Great letter, far more articulate and diplomatic then anything I could have written. It’s disgusting how any attempt to articulate a critique of anti-semitism on the left is subject to a witchhunt for “anti-german” sympathies.

I think it can be charitably said that the representative of the three-way fight perspective merely represents the muddled thinking of a lot of leftists who are uncomfortable with the reactionary positions of groups like Hezbollah but who tread on eggshells to preserve some sort of imaginary “unity” on the left.

The same understanding can’t be extended to El-Amin and the Vernichtungskommando over at Left Turn magazine. Let’s have Karl Marx have the last word on them:

“They are below the level of history, they are beneath any criticism, but they are still an object of criticism like the criminal who is below the level of humanity but still an object for the executioner. In the struggle against that state of affairs, criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of passion. It is not a lancet, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy, which it wants not to refute but to exterminate. For the spirit of that state of affairs is refuted. In itself, it is no object worthy of thought, it is an existence which is as despicable as it is despised. Criticism does not need to make things clear to itself as regards this object, for it has already settled accounts with it.”

[…]

“Criticism dealing with this content is criticism in a hand-to-hand fight, and in such a fight the point is not whether the opponent is a noble, equal, interesting opponent, the point is to strike him.”

He says openly that his aim is to consciously and explicitly trivialize antisemitism. He is quoting Michael Neumann’s article “What is Anti-Semitism,” which reads, “This is not to excuse genuine anti-Semitism; it is to trivialize it.”

What does Neumann mean by trivializing antisemitism? Here’s a demonstration. He writes:

Undoubtedly there is genuine antisemitism in the Arab world: the distribution of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the myths about stealing the blood of gentile babies. This is utterly inexcusable. So was your failure to answer Aunt Bee’s last letter.

On the topic of “hatred against Jews,” Neumann writes, “Some of this hatred is racist, some isn’t, but who cares? Why should we pay any attention to this issue at all?”

Additionally, I wonder if El-Amine is aware of Michael Neumann’s support for the openly antisemitic website, Jewish Tribal Review, or of Neumann’s attempt to differentiate between “good” and “bad” antisemites, or that Neumann admits he’s willing to lie or obfuscate in his political work, and that he is, by his own words, “not interested in truth, or justice, or understanding, or anything else, except so far as it serves [the] purpose [of “helping the Palestinians”].”

These comments come from a correspondence between Neumann and the website mentioned above. They are documented here on the Engage website.

This approach to the topic is very popular on the U.S. Left. Neumann’s essay was published on one of the most widely-read websites for Leftists, Counterpunch (though it’s also popular amongst those on the Right, and the editor, Alexander Cockburn, welcomes this.) The essay was published by the largest anarchist publisher, AK Press, in the book “The Politics of Anti-Semitism.”

It is one thing to neglect the existence of antisemitism, to not be aware of it, to be ignorant to it. It is entirely another thing to intentionally trivialize it. That’s what makes El-Amine’s position so shocking.

A strong reply. I agree that El-Amine probably couldn’t care less considering the wording of his analysis.

I think at least one of the problems with the approach to Hezbollah taken by many on the revolutionary left is the non-analysis of their propaganda, more specifically Al-Manar or Nasrallah’s speeches (some examples here: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=_WK3HbXwN0k). If the effort is not put forth to expose their real aims towards Israel, then people who don’t bother to read the first thing about the Lebanese situation tend to accept Hezbollah as some sort of defensive army that protects the Lebanese! When in fact it was Hezbollah two months ago killing its way into the center of Beirut to jockey for power against the very Lebanese it claims to represent. And it was Hezbollah which triggered a war with Israel by kidnapping two IDF soldiers, who they aimed to trade for Kuntar, the aggressive anti-semitic murderer currently held in Israel. Lebanese Hezbollah’s aims, methods and propaganda focus attention on their foreign adversary, Israel which allows them to counterpose an internal Lebanese regime based on populist Shi’ism and Islamic principles. In other words to gain a cultural domination over the Lebanese population in the interest of Iran and debatably Syria. At the center of this is the ideology both of anti-imperialism (Hezbollah was born during the Lebanese Civil War and was one of the main causes of Israeli retreat) and an anti-Zionism similar to other early anti-Zionisms like that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: an anti-modernist, anti-feminist political praxis that manifests itself in internal anti-semitism and support for military action or simple terrorism against Jews anywhere.

It’s sad that the effort to expose the historical socialization so intrinsic to the nationalism of the new post-colonial Arab states has to pass through the test of: ‘Are you an anti-German or not?’ Postone and others’ analysis is not only useful it is necessary for understanding the appeal of anti-semitism and anti-Zionism today. It shows the weakness of the dialogue happening and as you say, the real ignorance of the American left on these matters.

The void is increasingly being filled by the reactionary right, at least as far as I can see. Conspiracy theory, the Federal Reserve, these things seem to occupy many people’s attention in a rather demobilized period.

sphinx