Wall Street protests marred by anti-Semitism
New Jewish Resistance | October 6, 2011 | By Seth Weiss
While the Left celebrates the Wall Street occupation with much fanfare — including endorsements from Michael Moore, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, and Susan Sarandon — an anti-Semitic undercurrent in the protests goes largely unchallenged. Continue Reading »
“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)
Here is a link to an article by someone who, as a response to her criticism of the Occupy Wall Street protests, has received a huge amount of antisemitic hate mail:
After spending hours at the protest on Saturday and Monday, talking to participants, listening in on people’s assemblies and taking pictures, I wrote a report on it for the London-based online magazine, spiked. It was an unflattering account of what I saw as a farcical happening, like something taken straight out of a Monty Python skit. It was surreal and I was astonished that the protesters could expect, let alone demand, to be taken seriously when they engage in such shenanigans as ‘political yoga’, human megaphone meetings, face-painting and fancy-dress parades. One woman even had her boobs out, with the words ‘Free Bradley Manning’ written across them (a reference to the jailed WikiLeaks whistle-blower).
But the responses I got to my article were even more astonishing than the carry-ons in the Financial District. I received a string of indignant emails and tweets about my Jewish, kleptocrat banking connections; demands that I reveal the details of my pay checks and that I come clean about my not-so-hidden agenda. I was told that my family name disqualifies me from having any opinion about the protest and that I have ‘the karma of a demon’. One reader posted my article online, headlining the post ‘Journalist & Jew – Nathalie ROTHSCHILD’.
Read the article here.
And for more examples of this, see the responses to “Concerns about antisemitism” on the protest organizers’ web forum.
Zero Authors’ Statement on Gilad Atzmon
By Lenin’s Tomb
We are writing to express our concern that Zero Books, a vibrant, radical publisher, has made a terrible error of judgment in publishing a manuscript by the Jazz musician Gilad Atzmon. The book, entitled The Wandering Who?, is a discussion of ‘Jewish identity’ in the light of global issues such as Israel-Palestine, and the financial crisis. But the nature of Atzmon’s political engagement on ‘Jewish identity’ makes him at best a dubious authority on such matters. His central concern is to describe and oppose “Jewish power”, as he sees it. Thus, in one piece complaining about the presence of Jews in the Clinton and Bush administrations, he argues:
“Zionists complain that Jews continue to be associated with a conspiracy to rule the world via political lobbies, media and money. Is the suggestion of conspiracy really an empty accusation? … we must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously … American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy.”[1]
Continue Reading »
“We have heard the comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany. I don’t like this comparison because I really think that Israel is far worse than Nazi Germany.”
Those are the words of Gilad Atzmon, a little known expatriate Israeli who divides his time between working as a jazz musician and campaigning against the Jewish community in all its manifestations. He has written that he not only opposes Israel and Zionism, but any Jewish collective enterprise, including even “Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist networks”. In fact, he describes himself as someone who is proud of being a “self-hating Jew”.
History teaches us that the most universally inspiring Jews, I mean, those who contributed something to humanity rather than merely to their own people or even just themselves, were motivated by some form of self hate. The first names that come to mind are Christ, Spinoza and Marx.
Of the Holocaust, Atzmon has written that he not only doubts it occurred as historians and survivors describe, he thinks that what did occur was justified.
Continue reading here
Beware of Left Anti-Semitism: Jew-Hatred Appears in Conspiracy Theories, Anti-Americanism, Lesser-Evilism, and Single-Issue Thinking
By Marxist Humanist Initiative
We are compelled to denounce the ancient practice of blaming Jewish people for the world’s ills, because anti-Semitism (as prejudice and discrimination against Jews is commonly called) has been rearing its ugly head—within the U.S. Left. The incident we just experienced began August 29, when the administrator of a feminist email list sent around a virulently anti-Semitic video which, in the process of supporting ousted Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, blamed global poverty and injustice on the Rothschild banking family. Only a few of the 100 people on the email list responded, even after we immediately pointed out and denounced the content of the video. Then we were shocked again by the tepid nature of some of the responses.
Martin Jay: “Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe”
http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2011/08/martin-jays-dialectic-of-counter.html
A recent article on the massacre in Norway, forwarded by a reader to Contested Terrain for posting, raises interesting questions about how to interpret the contemporary Right. Here is a quick response to one small selection.
Breivik’s actions were disgusting; yet they also indicated the weakness of the far right in Norway. As we saw in Britain in the early 1980s, after a strong anti-racist movement halted the National Front’s electoral progress, fascists and their fellow-travellers are more likely to choose violence when their political ambitions are frustrated.
It seems to me that the European and American Right has been moving rather in the direction of a populist approach. Of course there are distinctions and disagreements within the Right about strategy though, and Right-wing violence has been on the rise in recent years, but so has a populist approach which also has violence in its language, its symbolism and its discourse.
Therefore, to be clear, this article — like many on the topic — seems to treat violence as a mere tactic or strategy external to the political content of the Right. Violence is taken up as a expression of desperation, it is argued. But how accurate is this when right-wing policies have been on the advance for some time now? Is it not rather that the rightward drift in policy — a formal form of violence of the state — empowers and encourages the direct form of violence — as in the Norwegian massacre? And aren’t these forms of violence also linked quite closely? The stripping of the welfare state — a form of (state) violence itself — targeting a population that is now again re-targeted with direct and brute force from individuals in “civil society”? Or in the case of the Norway massacre, targeting those who administer the formal (ie. state) domination of immigrants, ethnic minorities and others? In short, I am not sure Right-wing violence is so much a strategy or tactic as a result of frustrated ambitions, as it is an expression of Right-wing politics itself, which at least on the formal (state) level has been on the march for some time, “indirect” forms administered by the state, which now encourage also direct forms of domination taken by individuals in “civil society.” Just some food for thought.
A recent article at New Jewish Resistance and World War 4, titled “Will ‘Hilltop Youth’ co-opt rent protests?” purports to be about the mass housing protests currently rocking Israel. The author, Bill Weinberg, cites the participation of (an incredibly marginal number of) right-wing activists in the events, the “Hilltop Youth”. Don’t get me wrong, the far right should always be pushed out of these events, and the proposals to “solve” the housing crisis through settlement expansion should be opposed, but Weinberg’s portrayal of this group as potentially “co-opting” the protests is a joke. The protest is being led by the National Student Union, and the Histadrut Trade Union will possibly increase its influence as well. The protesters’ demands put forth to Netanyahu are a set of tax-relief programs, support for more accessible mortgages, free education, and increased materials and funding for hospitals. The National Student Union opposed Netanyahu’s attempts to buy them off with the construction of separate student housing. Yes, Netanyahu might attempt to use the protests against rental *prices* to claim there is a housing *shortage* and therefore the need for West Bank settlement expansion. That is certainly something the protesters should be aware of and to guard against. But this too would not mean that this small far-right group had “co-opted” the protests, simply that Netanyahu were able to turn the protests to his advantage, supporting his current policies. But you don’t have to read much of Weinberg’s short post to notice that it is not even about the housing protests nor these settler activists. Those are simply hooks in order to force the reader into a fight over whether or not Zionism is Nazism. There is not much content to this, just the dogma that West Bank Settlements are equivalent to Nazi “Lebensraum” policies. While you may have initially thought you were reading a commentary about the housing protests and the political conflicts that may play out within them, you now realize that you’ve been hooked into a fight on another topic altogether. And the author makes that clear when he closes the article, not by asking the readers to challenge him on his view that the “Hilltop Youth” will co-opt the protests, but on the analogy between West Bank settlement and Nazi “Lebensraum” policy. “Please explain the flaws in our analogy,” Weinberg challenges you. “We’ll be waiting.” This is some tough-talking, slimy, manipulative antizionism.
When I got home last night from what was probably the largest demonstration in Israel since the first Lebanon war, I checked my usual websites to see how it was covered.
I also checked my usual two international papers, the New York Times and the Guardian sites. But there was nothing. Oh well, might be too early. I’ll check in the morning.
This morning, 7 hours after the demo ended, 10 hours after it began, nothing to be found on the homepages of both respectable outlets. Not a word.
Despite being a leftie, I’ve always believed that there is some truth to the claims that international media focuses on Israel and the conflict much more than on other conflicts – just as bloody, just as unjust – if not more.
So when 150,000 Israelis, a huge number even percentage-wise, protest the cost of living, as they do in Madrid and elsewhere – suddenly it’s not a story? When it comes to Israel, it’s not interesting? We’re only occupiers, right? What kind of news editors are you guys holding up there? Seriously, are you telling me this isn’t a story?
Excuse my French, but… gey koken ahfen yam.
Check out the massive housing protests here: 972mag, Digital Journal and here, LA Times.
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