December 13th, 2008 | admin
If the election of Barack Obama is to be a “watershed event” enabling discussions about race in the U.S., what kinds of conversations will these be, and how will they effect the political landscape?
Mainstream and conservative commentators are widely speaking of the “post-racial” society, the overcoming of racial exclusion and the progress of U.S. history. In response, sober analyzes detail the ongoing forms of institutional racism. And since the election there have been hundreds of racist incidents reported.
While anti-racists are quickly pointing out the contradiction between the proclaimed “post-racial” society and the ongoing forms of racial inequality and racism, the “post-racial” ideologues are not arguing that racial inequality has disappeared. Rather, they are pushing a line of justification for this inequality. Like neoliberal ideology generally, the “post-racial” ideologues are shifting the responsibility away from structural and institutional causes, and onto the shoulders of those individuals (in this case, blacks) for their situation. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
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December 12th, 2008 | admin
Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists
By Spencer Sunshine | Public Eye, Winter 2008
On September 8, 2007 in Sydney, Australia, the anti globalization movement mobilized once again against neoliberal economic policies, this time to oppose the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit. Just as during the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle,Washington, in1999, the streets were filled with an array of groups, such as environmentalists, socialists, and human rights advocates. And also just like in Seattle, there was a “Black Bloc”—a group of militant activists, usually left-wing anarchists, who wore masks and dressed all in black.
In Sydney, the Black Bloc assembled and hoisted banners proclaiming “Globalization is Genocide.” But when fellow demonstrators looked closely, they realized these Black Bloc marchers were “National- Anarchists”—local fascists dressed as anarchists who were infiltrating the demonstration. The police had to protect the interlopers from being expelled by irate activists.
Read the article here.
After the Shoah racial antisemitism and biological racism more broadly lost much of their popular appeal in the mainstream and in the academy. As it became ever-more apparent in Germany that the Nazis were going to lose the war, there was still a legitimation struggle to be waged about the era of National Socialism, and about the future world order. This involved a shift in Nazi rhetoric away from racial antisemitism towards political antisemitism in the form of anti-zionim.
Antisemitism is mainly expressed today through antizionism, and very few vocally express racial antisemitism. But Professor Kevin MacDonald at California State University is seeking to re-connect political antisemitism to psuedo-scientific race theories by means of socio-biology. Read the article here.
