AK Press to Fox News’ Glenn Beck: We have a lot in common
After “deep deliberation”, the anarchist publisher AK Press concluded that they have “a lot of overlap” with the right-wing conservative Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.
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contested terrain
platform against antisemitism and for emancipationFailed critiques of the economic crisis, and their relationship to antisemitism, racism, and nationalism
A short critique from Doug Henwood of attempts to separate finance capital from “productive capital,” and the relation such positions have to antisemitim, racism, and nationalism.
From Left Business Observer #119, July 2009.
The whole point of production under capitalism is not the satisfaction of needs, but the accumulation of money. In other words, it’s impossible to separate the economic world into a good productive side and a bad financial side; the two are inseparable. The monetary surpluses generated in production—the profits of capitalist businesses—accumulate over time and demand some sort of outlet: bank deposits, bonds, stocks, whatever. It’s going to be that way until we replace capitalism with something radically different.
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Would a ‘Left-Right’ Coalition Revive the Antiwar Movement?
I thought a left-right alliance was out of the question for self-respecting leftists, but with so-called leftists from Counterpunch to Infoshop.org promoting such an alliance with regular publications of American nationalist and antisemitic texts from the right-wing-libertarian website, antiwar.com, and elsewhere, the issue must be directly addressed. Here is an article from Socialist Action, explicitly opposing left-right coalitions.
“National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World”, Matthias Küntzel
National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World
By Matthias Küntzel
Jewish Political Studies Review 17:1-2 (Spring 2005)Anti-Semitism based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy is not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, in European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology to the Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda. Important to this process were the Arabic-language service broadcast by the German shortwave transmitter in Zeesen between 1939 and 1945, and the role of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who was the first to translate European anti-Semitism into an Islamic context. Although Islamism is an independent, anti-Semitic, antimodern mass movement, its main early promoters – the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti and the Qassamites in Palestine – were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National Socialist government.
Antisemitism After September 11th
Another older article that is still worth a read:
Antisemitism After September 11th
By Esther Kaplan
The Public Eye Magazine – Vol. 16, No. 2To White supremacists across the United States, the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were a cause for celebration. On a radio broadcast that week, William Pierce, head of the neonazi National Alliance, called the attacks “a direct consequence of the American people permitting the Jews to control their government and to use American strength to advance the Jews’ interests at the expense of everyone else’s interests.”[1] He victoriously announced the dawn of a “new era,” in which Jewish money, and Jewish manipulation of the media and the U.S. government are “no longer are enough to guarantee the Jews’ continued hegemony.”[2]
James “Bo” Gritz, a Patriot Movement leader and former Green Beret, suggested that it was the “high concentration of influential Jews” that made New York and Washington, D.C., attractive targets,[3] an idea echoed by the likes of Swiss neonazi Ahmed Huber and the Posse Comitatus militia in jubilant references to the attacks on “Jew York.”[4] As reports began to emerge of a surge of anti-Muslim violence across the United States, World Church of the Creator leader Matt Hale wrote to his listserve: “Now we have to help channel this hatred toward the Jews.”[5] He urged his followers to proselytize that the attacks were due to “the control of the United States government by International Jewry and its lackeys. Perhaps never before,” he added, “have people been so receptive to our message.”[6]
Zog Ate My Brains
This article by Chip Berlet, the senior analyst at Political Research Associates, is from 2004, yet analyzes antisemitic conspiracy theories and their reception on the Left which are still relevant to today. The article was suggested by a reader of contested-terrain. thanks!
Zog Ate My Brains
By Chip BerletIf you surf the web, you may have encountered the claim that the Israeli spy agency Mossad warned 4,000 Jews who worked in the World Trade Centre to stay home on 11 September 2001; or that a handful of Jewish lobbyists control US foreign policy; or the world is run by the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG). All these claims are patently false, yet they have devoted defenders.
The idea that a secret group of powerful people is conspiring to control world events is centuries old, and it is seeing a troubling resurgence on the political Left. Unlike most progressive theories about political power that stress systemic, institutional or structural analyses, conspiracy theories claim a handful of sinister plotters are mucking things up. This often devolves into charges that ‘The Jews’ are behind some sinister plan for global subversion. Where do these ideas come from?
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News & Etc.
- Another Jewish memorial defaced in Poland, in latest string of anti-Semitic incidents
- Tom Segev on Günter Grass, “The German who needed a fig leaf”
- Jedwabne monument to murdered Jews defaced with swastikas
- J14 and the rift between Israeli and international activists
- Glenn Beck is exploiting Israel
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