Progressives Cheer Mark Madoff Suicide as ‘Revolutionary Justice’

12 Dec, 2010 by Donald Douglas

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At DownWithTyranny!, “At This Point Do We Have to Be Hoping for a Revolution?” (And Memeorandum.)

On the other hand, more rich people and the criminal spawn can hang themselves, the way Mark Madoff did. That’s justice served — and revolutionary enough.

Amazing.

Folks may have heard. Mark Madoff hanged himself exactly two years after his father Bernard was arrested in the financial Ponzi scheme indictment. See NYT, “Madoff’s Elder Son Found Dead in Suicide.” (And at Legal Insurrection and Memeorandum.)

But read DownWithTyranny! Howie Klein is actually a top activist with the Firedoglake Act Blue coalition, but these folks make no qualms about calling for revolution. Clearly the death of Mark Madoff is fulfilment in miniature of leftist demands for decapitation of the Old Regime, on the order of the French and Russian Revolutions. The context is this student’s “fight back” speech, below, announcing revolutionary solidarity with Britain’s fight-the-cuts uprising from last week’s Coalition of Resistance Conference in Britain. DownWithTyranny! then links to a revolutionary manifesto from Ian Welsh, “An American Future.” The commentary reflects less an explicit agenda than a prediction for the pivotal crisis of capitalism in the near term. While Welsh is ambiguous on the ripeness for proletarian agitation, cleary Howie Klein and his progressive comrades are welcoming an epic confrontation with the capitalist state. The death of Mark Madoff is not a sad family tragedy but a symbol of state crisis, and, ominously, of the murderous reckoning awaiting the forces of reaction. This is, most of all, completely in keeping with the violent sensiblities of the left, which have been on display all week long at this blog. All I can say is hold your most cherished values close, and your loved ones even closer. The proletarian crisis needs a revolutionary vanguard to bring class consciousness to the contented and under-mobillized masses. Britain is gripped right now by an austerity crisis, and at home we’ve had some of our own anarcho-socialist violence. I hope I’m wrong, as I always say. But one of these days a new Weatherman-style organization will break out again with a campaign of domestic terrorism. And that’s just the beginning. It’s a dreadful thought, but these folks are simply not going wait for more suicides. I’m convinced, in due time, they’ll work to accelerate the forces of “revolutionary justice” for thousands of Mark Madoffs.