A Disputes Committee document was discussed at the party conference in January 2013 about allegations of sexual assault and rape made by a much younger female member against Comrade Delta,[93] a senior party official who by then was no longer in his former post. Allegations about Delta’s behaviour had been an issue for several years within the group,[94] the first complaint against him being made in 2010. Delta has never been questioned by the police about the allegations made against him.[5]
A transcript was leaked to the Socialist Unity website shortly after the January conference, and the party’s perceived failure to adequately resolve the issue resulted in strong internal criticism.[95] One member of the disputes committee[96] had asserted that the party had “no faith in the bourgeois court system to deliver justice”.[95] Journalist Laurie Penny noted that the allegations were investigated and dismissed by friends of the accused, and that the alleged victim and her friends have been harassed by other party members,[97] while journalist John Palmer, a one-time International Socialists member, pointed to problems with the policy of democratic centralism as it had been adopted by Tony Cliff,[98] though Alex Callinicos defended the party’s version of Leninism and referred to the Delta issue as “a difficult disciplinary case” in the February issue of the party’s monthly Socialist Review magazine.[99]
In an official statement via Charlie Kimber, the party’s Central Committee, stated that the issue was an internal matter, insisting that “we strongly condemn” the release of the conference transcript and that “this case is closed”.[100] On his Lenin’s Tomb blog, Richard Seymour criticised the party’s leadership.[94] Along with another writer and (then) SWP member China Miéville and others, Seymour was involved with the internal opposition’s blog, International Socialism, established in January 2013.[101] According to Alex Callinicos: “the internal opposition are accountable to no one for these actions. They offer an unappetising lesson in what happens when power is exercised without responsibility”.[99]The Guardian reported that a woman who complained about rape in the SWP claimed she was asked a number of offensive questions about her sexual past and drinking habits. Another article in The Guardian suggested that instead of actually dealing with the rape allegation, the SWP preferred to talk about its internal organisation, thereby protecting its leadership.[102] A report by Shiv Malik and Nick Cohen published by The Guardian the following March said that further allegations of rape have been made internally against another party member.[93]
On 10 March, a special conference was held[93] in which Seymour and Miéville’s faction was defeated, and the central committee insisted the report about the complaint against Delta “that no rape had occurred” be accepted.[103] Seymour, who later accused “the leadership” of “rigged debates and gerrymandered votes”,[104] announced his resignation[105] while the newly established International Socialist Network gained more than 100 now former SWP members.[104]
Julie Sherry, a member of the Central Committee responded in The Guardian to allegations of the party’s sexism.[106] Sherry replaced a member of the Central Committee who disapproved of the handling of the case while her father was a member of the disputes committee who found the allegation of misconduct against Delta “not proven”.[104] Journalist Owen Jones speculated in January that “the era of the SWP and its kind is over”.[107]
Subsequent to the publicity surrounding the SWP’s response to this rape allegation, a number of critics on the left called those in leadership positions “rape apologists”—for instance, these allegations were publicly aired and were the basis of a walkout in protest against SWP candidates at the National Union of Students (NUS) meeting in April 2013.[108] The Socialist Workers’ Student Society has been active at many universities, but the SWSS suffered a serious decline in membership as the Comrade Delta scandal unfolded.[109]
Comrade Delta himself was reported to have resigned from the SWP in July 2013.[3] According to Alex Callinicos in June 2014, around 700 members of the SWP had resigned from the group.[110]
Today it is a sexist comment, but if this has to be ignored then what else? That is how the Comrade Delta scandal started, with a leader who was considered infallible eventually being accused of rape and a group of his friends in the party ruling he was not guilty. The end result was the party being torn apart and no one trusts them anymore. Other left wing groups in the UK watched and learned to be better, with the exception of tankies. The US should be no different.
You didn’t actually read anything I quoted, did you? You just decided I was wrong and ignored it. Comrade Delta wasn’t even questioned by the police, never mind it getting as far as a criminal case.
That TL;DR is a perfect example of why now and not earlier. Because when it comes to misogyny, the message is “don’t be divisive” and women keep getting told “we’re taking care of it, be patient” and nothing gets done until someone finally realizes that the old boys aren’t ever going to deal with it.
And we’re serious that your “Why now, and not when it happened?” is the same fucking bullshit women hear every single time when men want to gaslight them. Bring it up when it happens and “now is not the time.” When someone finally fucking listens it’s “why now?” with the implication it’s the predatory woman acting opportunistically, rather than everyone ignoring her the whole fucking time. Kind of like the way you’re ignoring or dismissing everyone who is telling you this.
You want to know another way to lose elections? By acting like such a dick on behalf of your chosen candidate that you alienate anyone who doesn’t want to deal with that level of garbage simply because they had a few questions or doubts.
What probably happened is that Warren told this to her inner campaign circle at some point, they decided to leak it on their own volition as the primaries drew close, and when it went public Warren was then forced to either throw her staffer under the bus or back her/him up, and chose the latter. The time to make that decision would explain the delay in response.
At the same time Sanders campaign is distributing negative talking points critical of Warren, basically things we seen repeated on this thread. This is just how campaigns work. If Sanders or Warren supporters are ready to throw their favored candidate under the bus for either spreading the talking points or for the talking points themselves, then that just feeds the centrist talking point that the left wing of the party is not a reliable ally.
Yeah, I’m a lot more bothered by the “Bernie can’t do no wrong, let’s dismiss the female accusers” attitude I’ve seen from Sanders supporters (mostly in places other than BB) than by the alleged statement itself. Everybody can screw up, and otherwise good people can have their lapses into sexism, classism, racism etc. But the “our candidate is unquestionable” thing is very troubling.
My sense of the discrepancy between what he says he said versus what she says he said is that this sort of statement is so ubiquitous in our culture that he probably honestly has no remembrance of saying it, and yet has probably said it many times over. Do you remember every time you say “hope it doesn’t rain” or “have a good day”? I’m trying to think of any conversation I’ve had with friends about this specific aspect of politics where the phrase “a woman will never be able to win the presidential election, or at least not in our lifetime” WASN’T uttered by someone. And his track record with regard to women’s issues is such that there is no way he hasn’t said this, and thought it, and believed it.
But that doesn’t make him especially evil. It just makes him normal, in our culture. Which is why there has to be this pushback, to make the woman look ‘hysterical’ instead. Another day, another example.
Regarding Sanders’ comments about Warren, people who are “defending” Sanders on this are making this into a far bigger issue than it is. We’ve all miscommunicated in our lives, and after 2016 the pessimistic idea that the American public is too misogynist to vote for a woman probably floated through a lot of heads. I feel like Bernie’s comms staff could have cleared this up in a minute:
I imagine a lot of us didn’t think, when Barack Obama entered the race for 2008, that we’d see an African American president in our lifetime. And we were all thrilled to be wrong. Just because you think something won’t happen doesn’t mean you stop trying to make it happen.
After 2016 I think many of us were shocked by Hillary Clinton’s loss and wondered how much of that was because of misogyny. It left us feeling pessimistic, and I don’t doubt I said some pessimistic things. But now we’re looking forward to 2020 and there isn’t a democrat in race who can’t beat Donald Trump and who wouldn’t make a better president than Donald Trump. That definitely includes Elizabeth Warren.
So this might just be a terrible failure to communicate. Of course, clearing this whole thing up in a second only works if this really was just people dredging up and off-hand comment or a misunderstanding. For someone to remember this more than a year after it happened, there may have been a lot more to it than a misunderstanding.
Vermin Love Supreme has won the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire Presidential Preference Primary. I have no idea if that is good or bad, but it is an actual thing that has happened.
His actual politics seem to be OK, and far from the usual Libertarian Party candidates. He prefers Peter Kropotkin to Ayn Rand.
Is Vermin a celebrity at this juncture?
But of course. Vermin has always been a celebrity. There was never a question. We could quibble about the meaning of “celebrity,” or which timeline we’re talking about within the multiverse, but I see it as this: Vermin’s got more charisma in his little pinky finger than any mainstream celebrity I’ve met, and I’ve met my share. It’s on them if they haven’t caught up yet.
Case in point—the movie opens with Vermin challenging the actors from the Lord of the Rings to an imaginary battle with Narnia. The crowd went wild and knew Vermin immediately—but Sean Astin and Elijah Wood were bewildered. About an hour later, Astin called over to us, conceding that he had just done a crash-course in Vermin Supreme. The two of them spent the next six minutes talking about anarchist philosophy—Peter Kropotkin and mutual aid, and all that good stuff. By the end of the encounter, Vermin had Sean reading lines for his 2020 campaign commercial.
So, yes—it’s an Andy Warhol world, and Vermin has grafted himself into the public psyche as the world’s greatest boot-headed dictator, even if you don’t know it yet.
He won’t win overall, he just isn’t a capitalist at heart, but I think he is showing that some right-leaning Libertarians are having doubts about that as well.
