October 6th, 2011 | admin
“My Life Was Linked with that of the Race”
Emma Goldman’s Memoir Living My Life on Jewish identity and Antisemitism on the Left
By Olaf Kistenmacher*
The american anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) and her lifelong friend Alexander Berkman are well-known for their early critiques of Bolshevism, as well as their reflections on radical politics and direct action. When Goldman’s autobiography Living My Life, originally published in 1931, was released in German in the late 1970s, she also became an inspiration for the second-wave feminist movement. For Goldman anarchism did not only mean the overcoming of state power, but also the liberation of the individual from all forms of social domination. Throughout her life, she was engaged in the struggle for women’s rights. As an educated midwife and nurse she was closely familiar with the plight of working-class women. In her memoir she described the challenges of free love with an honesty that makes Living My Life worth reading even 80 years after it was published. Even amongst anarchists, Goldman noted, it was not particularly common for women to live independent lives. Although the “equality of sexes” was discussed in anarchist circles, she wrote, “the only men among them who practiced what they preached were the Russian and Jewish radicals.” (1)
With the new German edition of Living My Life (2010) however, another aspect of Emma Goldman’s political life can be discovered, one that played a minor role in her reception until now: She was a self-confident Jew, and she attentively observed judeophobic resentments in her environment – including within the left. On her self-understanding Goldman wrote: “My life was linked with that of the race. Its spiritual heritage was mine, and its values were transmuted into my being.” (2)
Continue Reading »
August 16th, 2010 | admin
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.
Continue Reading »
Two posts from the blog The Deliverators relevant to our subject:
Extract:
So what is needed then is a new style of opposition to the status quo in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. I think that Zizek handles this issue well, pointing out that a revolutionary project must ultimately be about busting through the boundaries of the possible and making the impossible a reality. For this reason I believe that the only revolutionary policy would be a single state policy. Well, in honesty I believe that the only solution is a No State Solution, but we’re talking turkey here: the only hope for a broad, radical/revolutionary alternative to the brutality of both Israel and its enemies (and I am happy to draw moral equivalence between them all), and the only meaningful vision to oppose the various two-state stumbling blocks is a One State Solution. Imagine a single multiethnic, secular, socialist republic, Israel-Palestine, built on the common ground shared by Jews and Palestinians: the fact that nobody else wants them. This has been done at least once before, in North America, and its result was profoundly revolutionary. Now that the American experiment has run well past its sell-by date, Israel-Palestine would offer a place to launch a new project in human liberty, an opportunity for a realignment of the values of the world.
Extract:
Being called a racist or an anti-Semite can come as a bit of a shock, because we’ve learned never to associate it with ourselves, but only to those we can clearly define as racists (i.e. the Klan, or the Third Reich, and so on and so on). If you’re a revolutionary communist, say, who is ostensibly at war with capitalism and racism and so on, you can’t, in your own mind, possibly be a racist. And then, if you view anyone outside your political system as racist, “everyone who is not a revolutionary communist is a racist,” well…
You’re saying this zone of self-critique is basically over. The response is never (Coates sort of put it like this) “well, maybe you have a point, my bad.” It’s “how dare you call me a racist” or “maybe you’re the racist.” The second part is this weasel justification, “we’re not homophobic, we’re just defending ourselves against the gay agenda.” It’s not “we dislike the Jews,” when the synagogue gets smashed up, it’s about Zionism, it’s about the injustice that justifies the dislike.
The blog Anti-German Translation has a strand called “critique and theory“. Here are some of the links in it, which might help towards the “new style of opposition” called for in the extract above: New from Anarchist Federation: Against Nationalism. Postone v Debord. Zizek quotes Postone [via PD]. Claussen on Adorno. On Karl Korsch. Noam Chomsky and genocidal causality. ‘Productive’ and ‘unproductive’ labour. New Moishe Postone. Why anarchists should not attack banks. In Praise of Usura.
A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement
By Jame Horrox
Against the backdrop of the early development of Palestinian-Jewish and Israeli society, James Horrox explores the history of the kibbutz movement: intentional communities based on cooperative social principles, deeply egalitarian and anarchist in their organisation.
“The defining influence of anarchist currents in the early kibbutz movement has been one of official Zionist historiography’s best-kept secrets…It is against this background of induced collective amnesia that A Living Revolution makes its vital contribution. James Horrox has drawn on archival research, interviews and political analysis to thread together the story of a period all but gone from living memory, presenting it for the first time to an English-reading audience. These pages bring to life the most radical and passionate voices that shaped the second and third waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, and also encounter those contemporary projects working to revive the spirit of the kibbutz as it was intended to be, despite, and because of, their predecessors’ fate.” —Uri Gordon, from the foreword
“A brilliant study of anarchism in the kibbutz movement, particularly regarding economy and polity. Revealing the roots and processes of the influx of anarchist ideas and practices into the early Jewish labour movement, assessing the actual kibbutz practice and seeing the kibbutzim as both a model way to live and a set of experiments to learn from, Horrox gives this history the meticulous attention it deserves. A Living Revolution is comprehensive, caring and even passionate, but also critical. Horrox’s study is an exemplary undertaking we can learn much from.”—Michael Albert, editor Znet and Z Magazine
“James Horrox’s accessible and clear history of the kibbutz movement and its intellectual roots is interesting and informative. Sensitive to political contexts in which the movement has operated, it provides a refreshing reminder of the constructive possibilities of anarchist ideas.”—Ruth Kinna, editor Anarchist Studies
Read the forward here
Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia Hatreds Old and New in Europe
By Matti Bunzl
The apparent resurgence of hostility toward Jews has been a prominent theme in recent discussions of Europe; at the same time, the adversities faced by the continent’s Muslim population have received increasing attention. In Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, Matti Bunzl offers a historical and cultural clarification of the key terms in these ongoing problems. Arguing against the common impulse to analogize anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, it instead offers a framework that locates the two phenomena in different projects of exclusion.
According to Bunzl, anti-Semitism was invented in the late nineteenth century to police the ethnically pure nation-state. Islamophobia, by contrast, is a phenomenon of the present, marshaled to safeguard a supranational Europe. With the declining importance of the nation-state, traditional anti-Semitism has run its historical course, while Islamophobia threatens to become the defining condition of the new, unified Europe. By ridding us of misapprehensions, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia enables us to see these forces anew.
Dissonant Memories – Fragmented Present Exchanging Young Discourses between Israel and Germany
How does the younger generation exchange discourses between Israel and Germany? In this essay collection, authors from both societies elaborate on their memories of the Holocaust, the Nazi past and their present. They ponder experiences in German-Israeli exchange as well as social and political realities in both countries. By highlighting marginalised memories such as Palestinian and migrant ones, they challenge monolithic national memory discourses. Altogether, a trans-national memory discourse emerges – albeit a dissonant and highly subjective one, truthfully reflecting some of the fragmentations that actually exist in both societies.
In the documentary film, “Young, Jewish, and Left”, a story from a Jewish anarchist, Jna Shelomith, perfectly illustrates the U.S. anarchist movement´s troubled relationship to the Shoah and to Jewish issues.
So, me and two gentile comrades decided to hit Eastern Europe, post Berlin Wall falling. And we had connections with anarchists and autonomen people across Eastern Europe.
So after doing some really incredible anarchist political work with my friends we went to Birkenau and we also went to Auschwitz and I shut down, completely stopped talking. And we had been traveling for at least 3 or 4 weeks at that point. And the next day, we were on the train and one of my comrades said to me, “if you don´t snap out of it, we´re not going to be able to travel with you anymore.” And there really wasn´t any room for me to have the visceral reaction that I had had from being at the camps.
Continue Reading »
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.
October 13th, 2008 | admin
To the Editor,
“Spain and the World”.
Dear Comrade,
I was interested in the article, ‘Palestine and Socialist Policy’, by our good friend Reginald Reynolds in ‘Spain and the World’ of July 29th. There is much in it with which I fully agree, but a great deal more which seems to me contradictory for a Socialist and a near-anarchist. Before I point out these inconsistencies, I wish to say that our friend’s article lends itself to the impression that he is a rabid anti-Semite. In point of truth, I have been asked by several people how it happens that ‘Spain and the World’ printed such an anti-Semitic article. Their surprise was even greater that Reginald Reynolds should be guilty of such tendency. Knowing the writer I felt quite safe in assuring my Jewish friends that Reginald Reynolds has not a particle of anti-Semitic feeling in him, although it is quite true that his article unfortunately gives such an impression.
Continue Reading »
In the latest issue of Upping the Anti journal, two articles were published on the question, “How should Left groups relate to non-Left anti-Imperialist movements?”
The first article, “Challenges to Capitalism, Challenges for the Left: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and the Three Way Fight,” Michael Staudenmaier introduces the “three way fight” analysis, as an attempt to go beyond the bi-polar worldview that the author finds both widespread on the Left and an unsatisfactory analytical framework. As a response, the journal published the article “Islam and the Left: A Reply to Staudenmaier” by Rami El-Amine of Left Turn magazine.
Continue Reading »
Conspiracy theory continues to enjoy a generally positive reception within many sectors of the contemporary North American anarchist movement. As this presentation will argue, conspiracy models of social reality consistently distort and obfuscate the power relations they purport to explain. Instead of examining or refuting specific instances of conspiracy thinking within the popular anarchist milieu, this analysis will concentrate on the logical structure of conspiracy theory as such, and attempt to illuminate its psychological, political, philosophical, and historical roots.
This is a recording of a presentation given by Peter Staudenmaier at the 2004 Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Peter Staudenmaier is an anarchist historian whose work focuses on modern European right-wing thought. He teaches at the Institute for Social Ecology.
Listen to the presentation here: Part 1, Part 2.
This article was written for Green Anarchy magazine. It was written under the name, “Nick Griffin,” which is obviously a pseudonym. The “other” Nick Griffin is the head of the far-right British National Party, who by coincidence was being brought to trial on charges of ‘incitement to racial hatred’ when this article was first published. However, apparently multiple unscrupulous North American radicals used this opportunity to publicly accuse Green Anarchy of printing an article by the BNP’s Griffin – a ludicrous notion to anyone who has read the article themselves. However, because of this, it should be noted that the “Nick Griffin” of this article is not the same as the BNP’s Nick Griffin, but rather is a psuedonym of an anti-fascist monitor with a wry sense of humor. Go figure.
Recently a man who hung out in Eugene around green anarchists started promoting the idea of National Anarchism. A few years ago he had written a well-known essay from a green anarchist perspective, and he was a familiar face to many. [2007 note: "Chris" wrote the article "Against Mass Society," which can be found on the cover of 'Green Anarchy' #6 (Summer 2001) and is reprinted in Our Enemy Civilization: An Anthology Against Modernity.] His new belief system advocated that people of different ethnic backgrounds should live in different villages, and he later wrote a letter to Green Anarchy in an attempt to propagate his views about supposedly “natural” hierarchies. [GA Note: We were going to print his letter, but it is almost as long as this article, and we did not want to provide a forum for his ideas on "natural hierarchies" and "National Anarchism". If people are interested in the letter, and who wrote it, you can contact us.] Fortunately his attempt to spread this racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic (so-called) “anarchism” were quickly unveiled. But what is National Anarchism? How did it arise, and what does it stand for, and why are these racist Right-wingers attempting to recruit anarchists?
Radical politics of all kinds took a new turn after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this accelerated after the demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle in 1999. Decentralized and networked political forms started becoming the predominant types of resistance. In the last few years, we have seen anarchism replace marxism as the dominant radical movement in the U.S., but changes have also occurred elsewhere. Parts of the white power movement started advocating “leaderless resistance” as early as the 1980s; the Islamic jihadists Al Qaeda are a state-less, transnational entity; and even marxist groups like Left Turn have rejected the tight “vanguard party” model in favor of a more network-based structure.
But anarchism itself has also became a magnet for the racist radical right, and a tiny fringe group in the UK called the National Revolutionary Faction has re-christened itself as National Anarchists. They are attempting to use anarchist symbolism and rhetoric to recruit both “White Nationalists” (WN, a catch-all term for the various kinds of white racists) as well as anarchists – especially green anarchists – to their strange belief system. They advocate a decentralized economic and political system which features ethnically-pure villages which are defined by racial separatism, anti-semitism and homophobia.
Continue reading this article in Green Anarchy magazine website
