Adam Holland writes:
The blog Counterpunch, which is edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, has published an article which alleges that the blood libel is true, and is related to purported Israeli thefts of human organs from Palestinians. The blood libel, the charge that Jews ritually murdered gentiles and used their blood to cast spells, was a mainstay of medieval European anti-Semitism. In Europe, the blood libel led to pogroms, mass slayings and expulsions. The Counterpunch article may be the first instance of an American leftist media outlet promoting the blood libel.
The Counterpunch article (read here) supports and elaborates on spurious allegations concerning Israeli theft of body parts from Palestinians, charges which originated in an article by Donald Bostrom which appeared in the Swedish tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet. The controversy concerning that article has received extensive coverage internationally (read here). Medical experts have unanimously stated that the theft of organs from the dead for use in transplants, as alleged in the story, is medically impossible (read here). Bostrom’s article claims that Israeli soldiers hunted down a Palestinian youth, shooting him in the chest and abdomen at close range in order to steal his organs. The alleged witnesses to the events described in his article, including the families of the purported victims, have completely disavowed the story (read here). Counterpunch alleges not only that a campaign to murder and steal the organs of Palestinians is in fact true, but that it is sanctioned by the Israeli government and other Israeli institutions and that it is connected to religious traditions allowing the ritual murder of gentiles.
Continue Reading Here…
Update Oct 20, 2009: Adam Holland follows up with more great criticism of Alison Weir and her repeated pushing of the blood libel myth: Alison Weir Continues to Promote Blood Libel.
(Hat tip: Bob From Brockley)
This post is a follow-up to “Leftists Learning History from Neo-Nazi Propaganda,” in which I reported on a young Israeli blogger who cited a neo-Nazi website for her source on the history of zionism. Afterwards, I noticed a comment to her post thanking her for the resource.
Despite having alerted her to the fact that the Institute for Historical Review is a neo-Nazi group, she decided to leave the original link up, but said to check out the “kosher” link at the Jews Against Zionism site which has a “legitimate” article on the “Zionist-Nazi connection”. I haven’t had a chance to go through that text yet, but I did notice that the first resource in it’s bibliography is the same neo-Nazi text that Tali originally cited. In addition to offering this new resource, she posted a new blog entry defending citing the text and defending the Nazi-Zionist accusation. I thought it was worthy of a reply.
Continue Reading »
Over at ZNet, an Israeli blogger tells us that we should read up on the “Zionist dealings with [Hitler]” from the Institute for Historical Review.
Great that leftists are learning their history from neo-Nazis.
I replied to Shapiro on her blog with the following comment:
Dear Tali,
I am not sure if you know this but your recommended resource is from a prominent white supremacist, whose organization, The Institute for Historical Review, is a holocaust denial group, based in the far-Right scene. This is well documented by the Public Eye in many articles, of which I recommend this one: Encountering Holocaust Denial. (Chip Berlet, another Znet writer, has written a lot about them, and his writings are worth checking out.)
The author of your recommended text, Mark Weber, was formerly with the neo-Nazi organization, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei/Aufbau- und Auslandsorganisation (Redok, 2009), as well as the National Alliance, (Beirich and Potok, 2003) which was at one time the largest neo-Nazi group in the U.S.
The IHR is an attempt to dress up Holocaust denial as critical scholarship. Weber recently concluded that “revisionism” was ineffective, and therefore he is returning to other methods in “fighting against ‘Jewish-Zionist power’,” therefore revealing his historical “research” to be a mere hoax and weapon to legitimize his antisemitic aims.
Continue Reading »
From Louis Proyect
Apparently the new editorial position [of Monthly Review] has driven one board member to resign, as reported by Doug Henwood on his own mailing list:
I’ve just been informed (by someone who wants to remain anonymous) that Barbara Epstein resigned from the board of MR because of the nonsense that Yoshie has been posting to MRZine about Iran. When she made her complaints known to the board, they made it clear that they supported Yoshie’s work, so Epstein felt that she had no choice but to quit. She’s not interested in campaigning against what she still regards as a venerable institution, but she feels that Yoshie’s position on Iran has so discredited the organization that she couldn’t abide a formal association anymore.
Though I’m just the messenger on this, I completely agree with Epstein. Defending a regime that has jailed and killed thousands of socialists and Marxists is a disgraceful thing for a socialist/Marxist publication to do.
continue reading at Louis Proyekt…
From Rose City Antifa and Portland Anti-Racist Action
Recent events have highlighted the fact that anti-Semitic organizers in Portland, Oregon are relying on “Leftist” spaces and groups to tolerate their efforts and ideology.
On Wednesday, June 10, Valdas Anelauskas, a self-described “white separatist” who is involved with Holocaust-denial circles, gave a presentation to a group of sympathizers in Portland, Oregon. The event was sponsored by the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance, and was initially scheduled to take place at the Laughing Horse Book & Video Collective.
Members of Rose City Antifascists (“Antifa”) -the Portland affiliate of the Anti-Racist Action Network-were among those who contacted Laughing Horse Books about the scheduled event. The Laughing Horse collective canceled the anti-Semitic event within 48 hours of being notified about its true nature. Subsequently the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance moved Anelauskas’ talk-on the topic of “The Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism”-to a secondary venue, which was also discovered by Antifa and then persuaded to cancel on the day of the event. Unfortunately, Anelauskas’ talk then went ahead at a third venue, a restaurant obviously booked at the last minute.
Continue Reading »
From the Jewish Times
Five Austrian teenagers were arrested in connection with a neo-Nazi attack on Holocaust survivors. The survivors and others were attacked while commemorating the 64th anniversary of the liberation of a concentration camp near Salzburg on May 9. Two people were wounded in the attack, in which teens allegedly fired plastic bullets from air guns and harassed visitors verbally, according to reports.
According to an Austrian news service, one of the arrested youth is a member of the Socialist Party of Austria’s youth group, the Red Hawks.
Austria’s foreign minister called the attack a provocation against Austria.
At hagalil.de, he is quoted as saying:
This is an unacceptable provocation, which will hurt Austria’s international image and the tourism of the country. One should not allow such acts to effect the openness and the hospitality of our country.
Following last week’s incident of a Vienna Jewish family being refused a room under an Austrian hotel’s “no-Jews” policy, the country’s openness and hospitality is already in question, especially when Jewish Austrians themselves encounter such hostility. According to the Hotel owner, “Jews make problems.” And the Mayor explained that “every Hotel owner has the right to decide, who to rent a room to and who not.”
Responding to the attack on the Holocaust Survivors in Ebensse the Chairman of the youth group is calling to immediately establish an antifascist project.
Antifascism as marketing strategy to save the national reputation?
From The University of Chicago Press:
In 1978, as the protests against the Shah of Iran reached their zenith, philosopher Michel Foucault was working as a special correspondent for Corriere della Sera and le Nouvel Observateur. During his little-known stint as a journalist, Foucault traveled to Iran, met with leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini, and wrote a series of articles on the revolution. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution is the first book-length analysis of these essays on Iran, the majority of which have never before appeared in English. Accompanying the analysis are annotated translations of the Iran writings in their entirety and the at times blistering responses from such contemporaneous critics as Middle East scholar Maxime Rodinson as well as comments on the revolution by feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.
Continue Reading »
Here are some links to articles about the connections between the Secessionist group, Second Vermont Republic, and racist and neo-confederate groups.
The recently published “Vermont Secessionists Meet with Racist League of the South,” is the latest article on the topic. The issue was made public last year, in
“Second Vermont Republic/Vermont Commons Tied to White Supremacists.”
After learning about these links, the Green Mountain Collective, a Left group which had worked together with the SVR, wrote a statement “Concerning the Alleged Racism of the Second Vermont Republic Organization”.
This is an essay from 2002, published in the German-language internationalist magazine iz3w. Lucky for us, they’ve translated a few good texts.
By Stephan Günther
In their criticism of neoliberalism and globalisation the Left and the Right are sometimes uncannily close. One has to look very carefully to find the differences between their struggles against “financial capital” or “speculators.” Left-wing critics of globalisation often defend themselves with the assertion that there is no protection against uninvited support.
…continue reading the article here
The text below is from a leaflet distributed at the anti-G8 mobilization in Germany, by the Berlin group, Theorie, Organisation, Praxis (TOP).
Capitalism is no conspiracy and the Hamas is not the Rebel Alliance
Against Antisemitism within the activist scene
You consider yourself an activist, a radical, maybe an anarchist. In any case you are someone who is an outspoken critic of capitalism and who wants to end oppression and injustice as the left all over the world wants to.
At the same time, all over the world, Antisemitism is on the rise again. It takes many forms, some of which are violent such as verbal and physical attacks, while others are more subtle.
Antisemitism has a long and gruesome history: Since the middle ages, Christianity supported pogroms against Jews. Later, the natural sciences came up with the idea of an inferior Jewish „race“, and generally speaking Jews often got blamed for all evil in the world. The climax were the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other concentration camps where six million Jews were murdered.
The activist movement, however, seems to ignore this history and the fact that Jews still are not secure. Rather than acknowledging Antisemitism as another means of oppression that needs to be fought – such as racism or sexism – quite a few of its members actively take part in pushing antisemitic attitudes.
Continue Reading »
