October 25th, 2011 | admin
From Radical Archives:
Kalle Lasn (Adbusters): “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” (full image)
“Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?”, Kalle Lasn’s infamous Adbusters article (March/April 2004), is often talked about. But it is curiously hard to find a copy of the actual image—especially since much of its notoriety derives from it being a list political figures in which the Jewish ones are marked with symbols next to their names! So, with all the brew-ha-ha lately about antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street, we thought we’d pull this one out of the archives.
We have a lot to say about antisemitism and the critique of finance capital; the failure of the left to oppose antisemitism at OWS and how this has handed openings to the right; the left’s pathetic failure in the response to these accusations, which have some validity; and the comparison between the anti-globalization and “Occupy” movements in terms of antisemitism, the critique of finance capital, and Left/Right crossover. But it will all have to wait.
Here is the document.
Some of these links have already been in comment threads in previous posts on this topic, but here are extracts from some reports and comments on the Occupy movement. Continue Reading »
Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) held a workshop at Occupy Wall Street on anti-Jewish oppression, responding to some of the talk about antisemitism at the occupation. Here are some observations from P. Naberrie:
The workshop was very much coming from a social justice perspective, where the term “anti-semitism” also includes “racism towards other ‘semitic peoples’”, i.e. “islamophobia” – hence in this workshop the use of the expression “anti-jewish oppression”. Apart from a little introduction to “anti-Jewish oppression” it was focused on an exchange of experiences of oppression on the intra-, inter-personal or institutional levels, in pairs. These were brought together and shared, followed by some talking. It had about 9 participants that stayed til the end, most of them Jewish.
It was acknowledged that antisemitism had been an issue here and there at OWS, but people had the perception that it was mostly a fringe phenomenon that gets criticisized when it pops up. Also, there was overall excitement about various Yom Kippur activities and JFREJ workshops that happened all over the week without any disturbances.
Meanwhile, a guy with a “Why do the Arabs hate the US?” sign was passing out leaflets on the Broadway side of Liberty Plaza with following passage:
“As long as the great majority of Americans remain totally ignorant and uninvolved in our Israeli policy, the US government will continue to be hostage to Israel, Zionist Christians and American Jews. I am not a Jew hater. In fact, I consider them the smartest people in the world. This small minority of Americans, less than 3% of our population, have enormous power in all segments of American economy and government. Unfortunately, when it comes to Israel, these gifted people turn off their brains and think only with their hearts.”
Argued with him for a while, seemed to be some US nationalist (“Pro-Palestinian? I am not an Arab lover!”) who said he wasn’t affiliated with any group. No other people seemed to take offense…Had another argument with a US-flag carrying whacko with no coherent political idea that sooner or later was talking about the 1% being the “rich Rothschilds and other such families” while he had no problem with capitalism or imperialism as such: “If you only work hard enough, you can be whatever you wanna be”.
Best sign of the day: “Shit is fucked up and bullshit”. Not antisemitic, and to the point 
I just posted a piece on Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London at my blog. Here is a brief extract, looking at antisemitism in the American movement. Below is an extract from History is Made at Night, which mentions some manifestations in the UK.
I hadn’t realised there is a whole #OccupyJudaism thing going on at the margins of #OWS and other US occupations (here’s Occupy Judaism’s official blog, Facebook page and Twitter account). See, e.g. this broadcast on the very interesting radio613 of from the Yom Kippur Services that took place at #OccupyWallStreet and #OccupyPhilly, or this useful article in The Forward, or this round-up of items from Kung Fu Jew at Jewschool. (Comical tangent: Jewish occupiers put up a “Sukkah”; the NYPD appeared to have better halachic knowledge, noting that you couldn’t see the stars through it therefore not a proper Sukkah – although more halachically trained folks say the NYDPD got it wrong.)
In contrast, the right (at times hysterically) has put a lot of attention into hunting down examples (or at least “hints”) of antisemitism in the Occupy movement. (For one of the more articulate litanies against the antisemitism, read David Brooks on milquetoast radicals; for a good round-up of the evidence see PJ Tatler; for another video see BreitbartTV.) It is undeniable that there is antisemitism in the movement, and it has manifested itself in several of the events. (I haven’t seen examples from the UK yet, but won’t be surprised when I do.) It is incumbent on the movement, and on anti-capitalists in general, not to ritually denounce it, but to be honest and aware about it, and to understand where it comes from. Where it comes from, in my view, is: a limited anti-capitalism that focuses on finance capital rather than on capital in general which segues easily into a “socialism of the fools” antisemitism. This, I think, is not an indictment of some inherent antisemitism in the left, but rather a consequence of the failure of the left, a failure to coherently argue for, and win people over to, a thorough anti-capitalist politics. This failure has left a vacuum, which is filled with conspiracy theory, vulgar materialism of the blood-for-oil/blame-the-Fed variety, a populist discourse of patriotic defence of the national economy being looted by the banks, and other extra-left forms of politics.
It is also the case that the scattered instances of antisemitism in the protest are no more prevalent than the scattered instances of racism and antisemitism in the tea party movement, which the right (correctly) argued were epiphenomenal and not central to tea partyism. And these scattered instances, involving handfuls of oddballs at the margins of the occupations, must be balanced against the thousands of people in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, DC and elsewhere turning up to Kol Nidre prayers and sukkot. Highlighting a few incidents of antisemitism in a large, disparate, weeks-long movement and claiming that renders the whole thing is to play the antisemitism card. I particularly recommend A Jay Adler on The Putrid Cynicism of the Emergency Committee for Israel for a good rebuttal of one example of this, promoted at CIFWatch.
Matt at Ignoblus has a nice, short post written after his attendance at a Kol Nidre service at Occupy Wall Street. His concern is not with the antisemitism as such, but the way the lens of Zionism/anti-Zionism distorts the movement’s understanding of the world. The Tent City protests in Israel were a major episode in the so-called “movement of the squares”, the wave emanating out of the Jasmine Revolution via Tahrir Square which the Occupy protests want to surf. But they air-brush it out of the account because it was not against the other occupation, the Israeli one of Palestine. Ignore the fact that pro-Hamas Islamists and pro-Israeli Coptic Christians, for example, were part of the Tahrir moment: Arabs can be as politically correct as they like but Israelis had better denounce their state if they want to enter our big tent.
From History is Made At Night:
There are some odd alternative economy models around in the occupations, notions of capitalism without finance capital (the ‘real economy’), of monetary reform, of a resource-based economy that is beyond capitalism and communism (this is the line of the new-agey Zeitgeist Movement who had a banner on steps of St Pauls). It is not just that some of these ideas seem to have very little understanding of what capitalism actually is and misrepresent it as a conspiracy by a few rich bankers rather than a global mode of production and exchange. It’s far worse than that, because some of these ideas have very murky antecedents and indeed dubious present-day associations.
A lot of ‘monetary reform’ notions just read like recycled ‘Social Credit’ ideas, as developed before the Second World War by CH Douglas. As Derek Wall pointed out in his article Social Credit: The Ecosocialism of Fools (Capitalism Nature Socialism, September 2003), Douglas was not only an extreme right wing racist, but his monetery ideas are saturated with an anti-semitic world view. Likewise, the Zeitgeist Movement basically rehash the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, simply subsituting the word ‘bankers’ for ‘jews’ (see Zeitgeist Exposed at the Third Estate).
At the Bristol occupation at the weekend this racist conspiracy theory view of capitalism was openly articulated by someobody telling the occupation that ‘Zionists want a new world order’. What was disgraceful about this episode was that people dutifully repeated this poison and cheered him rather than kicking the guy out. And that whoever was responsible for ‘Occupy Bristol update’ on youtube thought this was uncontroversial enough to give the guy a platform.
The ‘human microphone’ thing in the occupations is in danger of becoming an absurd fetish. In Wall Street people repeated the phrases of speakers to make sure that people further back could hear speeches when a microphone was banned. In most cases where there is no ban it would be surely be better – and very simple – just to set up a PA or use a megaphone, like people have been for years. By the looks of the Bristol occupation, there was no need for anything as the crowd seemed small enough for everybody to hear. It did look like a religious ‘call and response’ exercise, and involved people in the bad faith exericse of speaking nonsense which on reflection I would hope many would prefer not to utter.
I know that there are plenty of good sound people camping out at St Pauls now, and I think it is very important to get involved and challenge reactionary ideas. To just walk away holding our noses could allow some of these dangerous ideas to get a foothold in the very high profile occupation movement.
October 16th, 2011 | echo
A disagreement with Bob, who writes in a post in which I otherwise agree with a great deal
finally anti-Zionism which sees Zionism as a form of imperialism and takes a consistent opposition to all imperialisms without singling out Zionism as unique is wrong-headed, but not in itself antisemitic.
Bob may (or may not) be right that such anti-Zionisms are not (or not necessarily) antisemitic, but they’re certainly not merely wrong-headed, in the same way that branding Zionism (and no other nationalism) as racism or equating Zionism with apartheid is not merely wrong-headed. For it involves misrepresenting the views of (i.e. libelling) the huge proportion of Zionists who are not imperialists. It’s thus problematic in the same way that it’s problematic when Zionism is presented as uniquely evil (more so than other nationalisms), necessarily expansionist, etc.
One can disagree as to whether or not this libel is antisemitic. I tend toward the view that it probably is, insofar as it misrepresents the views of a large number of Jews (although not only of Jews), but seem to be moving toward a position according to which whether or not it’s antisemitic isn’t hugely importance, since I see anti-Israel sentiment and prejudice as worthy of opposition in themselves.
My tentative and provisional attempt to reformulate of Bob’s sentence thus looks something like this:
finally anti-Zionism which sees Zionism and all other nationalisms as a forms of imperialism and takes a consistent opposition to all imperialisms without singling out Zionism as unique is wrong-headed, but not in itself antisemitic.
October 15th, 2011 | admin
On the Federal Reserve
I have noticed some strange, Ron Paul-ish stuff about the Federal Reserve around Occupy Wall Street. I do want to file a complaint about that.
The Federal Reserve is admittedly manna for conspiracists. It’s a fairly opaque institution that does work for the big guys. But it’s not their puppet exactly. A friend who spent many years at the New York branch of the Fed once told me that within the institution, the thinking is that bankers are short-sighted critters who come and go but the Fed has to do the long-term thinking for the ruling class. So it has more autonomy than the popular tales allow.
The founding of the Fed is also a great subject of mythmaking—like secret meetings involving more than a few Jews. (The conspiratorial mindset often overlaps with anti-Semitic stories about rootless cosmopolitans, their greed and scheming.) There were some secret meetings, but the creation of a central bank was a major project of the U.S. elite for decades around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th. There’s a great book on that topic by James Livingston that I urge anyone interested in the topic to read. It was a long, complex campaign, and not the task of a secret train ride to a remote island. Continue Reading »
October 7th, 2011 | admin
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 »
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 »
September 29th, 2011 | admin
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.
September 27th, 2011 | admin
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 »
