QUOTE: Norman Geras gets himself quite worked up over the 'betrayal of dissent' argument floating out there. Me likey:
"Well, here's my little counter-exercise in the sociology of knowledge. It answers this question: how on earth could individuals belonging to a global movement of millions of people, and whose point of view had widespread representation in the world's media, being in some sectors of this almost suffocating - how could these individuals have seen themselves as 'surrounded' and their dissent as under pressure, under threat of being silenced? I wonder if what they're saying is a displacement of something else which they may have acutely felt: namely a painful discomfort at the substance of what the critics of their position kept pointing out - that if their view had prevailed it would have meant the survival of quite monstrous regimes of murder, torture and political and social oppression. If any of them did feel the force of this discomfort as surrounding and discouraging them, then that is in some measure to their credit. But it still ain't the silencing of dissent."
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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