Berlin — In Germany today, Muslims are often cited as a crucial factor in contemporary German anti-Semitism—and are themselves increasingly a target of ethnic based prejudice and bigotry.
Yet, leaders of Germany’s Jewish community have joined others in combating what many view as a tidal wave of German Islamophobia.
Though rich in irony, Jewish leaders see their position as a matter of Jewish self-interest in a Germany in which old ghosts remain laid to rest.
Concern about German Islamophobia comes against a backdrop in which experts who track anti-Semitism in Germany today cite a trend of Muslims joining with extreme leftists and traditional anti-Semites to protest Israel while invoking Jews, explicitly, as their targets.
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. Continue Reading »
On the blog “People of Color Organize!” there is a new post, “The Little Known History of Germany’s Genocidal Second Reich in Africa!” The short post expresses anger over the silence about these crimes in comparison to the public knowledge of the genocide of the Jews. The author writes, “I mean how many times have we heard about the horrors and brutality of Germany’s Third Reich, how they methodically set out to exterminate the Jewish race,” but how little is known about the German genocide against Africans. The author continues, “In short, The Nazis took their avarice way too far when they started to exterminate ‘white people.’”
The author does note the fact that the atrocities against Jews were actually regarded with indifference amongst some of the Allied Forces, saying, “not that the Allied Forces could have really cared less about the Jews that were being exterminated.” And furthermore that what got the Allies in the war was the intention to prevent the Germans’ desire for global domination, writing “remember Germany was vying for total supremacy of the world, and was threatening The Allied Forces power.”
But the author then strongly contradicts these statements arguing: Continue Reading »
It’s rare to go to an action and leave with the certainty that we’ve achieved a victory. No footnotes, no relativising it: when we went to Dresden to take part in mass blockades intended to stop Europe’s biggest Nazi-march from going ahead, we won. Some ten thousand people shut down the area where the Nazis were planning to march, making it impossible for the police to ‘guarantee the safety’ of the Neo-Nazi demonstration, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.
The mass-blockades were organized on the initiative of the antifascist alliance No Pasaran? a german-wide
network of antifascist groups and were supported by civil society groups, [left/liberal] parties and unions. In the run-up more than 600 organizations and more than 2000 individuals signed a list of support, declaring that they would come to Dresden to block the nazis. Some weeks before Dresden Authorities confiscated posters of the Alliance, which mobilized for the mass-blockades and forbid rallies, nazis attacked supporters of the Alliance and the police proudly announced the acquisition of american pepperball-guns.
January, 24, 2010, Germany — Neo-Nazis across Europe are planning to march on Dresden on February 13th. A broad coalition of over 200 groups — left, ecology, labor, student, youth, human rights and anti-fascist — has called for counter-protest, for broad-scale civil disobedience to prevent the Nazi march. “We are colorful and we are placing our selves in the way of the brown mob. From our side, there will be no escalation.”
(Address given at a demonstration in Hamburg against the blockade of the film showing of Claude Lanzmann’s “Why Israel.” December 13, 2009)
I think it is politically important that so many on the Left are taking seriously the expressions of anti-Semitism that have become widespread among groups that regard themselves as anti-imperialist. Perhaps it can also lead to some long overdue theoretical clarification. At issue is not whether or not Israeli policies can be criticized. Israeli policies should be criticized, especially those aimed at undermining any possibility of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. However, the critique of “Zionism” prevalent in many anti-imperialist circles goes beyond a critique of Israeli policies. It attributes to Israel and the “Zionists” a unique malevolence and global conspiratorial power. Israel is not criticized as other countries are criticized – but as the embodiment of that which is deeply and fundamentally evil. In short, the representation of Israel and the “Zionists” in this form of “anti-imperialist” “anti-Zionism” is essentially the same as that of the Jews in the virulent anti-Semitism that found its purest expression in Nazism. In both cases, the “solution” is the same – elimination in the name of emancipation.
In Berlin, for the National Day of Mourning, wreaths were laid at Berlin’s best memorial to everything and nothing, the Neue Wache monument, while the Holocaust Memorial was used for a fashion shoot. Continue Reading »
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? Continue Reading »
After the violent blockade of a film showing of Claude Lanzmann’s “Why Israel” in Hamburg, Germany, the coalition around the Internationalist Center B5 has sought to make an explanation.
This Autumn in Germany the showing of 2 films were forcefully prevented: In Hoyerswerda, a bomb threat caused the cancellation of Quentin Tarantinos “Inglorious Basterds,” and in Hamburg the showing of the documentary “Pourquoi Israel” (1972) of the French filmmaker and former antifascist partisan Claude Lanzmann was also not allowed to take place. Continue Reading »
Anti-German Translation
A blog about the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and anti-globalization movements, analysing the convergences between right-wing thought and false forms of anti-capitalism, drawing on the German “anti-German” communist current.
Aufheben
The proletariat’s revolutionary negation of capitalism, communism, is an instance of this dialectical movement of supersession, as is the theoretical expression of this movement in the method of critique developed by Marx.
Entdinglichung
… alle Verhältnisse umzuwerfen, in denen der Mensch ein erniedrigtes, ein geknechtetes, ein verlassenes, ein verächtliches Wesen ist … (Marx)
Letters Journal
With this journal we wish to better understand and analyze capitalism and its critics through the distorting lens of a rigorous anti-political experimentation and soul searching.
Chicago Political Workshop
a reading group interested in developing a critical understanding of contemporary society through the categories of labor, value, and time, as specifically capitalist forms of domination. We seek to develop new theories that can adequately grasp the prese
Platypus
focused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old” (1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.
