Why your Revolution is no Liberation!
Antifa groups from Germany and Austria have just published a pamphlet about antisemitism and anti-zionism. It includes basic texts, including critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s “Theses on Antisemitism”; two texts by Moishe Postone, one on Nazi antisemitism, the other on contemporary forms of anti-capitalism; and a text on anti-Zionism. The pamphlet is downloadable from their website. More information below.
Why your revolution is no liberation!
With this reader, we want to take a stand against the currently predominating analyses, of the anti-globalisation movement, which, articulating themselves as in the broadest sense left-wing and anticapitalist, constantly boisterously trumpet their opinion, that another world was possible. We have serious doubts that this “other” world, was going to be of a better constitution than the current one. This anti-globalisation movement is of course not at all marginalised, but is enjoying broad sympathy, which reaches from the “bourgeois left” right to the so-called centre of society and which is even shared by Neo-Nazis
The anti-globalisation movement is - as its protagonists certainly emphasise when facing criticism - a heterogenous movement, in which many groups and individuals have agreed to a minimum consensus. In the case of the activities against this year’s G8-summit this consensus will consist of the participating heads of government being evil, whereas demonstrators and activists on the other side of the fence are “good”. Within the last couple of years, another consensus has-explicitly and implicitly-been agreed on: An antagonism toward the USA and Israel, as well as a structurally anti-Semitic criticism of capitalism.
The closing statement of the world social forum of Porto Alegre expressed the forum`s solidarity with the “Palestinian people” - not a word about suicide bombings or islamic anti- Semitism. The European Social Forum in Paris willingly offered a platform to the islamist and anti-semite Tariq Ramadan, whilst activists, that criticised the anti-Semitism of the No-Globals in a Flyer, were attacked and expelled from the forum. At an event during the EU-Summit in Copenhagen the Danish group “Global Roots” demanded a boycott of Israel stewards wore shirts with the slogan “Burn Israel Burn” on them. During an ATTAC meeting in Germany the Italian globalisation critic Alfonso de Vito compared Israels policy toward the Palestinians with the eviction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Noam Chomsky who can’ t detect anti-Semitism in Robert Faurrissons statement that the holocaust was a Zionist lie authored a manifesto in summer 2006 which declares Israel guilty of the Hisbollahs attack on Israels North because it was aiming to liquidate the Palestinian state. This silly writ which not only ignores the fact that there is no Palestinian state but also turns a blind eye to Israels withdrawal from the Gaza strip and the subsequent terror offensive of the Palestinians was promptly signed by other idols of the anti-globalisation movement: Naomi Klein, Jose Sarango, Arundhati Roy (amongst others).The latter was recently only notable by a completely amiss analysis of capitalism in which globalisation - equated with imperialism - is understood as a conspiracy of “men in suits”(Americans of course), who “trek the world like locusts”. Not forgetting the messias and head-of-state of the No-Globals, Hugo Chavez, close ally of the Iranian mullah regime which is currently sedously working on the nuclear destruction of Israel and which flaunts its president as the international figurehead of an extermination-anti-Semitism.
Why the hatred for Israel and the Jews? After every attack on a synagogue or another Jewish institution Israels allegedly disproportional military policy is at least considered as the reason for the attack. No assault on a mosque or an African immigrant in Europe has ever been justified with a reference to the policy of Muslim or African states. Why the personalisation of the circumstances of capital? It should be known since Marx that capitalism is not an event staged by handful of “men in suits” but a total social condition. With this cognizance this reader wants to contribute to the formulation of a radical criticism.
More info here
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 at 11:53 am and is filed under social movements, antisemitism, anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, anti-zionism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on July 4, 2007 [me] wrote:
hi, great site.
check out my collection of links to antideutsch texts in english:
del.icio.us/antideutschproject
on October 4, 2007 [reader] wrote:
you can download the reader for free at http://www.no-liberation-reader.tk/ now! get it, read it, spread the message!
on April 5, 2008 melanie wrote:
so im confused. it seems like you are trying to critique binaristic thinking (good/bad, present world/other world), but you yourself traffic in SO many oversimplified binaries which remain undefined and ahistorical — what is antisemitism? what constitutes one as antisemitic?
how does tariq ramadan qualify as an anti-semite? what is islamism? how does islamism vary in different contexts, histories, and countries?
im wary of a political discourse that generalizes things into one hegemonic category “antisemitism” “islamism”… this is universalizing and reductive, and contrary to the very types of critique and openness of discourse you seem to claim to want.
i am certainly willing to agree that some palestinian groups have done fucked up things to israelis and that, as you point out, there are double standards in so far as israel’s fucked up policies are credited for all violence against jews/israel and not the same for muslims and islam. but it seems to be reasonable (whatever reasonable may be…) that we can have a critique of israel’s policies, state violence, and nationalist rhetoric without resorting to crude and ethically inappropriate comparisons to the warsaw ghetto, and without hating on Israel anymore than other State’s violences (prisons, police, military, war, etc).
A critique of others’ dogmatic anti-israel or anti-american sentiment is important and right on, but to dogmatically and ideologically flip to the other binary, unconditionally, and be pro-israel and pro-american or pro-corporations or whatever is totally… well… undialectical to say the least. these are often the positions that anti-deutschers take up. it doesn’t preserve the force of radical critique that questions everything and asserts political positions contingently and out of necessity.