Martin Jay: “Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe”
http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2011/08/martin-jays-dialectic-of-counter.html
A recent article on the massacre in Norway, forwarded by a reader to Contested Terrain for posting, raises interesting questions about how to interpret the contemporary Right. Here is a quick response to one small selection.
Breivik’s actions were disgusting; yet they also indicated the weakness of the far right in Norway. As we saw in Britain in the early 1980s, after a strong anti-racist movement halted the National Front’s electoral progress, fascists and their fellow-travellers are more likely to choose violence when their political ambitions are frustrated.
It seems to me that the European and American Right has been moving rather in the direction of a populist approach. Of course there are distinctions and disagreements within the Right about strategy though, and Right-wing violence has been on the rise in recent years, but so has a populist approach which also has violence in its language, its symbolism and its discourse.
Therefore, to be clear, this article — like many on the topic — seems to treat violence as a mere tactic or strategy external to the political content of the Right. Violence is taken up as a expression of desperation, it is argued. But how accurate is this when right-wing policies have been on the advance for some time now? Is it not rather that the rightward drift in policy — a formal form of violence of the state — empowers and encourages the direct form of violence — as in the Norwegian massacre? And aren’t these forms of violence also linked quite closely? The stripping of the welfare state — a form of (state) violence itself — targeting a population that is now again re-targeted with direct and brute force from individuals in “civil society”? Or in the case of the Norway massacre, targeting those who administer the formal (ie. state) domination of immigrants, ethnic minorities and others? In short, I am not sure Right-wing violence is so much a strategy or tactic as a result of frustrated ambitions, as it is an expression of Right-wing politics itself, which at least on the formal (state) level has been on the march for some time, “indirect” forms administered by the state, which now encourage also direct forms of domination taken by individuals in “civil society.” Just some food for thought.
A recent article at New Jewish Resistance and World War 4, titled “Will ‘Hilltop Youth’ co-opt rent protests?” purports to be about the mass housing protests currently rocking Israel. The author, Bill Weinberg, cites the participation of (an incredibly marginal number of) right-wing activists in the events, the “Hilltop Youth”. Don’t get me wrong, the far right should always be pushed out of these events, and the proposals to “solve” the housing crisis through settlement expansion should be opposed, but Weinberg’s portrayal of this group as potentially “co-opting” the protests is a joke. The protest is being led by the National Student Union, and the Histadrut Trade Union will possibly increase its influence as well. The protesters’ demands put forth to Netanyahu are a set of tax-relief programs, support for more accessible mortgages, free education, and increased materials and funding for hospitals. The National Student Union opposed Netanyahu’s attempts to buy them off with the construction of separate student housing. Yes, Netanyahu might attempt to use the protests against rental *prices* to claim there is a housing *shortage* and therefore the need for West Bank settlement expansion. That is certainly something the protesters should be aware of and to guard against. But this too would not mean that this small far-right group had “co-opted” the protests, simply that Netanyahu were able to turn the protests to his advantage, supporting his current policies. But you don’t have to read much of Weinberg’s short post to notice that it is not even about the housing protests nor these settler activists. Those are simply hooks in order to force the reader into a fight over whether or not Zionism is Nazism. There is not much content to this, just the dogma that West Bank Settlements are equivalent to Nazi “Lebensraum” policies. While you may have initially thought you were reading a commentary about the housing protests and the political conflicts that may play out within them, you now realize that you’ve been hooked into a fight on another topic altogether. And the author makes that clear when he closes the article, not by asking the readers to challenge him on his view that the “Hilltop Youth” will co-opt the protests, but on the analogy between West Bank settlement and Nazi “Lebensraum” policy. “Please explain the flaws in our analogy,” Weinberg challenges you. “We’ll be waiting.” This is some tough-talking, slimy, manipulative antizionism.
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