Just a moment's reflection. The incompetent, blubbering coward Mayor Rob Ford has a right-hand man; the arrogant, hypocritical homophobe Giorgio Mammoliti. (Oh yeah, the cry-baby, ignorant, incompetent, lying sack-of-shit Rob Ford is a homophobe too.) Mammoliti is an enthusiastic advocate of the mayor's cut-cut-cut, anti-union agenda. But Mammoliti was once a union member himself, with CUPE, and he was very protective of his perks then. What's changed? Simple. Mammoliti has a new job and during the course of this new career, power shifted to a simpleton right-wing buffoon and his allies. Mammoliti's self-interest (which made him an active union member as a worker) has now compelled him to become a right-wing, anti-union, anti-public services shill.
Sometimes, self-interested, arrogant pricks can help a good movement if there's something in it for them. In this case they are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Some people might say that Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd is doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. I'm not sure I include myself in that group. Driving whales and other forms of ocean life into extinction might be worse than putting some ships out of action. Anyway, I'm bringing up Paul Watson in this post along with Mammoliti because he's another example of how leaders aren't always pleasant human beings. A documentary came out about Watson last summer and I remember the reviews saying that it shows a man with a simplistic, black-and-white view of the world, and himself, and that he disregards people close to him (including his own children) for his causes. Sort of like a man-child in some respects.
And I thought; well of course. Causes aren't sustained by part-time activists like me, trying to sustain work, family, and some degree of balance, in our lives. They're sustained by people fixated on an idea and often oblivious to everything else.
Just some reflections as I'm too busy for sustained blogging.
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7 comments:
There is a movie around called End:Civ based on the book Endgame by Derrick Jensen that has a couple of bits of interview with Paul Watson, in which he talks about some of his former Greenpeace colleagues. They appear to have sold out to the very things Greenpeace was fighting for. Its all very disheartening. I think I am in the admiring Watson for his commitment camp. Mammolito appears to be merely self serving.
karen,
I don't know whether either side of the Watson-Greenpeace split can be a reliable source for the other. I believe that Watson is a principled man and that sometimes living one's principles can get in the way of being a well-rounded personality.
Mammolito on the other hand is just a self-serving prick. But when he was on our side (for his own purposes) he was just as effective as he is now serving Team Ford. We should use such personalities, but with our eyes open.
i would imagine that patrick moore's rotten name must have come up in that film as one of the notorious greenpeace turncloaks.
oh yeah, i'd heard of that genuine sell-out
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/deep-green-science-and-rhetoric-patrick-moore/blog/34145/
That was certainly one of the names. Mr Moore is apparently coming here to my home in the Middle of Nowhere to tell us why the Enbridge pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat is such a great idea.
I met Paul Watson a few years ago at a talk. He strikes me as the real deal. I don't necessarily feel comfortable with his brand of radicalism or his personality but at the same time I have trouble finding fault with it. I'd support him over a Japanese whaling fleet without question. He's an extremist but without people like him any progressive cause would be poorer.
karen,
You know it would spoil it for Moore if you make your local paper report that somebody told him to fuck-off with his lies!
Boris,
That's it exactly. He's a man with a mission.
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