Antifa groups from Germany and Austria have just published a pamphlet about antisemitism and anti-zionism. It includes basic texts, including critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s “Theses on Antisemitism”; two texts by Moishe Postone, one on Nazi antisemitism, the other on contemporary forms of anti-capitalism; and a text on anti-Zionism. The pamphlet is downloadable from their website. More information below.
Why your revolution is no liberation!
With this reader, we want to take a stand against the currently predominating analyses, of the anti-globalisation movement, which, articulating themselves as in the broadest sense left-wing and anticapitalist, constantly boisterously trumpet their opinion, that another world was possible. We have serious doubts that this “other” world, was going to be of a better constitution than the current one. This anti-globalisation movement is of course not at all marginalised, but is enjoying broad sympathy, which reaches from the “bourgeois left” right to the so-called centre of society and which is even shared by Neo-Nazis
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Three essays by Matthias Küntzel, published in Telos in September 2006.
Part 1:
During my preparations for this lecture, I realized that the German Coordinating Group had already sponsored a lecture with the title “On the struggle against Anti-Semitism today” in 1962. [1] At that time they invited a more prominent speaker—a person whom I esteem and admire, Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno’s suggestions for combating anti-Semitism remain relevant today, a point to which I will return later. Anti-Semitism itself, however, which at that time Adorno attributed to an “excessive nationalism,” has changed its form of appearance. First of all, hostility against Jews today is directed less against the Jewish minority in Europe and more toward the Jews in Israel and the United States. Second, we find the most radical propagandists for eliminatory anti-Semitism today not in Europe but in the Islamic World.
read the article here
Part 2
I will not be concerned in the following with the societal parameters (politics, media, culture) that more strongly shape the anti-Semitic consciousness than pedagogical endeavors can ever counteract. I also do not want to speak about those who no longer allow themselves to be educated or changed, those who have become unapproachable for enlightenment. For them, Adorno’s motto remains unchanged: “[T]he instruments of power, which really are at one’s disposal, must be applied without sentimentality, certainly not out of the need for punishment or in order to avenge oneself against these persons, but rather in order to show them that the only thing that impresses them, namely real social authority, is in the meantime, actually really against them.” And Adorno repeats, “Anti-Semitic utterances should be confronted very energetically: they must see that the one who confronts them is not afraid.” Today more than ever, these must be the criteria in schools, universities, and other educational institutions—independent of the question of whether the carriers of the anti-Semitic stereotype have a Muslim or a non-Muslim background. It is therefore absolutely right (and deserves emphasis during professional education) that, based on accepted work jurisdiction, trainees are to be let go without notice in response to anti-Semitic or racist comments.
However, here I am not concerned with those stubborn characters but rather with subjects capable of being enlightened, whom I can and want to influence through pedagogical methods. Unfortunately, it is not possible to present to this clientele recipes for success. Instead I will try to show, by means of three case studies from my field of occupation, how the confrontation of anti-Semitism at any rate does not work.
read the article here
Part 3
What would have happened if the anti-Semitism of the member of the Bundestag Hohmann had been articulated through e-mails internal to the CDU, instead of in a public speech? Would the public have ever found out about it? Or would those responsible have outwardly kept quiet on the basis of party loyalty?
read the article here
ZNet - June 2007
“Make Capitalism History: Shut Down the G8!”
The grassroots mobilizations against the G8 summit, held in the northern German town of Heiligendamm in early June of this year, were organized by broad networks of direct actionists, anti-racist groups, anti-border groups, anti-fascist militants, queer activists, squatters, debt-relief groups, trade unions, environmental organizations and many others. Despite the very restrictive policy of the German state that forbid any demonstrations in a large perimeter around the ’security fence’ protecting the G8 summit, activists successfully disrupted the G8 meeting.[i]
The tiny enclave of Heiligendamm was for two days only reachable by helicopters or with boats from the seaside, as demonstrators blocked roads and train tracks leading to the site of the summit. Impressive were the pictures of thousands of people crossing fields and forests, in their effort to out-maneuver the huge police force, and make their way to the fence.
Heiligendamm will mark another memorable moment in the alter-globalization movement, a movement whose strength is often attributed to its diversity of actors. But this multitude, however, should not be mixed up with arbitrariness, as the movement itself also struggles with the challenges in developing a critique of global capitalism that provides emancipatory possibilities.
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This is an essay from 2002, published in the German-language internationalist magazine iz3w. Lucky for us, they’ve translated a few good texts.
By Stephan Günther
In their criticism of neoliberalism and globalisation the Left and the Right are sometimes uncannily close. One has to look very carefully to find the differences between their struggles against “financial capital” or “speculators.” Left-wing critics of globalisation often defend themselves with the assertion that there is no protection against uninvited support.
…continue reading the article here
June 4th, 2007
far-Right, g8, left-right overlap, social movements, conspiracism, antisemitism, Germany, anti-capitalism, anti-globalization, anti-zionism
The text below is from a leaflet distributed at the anti-G8 mobilization in Germany, by the Berlin group, Theorie, Organisation, Praxis (TOP).
Capitalism is no conspiracy and the Hamas is not the Rebel Alliance
Against Antisemitism within the activist scene
You consider yourself an activist, a radical, maybe an anarchist. In any case you are someone who is an outspoken critic of capitalism and who wants to end oppression and injustice as the left all over the world wants to.
At the same time, all over the world, Antisemitism is on the rise again. It takes many forms, some of which are violent such as verbal and physical attacks, while others are more subtle.
Antisemitism has a long and gruesome history: Since the middle ages, Christianity supported pogroms against Jews. Later, the natural sciences came up with the idea of an inferior Jewish „race“, and generally speaking Jews often got blamed for all evil in the world. The climax were the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other concentration camps where six million Jews were murdered.
The activist movement, however, seems to ignore this history and the fact that Jews still are not secure. Rather than acknowledging Antisemitism as another means of oppression that needs to be fought – such as racism or sexism – quite a few of its members actively take part in pushing antisemitic attitudes.
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