September 23rd, 2011 | admin
“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.
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September 20th, 2011 | admin
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.
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August 19th, 2011 | admin
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.
Norway Shooting Suspect is Islamophobe Using Antisemitic “Cultural Marxism” Model
By Chip Berlet | Daily Kos
Based on online posts apparently by Anders Behring Breivik circulated in Norway, the alleged terrorist opposed multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants in Norway. Breivik championed opposition to “Cultural Marxism,” a right-wing antisemitic concept developed primarily by William Lind of the US-based Free Congress Foundation, but also the Lyndon LaRouche network.
The idea behind the conspiracy theory about “Cultural Marxism” is that a small group of Marxist Jews who formed the Frankfurt School set out to destroy Western Culture through a conspiracy to promote multiculturalism and collectivist economic theories.
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The left-communist author Gerhard Hanloser subjects the notion of “structural anti-Semitism” to a rigorous critique
The truncated understandings of Marx’s Capital by Postone and the German Krisis group, among others, come in for a rigorous Marxological critique.
Slovenian philosopher: “Antisemitism is alive and kicking in Europe”
On Friday evening, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek gave a lecture in a bookstore in Central Tel Aviv teeming with familiar faces of leftwing activists. It was hosted by Udi Aloni, an Israeli-American artist and BDS activist, who just completed a book entitled What Does a Jew Want, which is edited by Zizek.
The bookstore called Tola’at Sfarim (Bookworm), which is also a small publisher of books mostly on psychology, was packed with people, young and old, very eager to hear Zizek speak, just as I was.
Many seem to have come with the expectation to hear Zizek rip into Israel and use his wry wit and charisma in such a bourgeoises Tel Aviv setting to endorse the BDS Movement. Indeed when Udi Aloni introduced Zizek, he identified himself as an activist on behalf of BDS and said he chose the bookstore as a venue in order to not cooperate with any formal Israeli institution.
However, Zizek did not officially endorse or even talk much about BDS – and when he did it was because he was prompted to during Q&A. His two clear statements about BDS were that a) he is not 100% behind it and b)he supports a movement that is initiated jointly by Palestinians and Israeli here in the region.
Rather, Zizek spent almost two hours with the crowd’s undivided attention talking about antisemitism, capitalism and the place of the Jew in the world. He warned that antisemitism is “alive and kicking” in Europe and America and asserted that the State of Israel should worry more about Christian right antisemitism rather than wasting its energy on self-proclaimed Jewish anti-Zionists. He said that the Christian Zionists in America are inherently antisemitic and that Israel’s willingness to embrace their support is baffling.
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From Three Way Fight:
Liberalism’s Limits: A review of Burghart and Zeskind’s Tea Party Nationalism
by Matthew N. Lyons
The Tea Party movement erupted largely as a backlash against Barack Obama’s election as president. Starting in February 2009, a series of local and then national protests invoked the anti-tax Boston Tea Party that foreshadowed the American Revolution. They denounced Obama and other Democratic leaders for promoting irresponsible government spending, high taxes, and government intrusion into people’s lives. A loose-knit network of Tea Party organizations quickly came together, oriented toward the right wing of the Republican Party. The new movement was fueled by anger at big government but also, as many liberals and leftists pointed out, anger at the election of the first black president of the United States, who was vilified on some Tea Party signs as an African witch doctor, a Muslim foreigner, or a monkey. Despite Tea Partiers’ denials, their movement was very much about race.
The October 2010 exposé Tea Party Nationalism represents both the strengths and the weaknesses of liberal anti-racism. The report offers valuable information about widespread racist tendencies within the Tea Party and how these tendencies relate to the movement’s origins, structure, and factional differences. But in focusing on Tea Partiers’ ties with white nationalist and Patriot/militia politics, the report presents racism as an ideology associated mainly with the political fringe – not as a core structural feature of U.S. society.
Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope, and Focus of Its National Factions was written by Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind of the Kansas City-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR). Both Burghart and Zeskind have been studying and writing about white nationalism and related right-wing movements for many years. Zeskind, a 1998 MacArthur fellow, is also the author of the 2009 book Blood and Politics: The History of White Nationalism from the Margins to the Mainstream.
The report Tea Party Nationalism was published by the NAACP, which three months earlier had publicly called on Tea Party leaders to repudiate racist elements within their movement’s ranks. In a Democracy Now! interview about the report, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous claimed that Tea Party groups had responded to NAACP pressure by throwing out one racist and one anti-gay bigot. “And we’re saying, ‘Good. Those are good first steps. Keep on going. You’ve got to clean house. If you do so, you won’t just make this country better, you’ll make your own Tea Party better.”
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