues in the points I raise, by
consistently falsifying what I actually say with his own mad version of what
he tries to assert my views amount to. He's hard up for an argument.

The ritual abuse that I'm somehow covering for the policy retreats of the
official Labor left, is intentionally insulting, and really amounts to the
proposition that anyone like me who doesn't snap to attention and
immediately concur with the DSP leadership's lunatic strategic propositions
for the Australian labor movement is covering for the labor left. The
problem with this is that everyone knows that I've been in conflict with the
official Labor left on major questions for all my political life, and I
still am.

Boyle reduces my argument that we should still try to rebuild the unity of
the broad antiwar coalition, despite the bad behaviour of some of the Labor
left in Sydney, to the proposition that I want to crawl to those Labor
lefts. This approach to the important question of whether or not to attempt
to rebuild a broad unity in the antiwar movement is triumphalist, sectarian
and frivolous. The abusive aspect of Boyle's attack irritates me, but the
pipsqueak triumphalism from a position where the far left is really rather
isolated, is the aspect of Boyle's polemics that is politically most
dangerous. Another thing that has emerged in this serious of exchanges, is
the way all pretense at any serious approach to a united front with
significant figures on the Labor left like Carmen Lawrence, are immediately
thrown aside in favour of hysterical exposure and denunciation of Lawrence.
My rather cautious proposition that Lawrence's victory in the ALP
Presidential contest opens up a space for the rebuilding of the Labor left,
is immediately reduced by Boyle to the proposition that I am trying to bring
the left in behind all of Lawrence's alleged policies, and thereby bring the
left in behind Crean's alleged policies. In Boyle's universe, there are no
contradictions or shades of grey. Everybody who doesn't immediately snap to
attention behind the shining political sun of the DSP leadership is treated
as objectively trying to line up the movement behind all of Simon Crean's
policies. This approach to Labor movement politics is a kind of higher
lunacy.

As well as constantly falsifying what I've said, Boyle also recklessly,
breathlessly, tries to remould the material world to form part of his
'Potemkin Village', a village in which the DSP-Socialist Alliance is central
to all major political developments. His response to my careful proposition
that the DSP ought to be more cautious than to present the conflict between
the militant group in the QLD AMWU and the Cameron machine, as a contest
between the Socialist Alliance and Laborism, is immediately reduced to the
notion that I in some way support the Cameron machine, which is, as everyone
knows, bizarre in the extreme.

Any disagreement with the DSP leadership's desperate tactical eccentricities
has of course to be immediately reduced to the critic siding with their
ostensible enemies. Boyle then wheels out a new story. He says:

"Silly me, I keep rejoicing when the workers vote against great ALP leaders
in the trade unions, like Doug Cameron of the AMWU, for a more militant
alternative, such as the latest news from the Qld election that Workers
Unity member and Socialist Alliance supporter Danny Doherty has won the
election for QLD secretary of the printing division of the AMWU in QLD --
the first member of Workers Unity to be elected to a position in the union."

Just about everything about this little paragraph is false, and it
illustrates, vividly, the reckless, 'Potemkin Villiage' approach of the DSP
leadership to serious trade union matters. I've sought out first hand
information from Workers Unity in QLD, and the actual situation is this:
Workers Unity includes a number of militants, well established in the metals
side of the industry. Some of them are members of the group who left the ISO
a while back. Some of them are members of the ALP. The group who left the
ISO are still deciding if they intend to stay in the Socialist Alliance.
Workers Unity are conducting an energetic struggle, on a trade union basis,
against Cameron's QLD machine. The Socialist Alliance, as an entity, figures
very little in the battle in the QLD metalworkers union. The exaggerated
journalistic coverage by the DSP and Green Left is entirely artificial, and
the only effect it has had, has been to give the Cameron machine a
propaganda stick to beat the opposition with.

Unfortunately, on the metals side in the recent ballot, which Boyle doesn't
mention, the Cameron machine were successful, and the opposition got a bit
over 30%. Obviously the Cameron machine's propaganda was reasonably
effective, and in my view, Green Left's intervention didn't help. It seems
to me that Green Left and the DSP leadership are making entirely literary
propaganda to blow their own trumpet, at the expense of the practical
day-to-day interests of the group of workers actually engaged in a fight
with the Cameron machine. Boyle's proclamation that Danny Doherty, who beat
the Cameron machine for Secretary of the Printing Division of the union, is
a member of Workers Unity and a supporter of the Socialist Alliance
(whatever that means), is according to my information, simply untrue. I'm
told that that the situation is this: the printing division is a small,
fairly closed community, as you might expect. Danny Doherty is a highly
respected militant. The Cameron machine incumbent was unpopular. The Cameron
machine actually approached Danny Doherty to replace the incumbent. Doherty,
however, decided quite courageously to maintain his independence from the
Cameron machine. In a friendly way he rejected the offer to run as a Workers
Unity candidate, he preferred to run as an independent, though obviously
Workers Unity supported him. Now that he has won the position, he will
clearly come under considerable pressure to conform to the Cameron machine.

The question I ask is how does Boyle lightmindedly falsifying the facts of
this situation, and claiming Danny Doherty as one of the Alliance's own, so
to speak, help the militants in the QLD AMWU? Its just another example of
the DSP's recklessness in trying to blow its own political trumpet.

There are other errors of fact, in Boyle's recent posts, and I may address
them in the future, but basically I prefer to address the serious political
questions, as I do in my other posts. I don't intend to spend too much time
in responding to either to Boyle's abuse, or to his hysteria.


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