December 9th, 2010 | admin
Towards a critique of anti-German “communism”
By Raphael Schlembach
Interface: a journal for and about social movements.
Volume 2 Issue 2. November 2010. (pp. 199-219).
Abstract
The spectre of anti-Germans has easily become the Feindbild for activists of the Anglophone Left; yet rarely does this translate into fundamental or informed criticism of the anti-German premise. This article, then, offers an introductory description and a critical analysis of pro-Israeli, anti-German communism in its context within the post-war German Left and as a contemporary protest movement that sits oddly on the fringes of radical politics. Its origins and politics are examined to depict the radicalisation of a broad anti-nationalist campaign against German re-unification, and its evolution into a small but coherent anti-German movement, controversial for its pro-Israel polemics and provocations. Current debates within the anti-fascist German Left are reviewed to explore anti- German positions on the Holocaust, Israel, Islam, anti-imperialism and Germany’s foreign policy. Theoretical works that have heavily influenced anti-German communism are discussed to comprehend the movement’s intellectual inspirations. The purpose of the article is to introduce one of Germany’s most controversial protest movements to an English-speaking audience and to hint at the formulation of a critique that is more than a knee-jerk reaction to pro-Israeli agitation.
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October 11th, 2010 | admin
From The Platypus Review, No. 28, October 2010.
This text was written collaboratively and originally published by the anti-Deutsch group, Initiative Sozialistisches Forum (Socialist Initiative Forum) as “Der Kommunismus und Israel” in the collection Furchtbare Antisemiten, ehrbare Antizionisten. Über Israel und die linksdeutsche Ideologie, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, 2002. Translated and reprinted with permission of the authors.
COMMUNISM, ACCORDING TO MARX, is the “riddle of history solved.” The riddle consists in the fact that the division of the human race into those who dominate and those being dominated, exploiters and exploited, has been exacerbated to such an extent that, caught between complete reification, on the one hand, and the transition to the “association of free individuals,” on the other, revolution seems imminent even as it recedes ever farther into the distance. Marxists of all persuasions, instead of denouncing the riddle in its tragedy, instead of submitting it to critique, persist in rationalizing it and as such are complicit in its ideological distortion.
Israel is the Schibboleth of the yet-so-close revolution, the uncomprehended shadow of its failure. It is the Menetekel that involuntarily both illustrates the minimal categorical conditions of communism while simultaneously demonstrating the beastliness of which the bourgeois national state is capable. Those who have failed to grasp the hatred against this state—embodied in anti-Zionism and antisemitism, both of which harbor a will to eliminate those who live there as well as the Jews who live in scattered cosmopolitanism around the world—have not understood the essence of antisemitism: the unconditional hatred of the idea of mankind living in free association. They fail to grasp communism as the riddle of history solved.
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[See all the Resources on anti-German tendency here]
Some interesting quotes from the GDR, regarding the positive orientation towards national thinking and it’s role amongst some of the leading communists and policy decisions. In his “On the Character of Hitler-Fascism,” Walter Ulbricht (head of the Communist Party, the Socialist Unity Party, and later the GDR) wrote:
“The fascist rule, which called itself ‘national’ and ‘socialist’, was neither one nor the other” (From “The Fascist German Imperialism.” 1952.).
Meaning, Nazism was not the correct form of nationalism? German fascism was, as Ulbricht explains by recalling the official definition, “the open rule of terror of the most reactionary, chauvinistic, imperialistic elements of German finance capital” (ibid). That is, it was a reactionary movement which was used by the “monopoly capitalists” to preserve and advance their interests by “terroristic” means. In this definition, the nationalist character of German fascism falls away, giving the impression that National Socialism was not really a popular party across the broad spectrum of the population, nor did it speak to nor reflect the population’s desires nor actions. National Socialism, we are told, had nothing to do with Germans. The GDR sought not only to build a socialist society, but also a correctly nationalist one?
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In the ongoing debate about the relationship of antisemitism to anti-zionism, historical case-studies can serve as useful material. The anti-zionist campaign in Poland, of 1967-1968, offers the ability to examine the relationship in detail. Below are links to some recent contributions on the topic.
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Workshop: Nationalism and Communism
Eastern European History and Eastern European Studies,
University of Amsterdam, 25 April 2008
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 nationalism suddenly resurfaced in Eastern Europe, or so the common wisdom goes. This implies communism and nationalism have little to do with each other. In reality, the communist regimes of Europe all flew the national flag in order to gain popular legitimacy. After 1948, the People’s Republics of Central and Eastern Europe constructed the state ideology of ‘Socialist Patriotism’, a conscious blend of national and socialist imagery. Parties presented themselves as heirs to national traditions, and as guardians of national interests. They appropriated national symbols and heroes, and pursued ‘national’ policies whenever possible.
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