anti germans

There's been a discussion on here before, search under anti-deutsch and you shoudl find it.
Apparently the anti-deutsch beat people up for wearing kheffiyehs among other crazy things. I think there's also some tension between them and antifa as well.

is it really all that different to leftists swooning over third world nationalists? they've just bought into a different national guilt trip and have orientated their victim politics accordingly...

(that said, when you get leftists going on about how israel is conspiratorially behind everything in the middle east from suicide bombings to events in iraq, 'structural anti-semitism' seems as good a description as any since it clearly plays on the 'conspiratorial jew' archetype)

Joseph K.

is it really all that different to leftists swooning over third world nationalists? they've just bought into a different national guilt trip and have orientated their victim politics accordingly...

Aye, they remind me of this mob more than anything else.

Jack

Have you been rimming another member of our local?

didn't you get the memo? it's part of our internal diversity training.

madashell

Joseph K.

is it really all that different to leftists swooning over third world nationalists? they've just bought into a different national guilt trip and have orientated their victim politics accordingly...

Aye, they remind me of this mob more than anything else.

Oh my god. I don't know whether to laugh or punch.

j.rogue

Oh my god. I don't know whether to laugh or punch.

obvious answer: why not do both?

wondered what people thought about this article that might explain some of the discussions in the German antifascist left

http://www.shiftmag.co.uk/topberlin.html

I read an article from an anti-Deustch group a bit ago which was really pretty sane until it suddenly went mad. basically the argument was that many leftists view capitalism as being simply the sum of its most visible parts - McDonalds, Starbucks and Microsoft on the one hand, the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank on the other. this in turn leads people to view capitalism as a literal conspiracy of the elite rather than a pervasive social relationship which has produced a ruling class.

but apparently because of this, if you view capitalism as having an elite at all, you're echoing the anti-semitic World Jewish Conspiracy concept and are therefore a latent Nazi, because all references to "the ruling class" are guarded references to the Jews.

odd stuff.

qwertz - I read that article and most of it seems pretty good, this bit confused me tho:

One of the inherent dangers of this logic is to fall into anti-Semitic stereotypes: the anti-Semitic ideology is usually embedded into a worldview, which ‘explains’ the evils of modern capitalist society. Capitalism in this worldview is not seen as a process, which arises following its own structural logic without a particular leadership, but rather as an exploitative project consciously put into effect by evil people. Historically, this way of thinking emerged in the 19th century in Europe in a time of to the rapid spread of capitalist society and the social upheavals this triggered. The anti-Semitic worldview thus consists of personification for non-understood economic and social procedures and draws upon the picture of the ‘Jewish capitalist’ that is deeply embedded in Western culture, which for centuries associated Jews with money. It can be displayed in talk of ‘the capitalists’ who ‘pull the strings’ from ‘the US East Coast’, ‘dominate the world’ and just can't get enough with their ‘greed’.

I really don't see how the first bit, describing anti-Semites depicting capitalism as a conspiracy for the enrichment of a Jewish elite, ties to the last sentence, referring to capitalism itself and those who are currently at the top. or do you consider all class analysis latently anti-Semitic?

apologies if I've missed the point entirely.

the last thread on this pretty much had the final word.

Tacks

the last thread on this pretty much had the final word.

and that was..."MUPPETS!!"

I think it's funny that anti-fascism competes with anti-imperialism.

its weird how what is effectively a radical mag (BaHaMas) written by a handful, mere handful, of dissident commies that comes up with this ridiculous antideutsche idea has actually translated this silliness into feets on streets.

To see people on antifascist demo's waving israeli flags is just fucking insane.

Well to see people on antifascist demo's waving israeli flags and not getting told where to go is just fucking insane.

yoshomon

I think it's funny that anti-fascism competes with anti-imperialism.

dude you should write to them.

not re your comment just tell them to fuck off. Are people aware of this silliness in Israel? I know a few of AATW have been to germany and one is banned from Denmark for insulting the monarchy or something.

The most insane thing to me is them marching through Dresden with American flags!

I guess it's a very weird thing to do with denial of the past without making the necessary adjustments for 60s of political change. A naive viewpoint at best, and dangerous at worst. Very much like that "We are all Hezbollah" crap. If that's their conclusion so be it, but if they get in the way of change they're just another bunch of liberal twats.

I know a few of AATW have been to germany and one is banned from Denmark for insulting the monarchy or something.

Wasn't that Netherlands? Handing out fliers against the monarchy on the queens birthday (which is a big deal there).

Poo, structural antisemitism isn't what you described, its closer to

Joseph K

'structural anti-semitism' seems as good a description as any since it clearly plays on the 'conspiratorial jew' archetype

According to the friend that poo mentioned, the general feeling towards Israeli anarchists (assumingly including AATW crew) who go to Germany is that "they don't understand because they've never experienced antisemitism".

I've read a fair bit of anti-deutsch stuff (most of what I've been able to find in English) coz I find it interesting, as a Jewish anti-Zionist - I've even argued (semi-jokingly) with our friend that anti-deutsch is antisemitic in itself, in that its a bunch of non-Jewish Germans telling Jews that we need Israel to survive, (essentially) because we aren't able to find common interests with anyone but ourselves...

I've also read a couple of interesting critiques (cant remember titles, sorry) of anti-deutsch as German nationalism, albeit in an abnormal form.

For what its worth, poo, our friend seems pretty open minded when it comes to this stuff, and he's pretty mild on it compared to a lot of the anti-deutsch stuff I've read.

I agree with Joseph K. that dynamic isn't particularly different from leftist supporting whatever leftist gulag you might name. The main surface difference is that the anti-Germans have facility with a wide variety of anti-state communist/modernist Marxist and so-forth concepts.

This might fool those who think the hallmark of Stalinists is their crude style and understanding. That idea is itself crude in my opinion. Nationalism of any stripe is a social and psychological dynamic which even the most sophisticated thinker can fall into.

This raise the question of what purpose revolutionary theory serves. If an anti-German or Pol-Potist can make "advances" in value theory or the theory of state, what actually distinguishes revolutionary theory and how does it advance a potential movement for the end of capitalist social relations.

This deserves more discussion

Red

guydebordisdead

yoshomon

The most insane thing to me is them marching through Dresden with American flags!

This is the same group who carried a banner stating "Dresden: Noone was innocent". It's little more than a guilt complex, people comparing supporting the oppressed peoples of palestine to this sort of thing need to start being a bit more honest in their comparisons.

I wonder if there is an Anti-Japanese group in Japan that theorizes about the inevitable authoritarianism of the Japanese state and celebrates the atomic bombs?

I agree that this is a different phenomena that the crude anti-imperialism of leftist college students passing out pro-Hezbollah fliers or the PLO, though I have reservations about the wording of your comment (isn't "supporting the oppressed peoples of palestine" exactly the kind of anti-imperialist line we are all mocking?).

no.

I have already made my views on Israel clear in the discussion around Hamas' takeover of Gaza here http://libcom.org/forums/news/palestine-situation-hamas-fatah-fighting , and my position is influenced by a reading of anti-deutsche theory. Unlike others, I think that the anti-deutsch have something to contribute to revolutionary theory.

For instance, whereas Yoshomon laughs at the competition between anti-fascists and anti-imperialists in Germany, I think that this has been a very important dynamic for developing a critique of the German nation-state and its imperialist motives. The lack of such a dynamic elsewhere has been at least a contribution to the culdesac of the left.

Tacks is wrong that the anti-germans only consist of Bahamas, actually a bit funny. The anti-Germans begin as a split from the Kommunistische Bund in 1989 over the question of supporting the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) after reunification. Bahamas was one publication, along with others like Konkret and later Jungle World, Konkret and Phase 2, which rejected the new 'euphoric' German nationalism and insisted on an anti-nationalist position.

I would argue that if it is now possible for Germany to be critiqued not only as a capitalist nation state occupied with preserving class society, but also in its specificity, as a modern democratic state built on the reactionary tendencies of the 19th and early 20th century (that gave rise to the SS), this has been possible by the emergence of partisan positions against Germany and their dialectic influence. Many on the revolutionary German left (non-anti-imperialist) recognize at least some contributions of the anti-germans to the modern critique of German nationalism and its imperialism (Kosovo, German troops for the Golan etc.). Although Bahamas is basically a liberal magazine now, groups like Phase 2 and Jungle World still produce interesting texts according to my German comrades.

I was actually discussing the anti-deutsche with a comrade the other day. I put it like this.

Look around you. What are the major tendencies in how people are thinking in relation to the war? But more than that, how do people consider their own agency... True, the Olympia protests are an interesting development, but on the other hand, I see a lot more hopelessness or abject faith in bourgeois democracy. Whereas the left of the 1960s had the Vietcong to project their own revolution onto, as a 'progressive' Stalinist movement, the anti-war movement today has no allies 'in waiting', none that embody any sort of ambition for a negation of capitalism. If anything the Iraqi militias represent an intra-communal civil war and larger, the 'local wars' of regional states.

In such a situation, where the clear bankruptcy of both sides is evident, why hasn't the internationalist position of 'no support for either side' become more widespread? How is it possible that this isn't the conclusion of the average working class person?

This has contributed to a situation where a critique of the structures that necessitate the war (energy-intensive, international capitalist economy) either does not emerge, or does so in piecemeal and reactionary ways (peak oil, 9/11 'truth' movement, energy alternative moralism) which are in turn easily channeled back into elections. One of the worst symptoms of this is a surge in the appeal of both anti-semitic ideas and crass negationism aimed at Israel. I am talking now less of the left, and more at the level of 'common sense', where it has become fashionable in America (and elsewhere) to infer that Israel's interests are the main reason for the Iraq war (Walt-Mearsheimer), that AIPAC is somehow stronger than the Saudi Lobby, Bechtel, Blackwater etc. A 'cabal' understanding of capitalism instead of a sense of its real, diffuse everyday presence. This paranoiac understanding of society is no doubt provoked by the all-encompassing 'war on terror', a secretive government etc. and thus is a bit inevitable, but it distorts any sense of internationalism (especially vis a vis Israelis), and has devastating consequences at the level of agency. If the cabal controls everything why put up a fight?

The interventions of the anti-Germans have at least been focused on attacking structural anti-semitism, and its consequences at the level of ideology. The photos intervene at the level of popular discourse. The Hezbollah flag vs. the Israeli one, the American flag versus the German one. However, unlike the right-wing sideshows at American anti-war protests, this time both sides claim the cause of social emancipation. It doesn't matter who 'wins' the silly battle. It is only important that the claims of anti-imperialism are challenged theoretically, in image and in action. It is from this clash that more interesting politics and deeper thinking can emerge. The jaded communists and anarchists will yawn, but at the level of everyday interpretation, there is a shift.

Eh, actually you'd be surprised at how wide spread Jungle World (as opposed to Junge Welt) is within the left radical/autonome scene in Germany, at least from what I could see. Don't know so much about bahamas apart from the split in which it came about. Phase 2 from what I'm told is a far more theoretical journal.

Trying to find an image of the antideutsch european map that relates to their slogan of poland must reach to the netherlands and germany fall into the sea. It has the netherlands about four times as big, poland stretching into the middle of germany, france also stretching up with denmark stretching down and I think austria was some sort of agrarian state, from what I remeber. Also remember, dusseldorf being renamed dusseldorp amongst other strange name changes for german cities. :D

Don't they say use value or something is anti-semitic? I can't remember.... I just remember a german pointing to a chair...

It's important to look at what's unique about german culture, seeing as it was the only european country that went fascist in the 1930's.

Seriously though I do have some sympathies with anti-deutsch but at the same time it is a bit ridiculous.....

Jess

It's important to look at what's unique about german culture, seeing as it was the only european country that went fascist in the 1930's.

1. Italy?!?
2. Why do you focus on 'culture', looking for an explanation? Because I've studied the rise of Fascism in Germany twice at school, and once at university, and I don't remember that being raised as an important issue.

And what does 'deutschland das existenzrecht entziehen' translate as?

posi

Jess

It's important to look at what's unique about german culture, seeing as it was the only european country that went fascist in the 1930's.

1. Italy?!?
2. Why do you focus on 'culture', looking for an explanation? Because I've studied the rise of Fascism in Germany twice at school, and once at university, and I don't remember that being raised as an important issue.

She was being sarcastic, posi.

italy was already fascist in the 30s, it didn't 'go' fascist in the 30s. not sure what that has to do with anything though...

according to babelfish, the banner means "germany existence quite extract", presumably actually meaning something along the lines of "wipe germany out of existence"

i think it means more 'germany has no right to exist' or 'germany has lost its right to exist', but my nonexistent german is very rusty

sphinx

The interventions of the anti-Germans have at least been focused on attacking structural anti-semitism, and its consequences at the level of ideology. The photos intervene at the level of popular discourse. The Hezbollah flag vs. the Israeli one, the American flag versus the German one. However, unlike the right-wing sideshows at American anti-war protests, this time both sides claim the cause of social emancipation. It doesn't matter who 'wins' the silly battle. It is only important that the claims of anti-imperialism are challenged theoretically, in image and in action. It is from this clash that more interesting politics and deeper thinking can emerge. The jaded communists and anarchists will yawn, but at the level of everyday interpretation, there is a shift.

Why not critique anti-imperialists without supporting Israeli nationalism? Why not wave the black flag and denounce all nationalism? I think that the argument against anti-imperialism is weakened when one takes pro-zionist positions because waving an Israeli or American flag does not challenge anything.

I don't understand how deeper thinking and more interesting politics can emerge from a clash of competing nationalist ideologies.

posi

Jess

It's important to look at what's unique about german culture, seeing as it was the only european country that went fascist in the 1930's.

1. Italy?!?

October 1922

Devrim

I think it's more "withdraw germany's right to exist(ence)", that's a closer translation but not the best.

The problem of flag waving is really the least important point but...I am not shocked and horrified that there would be people waving Israeli flags in a European context where there have been joint marches of left organizations and Islamists for Al-Quds day, 'peace' marches featuring Hezbollah flags and open anti-semitism expressed in left media and demonstrations. Keep in mind that at the time when the anti-Germans were most notorious for this symbolism (2001-2004), the covert funding of Hamas was EU policy until 2003 when it was finally exposed (by Ilka Schroeder and others). It is one means by which to question the direction of the left. My appreciation is for what emerges out of the process, the reflection. I am not arguing for us to all go outside and wave the star of David.

As for the black flag, well it has been waved at anti-globalization and anti-war demonstrations since 1998. What has changed? Where are we now? What has been opened up?

More important to me than the questions of flags is why, in a worldwide left characterized by the abandonment of the critique of political economy, embrace of the nation state and therefore national liberation does only one national liberation in history attract so much controversy?

In fact, why is 'Anti-Zionism' a distinct position in itself, one adopted by non-Israelis? Why do the hippy activists in solidarity with Tibet not declare themselves 'anti-Chinese'? Why do people in favor of Kurdish nationalism not declare themselves 'anti-Kemalist'? Why are partisans of the Zapatistas not 'anti-Mexican'?

There has been a shift in discourse that favors the revival of certain nationalisms (Europe, Germany), adjusts the imperialist pole position of others (Iran, Saudi Arabia) and tries to save the 'national interests' of others (American, British), revolving around the judgment of one state in particular. This moment in history I think requires a re-thinking of the focus on Israel, and so far it is only the anti-Germans (for all their flaws, including the previously mentioned odd bit about Poland) and scattered groups like Engage who have addressed this problematic in appreciation for its depth.

I think Zionism is special because it's the only active colonial (not neo-colonial, but downright colonial) political movement in existence.

Also, if you're looking for where the revival of anti-semitism is coming from, you need look no further than the Zionist movement, crystalized into the Israeli government, which has appropriated the consistent victimhood of anti-semitism in order to promote its own colonialism (and is still getting money from the German government as a result; I wonder how anti-Deutsch wrap their heads around that, and the fact that the Israeli government is now asking for additional funds). By the way, how do you respond to the Neo-Nazi flareup inside of Israel, as well as the ridiculous amount of new Holocaust-related material (novels and autobiographies) that get published over here?

I still do not understand how leftist support of Israel is a coherent critique of anti-imperialism or how Israel is somehow exempt from collusion with Islamism (what about the covert funding of Hamas by Israel?).

I agree that a rejection of anti-imperialism (with its connections to anti-semetism and Islamism) is extremely important, especially in Europe where the Left has had such strong material connections to "anti-imperialist" regimes in the Middle East and Africa, but why not go further and reject the Left? Do you think the Left will cease to be anti-imperialist?

Devrim

posi

Jess

It's important to look at what's unique about german culture, seeing as it was the only european country that went fascist in the 1930's.

1. Italy?!?

October 1922

Devrim

sphinx

The problem of flag waving is really the least important point but...I am not shocked and horrified that there would be people waving Israeli flags in a European context where there have been joint marches of left organizations and Islamists for Al-Quds day, 'peace' marches featuring Hezbollah flags and open anti-semitism expressed in left media and demonstrations. Keep in mind that at the time when the anti-Germans were most notorious for this symbolism (2001-2004), the covert funding of Hamas was EU policy until 2003 when it was finally exposed (by Ilka Schroeder and others). It is one means by which to question the direction of the left. My appreciation is for what emerges out of the process, the reflection. I am not arguing for us to all go outside and wave the star of David.

I was under the impression that EU funding for the Palestinian administration was necessary to avoid collapse

More important to me than the questions of flags is why, in a worldwide left characterized by the abandonment of the critique of political economy, embrace of the nation state and therefore national liberation does only one national liberation in history attract so much controversy?

Have you read none of the threads here on Ireland just to pick the most obvious example.

In fact, why is 'Anti-Zionism' a distinct position in itself, one adopted by non-Israelis? Why do the hippy activists in solidarity with Tibet not declare themselves 'anti-Chinese'? Why do people in favor of Kurdish nationalism not declare themselves 'anti-Kemalist'? Why are partisans of the Zapatistas not 'anti-Mexican'?

Anti-zionism is a position taken against an aggressive and racist form of nationalism. Declaring yourself anti-chinese etc would be lumping all chinese together as oppressors when in fact it is the chinese governetn that we are against. In the same way as while I am against zionism (as well as other imperialist/nationalist movements) I would never describe myself as anti-jewish or anti-israeli. Although obviously judaism and Israel like other religions and nations have little or nothing to offer the working class.

There has been a shift in discourse that favors the revival of certain nationalisms (Europe, Germany), adjusts the imperialist pole position of others (Iran, Saudi Arabia) and tries to save the 'national interests' of others (American, British), revolving around the judgment of one state in particular. This moment in history I think requires a re-thinking of the focus on Israel, and so far it is only the anti-Germans (for all their flaws, including the previously mentioned odd bit about Poland) and scattered groups like Engage who have addressed this problematic in appreciation for its depth.

Which discourse?
And once and for all you cannot fight nationalism by suporting other nationalist movements. So ETA, IRA, UFF, KLF etc are not going to help the working class any more than the anti-deutsch's self-flagellation will.

sphinx

In fact, why is 'Anti-Zionism' a distinct position in itself, one adopted by non-Israelis? Why do the hippy activists in solidarity with Tibet not declare themselves 'anti-Chinese'? Why do people in favor of Kurdish nationalism not declare themselves 'anti-Kemalist'? Why are partisans of the Zapatistas not 'anti-Mexican'?

just saw this.

Genuinely upset by the stupidity of this :x

fuck off revol!

Its a semantic distinction used to show you are against israeli expansionism but not against israel and israelis!

Jef costello has dealt with the statement admirably well so fucking take it up with him you little cunt.

I think the anti-german perspective is fairly logical for those who adopt a developmental or progressive notion of history and attempt to ‘intervene’ within that development.

Those who are habituated to looking at the ‘bigger picture’ tend to develop opinions in terms of a strategic or quantative outlook. They try and infer, from the forces now present, a set of historical tendencies from which they then ‘advocate’ one as the most preferable.

In other words, anti-germanism is a logical outcome of a particular form of thought process in relation to marxist ideas of historical movement. I would say it is this totalising analysis that is inappropriate rather than any given outcome as it involves a category type error (i.e that waving the political flags of one or other nationalism engages with actual economic process).

Shorty

I think it's more "withdraw germany's right to exist(ence)", that's a closer translation but not the best.

They want German devolution back to the principality states before the Prussian unification?

Sounds exactly like Nazism, only in reverse.

Zazaban

Sounds exactly like Nazism, only in reverse.

Er, no :roll:

Tacks

Devrim

posi

Jess

It's important to look at what's unique about german culture, seeing as it was the only european country that went fascist in the 1930's.

1. Italy?!?

October 1922

Devrim

i assumed that was sarcasm by jess. Utterly puzzled now.

It was her being completely sarcastic. Let's move on...

John.

Zazaban

Sounds exactly like Nazism, only in reverse.

Er, no :roll:

Tacks

Devrim

posi

Jess

It's important to look at what's unique about german culture, seeing as it was the only european country that went fascist in the 1930's.

1. Italy?!?

October 1922

Devrim

i assumed that was sarcasm by jess. Utterly puzzled now.

It was her being completely sarcastic. Let's move on...

that's what i thought.

This calls for a rodent of the jiggy variety.

I still don't get Sphinx's logic. Yes, the left (of capital) is nationalist and anti-semitic. Why would it not be? But to argue from that to (critically) supporting Israel is to compeltely undermine the internationalist critique of the left. It's basically saying that internationalism is perhaps a nice idea but could never work, so in the meantime, we have to defend the (Israeli) nation's right to exist. Interesting as well how the anti-Germans' view of 'Germany's non-right to exist' is the mirror image of the anti-Zionist argument about Israel's 'non-right to exist'. Again both of them run counter to the communist position that all nation states need to be destroyed.

BOOM!

Logic bomb dropped by Alf there.

I’m still curious about what they mean that Germany doesn’t have a right to exist. What are they actually proposing, devolution to previous principalities, absorption into neighboring countries, change of name/government but retaining all geographical boundaries, nuking all Germans?

As suggested they are not internationalists so what exactly do they mean by anti-German?

lrnec

I’m still curious about what they mean that Germany doesn’t have a right to exist. What are they actually proposing, devolution to previous principalities, absorption into neighboring countries, change of name/government but retaining all geographical boundaries, nuking all Germans?

As Alf said above, they are mirroring the anti-Zionist rhetoric that Israel doesn't have the right to exist. I assume they mean this as a critique of anti-Zionism, and you shouldn't take it too literally.

lrnec

I’m still curious about what they mean that Germany doesn’t have a right to exist. What are they actually proposing, devolution to previous principalities, absorption into neighboring countries, change of name/government but retaining all geographical boundaries, nuking all Germans?

As suggested they are not internationalists so what exactly do they mean by anti-German?

Shorty mentioned this in his post on the first page:

Shorty

Trying to find an image of the antideutsch european map that relates to their slogan of poland must reach to the netherlands and germany fall into the sea. It has the netherlands about four times as big, poland stretching into the middle of germany, france also stretching up with denmark stretching down and I think austria was some sort of agrarian state, from what I remeber. Also remember, dusseldorf being renamed dusseldorp amongst other strange name changes for german cities. :D

Obviously he hasn't come back with the map itself, but it sounds like he's seen it. Not sure it's worth your while to try to understand their exact ideas anyway, that's one abyss of mentalism you'd probably be better off not gazing into.

Felix Frost

lrnec

I’m still curious about what they mean that Germany doesn’t have a right to exist. What are they actually proposing, devolution to previous principalities, absorption into neighboring countries, change of name/government but retaining all geographical boundaries, nuking all Germans?

As Alf said above, they are mirroring the anti-Zionist rhetoric that Israel doesn't have the right to exist. I assume they mean this as a critique of anti-Zionism, and you shouldn't take it too literally.

So it’s supposed to be a parody?

Sorry I fail at humour.

bugbear

Obviously he hasn't come back with the map itself, but it sounds like he's seen it. Not sure it's worth your while to try to understand their exact ideas anyway, that's one abyss of mentalism you'd probably be better off not gazing into.

I always like to figure how why and how though.

1800
http://www.euratlas.com/big/big1800.htm

1850
http://home.versatel.nl/gerardvonhebel/euro1850.GIF

1870
http://www.bartleby.com/67/wester02.html

helpfull?

Yeah, I can't find the image on the net, it was on the bedroom door of a guy I know/friend of a friend/... :) I think it was meant as more of a humourous thing but I can't be sure. I generally avoided discussing it too much when I was living in Berlin and most of my knowledge on the subject is based on what I've read on the net. I think there is an element in anti-deutsch belief of germany being absorbed into other countries but I think there's also an element of it that believes post WWII germany shouldn't have been recreated as such. One of the original theorists behind anti-deutsch in the 80s has renounced it but is now "anti-imperialist" as was explained to me. Can't remeber his name, will have to do a search.

Also, anti-deutsch LOVE adorno. A lot of anti-deutsch Adorno reading groups, though reading groups seemd to be the largest form of political "organising"/groups in Berlin. I hadn't read much adorno at the time beyond notes on literature but my australian housemate/friend who's read Dialectic of Enlightemnet and studied philosophy had had a discussion with a self identified anti-deutsch who's reading of it seemed completely different from his own.

Shorty

Yeah, I can't find the image on the net, it was on the bedroom door of a guy I know/friend of a friend/... :) I think it was meant as more of a humourous thing but I can't be sure. I generally avoided discussing it too much when I was living in Berlin and most of my knowledge on the subject is based on what I've read on the net. I think there is an element in anti-deutsch belief of germany being absorbed into other countries but I think there's also an element of it that believes post WWII germany shouldn't have been recreated as such. One of the original theorists behind anti-deutsch in the 80s has renounced it but is now "anti-imperialist" as was explained to me. Can't remeber his name, will have to do a search.

If you know what time frame it was or even describe what it looked like I can probably check it out. got a few old type books then find it online with a more specific search, is it renaissance, Victoria, etc type time era or? Remember any of the empires on it at the time, ottoman, Prussian, Holy Roman etc?

There is a big historical argument that dividing/ removing German speaking people from the nation of Germany post WW1 was a big cause for WW2. Anyway most folks say either Germany should have been left relatively unaltered or smushed up beyond modern recognition. Big complaint as well was that the person mainly responsible for redrawing the borders hadn’t got a single clue about ethnic geography in Europe.

lrnec

If you know what time frame it was or even describe what it looked like I can probably check it out. got a few old type books then find it online with a more specific search, is it renaissance, Victoria, etc type time era or? Remember any of the empires on it at the time, ottoman, Prussian, Holy Roman etc?

There is a big historical argument that dividing/ removing German speaking people from the nation of Germany post WW1 was a big cause for WW2. Anyway most folks say either Germany should have been left relatively unaltered or smushed up beyond modern recognition. Big complaint as well was that the person mainly responsible for redrawing the borders hadn’t got a single clue about ethnic geography in Europe.

What are you looking for here exactly? I don't think anyone's said that these guys are basing their ideas of Germany becoming non-existent on any particular historical layout, as far as I'm aware Germany has never been totally dominated and absorbed into surrounding states in the way somewhere like Poland has (although my dark ages and medieval history isn't great), so as such there isn't really a historical blueprint for their ideas of Germany not being there in some form, be it as patchwork of minor states and principalities (either relatively independent or held together in a loose association such as the Holy Roman Empire) or as a unified entity. Like I said before though, I really don't know much about their ideas and I don't care to spend much time learning the specifics, just offering my historical perspective.

Shorty

One of the original theorists behind anti-deutsch in the 80s has renounced it but is now "anti-imperialist" as was explained to me. Can't remeber his name, will have to do a search.

jürgen elsässer, and believe me, "theorist" is not the word you wanted to use ;)
back in the day, when he was writing for konkret he always seemed to be the most unsophisticated of the anti-german bunch with the most hands-on writing style so to speak. these days he´s writing for the national-bolshevik outlet junge welt fighting against "locusts" and for the interests of the "german worker".

i agree with bugbear, that anti-german ideas aren´t really worth engaging with, but since there seem to be such vast misconceptions regarding what anti-german is about, for your information and entertainment, two quotes that clarify what´s at the core of anti-german thought:

stephan grigat in the last issue of jungle world:
"critique of political economy takes sides. the partiality for israel is nothing that accompanies this critique by accident, but is the compulsory consequence of this critique. the society obeying the valorisation imperatives of capital and the power imperatives of the state produces antisemitism as a delusional attempt to more clearly define the abstract, again and again. like economy can only be understood as a unity of economy and state, also the fetish were to be understood only as a unity of fetish and delusional more clear definition (concretizing?) of the abstaction. in this sense exactly antisemitism is a basic ideology of bourgeois society. the israeli state is the reaction to this antisemitism - and due to that alone solidarity with this state is compulsory for any critique of the capital-induced disaster."

manfred dahlmann in "antideutsch":
"to think and act anti-german thus means to defend the political forms of mediation and representation in society which are based on the separation between free and equal commodity-owners on one hand and citizens oriented towards the welfare of the general public on the other, against those, who want to overcoe this separation in favour of an authoritarian "people´s state" (volksstaat), which´s subjects are dependant on nothing besides its welfare benefits. who doesn´t relate the label anti-german to him/herself in this sense, at least disregards the danger of german ideology - which is of course not restricted to germany or germans but has been rampant worldwide since ever - which´s historical core consists of not only being responsible for the "normal" capital-induced exploitation and power, not only for wars which are on principle immanent to capital and for the antisemitism inscripted into its foundation, but supports the survival of an ideology, which furthermore has inscripted in itself the neither historically nor empirically deniable fact, that the german version of the relation between state and society would have almost totally realized the annihilation of humanity in two world wars in general and eliminatoric antisemitism in particular."

bugbear

What are you looking for here exactly? I don't think anyone's said that these guys are basing their ideas of Germany becoming non-existent on any particular historical layout, as far as I'm aware Germany has never been totally dominated and absorbed into surrounding states in the way somewhere like Poland has (although my dark ages and medieval history isn't great), so as such there isn't really a historical blueprint for their ideas of Germany not being there in some form, be it as patchwork of minor states and principalities (either relatively independent or held together in a loose association such as the Holy Roman Empire) or as a unified entity. Like I said before though, I really don't know much about their ideas and I don't care to spend much time learning the specifics, just offering my historical perspective.

I was currious about the map, I was looking to help shorty find the map he was talking about.

If your curious about Poland and Germany’s history look up the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They were the big imperialist players in eastern Europe replaced by the Prussia’s who later evolved into Germany and The Austro-Hungarian Empire which was the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire.

Geographically speaking most of modern Germany is ex holy roman empire states taken in/over by Prussia. Germany didn’t really exist till about 1870. The geographical lands that make up modern Germany have been tossed between empires and new small countries like a beech ball.

Its one of those funny things about nationalism if you go back there’s no logical sense to it at all.

tastypudding

manfred dahlmann in "antideutsch":
"to think and act anti-german thus means to defend the political forms of mediation and representation in society which are based on the separation between free and equal commodity-owners on one hand and citizens oriented towards the welfare of the general public on the other, against those, who want to overcoe this separation in favour of an authoritarian "people´s state" (volksstaat), which´s subjects are dependant on nothing besides its welfare benefits. who doesn´t relate the label anti-german to him/herself in this sense, at least disregards the danger of german ideology - which is of course not restricted to germany or germans but has been rampant worldwide since ever - which´s historical core consists of not only being responsible for the "normal" capital-induced exploitation and power, not only for wars which are on principle immanent to capital and for the antisemitism inscripted into its foundation, but supports the survival of an ideology, which furthermore has inscripted in itself the neither historically nor empirically deniable fact, that the german version of the relation between state and society would have almost totally realized the annihilation of humanity in two world wars in general and eliminatoric antisemitism in particular."

I know this is probably exceptional oversimplification but it sounds like anti-nation, anti-imperialism, group control as opposed to state control. Only focused specifically on Germany? Is that kind of right or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?

Just as a little note it also claims the German State was responsible for both world wars? Or is the “german version of the relation between state and society” a reference to general hierarchical state control?

Thanks for the quote anyway it explains a few things anyway.

No, the map is probably something very recently drawn up, using graphic design or something, it's not a historical map. I think there was an element of tongue in cheekness/irony, but this is germans we're talking about :p (okay, very innapropriate joke :( ;) ) Dusseldorf being called dusseldorp etc.

I've e-mailed a friend to ask about the author, but I think tasty pudding is correct and it's jürgen elsässer. The way his politics were explained to me they did seem very confused and still nationalist in one way or another but like I said I generally avoided discussions on the subject.

lrnec

Its one of those funny things about nationalism if you go back there’s no logical sense to it at all.

That's pretty much the gist of it. The rest of the thread is prety much superfluous.

h

Unless one is fluent in German and is capable of reading the various key documents which are points of reference for this discussion within the extra-parliamentary left, it's best to withhold any sort of judgement or opinion concerning the Anti-Germans, as such opinions tend to be based upon anecdote, imputation, guesswork, and rumour.

At least sphinx manages to get the chronology more-or-less correct. "Anti-German" as a term for describing a specific political tendency first emerges in the wake of reunification and the attacks upon foreigners in Germany in the early 1990s. The criticism of left Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism is prevalent in the German radical left as far back as the early-1980s, when figures like Wolfgang Pohrt and Eike Geisel first took up the issue, long before "Anti-German" ever existed as a political tendency. Israel as a focal point for Anti-German politics really doesn't emerge until the Al-Aksa Intifada and September 11th, 2001, when a hardcore of Anti-Germans around Bahamas and the ISF Freiburg went off the deep end and developed a sort of Hegelian-teleological conception of Israel as a bulwark of communism.

It should also be kept in mind that in addition to groups self-apply the label Anti-German to describe their politics, there are also groups which are regularly denounced as Anti-German by others as a defensive mechanism for warding off any discussion concerning anti-semitism on the left. For example, T.O.P.-Berlin, one of the surviving splinter groups of the now-defunct Antifaschistische Aktion Berlin, rejects the label Anti-German as a description of their politics, but their enemies in the "scene" apply the label nonetheless, it's often merely a convenient shorthand for denouncing anyone who stresses the importance of the critique of political economy and the state, as opposed to mindless activist-ism.

Anti-German simply isn't reliable as a way of indicating the politics or theory of specific groups and individuals, since like the terms "Anarchist", "Maoist", or "Trotkyist", it refers to a vast agglomeration of sub-tendencies, many of which are violently opposed to one another. The term can be used to describe the off-the-wall neo-conservative communism of Bahamas and ISF, the (post-)Antifa perspective of journals like Phase 2, old-school capital-C Communism of journals like Konkret, or heterodox left journals like Jungle World, the latter journal publishing every conceivable political opinion in its pages, from Italian operaists like Sergio Bologna to French Trotkyists like Daniel Bensaid. They even publish whacked-out Anti-Germans of the Bahamas variety, though thankfully, one of them, Uli Krug, seems to be relegated to writing about music these days.

One of the more hilarious misunderstandings of German far-left political reality I've encountered recently was an account on the homepage of the anti-Zionist American Activist-ist magazine Left Turn, which actually refers to the Antifa movement "becoming" Anti-German, as if the entire Antifa movement became Anti-German en masse! Boners like that are one reason why people should refrain from issuing pronoucements about political scenes they aren't involved in first hand.

I'm generally sympathetic of the critique of any sort of Anti-Zionism (as opposed to anti-nationalism encompassing all nations, not just "illegitimate" ones), but I think my comrade sphinx is making a theoretical error by adhering to theoretical conceptions of anti-semitism which attempt to derive it from the value-form.

P.S. I'm all for people engaging in all manner of provocative acts as far as Dresden is concerned. The cult of victimhood in Germany is really something appalling. Again, this is a case of having to live in Germany and absorb its everyday discourse to get a sense of how far that discourse has shifted to the position of viewing the Germans as the true victims of the second World War.

I'm reminded of Zizek's riffing on Freud's kettle joke. To update it for current mainstream discourse in Germany, I suppose it would go something like:

1) "We never knew anything about the camps". 2) "No Jews were killed in the camps". 3) "The Jews brought it upon themselves".

... and 4) "We (or the Palestinians) were the real victims of the Holocaust".

I think Zionism is special because it's the only active colonial (not neo-colonial, but downright colonial) political movement in existence.

Also, if you're looking for where the revival of anti-semitism is coming from, you need look no further than the Zionist movement, crystalized into the Israeli government, which has appropriated the consistent victimhood of anti-semitism in order to promote its own colonialism (and is still getting money from the German government as a result; I wonder how anti-Deutsch wrap their heads around that, and the fact that the Israeli government is now asking for additional funds). By the way, how do you respond to the Neo-Nazi flareup inside of Israel, as well as the ridiculous amount of new Holocaust-related material (novels and autobiographies) that get published over here?

No matter how much the Israeli government appropriates 'the' narrative of victimization, there is no reason that the real content of anti-semitism, its real history and consequences should be thrown out while critiquing the abuses of history. The rise of the SS, the scapegoating of the Jews, their fetishization, their place in racial hierarchies, biology etc. are incredibly important lessons for humanity as a whole; they are not to be abandoned or diminished. To say that 270,000 settlers in the occupied territories (not all of whose future is certain by the way) and the occupation required to maintain their presence is responsible for the rise in anti-semitism worldwide essentially legitimates the crude extrapolation of guilt to all Jews based on the actions of an Israeli settler minority. It is also clear that this narrative does not always stand up, witness the Gaza settlers being evicted even so with yellow stars of David pinned to their orange shirts. Here the holocaust was not decisive. How do you 'respond' to that?

The truth is that the growth in worldwide anti-semitism is a manifold phenomenon that is only tangentially related to a real concern for Palestinian lives. Whereas its political implications are intricately connected to the ambitions of local ruling classes, militias and their imperialist patrons, anti-semitism (in its geopolitical form, anti-zionism) is one political safety valve for people who think that somehow the imperialism of the West is the 'primary contradiction', the breach holding capitalism together, when in fact imperialists wage wars of position in order to restructure the same international economy. In fact, anti-semitism most often does not result from an engagement with Jewish people, and (often) the people decrying Zionism have no real knowledge of the conflict; these ideas result from a particular despair vis-a-vis one's agency in capitalist society.

Jef:

I was under the impression that EU funding for the Palestinian administration was necessary to avoid collapse

Hamas did not have control of the PA at that point. This was mainly 2001-2003. At the time, Europe was essentially funding a terror war against Israeli civilian targets. It was only after Hamas' election that there were serious talks about funding a Hamas-led PA.

In fact, why is 'Anti-Zionism' a distinct position in itself, one adopted by non-Israelis? Why do the hippy activists in solidarity with Tibet not declare themselves 'anti-Chinese'? Why do people in favor of Kurdish nationalism not declare themselves 'anti-Kemalist'? Why are partisans of the Zapatistas not 'anti-Mexican'?

Anti-zionism is a position taken against an aggressive and racist form of nationalism. Declaring yourself anti-chinese etc would be lumping all chinese together as oppressors when in fact it is the chinese governetn that we are against. In the same way as while I am against zionism (as well as other imperialist/nationalist movements) I would never describe myself as anti-jewish or anti-israeli. Although obviously judaism and Israel like other religions and nations have little or nothing to offer the working class.

No, anti-zionism is more than you describe, and I do not think you can so easily separate Israelis from Zionism, the movement that of course made that nation possible. From the very phrasing 'anti-zionism' you do not pick and choose but instead negate everything about the zionist movement, including its most important contribution, that it managed to create a space for Jews to defend themselves on their own terms when the revolutionary movement despite its brave contributions failed in this regard.

If you really find it necessary to take a particular position against an 'aggressive and racist form of nationalism' to the exclusion of similar judgments on other nationalist movements worldwide, what is lacking to you in the classical position 'against the occupation' ?

Most importantly, why is it not a position 'against the occupation', but instead those judgments that Israel is incurably imperialist and therefore deserves a special kind of abolition which undergo a wave of popularity? That was the content of my original question.

Which discourse?

I would say the shift in discourse that I am discussing appears at most levels of discussion on the topic of the middle east, certainly in the 'left' papers such as the Morning Star which recently had a big feature on Gilad Atzmon (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index2.php/free/culture/music/interview_gilad_atzmon) or the Guardian which allows this man platform to 'respond' to people who call him out as an obvious anti-semite. Oxford allowing Irving and the BNP leader to speak are similar scandals.

There have been certain milestones on the left as well such as the attempt by the UCU and other unions to boycott Israeli academics which was conceived on premises that go 'against all internationalism' (Alf) but didn't get much critique here or in any revolutionary publications that I read. Right now Walt and Mearsheimer are touring America 'exploding the taboo' of anti-semitism by shilling for the sections of the American ruling class who see in Israel a useful scapegoat for the failures of American imperialism. On the internet you can search 'zionist' and get taken right to 'ziopedia' where you can find out who's a dual citizen, who is a Jew, which Zionists hold the levers of power in the US etc. It has been hard work for the anti-semites to hike up their position on the search engines so high but in doing so they have scored quite a propaganda victory.

Over at 9/11 blogger where the truth is about 9/11 is studiously uncovered by troupes of cake-eating recluses, we can see Charles Lindbergh approvingly quoted in the context of potential war with Iran: http://www.911blogger.com/node/12497

The second major group I mentioned is the Jewish.

It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.

No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.

Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.

Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.

These are a few of the levels at which anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are emerging as popular explanations for the current crisis.

Alf:

I still don't get Sphinx's logic. Yes, the left (of capital) is nationalist and anti-semitic. Why would it not be? But to argue from that to (critically) supporting Israel is to compeltely undermine the internationalist critique of the left. It's basically saying that internationalism is perhaps a nice idea but could never work, so in the meantime, we have to defend the (Israeli) nation's right to exist. Interesting as well how the anti-Germans' view of 'Germany's non-right to exist' is the mirror image of the anti-Zionist argument about Israel's 'non-right to exist'. Again both of them run counter to the communist position that all nation states need to be destroyed.

First I think the anti-german position is not that internationalism could never work but that at least that it did NOT work when it needed to, or that it was too weak, and the consequence of that failure was the establishment of a Jewish state. I do not think that it completely undermines internationalism to exercise solidarity in the self-defense of people for whom their own value as labor power, and therefore power as workers, was negated in planned genocide after decades of oppression and terrorism.

I agree that all nation states are only good as mediums of the ruling class, and on that basis deserve to be dissolved. Israel fits this criteria too if you conceive of it as 'just another state'. The problem is that more and more it is clear that Israel will not be allowed to be like 'any other state' and its people as any other people. Maybe this was possible up until the second intifada, but now Israel is too useful as a scapegoat and 'other' for Islamism and European nationalism to rally against, a historical 'anomaly' to be dissected, a 'contingency' to be paved over by the steamroller of history. Now its original purpose as a place of defense for Jews resumes a certain importance.

Hi Angelus_Novus, long time no speak!

I'm generally sympathetic of the critique of any sort of Anti-Zionism (as opposed to anti-nationalism encompassing all nations, not just "illegitimate" ones), but I think my comrade sphinx is making a theoretical error by adhering to theoretical conceptions of anti-semitism which attempt to derive it from the value-form.

? Am I doing that in this thread? I would agree that anti-semitism shouldn't be reduced to simple dimensions, but would be interested in the particulars of your critique of my position.

smokescreen

Very much like that "We are all Hezbollah" crap.

Trying to express support for Lebanese people's solidarity against Israeli attacks by simply adopting their slogan may have been silly, but I hardly think it's comparable to the anti-Deutsch.

sphinx

No matter how much the Israeli government appropriates 'the' narrative of victimization, there is no reason that the real content of anti-semitism, its real history and consequences should be thrown out while critiquing the abuses of history. The rise of the SS, the scapegoating of the Jews, their fetishization, their place in racial hierarchies, biology etc. are incredibly important lessons for humanity as a whole; they are not to be abandoned or diminished.

With you so far.
sphinx

To say that 270,000 settlers in the occupied territories (not all of whose future is certain by the way) and the occupation required to maintain their presence is responsible for the rise in anti-semitism worldwide essentially legitimates the crude extrapolation of guilt to all Jews based on the actions of an Israeli settler minority.

Where did I say this? Where did I even use the term settler? I said this:
tojiah

Also, if you're looking for where the revival of anti-semitism is coming from, you need look no further than the Zionist movement, crystalized into the Israeli government, which has appropriated the consistent victimhood of anti-semitism in order to promote its own colonialism (and is still getting money from the German government as a result; I wonder how anti-Deutsch wrap their heads around that, and the fact that the Israeli government is now asking for additional funds).

The usage of Holocaust victimhood as justification for atrocities is completely mainstream, and not just used by a settler minority.
Also, I said this:
tojiah

I think Zionism is special because it's the only active colonial (not neo-colonial, but downright colonial) political movement in existence.

In general, as I have said in this forum before, though perhaps I have not said so clearly enough, I do not consider what is called "settlements", i.e., Jewish villages, towns and outposts erected outside the green line (or outside the green line and the "big settlement blocks", depends on who it is you're talking to) to be the Zionist movement's sole colonialist enterprise. I in fact see them as merely as the violent margin of a process driven by the "Law of Return", which effectively promotes Israel as a colony for world Jewry. Every Jew is allowed automatic citizenship in the colony, while non-Jews are either tolerated as citizens, limited to residency, or merely held as cheap labor until such time as they are deemed fit to be dismissed. It doesn't matter if a Jewish "oleh" goes to a settlement; the dynamic of colonialism pushes people into the periphery of Israel, which pushes a very small minority of extremists into broadening the "legitimate" living space, which is then settled by those looking for cheaper housing, which then becomes more expensive, and thus the process repeats. The driving force behind the atrocities committed against the Palestinians is not a few hundreds or thousands of active hooligans, but by the demographic forces which push them forward, coupled with a colonist mechanism which enforces and reinforces an ethnic differential.
sphinx

It is also clear that this narrative does not always stand up, witness the Gaza settlers being evicted even so with yellow stars of David pinned to their orange shirts.
Here the holocaust was not decisive. How do you 'respond' to that?

How do I respond to what? Holocaust victims have protested against the Israeli government's "mismanagement" of the funds given to them from the German government. The only conclusion to that was vague promises and further demands for reparations from the German government. What's your point? That the Israeli government is being dishonest? That the Holocaust memorial rhetoric is a mere fig leaf? No shit, Sherlock! I never claimed that the Holocaust is decisive: you and the Zionists claim it, and the latter use it as an excuse for atrocities and funding when that is convenient; and since they have appropriated the victimhood of the Holocaust, they may ignore its imagery at their convenience.
sphinx

The truth is that the growth in worldwide anti-semitism is a manifold phenomenon that is only tangentially related to a real concern for Palestinian lives.

Perhaps. But the Israeli government constantly bigging up anti-semitism abroad in order to justify its existence as well as to persuade more wealthy colonists to settle within its borders has been a great help.
sphinx

Whereas its political implications are intricately connected to the ambitions of local ruling classes, militias and their imperialist patrons, anti-semitism (in its geopolitical form, anti-zionism)

You have yet to show that in any manner. Your rhetoric mirrors that of Zionist apologists such as Abe Foxman and others. How is opposition to a colonialist regime automatically racist?
sphinx

is one political safety valve for people who think that somehow the imperialism of the West is the 'primary contradiction', the breach holding capitalism together, when in fact imperialists wage wars of position in order to restructure the same international economy. In fact, anti-semitism most often does not result from an engagement with Jewish people, and (often) the people decrying Zionism have no real knowledge of the conflict; these ideas result from a particular despair vis-a-vis one's agency in capitalist society.

A lot of people decrying Zionism are either Palestinians, who have direct personal or familial experience of the conflict, with a few of whom I have discussed this issue, or Israelis, who experience and know it from the "offending" side, like myself. I decry your attempt to muddy the waters.

Let's move this discussion onto firmer ground. I'm willing to take on the mantle of being "an anti-Zionist", at least for the sake of discussion; I also have real knowledge of the conflict. What do you have to say to me? Is it wrong for me to oppose Zionism? Should I be joining the IDF instead? Should I be hailing the Annapolis talks, which are no more than a final attempt at having a legitimized indigenous contractor for the Zionist regime?

winjer

smokescreen

Very much like that "We are all Hezbollah" crap.

Trying to express support for Lebanese people's solidarity against Israeli attacks by simply adopting their slogan may have been silly, but I hardly think it's comparable to the anti-Deutsch.

well quite!

AD are fucking fruits.

I listen to right-wing radio now and then as entertainment, and there are ads all the time from an American zionist group about how Israel is a "nation of peace" and such. As far as I know, Israel is the only country whose policies get defended consistently via (creepy) advertisements on the radio. Why is that>

Sphinx, how would you analyze anti-Americanism and its connection to Islamism? Some in the anti-German milieu fly American flags, Should there be solidarity with the nation of America as well as Israel, as money and support from the US in many ways keeps Israel afloat? And what of Israeli funding of Hamas?

Israel is a state whose form of reproduction is not only founded upon various forms of racialisation (hierarchy, exclusion, etcetera) but a state whose hegemonic strategy of reproduction is based around the defence and expansion of its status as the "jewish state", which entails an ongoing project of aggression against people deemed to be a problem, including a problem by their very existence (the 'demographic problem'). 'Anti-zionism' can certainly be criticised, in ways parallel to radical critiques of 'anti-fascism' and 'anti-imperialism' - but, just as in the latter cases these critiques are not based on indifference to fascism or imperialism, a critique of anti-zionism shouldn't be based on an indifference to zionism, an 'it's just another state' refusal to attend to the realities of the struggles involved. Zionism is a tendency in the organisation of the reproduction of capitalist social relations, of which the Israeli state is obviously the central manifestation, and one which overwhelmingly exists as inseparable from ongoing violence against Palestinian people, using almost every means at the disposal of the Israeli state and adjunct zionist institutions. I don't know if Israel's constitution as a particular form of racialised violence is 'incurable', but it hard to see how it would be 'curable' in the absence of the destruction of much of what zionists think they are defending in the state of Israel.

In other words, Sphinx, if some critics of anti-germanism have never had experience of hard-core anti-semitism, it seems that pro-Israel tendencies in anti-Germanism probably have very little real experience of zionism and its socio-political realities.

Atzmon is indeed one manifestation of a particularly repugnant, not to mention bizarre, tendency, to be sure, around Israel Shamir and some people in Deir Yassin Remembered. Some have or claim to have jewish backgrounds, but to be rejecting being jewish per se, and then move toward the expression of surprisingly crude anti-semitic views. Which is why when the SWP's Bookmarks had Atzmon launching his book, a protest was organised outside precisely by left-wing anti-zionists, in particular those involved with Jews Against Zionism.

Some of whom, by the way, are active supporters of a boycott of Israel, including by educational unions. The point being that it should be possible to debate the boycott of Israel proposals, as part of efforts to oppose Israel's active project of what we are now trained to call 'ethnic cleansing', without regarding supporters of the boycott strategy as a priori anti-semitic.

Good post ToJ.

Sphinx wrote:

I agree that all nation states are only good as mediums of the ruling class, and on that basis deserve to be dissolved. Israel fits this criteria too if you conceive of it as 'just another state'. The problem is that more and more it is clear that Israel will not be allowed to be like 'any other state' and its people as any other people. Maybe this was possible up until the second intifada, but now Israel is too useful as a scapegoat and 'other' for Islamism and European nationalism to rally against, a historical 'anomaly' to be dissected, a 'contingency' to be paved over by the steamroller of history. Now its original purpose as a place of defense for Jews resumes a certain importance.

The 'just another state' view is how Israel should be viewed. Doing anything other than that is putting it in a special category that both anti-zionists/semites do, giving the state of Israel special treatment as the historical anomaly, the ultimate evil, the outpost of imperialism, that murderous state etc. Interestingly enough this category is also what apologists and zionists do as well. Israel is historically unique, its people suffered at the hands of the ultimate evil, Israel is a beacon of democracy in the Middle East/ sea of barabarians etc and so on.

This is exactly what you're arguing Sphinx, and there is quite a bit of hypocrisy in there. You decry that ant-zionists verge over to anti-semitism because of setting Israel/Jews apart from other nation-states, but go full circle ending up as a mere apologist of Israeli colonialism and occupation.

Israel is just like any other nation-state. What is happening to the Palestinians at the hands of Israel(is) is not unique at all. Nearly every single creation of a nation-state has been a bloody affair with enough bigotry and violence for everyone. Genocide, politicide and ethnic cleansing are also pretty standard historically. The difference is that these sorts of things are more unpopular these days, and this does have an impact on how Israel is viewed.

In addition, the Palestinians have been quite successful in publicizing their plight for better or worse (intifadas and aviation and suicide terrorism respectively). Israel is playing the same PR game, and is better at it. This is also part of the reason why the I-P conflict resonates more than other conflict, and why Israel and Palestine are put in special categories that subsumes all other reducing everything to the pro/anti Israel/Palestine binaries.

There's a couple other comments I'd like to get to but I won't have time for a little bit.

TreeofJudas

The original question I posed was: how can we understand the rise in worldwide anti-semitism and anti-Zionism, concentrating on its appeal to populations with nothing directly at stake in the territorial struggle of Israelis and Palestinians. You said that Zionists and the Israeli government use anti-semitism to justify internal colonialism. If what you refer to as colonialism is not the 'excesses' beyond the borders of the nation state (settlements), but intertwined with the capitalist history of the state (the Histradut etc.), that Israel is colonialist in its very constitution, then if the Israeli government defends its policies by decrying 'anti-semitism', the day to day existence of Israel must be an incitement to anti-semitism. I think this is a uselessly broad statement, and doesn't shed much light on the contemporary appeal of anti-semitism and so I went with the supposition that you were referring to the colonies of Israel itself.

Is Israel a colony of 'world jewry'? I'm not entirely convinced by your argument. The law of return certainly exists and is built on exclusionary principles, it grants accelerated citizenship to Jews, and other immigrants flounder in the bureaucratic nightmare (the Sudanese are a good example lately, I also have a friend who after a year trying to immigrate to Israel gave up in exasperation after his papers were delayed for months and months simply for being a convert). Israel is also a racist place, with not only a 'demographic' exclusionary principle but workforce hierarchies based on ethnic affiliation. But back to the subject, world Jewry is not a nation state with the power to militarily defend the territory of 'its colony' from the outside. In terms of finance? The American government is for instance the heaviest investor in the Israeli economy, both in terms of direct investment and foreign aid, mostly for the sake of advanced weapon production, but even this amounts to only $1.2 billion a year. Israeli GDP is $195 billion a year. How does this colonial relationship exist objectively?

I would argue that Israel is better described as a state in which the primitive accumulation phase of the bourgeois revolution has essentially been allowed to continue indefinitely, and the racist aspects of this remain within the tiers of the economy, the economic relationship between Israel and the territories and with the annexation of land in the settlements serving as a pressure valve for working class struggle. All of these tendencies are important for understanding class society in Israel and Palestine, but to concentrate on them to the exclusion of the most important consideration: that Israel is a sovereign state which mediates the class relations of capitalism, like any other state on the rest of the planet, seems to me to miss the forest for the trees. And this is precisely the obsessive focus of the anti-Zionists. It needs to be emphasized that the core of Israeli capitalism is the tech sector, metals, the diamond industry, weapons, it is not the settlements nor is it the land that the JNF has accumulated but doesn't know what to do with.

When I was in Israel this summer I went to a village called Segev Shalom, which is a bedouin settlement created by the government. Here there was a presentation by people working in solidarity with Bedouin against demolitions in the Negev, discussing the problem of the 'Judeaization of the Negev', a project the Israeli bourgeoisie has been quite keen on since the founding of the state: creating an infrastructural link between the middle belt of Israel (starting at Be'er Sheva basically) and its southern outposts across the vicious heat of the Negev. You may remember that there were some recent Bedouin evictions which were initiated by the government for the sake of slowly bringing Jews from outside of Israel into the desert and subsidizing their neighborhood developments in order to slowly populate this area with Jews. This is an example of this process. However can we analyze this project in terms of a colonial endeavor for instance?

It would be a mistake to understand the goal of the policy as the ethnic cleansing of bedouin remaining on the land. The Israeli bourgeoisie are like any other, they not only want to profit from a large public works project, they are also interested in centralizing all the water resources in this area, which is one of the centrifugal characteristics of capitalism itself. Thirdly they are interested in a stronger transport infrastructure across the Negev, and last the military benefits of firmer control over the entire territory. Most of these goals are not characterized by colonial aims, but instead by capitalist development. For the bourgeoisie, the Bedouin are only in the way. They are only in the way like other poor minorities in American slums slated for redevelopment, like working class people where a nuclear power plant will be built.

Getting back to the subject of anti-semitism,

Whereas its political implications are intricately connected to the ambitions of local ruling classes, militias and their imperialist patrons, anti-semitism (in its geopolitical form, anti-zionism)

You have yet to show that in any manner. Your rhetoric mirrors that of Zionist apologists such as Abe Foxman and others. How is opposition to a colonialist regime automatically racist?

Wow, Abe Foxman. That's low.

First off, why is it that in a discussion of anti-semitism and anti-Zionism we have not yet even touched on the efforts of Al-Manar, broadcasting since 1991, which was (is still?) available in Europe until 2004 and enjoys a considerable audience in the middle east and Arabic-speaking parts of Africa. We haven't talked about the rise of the far right in Europe. We haven't talked about Al Qods day, we haven't talked about Iranian TV. We haven't talked about the efforts to rally holocaust deniers with an international conference and contest in Teheran. We haven't talked about Jorg Haider on Al Jazeera. We haven't talked about the propaganda of Hamas.

Just the above should be enough proof that anti-semitism is seen as a useful tool of mobilization for a variety of ruling classes. Add to this that many of them have overlapping interests.

is one political safety valve for people who think that somehow the imperialism of the West is the 'primary contradiction', the breach holding capitalism together, when in fact imperialists wage wars of position in order to restructure the same international economy. In fact, anti-semitism most often does not result from an engagement with Jewish people, and (often) the people decrying Zionism have no real knowledge of the conflict; these ideas result from a particular despair vis-a-vis one's agency in capitalist society.

A lot of people decrying Zionism are either Palestinians, who have direct personal or familial experience of the conflict, with a few of whom I have discussed this issue, or Israelis, who experience and know it from the "offending" side, like myself. I decry your attempt to muddy the waters.

Ok, yes of course. I did not mean to assert that for some reason Israelis and Palestinians should not have a critique of Zionism (alongside one of capitalism and the state).

Let's move this discussion onto firmer ground. I'm willing to take on the mantle of being "an anti-Zionist", at least for the sake of discussion; I also have real knowledge of the conflict. What do you have to say to me? Is it wrong for me to oppose Zionism? Should I be joining the IDF instead? Should I be hailing the Annapolis talks, which are no more than a final attempt at having a legitimized indigenous contractor for the Zionist regime?

If you send me your address I will send you pom-poms for the Annapolis broadcasts.

Seriously though, I am in no position to give you advice on what you should do personally. Like any anti-capitalist, the goal is to be and act subversively in your own context (and eventually outside of it). It is good that you are a revolutionary and that you communicate with the rest of us. I would hope that you are capable of organizing among others and fighting capitalism. What I think you will find however is that in an Israel where 80% of the population saw the end of the second intifada in a security barrier, and not in cross-border struggles, that the prospects for an internationalist movement are quite dim at the moment.

Two questions:

1. Why anti-zionist? What is lacking in the post-Zionist position (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Zionism) which asserts that Israel has achieved a safe space for Jews as well as a democratic state, and now is the time to move beyond it?

2. From an anti-zionist perspective, why do you think that Matzpen for instance failed to make real dents in the settlement project, but more importantly Israeli capitalism as a whole? Were the masses just too stupid for anti-Zionism the first time around?

"1. Why anti-zionist? What is lacking in the post-Zionist position (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Zionism) which asserts that Israel has achieved a safe space for Jews as well as a democratic state, and now is the time to move beyond it?

2. From an anti-zionist perspective, why do you think that Matzpen for instance failed to make real dents in the settlement project, but more importantly Israeli capitalism as a whole? Were the masses just too stupid for anti-Zionism the first time around?"

1. Most of the people on this thread are not arguing from an anti-zionist position, but, as Khawaga said, from the position that Israel is neither an extraordinary evil (rather like the anti-fascists argue about Nazi Germany) nor a special case that needs to be defended; that it is a bourgeois, imperialist state like all other nation states.

2. If the 'post-zionist' view is that Israel is a safe space for Jews then it's a crock, because I can't think of any less safe space for Jews than Israel

3. I have no doubt that putting forward an internationalist position in Israel/Palestine is extraordinarily difficult and always has been. But I don't think that Matzpen ever did that. They were classic anti-Zionists, leftist and pro-Palestinian nationalist - even their more 'libertarian' spokesmen like Akiva Orr who was a member of Solidarity when he moved to the UK never broke from this ideology.

Alf

2. If the 'post-zionist' view is that Israel is a safe space for Jews then it's a crock, because I can't think of any less safe space for Jews than Israel

While I agree with you that Israel is not the safest place for Jews (the US or Canada are safer, for example), it is certainly not the least safe place. I can think of a number of places that would be much more dangerous that are right nearby Israel...

revol68

how is taking up the slogan of victory to hezbullah as a suppoused act of solidarity with the lebanese any different than taking up the slogan of victory to Israel/IDF as a suppoused act of solidarity with jews?

The difference is that the slogan "We are all Hezbollah" was taken up by the Lebanese population and then migrated to Lebanese ex-pats, and only then was it taken up by (some of) the Trots.

[i]"While I agree with you that Israel is not the safest place for Jews (the US or Canada are safer, for example), it is certainly not the least safe place. I can think of a number of places that would be much more dangerous that are right nearby Israel...["/i]

Except that most of the Jews in these countries have left or been kicked out since Israel was formed. At the time of the US invasion, there were two Jews in Kabul, who apparently couldn't stand each other.

sphinx

The original question I posed was: how can we understand the rise in worldwide anti-semitism and anti-Zionism, concentrating on its appeal to populations with nothing directly at stake in the territorial struggle of Israelis and Palestinians. You said that Zionists and the Israeli government use anti-semitism to justify internal colonialism. If what you refer to as colonialism is not the 'excesses' beyond the borders of the nation state (settlements), but intertwined with the capitalist history of the state (the Histradut etc.), that Israel is colonialist in its very constitution, then if the Israeli government defends its policies by decrying 'anti-semitism', the day to day existence of Israel must be an incitement to anti-semitism.

Nope. It is an "incitement" to anti-Zionism. Its identification with the victimhood of the Holocaust on and the monetary compensation it garners as a result, on the other hand, as well as its persistent deflection of criticism towards anti-semitism, are what encourages the latter, and the connection between the two.
sphinx

I think this is a uselessly broad statement, and doesn't shed much light on the contemporary appeal of anti-semitism and so I went with the supposition that you were referring to the colonies of Israel itself.

Well, I hope I have made it more specific for you.
sphinx

Is Israel a colony of 'world jewry'? I'm not entirely convinced by your argument.

I can't see why though:
sphinx

The law of return certainly exists and is built on exclusionary principles, it grants accelerated citizenship to Jews, and other immigrants flounder in the bureaucratic nightmare (the Sudanese are a good example lately, I also have a friend who after a year trying to immigrate to Israel gave up in exasperation after his papers were delayed for months and months simply for being a convert). Israel is also a racist place, with not only a 'demographic' exclusionary principle but workforce hierarchies based on ethnic affiliation.

So far you're with me.
sphinx

But back to the subject, world Jewry is not a nation state with the power to militarily defend the territory of 'its colony' from the outside.

World Jewry is a loosely-connected cultural collective, with a few major influential bodies (mostly centered around the colonial project). That is not at all a necessary condition for Israel to be a colony, though, so long as there is enough organization for a sufficient body of human resources to be directed at enlarging the colony.
sphinx

In terms of finance? The American government is for instance the heaviest investor in the Israeli economy, both in terms of direct investment and foreign aid, mostly for the sake of advanced weapon production, but even this amounts to only $1.2 billion a year. Israeli GDP is $195 billion a year. How does this colonial relationship exist objectively?

I refer you to your own statement above. It's a matter of demographics, not finance. When it comes to finance, I suspect Israel is a lot like other imperialist pawns. But other imperialist pawns of the bigger powers such as the US, Russia and China are not based upon an influx of enclassed ethnically-differentiated immigrants.
sphinx

I would argue that Israel is better described as a state in which the primitive accumulation phase of the bourgeois revolution has essentially been allowed to continue indefinitely, and the racist aspects of this remain within the tiers of the economy, the economic relationship between Israel and the territories and with the annexation of land in the settlements serving as a pressure valve for working class struggle. All of these tendencies are important for understanding class society in Israel and Palestine, but to concentrate on them to the exclusion of the most important consideration: that Israel is a sovereign state which mediates the class relations of capitalism, like any other state on the rest of the planet, seems to me to miss the forest for the trees. And this is precisely the obsessive focus of the anti-Zionists. It needs to be emphasized that the core of Israeli capitalism is the tech sector, metals, the diamond industry, weapons, it is not the settlements nor is it the land that the JNF has accumulated but doesn't know what to do with.

I don't disagree with anything you've said in this paragraph, except that I think the JNF knows exactly what it wants to do with the land it has accumulated: put more Jews on it, and keep non-Jews off of it.
sphinx

When I was in Israel this summer I went to a village called Segev Shalom, which is a bedouin settlement created by the government. Here there was a presentation by people working in solidarity with Bedouin against demolitions in the Negev, discussing the problem of the 'Judeaization of the Negev', a project the Israeli bourgeoisie has been quite keen on since the founding of the state: creating an infrastructural link between the middle belt of Israel (starting at Be'er Sheva basically) and its southern outposts across the vicious heat of the Negev. You may remember that there were some recent Bedouin evictions which were initiated by the government for the sake of slowly bringing Jews from outside of Israel into the desert and subsidizing their neighborhood developments in order to slowly populate this area with Jews. This is an example of this process. However can we analyze this project in terms of a colonial endeavor for instance?

Read this over again and tell me if this isn't an exact description of how a colonial power would expand its settlements and slowly yet violently remove the current inhabitants. Seriously, why do you keep arguing with me when all your arguments are supportive of my perspective?
sphinx

It would be a mistake to understand the goal of the policy as the ethnic cleansing of bedouin remaining on the land.

Was that ever the goal of colonialism anywhere else? As you say later, the ethnic cleansing has always been the result of indigenous people being "in the way":
sphinx

The Israeli bourgeoisie are like any other, they not only want to profit from a large public works project, they are also interested in centralizing all the water resources in this area, which is one of the centrifugal characteristics of capitalism itself. Thirdly they are interested in a stronger transport infrastructure across the Negev, and last the military benefits of firmer control over the entire territory. Most of these goals are not characterized by colonial goals, but instead by capitalist development. For the bourgeoisie, the Bedouin are only in the way.They are only in the way like other poor minorities in American slums slated for redevelopment, like working class people where a nuclear power plant will be built.

With, again, the clear difference that there is an ethnic differential created by the colonialist regime making class solidarity close to impossible.
sphinx

Getting back to the subject of anti-semitism,
...
Wow, Abe Foxman. That's low.

You're right. That was needlessly insulting and I withdraw it. I'm sorry.
sphinx

First off, why is it that in a discussion of anti-semitism and anti-Zionism we have not yet even touched on the efforts of Al-Manar, broadcasting since 1991, which was (is still?) available in Europe until 2004 and enjoys a considerable audience in the middle east and Arabic-speaking parts of Africa. We haven't talked about the rise of the far right in Europe. We haven't talked about Al Qods day, we haven't talked about Iranian TV. We haven't talked about the efforts to rally holocaust deniers with an international conference and contest in Teheran. We haven't talked about Jorg Haider on Al Jazeera. We haven't talked about the propaganda of Hamas.

That's because the real topic wasn't antisemitism but anti-Deutsch, a group which, like anti-semites in the Left, conflates Zionism and Judaism.
sphinx

Just the above should be enough proof that anti-semitism is seen as a useful tool of mobilization for a variety of ruling classes. Add to this that many of them have overlapping interests.

And which interests do anti-semite migrants in Israel represent?
tojiah

A lot of people decrying Zionism are either Palestinians, who have direct personal or familial experience of the conflict, with a few of whom I have discussed this issue, or Israelis, who experience and know it from the "offending" side, like myself. I decry your attempt to muddy the waters.

sphinx

Ok, yes of course. I did not mean to assert that for some reason Israelis and Palestinians should not have a critique of Zionism (alongside one of capitalism and the state).

That's awfully kind of you.
tojiah

Let's move this discussion onto firmer ground. I'm willing to take on the mantle of being "an anti-Zionist", at least for the sake of discussion; I also have real knowledge of the conflict. What do you have to say to me? Is it wrong for me to oppose Zionism? Should I be joining the IDF instead? Should I be hailing the Annapolis talks, which are no more than a final attempt at having a legitimized indigenous contractor for the Zionist regime?

sphinx

If you send me your address I will send you pom-poms for the Annapolis broadcasts.

Seriously though, I am in no position to give you advice on what you should do personally. Like any anti-capitalist, the goal is to be and act subversively in your own context (and eventually outside of it). It is good that you are a revolutionary and that you communicate with the rest of us. I would hope that you are capable of organizing among others and fighting capitalism. What I think you will find however is that in an Israel where 80% of the population saw the end of the second intifada in a security barrier, and not in cross-border struggles, that the prospects for an internationalist movement are quite dim at the moment.

And this is a God-given fact of life, that cannot be analyzed in any way? My critique of Zionism is exactly as the use of colonialism as a tool of suppressing working-class consciousness in Palestine by the most powerful local ruling class.
sphinx

Two questions:

1. Why anti-zionist? What is lacking in the post-Zionist position (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Zionism) which asserts that Israel has achieved a safe space for Jews as well as a democratic state, and now is the time to move beyond it?

Common sense and historical perspective, maybe, seeing as it suggests that Zionism was worthy of support at some time in its past, that it has at some point not been a reactionary and repressive ideology?
sphinx

2. From an anti-zionist perspective, why do you think that Matzpen for instance failed to make real dents in the settlement project, but more importantly Israeli capitalism as a whole? Were the masses just too stupid for anti-Zionism the first time around?

It's not a matter of stupidity, it's a matter of availability of colonists. As long as enough colonists are available for the Zionist ruling class, it can prove itself and reproduce itself through the influx of colonists and expansion of living quarters. What can a bunch of whiny leftists do against that?

Nope. It is an "incitement" to anti-Zionism. Its identification with the victimhood of the Holocaust on and the monetary compensation it garners as a result, on the other hand, as well as its persistent deflection of criticism towards anti-semitism, are what encourages the latter, and the connection between the two.

Ok well you said it is an incitement to anti-semitism earlier in the thread, thus my response. Reframing your statement with the emphasis on anti-Zionism brings up a different argument.

World Jewry is a loosely-connected cultural collective, with a few major influential bodies (mostly centered around the colonial project). That is not at all a necessary condition for Israel to be a colony, though, so long as there is enough organization for a sufficient body of human resources to be directed at enlarging the colony.

I guess I'd like to hear your definition of colony then. Keep in mind that I'm not saying Israel doesn't have colonial aspects to it, it irrefutably does. But I still don't see the usefulness of your formulation. From what I know 'world Jewry' is a somewhat varied force. It's only homogeneity vis-a-vis Israeli policy comes in influencing Israeli policy on Jerusalem (a holy city to all religious Jews), in almost all other cases the Israeli government takes the lead in defining military operations, maintaining the occupation, regulating the economy etc., to which Jewish organizations worldwide take their own positions on. The relationship is largely one of reaction, not an active colonial relationship. World Jewry simply isn't deciding Israeli policy. Really, did world Jewry launch the attack on Lebanon? Or did Israel do that?

Even if you restrict your point to demographics, this does not decide the question of what is and what isn't a colony of something else. Germany for instance has (or had) 'the law of blood', a preferential immigration policy for people of German descent about which I quote:

Under this concept of citizenship, non-Germans in far-off lands who can show ancient Germanic family ties can claim a "right of return" to the fatherland, while children born in Germany to Turkish workers face bureaucratic obstacles. In the past decade, as many of these "Germans by blood" have been taken in as those seeking asylum; the ingathering was intended.

And the Germans were never subjected to a systematic policy of annihilation enacted on the basis of who and who was not a German. Germany also has a much lower population of non-Germans than Israel has of non-Israelis. Is Germany a colony of...Germans? Or just a nation state with racist tendencies like they all have? (Japan incidentally has the same policy and I'm sure others do as well). It makes more sense to me to understand Israel as a colonial state in its own right, that is in terms of its internal policy and the colonies outside of its borders, not in relation to an external power.

I also don't think that its development can be seen outside of the wider tendency towards the formation of post-colonial nation states after WWII, especially when you take into account how many Jews were evicted from countries in the region. The upsurge in Zionist immigration and the establishment of the staet coincided with the end of the colonial period in the middle East and the reactions to Israel's emergence were rooted in the attempts by regional ruling classes to define their own new nations not only against the imperial projects of Europe and America (and therefore the 'imperialist outpost Israel') but also narratives which could unite disparate belief systems to agree with the feudalistic governance structures on which these states were erected. In the period after the 1948 war, right when so many of these nations were coming into being, the attacks on Jews as Jews in these countries is pretty plain evidence that Zionism was defined as both an external enemy of these new nation states (illustrated in the war) and as an internal menace (already a marriage of anti-semitism and anti-Zionism), and therefore that the Zionists (more or less the Jews) could stand in as an easy avatar of imperialism (and in some instances communism).

In 1941, following Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup, riots known as the Farhud broke out in Baghdad. As a result of Farhud, about 180 Jews were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were looted and 99 Jewish houses were destroyed.[33]

A series of pogroms started in Tripoli in November 1945; over a period of several days more than 130 Jews (including 36 children) were killed, hundreds were injured, 4,000 were left homeless, and 2,400 were reduced to poverty. Five synagogues in Tripoli and four in provincial towns were destroyed, and over 1,000 Jewish residences and commercial buildings were plundered in Tripoli alone.[41] The pogroms continued in June 1948, when 15 Jews were killed and 280 Jewish homes destroyed.[42]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_lands#Jews_flee_Arab_states_.281948-.29

During the Arab-Israeli war:

In June 1948, soon after Israel was established and in the midst of the first Arab-Israeli war, riots against Jews broke out in Oujda and Djerada, killing 44 Jews. In 1948-9, 18,000 Jews left the country for Israel.

In 1948, Jewish neighborhoods in Cairo suffered bomb attacks that killed at least 70 Jews. Hundreds of Jews were arrested and had their property confiscated.

These events are part of the larger picture of how many of the post-colonial nationalisms in the middle east managed self-definition. The ideologists who defined themselves in anti-imperialist terms against Israel and the press which empowered them not only worked (and work) in their own interests for preserving their own power (my original point) but they are at least as responsible for reactionary anti-semitism and anti-Zionism as the justifications of the Israeli government (your point).

Read this over again and tell me if this isn't an exact description of how a colonial power would expand its settlements and slowly yet violently remove the current inhabitants. Seriously, why do you keep arguing with me when all your arguments are supportive of my perspective?

Yes the situation of the Negev does resemble traditional colonialist development, the Bedouin are gathered in settlement cities and the estates are used as incentive for Jews from other countries to immigrate to Israel. The problem is that the colonial aspect ("Judaization") is focused on to the exclusion of more relevant critiques of the situation for an anti-capitalist: 1. resource centralization and monopolization by the state and 2. the construction of road infrastructure for the sake of expanding access for capital and the military. These two phenomenon produce the exclusion which makes way for the colonists, and these phenomenon are the primary target for a critic of political economy.

You said that the worldwide growth in anti-semitism and anti-Zionism is mainly due to Israel being the only active colonial power in the world, a fact which supposedly sets it apart from other nations. What I'm trying to point out is that this 'active colonial' aspect of the Israeli state is fetishized, it is widely understood as an intransigent greed for territory and resources, when in fact it is the product of quite rote laws of capitalism in the context of uneven development. The settlements for another example have long been not only a biblical fulfillment of prophecy and justification for military outposting (Zionism) but also a tradeoff negotiated by successive labor and Likud governments to new immigrants and working class Israelis via 'Labor Zionism'.

Against any materialist understanding of Israeli class society, a good example of how the colonialist aspects of Zionism are fetishized is provided by Gilad Atzmon, given a megaphone as I mentioned above, by the Morning Star:

"For an Israeli to humanise himself, he must de-zionise himself. In this way, self-hating can become a very productive power. It's the same sense of self-hating I find, too, in Jews who have given the most to humanity, like Christ, Spinoza or Marx. They bravely confronted their beast and, in doing so, they made sense to many millions."

"I know deep inside me that the Hebraic identity is the most radical version of the idea of Jewish supremacy, which is a curse for Palestine, a curse for Jews and a curse for the world. It is a major destructive force," he says.

Not only for Gilad Atzmon, but for the press that endorses him, for the people who read him seriously, for the discourse that enables his speech, the critique of Zionism as colonialism is a moral critique. Self-hatred is the way to redemption (and others can help the Israelis hate themselves as well! Actually we can just hate the Israelis). Not the attack on value and the state, but the internal struggle against external phenomena is accorded legitimacy. It is not enough to note that Gilad Atzmon is an anti-semite. Given the currency accorded this man, I think it is fair to say that this is a relatively uncontroversial assessment of Zionism, that Zionism does not have liberatory qualities even after the Shoa but is an expansionist menace internal to the Israelis that has no internal barriers to development, not in terms of class nor in politics. I don't think this sort of essentialism is so far from a biologism, and the manifestation of the latter was illustrated quite vividly up until 2004 by suicide bombers for whom the bodies of the Israelis came to substitute for the domination they experience. "Every Israeli is a colonist".

It is also of course a scandal that the same European and American left which holds a special condemnation for the eviction of Palestinians from the territory that became Israel hardly had any such words when these powers were variously assisting the breakup of Yugoslavia (characterized by ethnic cleansing on all sides).

If I could bring this back to the anti-Germans for a minute, I think it is at least them who managed to expose many of these problems even if they have many of their own.

Next, you keep bringing this up:

And which interests do anti-semite migrants in Israel represent?

I'll bite. What do you think about them? To me they indicate the widespread appeal of anti-semitism in Russia, their country of origin, and not a lot more.

Two questions:

1. Why anti-zionist? What is lacking in the post-Zionist position (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Zionism) which asserts that Israel has achieved a safe space for Jews as well as a democratic state, and now is the time to move beyond it?

Common sense and historical perspective, maybe, seeing as it suggests that Zionism was worthy of support at some time in its past, that it has at some point not been a reactionary and repressive ideology?

Wouldn't that be the exact reason to leave it behind? That it was an ideal that became exactly that, a reactionary and repressive ideology. I suppose you share the position that after WWII there was not a need for Jews to gather together to defend themselves?

sphinx wrote:

2. From an anti-zionist perspective, why do you think that Matzpen for instance failed to make real dents in the settlement project, but more importantly Israeli capitalism as a whole? Were the masses just too stupid for anti-Zionism the first time around?

It's not a matter of stupidity, it's a matter of availability of colonists. As long as enough colonists are available for the Zionist ruling class, it can prove itself and reproduce itself through the influx of colonists and expansion of living quarters. What can a bunch of whiny leftists do against that?

There are plenty of colonists available for Gaza right now. Why aren't there any colonists actually living there? Obviously the ability for settlements to expand is a factor of the political situation, and surely it is a sign of consciousness that Israelis have grown a distaste for defending these colonies against the Palestinians that attack them. Somehow some whiny leftists managed to accomplish that, even if it was Sharon who eventually pulled the plug.

I'm still curious though do you see anti-Zionism as eventually having some sort of appeal among working class Israelis?

sphinx

Nope. It is an "incitement" to anti-Zionism. Its identification with the victimhood of the Holocaust on and the monetary compensation it garners as a result, on the other hand, as well as its persistent deflection of criticism towards anti-semitism, are what encourages the latter, and the connection between the two.

Ok well you said it is an incitement to anti-semitism earlier in the thread, thus my response. Reframing your statement with the emphasis on anti-Zionism brings up a different argument.

No, I did not. This is what I said, originally, in regards to how Zionist policy incites anti-semitism:
tojiah

Also, if you're looking for where the revival of anti-semitism is coming from, you need look no further than the Zionist movement, crystalized into the Israeli government, which has appropriated the consistent victimhood of anti-semitism in order to promote its own colonialism (and is still getting money from the German government as a result; I wonder how anti-Deutsch wrap their heads around that, and the fact that the Israeli government is now asking for additional funds).

I clearly link this with the appropriation by the Zionists, rather than the mere colonialism itself.
sphinx

tojiah

World Jewry is a loosely-connected cultural collective, with a few major influential bodies (mostly centered around the colonial project). That is not at all a necessary condition for Israel to be a colony, though, so long as there is enough organization for a sufficient body of human resources to be directed at enlarging the colony.

I guess I'd like to hear your definition of colony then.

I'd say that a colonial state is a state whose ruling class depends on a continuing influx of immigrants directly linked to it ethnically. The important part is for a large enough group outside the state to be able to become higher-strata members of the state, and for this to be necessary for the local ruling class's survival.
sphinx

Keep in mind that I'm not saying Israel doesn't have colonial aspects to it, it irrefutably does. But I still don't see the usefulness of your formulation. From what I know 'world Jewry' is a somewhat varied force. It's only homogeneity vis-a-vis Israeli policy comes in influencing Israeli policy on Jerusalem (a holy city to all religious Jews), in almost all other cases the Israeli government takes the lead in defining military operations, maintaining the occupation, regulating the economy etc., to which Jewish organizations worldwide take their own positions on. The relationship is largely one of reaction, not an active colonial relationship. World Jewry simply isn't deciding Israeli policy. Really, did world Jewry launch the attack on Lebanon? Or did Israel do that?

Ever since that point where David Ben-Gurion had to acquiesce to the demands of world Jewry not to be forced to obey him, so that they may support Israel financially and demographically, Israel's policy has to a large part been subservient to its need to maintain an organic connection with world Jewry. The colonial aspect doesn't have to be a matter of being given direct orders. The pre-revolutionary American colonists were not obeying orders to commit genocide upon the indigenous population, they were simply facilitating the use of natural resources for the benefit of the various empires and expanding their colonies in order to contain the influx of colonists. Indigenous peoples just happened to be in the way.
sphinx

Even if you restrict your point to demographics, this does not decide the question of what is and what isn't a colony of something else. Germany for instance has (or had) 'the law of blood', a preferential immigration policy for people of German descent about which I quote:

Under this concept of citizenship, non-Germans in far-off lands who can show ancient Germanic family ties can claim a "right of return" to the fatherland, while children born in Germany to Turkish workers face bureaucratic obstacles. In the past decade, as many of these "Germans by blood" have been taken in as those seeking asylum; the ingathering was intended.

How many "blood" Germans make use of this law every year? What percentage are they of the population? And, not least importantly, just how many "blood" Germans are living their lives outside of Germany's borders? With Jews and Israel the yearly influx has been:

[*]2000: 61723
[*]2001: 44863
[*]2002: 34984
[*]2003: 24536
[*]2004: 22485
[*]2005: 22806
[*]2006: 20955

As you can see, there is a marked decline in Jewish immigration, to which the Zionist regime has responded by privatizing certain colonization aspects and by initiating more benefit packages for Jewish immigrants.

As for the number of potential positive colonists compared to existing colonists, at the end of 2006 there were 5,393,400 of them (75% of the general population, and apparently about 4.3% of which were immigrants from the past seven years alone) according to the Israeli central statistics bureau, while there are around 6 million Jews in the US alone and around 14 million world-wide. How do the Germans compare?
sphinx

And the Germans were never subjected to a systematic policy of annihilation enacted on the basis of who and who was not a German.

Quite a few of them were, obviously. Or are you claiming that Jews, Slavs, etc. were not true Germans?
sphinx

Germany also has a much lower population of non-Germans than Israel has of non-Israelis. Is Germany a colony of...Germans? Or just a nation state with racist tendencies like they all have? (Japan incidentally has the same policy and I'm sure others do as well).

The law is just words on a piece of paper. Again, in practice, how large is the influx of Japanese "returnees"? How large is the influx of German "returnees"? How large are the respective external colonial pools?
sphinx

It makes more sense to me to understand Israel as a colonial state in its own right, that is in terms of its internal policy and the colonies outside of its borders, not in relation to an external power.

Well, I disagree, for reasons I've stated throughout this exchange. Israeli policy within its "borders" is not all that different from that outside its borders, it just happens to have less room to maneuver. What about the Bedouin situation that you yourself previously raised in this thread, for example? That makes a lot more sense if you see the whole of Palestine as one big colony, as opposed to accepting the partition just because the UN said so and Stalin figured it was a good idea at the time (the real reason Israeli Leninists of various sorts accept it), or for whatever reason you accept for it.

Responding to the rest of your comment will have to wait, I'm afraid, until I've gathered the strength for it.

sphinx

Why are partisans of the Zapatistas not 'anti-Mexican'?

Probably because some of their communiques appeal to some kind of broad Mexican nationalism?

I am finding the discussion between Sphinx and ToJ hard to follow. Why is it important to decide whether or not Israel is a 'colonial state'? Isn't this going back to the false question of whether it's 'legitimate' or not? The key point is that it's an imperialist state but in that it's no exception to all other states in ths period of history.

Alf

I am finding the discussion between Sphinx and ToJ hard to follow. Why is it important to decide whether or not Israel is a 'colonial state'? Isn't this going back to the false question of whether it's 'legitimate' or not? The key point is that it's an imperialist state but in that it's no exception to all other states in ths period of history.

I fully agree. I would just like to change the last sentence into this:
The key point is that Isreal is a capitalist state and so there is no exception to all other states at all !

As to all the 'Anti-German'-nonsence coming from the German 'Left' I think the best think to do is simple to ignore it and wait for some of them to come to their senses by themselves.

J.

Mike Harman

sphinx

Why are partisans of the Zapatistas not 'anti-Mexican'?

Probably because some of their communiques appeal to some kind of broad Mexican nationalism?

oh boo hoo.

Today, we repeat: OUR STRUGGLE IS NATIONAL

Alf

I am finding the discussion between Sphinx and ToJ hard to follow. Why is it important to decide whether or not Israel is a 'colonial state'? Isn't this going back to the false question of whether it's 'legitimate' or not? The key point is that it's an imperialist state but in that it's no exception to all other states in ths period of history.

But I think that it is an exception to other states in this period of history, for the reasons I've explained on our talk at the Doric Arches a while ago. Being a colony is a particularly effective method of masking class consciousness; it throws the "ruling" ethnicity into a self-perpetuating siege consciousness, while the various "subjugated" ethnicities are thrown into national liberation consciousness, if they are not merely represented by well-meaning liberal civil rights activists. If we are to foment class struggle in the Middle East, this is something that needs to be accounted for, though neither by supporting (critically or otherwise) reactionary factions masking themselves with anti-colonialist rhetoric (like most of the Left), nor by opposing them and supporting watered-down Zionism (like the anti-Deutsch).

> Apparently the anti-deutsch beat people up for wearing kheffiyehs among other crazy things.
This is certainly not true!

I agree with ToJ that there are particularities about the situation of Israel/Palestine which make it especially difficult to challenge the nationalist concensus on both sides; I also of course agree with the necessity to oppose Zionism and Palestinian nationalism as twin enemies. But Israel is certainly not unique in this: in Turkey, the nationalist oppression of the Kurds and the nationalist reaction to it produce a comparable trap, similarly in northern ireland, parts of the Russian Federation ,etc.

regarding modern anti-semitism, I do agree with Sphinx that it is not a mere reaction to Zionism, as it has much longer historical roots. Naturally though I don't at all agree with his Israeli 'exceptionalism'. The comrades of the Gauche Communiste de France produced an excellent critique of national liberation struggles (and Trot support for them) in the 40s called precisely 'Exceptional Cases'. Maybe I can translate it at some point.

Mike Harman

Today, we repeat: OUR STRUGGLE IS NATIONAL

look at my tears, i mean, just look at them

Alf, it's not just that there are and oppressing nationality and an oppressed nationality, it's that the oppressing nationality has reinforcements pouring in, that it depends on these reinforcements, which I think is different from the Turkish situation, though how one should respond to it I am obviously unsure. Somehow standing at Ben Gurion shouting "colonists go home!" doesn't seem to be the most effective answer (and would rightly make me look like a wingnut), but perhaps organizing in Jewish communities outside of Israel around this issue, within the greater immigration context, would make some sense, since it would cut off reinforcement at the source, and make the militant less accessible to the Israeli security apparatus. Considering that context of the conflict is so international, maybe this is where and how one should intervene.

I don't think that's the answer at all. It doesn't have any class basis. Jews who go to Israel come from a whole variety of class backgrounds - that's the whole problem with trying to intervene towards the 'Jewish community'. In the case of the most proletarian elements, they have most often gone to Israel to escape economic misery, as with many of the Russian and Ethiopian immigrants, or, earlier on, the direct racist oppression mentioned before in this thread. Arguing an 'anti-emigration' line outside Israel is not really any different from arguing against Jewish immigration inside Israel.

Presuming that the vast majority of Jews are working class, and taking into account the fact that the option of migrating into Israel with increased monetary compensation is only open to Jews, I think that there is a place for intervention within this milieu (of Jewish workers), either dissuading migration into Israel or providing a class background to circumvent class collaboration. I mean, working-class Jews would be a lot more accessible outside of Israel, before they have migrated, where they are experiencing their class anxiety most strongly (otherwise why would they move to begin with?), than after having migrated into Israel and settled into the "solution" to their problems, don't you think?

Not sure that the vast majority of Jews are working class....wasn't Borochov's 'inverted pyramid' about the tendency of Jews to be caught in the intermediate layers, linked to trade, etc? Leon had a similar idea with his notion of the 'people class', without drawing Zionist conclusions. Things have moved on since their day, but maybe not that much. '? In any case, a very strong petty bourgeois element to this day.

That's probably a question to be dealt with by a statistical analysis rather than by guessing. That'll have to wait for later. Anyway, I read on the online Israeli press that total Jewish migration to Israel is actually negative, more than twice as many Jews are leaving Israel as are returning, I've read on some other newspaper that there are some Russian government front organizations in Israel urging Russian-born Jews to return, etc. This is as much in the (bourgeois-imposed?) popular consciousness here as are draft-dodgers.

Not sure that the vast majority of Jews are working class....

Of course the vast majority of jews are working class, especially in Israel.

Just briefly, Alf and Kurasje, when have I ever said that Israel is not a capitalist state? I have said that historically, it is the only nation that has a reason to exist, that reason being based in the character of the exterminatory persecution and thouroughness of the genocide attempt against Jews in Europe before and during the second world war, which is obviously rooted in a longer history of Jewish persecution in Europe; second, the existence of Jewish colonies in Palestine during the war behind Allied lines that were available as a route of escape and a place for a defense of Jews as Jews; third the fact that the popularity of Zionism only surged in the first revolutionary wave's failure, corresponding to a period of deep pessimism for universal enlightenment. In such a period, the creation of an armed Jewish collective was not only rational but necessary given the consequences of the failure of bourgeois emancipation for the Jews in Europe. Even after the war there were pogroms of Jews in Poland. There was no guarantee that Jews remaining in Europe would not see the resumption of pogroms. There were also no guarantees that countries which accepted Jewish refugees would not have major anti-semitic backlashes at some point, given that this prejudice has an insidiously international appeal.

It's true that other peoples have endured similar persecution, but none share all of the characteristics I mention above. More importantly, no other people have been fetishized as universally as 'grave-diggers of the nation' as Jews have.

I also want to point out that it is TreeofJudas' point, not my own, that Israel is a special kind of state in terms of its mode of accumulation (colonialism). This is the position I am arguing against, in order to point out the fetishistic character of anti-Zionism in a period where Israel is projected as not only the cause of escalating imperialist tensions, but also an anachronously racist entity without a class basis.

I have already listed a few major examples of the shift in discourse around Israel, but recent events seem to confirm that things will get worse in this direction. This week the IAEA and NATO have somewhat officially backed off from the potential of armed conflict with Iran, a milestone in the 'emerging influence' of this power. The Iranian ruling class's efforts to establish nuclear energy, arm Shi'a militias in Iraq and cast aside the dollar in favor of the Euro have served them well in establishing the regime as a new regional power for the west (in particular Europe), Russia etc. to reckon with. It's already clear how much the Americans have worked out agreements with Iran in order to demobilize the Mahdi Army and to control security in Baghdad (military commanders praising the contribution of Iran to the 'stabilization' of the city). It is well known that this regime is actively involved with holocaust denial, recently inviting a German NPD leader, Udo Voigt, who felt empowered enough there to declare "at max only 340,000 Jews died in the holocaust" http://karlmarxstrasse.blogsport.de/2007/12/12/npd-goes-begging-to-ahmadinejad/. He repeated the denial of 'the numbers' in Germany later and is now facing a parliamentary inquiry. I believe that Iran's new status will represent a further escalation of crass anti-Zionism that has no internationalist content, and will serve to maintain and expand the anti-semitic memes now so popular from the hard right of Udo Voigt to the 'brave taboo-breakers' of Walt and Mearsheimer. Whatever happens as a result of Annapolis, it will be European currency and German investment maintaining the most actively propagandizing anti-semitic government on earth, providing a pole for new ventures in historical revisionism and regrouping of the right.

TreeofJudas, skipping ahead a little bit...

I'd say that a colonial state is a state whose ruling class depends on a continuing influx of immigrants directly linked to it ethnically. The important part is for a large enough group outside the state to be able to become higher-strata members of the state, and for this to be necessary for the local ruling class's survival.

The ruling class of Israel does not depend on a continuing influx of ethnically-linked immigrants as you yourself prove with immigration statistics. This point is further weakened by your later observation that many Jews left Israel during the second intifada and that Israel has not been successful in motivating them to return. At the same time Israel has failed to collapse...

Also, going by your definition, Germany is a colony of Germans. http://www.zuwanderung.de/english/1_statistik.html

- Ethnic German repatriates: As a result of World War II, Germany took in more than 12 million expellees and other persons between 1945 and 1950. From 1950 to 1984, an average of 36,000 repatriates of German ancestry resettled in the Federal Republic each year from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In 1987-88 this immigration started swelling; in 1988, the number of ethnic Germans moving to Germany rose to 203,000, and in 1990, the number was nearly 400,000. From 1987 to 1999, Germany took in a total of 2.7 million ethnic German repatriates from the territory of the Soviet Union. Starting in 2000, the annual figures sank to well under 100,000 and have now returned to their 1984 level.

Even if it were somehow a 'colony of Germans', Germany is not a state that depends on the influx of the 'blood Germans' for the survival of its ruling class. The ruling class survives like all other states in the expansion of value via the mediation of the market. What the 'blood Germans' provide is a nationalist motivation, one built on a racial basis. This doesn't qualify Germany for the title 'colony'. 'Nation-state' works just fine.

Ever since that point where David Ben-Gurion had to acquiesce to the demands of world Jewry not to be forced to obey him, so that they may support Israel financially and demographically, Israel's policy has to a large part been subservient to its need to maintain an organic connection with world Jewry. The colonial aspect doesn't have to be a matter of being given direct orders. The pre-revolutionary American colonists were not obeying orders to commit genocide upon the indigenous population, they were simply facilitating the use of natural resources for the benefit of the various empires and expanding their colonies in order to contain the influx of colonists. Indigenous peoples just happened to be in the way.

But that's exactly my point, that (in contrast to your first sentence) world Jewry does not significantly financially support Israel and that foreign investment is paltry compared to GDP! I do agree that to a certain extent the colonial relationship needs no special order-giving. However, besides your examples of Israel, which I think is flawed, I don't think you could bring up an instance of colonists acting independent of a state. Can you? Pre-revolutionary American colonists were subjects of their respective states. They were part of a larger framework that included a domestic exchange-based economy, taxation by their home country and exports flowing back to the hosts. That can hardly be called independent action.

My point all along has been that to the extent that Israel is colonial now and historically, it is Israeli colonialism, not that of a larger body of Jews outside of it. Further, that we can better understand major events such as the Nakba or the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Hebron not in terms of colonial primitive accumulation, which is undertaken in the interest of 'looting', the extraction of resources etc. (although the seizure of houses etc. is one aspect of al-nakba), but more bluntly as acts of ethnic cleansing, i.e. domestic racism, which are consistent with the creation of nation-states generally, and undertaken to secure territory.

sphinx wrote:

And the Germans were never subjected to a systematic policy of annihilation enacted on the basis of who and who was not a German.

Quite a few of them were, obviously. Or are you claiming that Jews, Slavs, etc. were not true Germans?

No. Obviously I'm pointing out that the majority of Germans were not the people sought out for this systemitized annihilation, instead they survived it, and the blood laws from that period still stand today as a descendant of the Nazi racial laws. The Israeli law of return is the inverse of this policy (at least in its refugee aspect), using the Nazi definition of a Jew to provide refuge for any Jew who seeks it.

sphinx wrote:

Germany also has a much lower population of non-Germans than Israel has of non-Israelis. Is Germany a colony of...Germans? Or just a nation state with racist tendencies like they all have? (Japan incidentally has the same policy and I'm sure others do as well).

The law is just words on a piece of paper. Again, in practice, how large is the influx of Japanese "returnees"? How large is the influx of German "returnees"? How large are the respective external colonial pools?

No it is not just a law on paper. As I've proven above it enables a significant migratory pull, and yet no one that I have read has EVER referred to Germany as running a colony in their nation state.

What doesn't fit in understanding Israel as one of many states created by 'national liberation' struggles? These efforts always define a people against an internal or external enemy and purges that enemy to a certain extent. The nationalist recarving in the 1990s of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia is a perfect example of this. Does this affect how we have to orient our solidarity to former Yugoslavs? Not to my knowledge. And yet it is allegedly decisive in the case of Israel. Look at the Kurds in north Iraq for instance and the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from their territory as another example of 'national liberation for those without a nation', especially the conflict over who gets to live in Kirkuk.

In Israel's case, the law of return has indeed served as a colonialist lever within the national territory and outside of it (as I mentioned in my understanding of the developments in the Negev). The big immigrations of Russian Jews, of Ethiopian Jews etc. were for instance politically and economically motivated migrant waves taken in the interest of a stronger Israeli state and economy. At the same time the law has functioned (and functions) as a refugee mechanism for Jews fleeing anti-semitism. But anti-zionism has to deny the historical constitution of the law because it avoids the historical constitution of Israel.

Considering the law of return as fundamental for the character of Israel as a 'Jewish state', does the widespread anti-zionism propagandized by those not directly involved in the conflict target ONLY the colonialist, or religious aspects of this law or of this state? No, it is enough to crassly negate Zionism and Israel itself. And that's why I'm talking about fetishization.

Interestingly, now even Abbas has for instance objected to the language of 'recognizing a Jewish state' in the negotiations before Annapolis, not likely indicating that the PA and the major ruling class factions have taken up the classic bourgeois position of universal abstract equality for all citizens, but more realistically that there has been a surrender to the Hamas positions since Camp David. Hamas of course is an organization that propagandizes an intransigient anti-zionism that hardly differs from anti-semitism (all Israelis are colonists), and revise history so that Palestine's status as a 'waqf' outweighs the importance of refuge for the holocaust survivors (In Gaza, Haniyeh himself recently lead crowds in the chant: 'we will never recognize Israel' right after another Hamas legislator declared "Jews ... we have already dug your graves" http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847343673&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).

Isn't it remarkable how for only one state in the world, the intimate connection between self-constitution (Jewish colonial state, and for Atzmon, Jew/Zionist as person) and imperialist expansion must be continually restated? That, otherwise, we 'aren't getting to the root of the problem'? When criticized, the imperialism of other countries are hardly ever effectively linked to the national character of its people. Yet for Israel this is repeated ad nauseam.

I wanted to get back to your original statement last, because I'm afraid I may just be misreading it.

No, I did not. This is what I said, originally, in regards to how Zionist policy incites anti-semitism:
treeofjudas wrote:

Also, if you're looking for where the revival of anti-semitism is coming from, you need look no further than the Zionist movement, crystalized into the Israeli government, which has appropriated the consistent victimhood of anti-semitism in order to promote its own colonialism (and is still getting money from the German government as a result; I wonder how anti-Deutsch wrap their heads around that, and the fact that the Israeli government is now asking for additional funds).

I clearly link this with the appropriation by the Zionists, rather than the mere colonialism itself.

Uh, but in your words, there is no mere colonialism in Israel's case, that colonialism has a Zionist character. No? If it's the Zionists 'appropriating the consistent victimhood of anti-semitism' in order to 'promote (Israel's) own colonialism', that is 'where the revival of anti-semitism is coming from', and since you also say that Israel's existence (the mode of state formation) inside its borders is inescapably colonial, (quoting you below)

tojiah

I do not consider what is called "settlements", i.e., Jewish villages, towns and outposts erected outside the green line (or outside the green line and the "big settlement blocks", depends on who it is you're talking to) to be the Zionist movement's sole colonialist enterprise. I in fact see them as merely as the violent margin of a process driven by the "Law of Return", which effectively promotes Israel as a colony for world Jewry.

then you are thereby saying that the colonialism of Israel (its existence in your words) is 'where the revival of anti-semitism is coming from'. Am I really misreading this?

What other ideas do you have about the origins of anti-semitism?

Look, I'm no longer finding my head or tail in this discussion. Maybe I should restate my point: as far as I'm concerned, the rise of antisemitism isn't instigated by the very existence of Jews, or by Zionist expansionism itself, but it is exacerbated by the fact that antisemitism itself has been used as an excuse for Israel's expansionist policy (which is not really, in itself, worthy of note, seeing as the state of Israel is a tool for its national bourgeois), painting every opponent of its actions as antisemitic, leading to the point where its opponents simply gave up to the label a while ago and thrive on it rather than going through the arduous task of denying it again and again. This has, of course, allowed many wide coalitions that were impossible previously between various bourgeois groups on the left and right. This is in addition to growing class antagonisms which promote racism as a tool of bourgeois survival in these trying times.

I think that this is similar to how various Islamist groups have participated in escalating Islamophobia; this obviously doesn't mean the same thing as "the damned Muslims bringing it upon themselves", so it goes the same way in relation to Jews.

As for the immigration question, I do think that it's important; as I told Alf, it's constantly pounded on us by the bourgeois media, almost as much as the "problem" of draft-dodgers; Again, this may not be as special to Israel as I am led to believe, but I remind you that unlike the German situation there is in fact a matter of former natives and their offspring being refused citizenship or even entry on an ethnic basis, namely, the Palestinian refugees of 1948. Perhaps the whole thing could be better formulated using a generic theory linking class struggle and immigration, and how differential immigration is used by national ruling classes to hide class antagonism.

I hope I've made things clearer. What I don't understand about your stance is why you think that Israel is the only justified nation in history due to anti-semitism. By your logic Kurdistan, Armenia, Liberia, etc., are all special legitimate nations, but I don't see them as anything more than tools of various bourgeois who are less well off trying to find places where they can be a ruling class.

Here is my tentative analysis of the situation regarding Israel: as Jews were violently evicted from their proto-bourgeois stations in decaying Feudal society by the national bourgeois, which had to base itself on national grounds in order to mask the class struggle with the proletariat (hence antisemitism in Europe, anti-Chinese sentiments in much of Oceania, and other examples I don't quite remember), some of them decided to form a nation-state in which they can be the ruling class, as opposed to just hoping to participate in some other nation's ruling class (an risky endeavor), or just becoming proletarians, God forbid (which most of the others did). Their plan of action was Zionism. In that sense Zionism was a national liberation movement (and is a national project), but it has set its territorial sights on a locale where there was a large percentage of natives with their bourgeois-inspired nationalism. The former's continuing success is the latter's continuing downfall, and the brunt of the pain goes to the farmers and proletarians, who have no stake in any of this, but have to bear the costs; those belonging to the nation of the more successful group of bourgeois have been having it easier, though things are deteriorating as the expansionist trend is closing on the borders of other established nation-states. This would have happened, by the way, even had the Palestinian populace been completely exterminated during the War of Partition (1947-1948), and more wars would have been inevitable, though obviously not because of some inherent anti-semitism of the various Arab nations in the Middle East.

Am I being anti-semitic so far?

This is a side issue, but on one of the 'anti-german' blogs someone posted a link to there's an article titled "Cool Kids Don't Wear Pali Scarves'. Is "Pali" the equivalent to "Paki"? I had never seen the word before, but it came off like a racial slur.

This may not be the place to write this, but I've just had an epiphany, and it's as good a place as any to have it torn to shreds. It's probably trivial to everyone and I've just caught on, but here it goes:

I now realize why the Jews were so central during the late 19th century and until the middle of the 20th century, why for such a long time their nation was so widely supported and upheld by so many states, what threw them to the forefront of proletarian struggles during that time.. in a sense they embodied the proletariat at least in one way: they had no country of their own. They were internationalist by nature, because they just had no national "home" with bourgeoisie who could seriously claim them as compatriots. That was why all the imperialist powers were so willing to set up Israel or a territory like it: the British, the Turks, the Americans, the Soviets (which moved from the Birobidzhan project to accepting the Partition Plan), even the Nazis(!), why the bourgeois have since kept it up for so long, in spite of the difficulties it raised regarding access to Middle Eastern oil. Since they failed in ridding the world of all Jews in the various processes which coalesced and were exemplified by the Holocaust, they needed Jewish workers to have a nation, instead, so that they could be nationalized and their class consciousness obfuscated; they needed those activist, immigrant, unsettled Jewish proletarians to find a steady territory to be dispossessed in: since they weren't able to destroy them, they had to grant them a state to be exploited in freely, where they will feel more easy in their chains.

Sphinx, you said that the Jewish state was the only nation-state with legitimacy, in view of antisemitism; but that is only true of you take the position promulgated by Zionism and encouraged by the rest of the bourgeoisie, that antisemitism is some ontological fact in the world psyche, that it is an a-historical fact, when that is not the case at all, when it is in fact a contingent, historical partner to Zionism in rerouting class struggle into nationalist warfare.

And now I shall really have to go to bed, hate working Fridays.

Those people are fucks. They can give war victims property they have in Germany if they feel so guilty for war. If they feel guilty they can come to Poland here and make the volunteer work because still there are ruins from Germans - the houses with holes from bullets. I think they apologists for American and Jewish imperialism who live in big fat rich Germany very convenient and judge everybody antisemites instead of making anything like real help for victims.

I now realize why the Jews were so central during the late 19th century and until the middle of the 20th century, why for such a long time their nation was so widely supported and upheld by so many states, what threw them to the forefront of proletarian struggles during that time.. in a sense they embodied the proletariat at least in one way: they had no country of their own. They were internationalist by nature, because they just had no national "home" with bourgeoisie who could seriously claim them as compatriots. That was why all the imperialist powers were so willing to set up Israel or a territory like it: the British, the Turks, the Americans, the Soviets (which moved from the Birobidzhan project to accepting the Partition Plan), even the Nazis(!), why the bourgeois have since kept it up for so long, in spite of the difficulties it raised regarding access to Middle Eastern oil. Since they failed in ridding the world of all Jews in the various processes which coalesced and were exemplified by the Holocaust, they needed Jewish workers to have a nation, instead, so that they could be nationalized and their class consciousness obfuscated; they needed those activist, immigrant, unsettled Jewish proletarians to find a steady territory to be dispossessed in: since they weren't able to destroy them, they had to grant them a state to be exploited in freely, where they will feel more easy in their chains.

I think there is some merit to this argument ToJ, but perhaps a bit one-sided.

The fact is that jewish populations were starting to integrate or be assimilated with the advent of modern nation-states. Before this jews lived in their own communities in self-chosen isolation from the rest of the community/society so that they could practice their religion and follow the rather strict and sometimes very arcane laws. The jewish communities would often get special permission to keep their own laws, own justice etc. (inter-jewish struggles were treated as that, the goyim community did not intervene) after simply paying them off. In a sense the jews did have their "nation" back then, though it was not tied to a piece of property.

With the nation becoming, the rational-bureaucratic state starting to form jews were not longer allowed to have separate communities with own internal laws and justice. They had to integrate, and in some cases were forced to assimilate, so it is in this sense that the jews "lost" their dispersed "countries". Many jews did integrate quite well (most notably in Britain if I remember correctly), for others there were problems.

It is in this context that jewish aspiration for a national home, where they can practice according to jewish laws without outside interference, also comes from. From what I've read (sorry can't remember the titles at the moment) there were struggles inside the jewish community whether they should integrate or seek to establish an independent polity. The loss of jewishness was often counterposed to integration, and security for jews was the argument against jews remaining separate. Many jews were very comfortable with the local bourgeoisie and were very successful capitalists, and they did not really want to start all over again where ever Israel might finally be located. Similarly quite a few proletarianized jews wanted to stay in the nations they integrated in because they could escape the sometimes very tyrannical internal jewish justice.

The Zionist organizations had a very hard time convincing, especially Britain to begin with, to support the Jewish colonization of Palestine. The Imperial Army was basically run by Arabists. It was an uphill struggle for quite some time. While I do agree with you that it must have been a blessing for the bourgeoisie European states to get rid of militant workers, it was hardly the only reason why the Zionist project was supported. Class is one thing, for sure, but pure racism, religious motives, being influenced by Zionists organizations also played a major part.

Sorry to ditch the discussion for so long, I'm having a busy winter.

tojiah

I hope I've made things clearer. What I don't understand about your stance is why you think that Israel is the only justified nation in history due to anti-semitism. By your logic Kurdistan, Armenia, Liberia, etc., are all special legitimate nations, but I don't see them as anything more than tools of various bourgeois who are less well off trying to find places where they can be a ruling class.

In any example of national liberation, a bourgeoisie that is repressed elsewhere will try to establish its hegemony in the new territory, yes that's true. The only difference between the Shoa and the massacres that the Kurds, Armenians and Liberians have faced is of course one of scale, and desired completion. The example of the Armenian genocide which you bring up is perhaps the crime most similar to the Shoa in that it involved a minority group which had previously faced political and religious oppression (and I believe sought political emancipation) being massacred on a wide scale. What differs here is that Armenians were attacked largely because they were accused of being supporters the entente, not necessarily being a corrupting or revolutionary menace in the body of society itself. They were never racialized, and were spared if they converted to Christianity. "The majority of Armenians in Istanbul (200.000 people) survived, and there was no international crusade to seek and kill Armenians outside of Turkey. Neither the Turks nor anyone else ever thought of Armenians as a demonic power threatening the whole human civilization, and the genocide was not planned as an end in itself." (Robert Wistrich, Hitler und der Holocaust, S. 330f.) This is the crucial difference that defines my position in relation to the German extermination plans and the establishment of a Jewish nation: that Jews were not seen as redeemable, even in the categories of bourgeois integration, and were as a consequence of their struggle for full citizenship, targeted for an internationally-organized elimination, in which industrialized killing apparatuses were employed, not for the conquering of territory or resources but only for a semi-automated genocide. This is an unprecedented break from civilization. Especially when you consider that (as Khawaga says) it was not because the Jews were without a nation necessarily, but often the opposite, that they were largely involved in bourgeois emancipation movements since the 1800s, had fought in WW1 in great numbers and despite this faced unprecedented pogroms and attacks on 'Jewish power in Germany'.

To get an idea of what distinguishes the Shoa from other genocides, I would urge you to read chapter 4 of 'Hitler's Willing Executioners', "The Nazis' Assault on the Jews: Its Character and Evolution" by Daniel Goldhagen.

Here is my tentative analysis of the situation regarding Israel: as Jews were violently evicted from their proto-bourgeois stations in decaying Feudal society by the national bourgeois, which had to base itself on national grounds in order to mask the class struggle with the proletariat (hence antisemitism in Europe, anti-Chinese sentiments in much of Oceania, and other examples I don't quite remember), some of them decided to form a nation-state in which they can be the ruling class, as opposed to just hoping to participate in some other nation's ruling class (an risky endeavor), or just becoming proletarians, God forbid (which most of the others did). Their plan of action was Zionism. In that sense Zionism was a national liberation movement (and is a national project), but it has set its territorial sights on a locale where there was a large percentage of natives with their bourgeois-inspired nationalism. The former's continuing success is the latter's continuing downfall, and the brunt of the pain goes to the farmers and proletarians, who have no stake in any of this, but have to bear the costs; those belonging to the nation of the more successful group of bourgeois have been having it easier, though things are deteriorating as the expansionist trend is closing on the borders of other established nation-states. This would have happened, by the way, even had the Palestinian populace been completely exterminated during the War of Partition (1947-1948), and more wars would have been inevitable, though obviously not because of some inherent anti-semitism of the various Arab nations in the Middle East.

Hmm...well first, what anti-semitism existed in Arab nations starting from the 1930s was carefully cultivated by among others, the Germans (just one example of many: the organizer of the Hitler youth helped organize Egyptian youth nationalist groups), al-Husseini and his allies, Qassam, al-Banna and the Ikhwan. It was not latent, it was in fact given form alongside the emerging anti-colonial movements.

I don't differ largely from the rest of your analysis, only perhaps on the level of inevitability that you seem to be convinced of. I also do not think that 'things are deteriorating as the expansionist trend is closing on the borders of other established nation-states", in fact the opposite seems to be the case. Israel did not hold territory after the last Lebanon war, the colonies in Gaza have been evicted and the overwhelming tendency expressed in Annapolis is towards the retreat from at least the outposts.

tojiah

Sphinx, you said that the Jewish state was the only nation-state with legitimacy, in view of antisemitism; but that is only true of you take the position promulgated by Zionism and encouraged by the rest of the bourgeoisie, that antisemitism is some ontological fact in the world psyche, that it is an a-historical fact, when that is not the case at all, when it is in fact a contingent, historical partner to Zionism in rerouting class struggle into nationalist warfare.

Of course this is not true.

I have argued that anti-semitism is a very specific fetishistic interpretation of dynamics in capitalism, and I will further state that it is historical and contingent upon the context in which it finds its object. Calling anti-semitism a 'contingent, historical partner to Zionism in rerouting class struggle into nationalist warfare' only makes sense if you ignore the context in which the Zionist project was accomplished: that the anti-semitism of the time did not intend to leave any Jews alive for Zionism! There was in fact a garrison of the SS awaiting Rommel's victory in Egypt to charge into Palestine and cleanse it of Jews. This as the holocaust in Europe was underway! How could these two forces be partners? So that is a complete misunderstanding of history and frankly the charge of an 'ultimate' collaboration is deeply mistaken. You're wishing crude class analysis onto the past.

interesting topic.

i would lik to contribute by providing english translations to some texts from anti-german writers, namely joachim bruhn and stefan grigat, and maybe, if i got time, parts of the ongoing debate between anti-germans and the "friends of the classless society". some of you might be interested, especially as some of those texts deal with theory of revolution, antipolitics, class constitution and critique of state.

unfortunately i've got pretty little time because of alienated labor. so it seems it will take some more time.

I must admit that engaging with the anti-germans in my head has led me to re-examine anti-semetism both historically and now and has broadened my understanding (and rejection) of the left.

Neither of my parents were/are leftists or anti-semites, so I'm not sure what you mean.

jesse blue

interesting topic.

i would lik to contribute by providing english translations to some texts from anti-german writers, namely joachim bruhn (...)

Joachim Bruhn? I guess this is the moron who told us some three years ago, that Ariel Sharon in his anti-fascist struggle is the modern successor and heir of Buenaventura Durruti? Isn't he the chief and guru of the ça Ira printing house, that published Willi Huhns book on the "Etatism of the social democracy", the book where Bruhn in his epilog blamed council-communism in general to be "the vanguard of anti-semitism"? I don't think it is worth getting him and his friends Grischat texts translated here. Maybe you should start your translation with those two texts...

yoshomon

Neither of my parents were/are leftists or anti-semites, so I'm not sure what you mean.

rrra ha ha haaaa :D

yoshomon

The most insane thing to me is them marching through Dresden with American flags!

I'd join any fascist beating those fuckers up. Some things just aren't kosher (as it were)!

lrnec

I’m still curious about what they mean that Germany doesn’t have a right to exist. What are they actually proposing, devolution to previous principalities, absorption into neighboring countries, change of name/government but retaining all geographical boundaries, nuking all Germans?

Probably nuking all Germans. Sound like awful people. The amount of grief they're tapping into, dishonoring the slaughtered and dead.

I think (I may be wrong tho) that it's been established that the German population had no knowledge of what Eichmann and co. were up to. Who knows if Hitler even knew?

I think that there has to be some explanation of why Germany, of all cultures, should be the one that fell to Nazism. It seems so strange - being the country that produced Stirner, Schopenhaur, and Nietzsche. The German people seemed so tied up with the question of the individual and the ego and the will, but ironically it was in the Latin countries (France, Italy, Spain) that libertarian aspirations actually flowered into powerful movements. I was talking to somebody recently who suggested that the answer lay in the fact that Germany had been the original bed of Europe's will to freedom. Martin Luther, Thomas Muntzer, the peasants who first marched with the black flag singing "Die Gedanken Sind Frie." Perhaps the will to freedom was exhausted in the German people?

zarathustra

I think (I may be wrong tho) that it's been established that the German population had no knowledge of what Eichmann and co. were up to. Who knows if Hitler even knew?

oh yeah dude, you are perfectly right; in that you "may be wrong tho" that is.

as far as i know, my grandparents knew everything one would want to know, and they liked it. they were workers and peasants. and i do not know anybody who dared tell me her/his grandparents didn't.

who exactly "established" your point? maybe i will get to learn anything.

Martin Luther

Supported killing Jews. Sounds like a great proponent of freedom.

Oh, and jesse is right. I'm sure not everyone knew the exact details of what was going on at every camp, but plenty knew plenty, and if they didn't, chose not to know.

I like the way in discussing this issue generally "they knew" establishes some kinda complicity, in the context of a very repressive dictatorship - which was killing loads of people - something which might encourage one to keep ones head down. Makes you think how the period we are living in will be described in the future - "they knew" about starvation in the third world, "they knew" about the nuclear stockpile, "they knew" about climate change, and this in the context of socities relativly free from political repression.

Terry

I like the way in discussing this issue generally "they knew" establishes some kinda complicity, in the context of a very repressive dictatorship - which was killing loads of people - something which might encourage one to keep ones head down. Makes you think how the period we are living in will be described in the future - "they knew" about starvation in the third world, "they knew" about the nuclear stockpile, "they knew" about climate change, and this in the context of socities relativly free from political repression.

no, "they knew" and they loved hitler. not in spite but because of, and i don't think it is very well understood (especially among the radical left) how much "they" (that means, the proletarian and semiproletarian masses) supported hitler actively and willingly, without coercion, took part in the killing of the jews. this is not goldhagens claim, it is a reality i grew up with, amongst those very same people.

i think you fail to grasp this. your comparison seems totally absurd to me: i don't think that 80% of any population not only desires a climate change, but is also eagerly willing to sacrifice anything they got in order to facilitate it.

Asher

Martin Luther

Supported killing Jews. Sounds like a great proponent of freedom.

Oh damn, so did Proudhon!! I guess we'll have to scrap him too! But seriously, Luther was a necessary step in the development of European consciousness away Papist group-think to a more individualistic consciousness. Even a Marxist historian such as Charles H. George recognizes this.

jesse blue

Terry

I like the way in discussing this issue generally "they knew" establishes some kinda complicity, in the context of a very repressive dictatorship - which was killing loads of people - something which might encourage one to keep ones head down. Makes you think how the period we are living in will be described in the future - "they knew" about starvation in the third world, "they knew" about the nuclear stockpile, "they knew" about climate change, and this in the context of socities relativly free from political repression.

no, "they knew" and they loved hitler.

Hitler never got more than 30% of the vote, and when he achieved power his popularity was lower even than that. There was an active resistance that was harbored by the population and were rarely turned over by fellow civilians.

not in spite but because of, and i don't think it is very well understood (especially among the radical left) how much "they" (that means, the proletarian and semiproletarian masses) supported hitler actively and willingly, without coercion, took part in the killing of the jews. this is not goldhagens claim, it is a reality i grew up with, amongst those very same people.

What we have here is a prime example of a self-hating German. Do you say the same thing about the Russians? Stalin killed more people, after all.

i think you fail to grasp this. your comparison seems totally absurd to me: i don't think that 80% of any population not only desires a climate change, but is also eagerly willing to sacrifice anything they got in order to facilitate it.

It's a good example. I still haven't seen any proof that the German people knew what was happening. I believe the government said that Jews etc. were being relocated to a homeland of their own in some Slavic country or something. Maybe some people suspected otherwise, but a) they were living under a totalitarian system, and b) they must have found it hard to believe.

Also, since I don't think you can quantitatively look at massacres of innocents, we should remember Dresden and the pillaging of Berlin by the Red Army.

The real criminals were the Nazis, Bolshevik traitors who undermined antifascist resistance, American Zionists who would rather see European Jews get massacred than see them immigrate anywhere but Palestine, the democratic governments who knew about the holocaust but kept mum, etc.

jesse blue

your comparison seems totally absurd to me: i don't think that 80% of any population not only desires a climate change, but is also eagerly willing to sacrifice anything they got in order to facilitate it.

No I don't think it is comparable. For one there were concentration camps in Third Reich Germany (majority German gentile population in them until 1942), suppression of any opposition groups, and a media entirely consisting of the propaganda of one party, not the sort of thing which exists today in Europe, yet people know - and this isn't a highly contestable supposition or a theory as is the Holocaust and knowledge among the wider public, about mass starvation,
and climate change, and before that the potential of nuclear holocaust, and yet do not do something!, in the later case, being as there were 'free elections' unlike in Nazi Germany, people in droves went out and voted for pro-NATO, pro-nuke, politicans. This to me suggests that 'knowing' about this or that big terrible thing doesn't necessarily amount to anything, and that if people today want to put previous generations on trial, it maybe the case that this too will happen in the future, especially in regard to things that it will be people in the future who have to suffer the consequences of.

jesse blue

supported hitler actively and willingly, without coercion, took part in the killing of the jews. this is not goldhagens claim, it is a reality i grew up with, amongst those very same people.

First of all "without coercion" is meaningless in Nazi Germany. Secondly where were the jews killed - in death camps in the East and by einzatgruppen in the East. Now talking about "the proletarian and semiproletarian masses" and "80% of any population"
and "took part in the killing of the jews" implies they were all over there doing that, well they were not were they, the death camps were in out of the way places outside of Germany, and the massacres in the East, were well massacres in the East. If the German public were made up of exterminationist anti-semites as you suggest they wouldn't have bothered hiding the holocaust and Himmler wouldn't have spoken of what was it a glorious chapter in our history that must never be written, ie keep quiet about this one lads.

For sure there was 'ordinary Germans' involved in the holocaust - as covered in the Order Police Battalion 101 book that Goldhagen ripped off, but it wasn't the entire population, or 80%, 50%, 20% etc... like there was an economy to run and a war to fight y'know they didn't all drop everything and start killing Jews, 'ordinary Germans' that is as opposed to hardcore committed National Socialists, pretty much the same as atrocities everywhere, except on scale, it was 'ordinary Americans' slaughtering Vietnamese villagers, 'ordinary Aussies' (Irish, English, Scots) killing the indigenous in Australia. Such is the way of the world.

I also do not doubt that a degree of knowledge about some atrocities was known about in Germany generally - but mostly about mass killings in the occupied territories - not about the death camps, for obvious reasons - there being tons of young Germans in the occupied territories, ad much less of a cover up, and there is no way people could have known about the scale of atrocity.

If the German Left wants to become useful it should spend more time concerned with today, and the future of its grandchildren, and less time concerned about what its grandparents were up to which is irreversable. Ye seem to have built up an entire milieu - and this is wider than the anti-Germans - revolving around what granddaddy did, I can't help thinking there was a time when the older folk of Germany used to go into full Alf Garnet mode just to wind ye up.

I couldn't care less if your grandfather was in the upper echelons of the SS - it is a personal issue for you to deal with - not something to build a political practise around.

The extent of involvement in, and support of, Nazi atrocities, is only a historical question now. If it were proved to be as you say, then so what?, humans have always been brutal to other humans - look at scalping or the postcards of lynchings in the U.S., the only unique facet of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s is one of scale and utter irrationality - both of which relate to policies emnating from central government, not the experience or involvement of individuals in the wider society in particular atrocities.

zarathustra

There was an active resistance that was harbored by the population and were rarely turned over by fellow civilians.

no there wasn't. you're either ignorant or in denial. there were some resisting groups in the factory, till around 1937, not longer. there were remnants of the illegal stalinist organisations, i.e. remnants from the para-secret cervice people like muenzenberg hab build. there were some catholic priests. that was all. nothing of it all was very popular.

Terry

there is no way people could have known about the scale of atrocity.

denial.

hey wouldn't have bothered hiding the holocaust

well they didn't.

I couldn't care less if your grandfather was in the upper echelons of the SS

thx, he was a peasant, as i told. don't even try and start distorting what i wrote , please.

There is no way people could have known about the scale of the atrocity cause there was no hub where reports, rumours, personal witness, etc.. could have been collated and then put forward as an analysis of what was happening in a fashion accessible to the average person. There wasn't say muckraking journalists to do this, opposition political groups to do this, human rights NGOs to do this, open publishing websites to do this, and there wasn't any publishing company or newspaper or such to then provide the information to the broad public after its collation by those non-existant (or very clandestine) groups.
So what are you left with - this or that story of a particular atrocity, maybe a photo of some Jews or Slavs being killed in the East - much like the photos of lynchings they used to have in the U.S. (except in Germany they were not commercially available as postcards), and so on - very small glimpses of what was going on (and certainly little knowledge of the specialist death camps).

The government did hide the holocaust. At a very basic level Jews were removed from Germany and killed elsewhere. If the entire population of Germany was well up for the holocaust and fully participating how come German Jews were not just killed where they were - in their houses, on the street, and something more like say in Rwanda in 1994. At another very basic level was it reported in German newspapers, no it wasn't.

Even if an appreciable large slice of the population knew and supported then what, would it be unique, they did surveys in the U.S. in the 1940s and something like 10 to 20 per cent of respondants wanted the entire extermination of the Japanese.

Aye there was an 'if' there, I was talking hypothetically, should have been clearer.

Very sensible stuff, Terry. I'd actually read a book about the national neurosis of guilt in Germany. It seems the only alternatives they're given is to hate themselves (with anti-deutsche being the most obvious example) or say a) they're proud of Hitler and/or b) the holocaust never happened. This kind of paralyzing guilt is horrible -- and apparently means the Zionist state has been parasiting off German tax-payers.

The fact is (as Terry said) the death camps were well away from people's eyes and the government was telling the German people that jews were being relocated.

Also, those who suspected what was happening were being thrown in the concentration camps themselves. And there was a German resistance worthy of memory!

The German Resistance Movement

Geschwister-Scholl-Institut fur Politische Wissenschaft

Die Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand

German Resistance to Hitler

Resistance in Nazi Germany

Actually, these liberal guilt-mongers are actually responsible for the current growth in racialist and neo-Nazi politics in Germany and Holocaust denial. There is no way a people can bare such a psychological burden of supposed guilt -- they either become self-haters (like anti-deutsche) or have to embrace Hitler and his deed, as I said. This guilt-mongering is objectively helping fascism.

Between 1933 and 1945, many thousands of people resisted the Nazis using both violent and non-violent means. Among the earliest opponents of Nazism in Germany were Communists, Socialists, and trade union leaders. Although mainstream church hierarchies supported the Nazi regime or acquiesced in its policies, individual German theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer opposed the regime. Bonhoeffer was executed in 1945. Within the German conservative elite and the German military's General Staff small pockets of opposition to the Nazi regime existed. In July 1944, a coalition of these groups made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. [...]

Other forms of non-violent resistance included sheltering Jews (sometimes at risk of death), listening to forbidden Allied radio broadcasts, and producing clandestine anti-Nazi newspapers. In the face of Nazi repression and violence, acts of resistance at times significantly impeded German actions, saved lives, or simply boosted morale of the persecuted.

Non-Jewish Resistance: Overview

Terry

I like the way in discussing this issue generally "they knew" establishes some kinda complicity, in the context of a very repressive dictatorship - which was killing loads of people - something which might encourage one to keep ones head down.

Oh, I didn't mean it like that, and I agree with the general content of your longer post at the end of page 4. I just wanted to correct zarathustra....

jesse blue

i would lik to contribute by providing english translations to some texts from anti-german writers, namely joachim bruhn and stefan grigat, and maybe, if i got time, parts of the ongoing debate between anti-germans and the "friends of the classless society"

Hi Jesse,

I think it might be more worthwhile to translate texts by some of the precursors of the Anti-Germans like Wolfgang Pohrt and Eike Geisel. I think Robert Kurz was correct in stating that contemporary Anti-Germans steal from Wolfgang Pohrt like kleptomaniacs in a supermarket.

I think the ISF/Bahamas crew, on the other hand, have produced very little theory of real value (pardon the pun). Ca Ira is a good publishing house for making available works by Backhaus, Reichelt, Agnoli, Rakowitz, etc., but the ISF's own texts are really nothing special, even the ones they wrote before they went off the deep end after the second intifada and 11.09.01.

By debate between ADs and the "friends of the classless society", are you referring to that article that appeared in Phase 2? I bought the first issue of Kosmoprolet, and I think the "theses on the classless society" deserve a translation.

zarathustra

Actually, these liberal guilt-mongers are actually responsible for the current growth in racialist and neo-Nazi politics in Germany and Holocaust denial.

Haha. Is this like the anti-semitic canard about how the Jews are responsible for the fact that people hate them?

There is no way a people can bare such a psychological burden of supposed guilt

"A people"? Anyone who thinks in categories of "peoples" has no business calling themselves a communist. I think you might be more satisfied fighting the good anti-imperialist fight for the "progressive nations" against the "reactionary nations" alongside the SWP/Respect.

Anyway, the notion of post-war German guilt is a myth. Of course, you don't read German, nor do you know the first thing about German post-war history, so it's expecting too much from you to carry out this discussion with any sort of tangential relationship to reality. Adorno's essay "Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?" would give you a pretty good idea of the collective psyche in the Federal Republic in the immediate postwar era. But you're not interested in real history.

they either become self-haters (like anti-deutsche)

Again, you know nothing about the Anti-Germans, otherwise you'd know the phrase "self-hater" is inapplicable since they define Germany as a specific mode of capitalist socialization, not as an ethnically defined people. It's a stupid notion (Germany as mode of production), but that's why I'm not an Anti-German. You, on the other hand, haven't spent anytime reading and refuting the theoretical writings of the Anti-Germans, so you haven't a clue one way or the other.

That's symptomatic for most discussions about the Anti-Germans within the British and American left, which is reducible to, "dude, I totally heard there were like Antifas in Germany who carry Israeli flags on demos". In other words, your "knowledge" of the Anti-Germans consists of rumors, your "refutation" of their ideology is with a fantasy opponent that only exists in your head.

I propose a moratorium on discussion concerning that Anti-Germans by anyone who:

- can't read German at a sufficient level of proficiency to follow the debates

- doesn't know what the difference is between the ISF/Bahamas, the BgR Leipzig/Phase 2, Rote Ruhr Uni, Cafe Critique Vienna, the ADK Berlin, or the jour fixe initiative berlin (the latter no longer even Anti-German)

- can't explain the significance of names like Wolfgang Pohrt, Eike Geisel, Jürgen Elsässer, Henryk Broder, KB Hamburg, Rainer Trampert, Thomas Ebermann, Herman Gremliza, or Günther Jacob

- can't explain the different between "fundamentale Wertkritik" and the Anti-German variant.

- can't distinguish between groups that self-apply the label "anti-german" as an adjective, and those which self-apply it as a noun.

It's a peculiar arrogance of English-speakers that they view themselves as qualified to pontificate about political tendencies and developments throughout the world without spending sufficient time living in those countries or speaking the languages.

I should post the obligatory disclaimer that I'm not an Anti-German, and consider them political opponents, but I'm sick of the half-informed hearsay and rumor-mongering on these boards.

Angelus Novus

(...) It's a peculiar arrogance of English-speakers that they view themselves as qualified to pontificate about political tendencies and developments throughout the world without spending sufficient time living in those countries or speaking the languages (...).

Maybe. But I guess a better reason for a moratorium on this thread would be that the subject (i.e. the Anti-Germans) has nothing or little to do with anything libcom.org is dedicated to. They are neither libertarian communists, nor do they have any relations to working class or social struggles. They are just a temporary product within the decline of certain sectors making the German "left".

10 points to robot

- 50 to Jesse Blue; madame, you suck.

robot

They are neither libertarian communists

What is a "libertarian" communist?

I am a communist, meaning that I advocate the abolition of the commodity-form, money, and the state-form.

What does the adjective "libertarian" contribute to that basic understanding?

They are just a temporary product within the decline of certain sectors making the German "left".

Who's "they"? ISF/Bahamas? Gremliza's Konkret (including Trampert/Ebermann)? The ex-BgR/Phase 2 milieu?

mk

I think they apologists for American and Jewish imperialism

BTW, how could a comment like this go uncommented by the entire board? Or are anti-semitic tropes about "Jewish imperialism" standard fare for "libertarian" communists?

I'm so proud that racism against jews has its own name. Your not a racist; you are an *anti - semite*.

i think it makes it clear that racism against jewish people is HUGE problem, not to be muddled with lesser ones.

[/fucking with stupid thread]

Tacks

I'm so proud that racism against jews has its own name. Your not a racist; you are an *anti - semite*.

Anti-semite is the label willingly adopted by anti-Jewish political parties in Wilhelmine Germany. If you bothered to read history, you'd know that.

Oh wait, reading history is for wanky intellectual toffs, not manly true proletarian individuals like yourself.

robot

Maybe. But I guess a better reason for a moratorium on this thread would be that the subject (i.e. the Anti-Germans) has nothing or little to do with anything libcom.org is dedicated to. They are neither libertarian communists, nor do they have any relations to working class or social struggles. They are just a temporary product within the decline of certain sectors making the German "left".

Yeah because there's no chance that they're working class themselves. They're reading too much theory for that.

sphinx

Yeah because there's no chance that they're working class themselves. They're reading too much theory for that.

Well said. The workerist posturing by some here is irritating. I come from a proletarian background, both parents trade union activists. It never occured to me that it was something to be proud of. Certainly no one in my family wanted that sort of life for me. They wanted us to be doctors or lawyers and escape all that shit.

Loren Goldner once stated that all three volumes of Capital are a "phenomenology of the self-abolition of the working class". Unfortunately I think his point is lost on toy-town radicals for whom proletarian affectations are some weird way of constructing a subcultural identity.

Angelus Novus

Tacks

I'm so proud that racism against jews has its own name. Your not a racist; you are an *anti - semite*.

Anti-semite is the label willingly adopted by anti-Jewish political parties in Wilhelmine Germany. If you bothered to read history, you'd know that.

Fuck, that changes EVERYTHING

jog on :D

Angelus Novus

sphinx

Yeah because there's no chance that they're working class themselves. They're reading too much theory for that.

Well said. The workerist posturing by some here is irritating. I come from a proletarian background, both parents trade union activists. It never occured to me that it was something to be proud of. Certainly no one in my family wanted that sort of life for me. They wanted us to be doctors or lawyers and escape all that shit.

Are you having a laugh?

Calling you on this bullshit has nothing to do with a distaste for theory in general, it is to do with inward looking bullshit useless twat theory. What fuck are you on, 'workerist posturing'? Where has anyone used their class pride as a detractor from your daft guilt trip?

Using class analysis is not an example of being a class bore droning about not having much money as kid.

but yes, 20 points for identifying yourself as proletarian, and a bonus 5 points for the smokescreen of pretending you hated it when people did that :D

Angelus Novus

That's symptomatic for most discussions about the Anti-Germans within the British and American left, which is reducible to, "dude, I totally heard there were like Antifas in Germany who carry Israeli flags on demos". In other words, your "knowledge" of the Anti-Germans consists of rumors, your "refutation" of their ideology is with a fantasy opponent that only exists in your head.

It's not a rumor or a fantasy dude. Such anti-Germans exist. Do you deny it?

Angelus Novus

I propose a moratorium on discussion concerning that Anti-Germans by anyone who:

- can't read German at a sufficient level of proficiency to follow the debates

- doesn't know what the difference is between the ISF/Bahamas, the BgR Leipzig/Phase 2, Rote Ruhr Uni, Cafe Critique Vienna, the ADK Berlin, or the jour fixe initiative berlin (the latter no longer even Anti-German)
...

Way to stifle discussion. Perhaps with your in depth knowledge of anti-German intricacies you could make some relevant points that we could all learn from, rather than come off like a condescending prick.

I guess I see this whole anti-German thing as so tragic, not just because it's so full of shit, but because the German autonomist and radical left had been an inspiration to myself and many US anarchists. In the 90s when a Berlin squatter/info-shopper told me that they weren't joining the mass movement to oppose social spending cutbacks because "the Germans have it too good as it is" I thought it was a youthful folly that would soon pass. Now I see the anti-mass politics that had been prominent in some quarters taken to it's ugly conclusion.

On a side note, I AM worried by the increasing acceptance of anti-Jewish racism by parts of the left. Several years ago there was a protest against the "Celebrate Israel Day" here in Boston. It was attended not just by the pro-Palestinian groups (whom I support) but by some Nazi boneheads. There were people in the left who actually opposed going against the fascists that day because they saw Israel as the bigger threat. There is also too much tolerance of loony, blame everything on Israel folks who claim the Darfur tragedy is a Zionist hoax and that the U.S. has been fooled into supporting Israel against its own interests. So while I am decidedly anti-anti-German. I share some of the concern about anti-Jewish racism in the left.

Tacks

Calling you on this bullshit has nothing[...] your daft guilt trip?

What guilt trip? Are your reading comprehension skills so bad that you missed the part where I pointed out (for only the 10,000th time) that I'm not an Anti-German?

Angelus Novus

What is a "libertarian" communist?

Maybe you might find it helpful checking the search engine for "libertarian communism". Just it case you misread libcom with "library of components", "liberty and compost" or whatsoever.

Angelus Novus

I am a communist, meaning that I advocate the abolition of the commodity-form, money, and the state-form.

This is brave but it means nothing. Half of the Anti-Germans and quite some German radical-leftist will tell you the same. Everyone claims to be a communist, some even claim to be some sort of libertarian communists. But they have a bloodless and sterile definition of communism derivated from nothing but abstract theory and without any consequences for their life. All those guys (and some girls) will tell you, that the only force who can smash capitalism is dead or –as most Anti-Germans would argue– that every class struggle or social struggle must (at least in Germany) be necessarily anti-semitic and therefor is of evil. Thus that "communism" of most German radical leftist is a communism without a class that can abolish itsself and therefor it is nothing more than a label that serves as an excuse for not taking part in class and social struggles. This is one of the reasons why the German radical-left is little more than boring and why the few exceptions from the rule like the FAU, Wildcat and some others try to avoid being labeled as "radical lefists".

mK ultra

It's not a rumor or a fantasy dude. Such anti-Germans exist. Do you deny it?

No of course I don't deny it. I'm just questioning the usefulness of a discussion on such a superficial level. The descriptor "Anti-German", like "anarchist", describes a whole range of groups, journals, and individuals, some of which are bitterly opposed to one another.

The now dissolved BgR Leipzig, for example, whose former members continue to put out the journal Phase 2, never jumped on the pro-war/pro-Bush bandwagon, and generally consider the waving of Israeli flags on demos to be ill-considered.

Way to stifle discussion.

Oh please. Nobody is censoring anyone or prohibiting people from talking out of their asses about a phenomenon they know little about. I'm just calling people on it when they speculate.

Perhaps with your in depth knowledge of anti-German intricacies you could make some relevant points that we could all learn from, rather than come off like a condescending prick.

I don't think the hardcore of the Anti-Germans make any points that haven't made made previously by others. On Anti-American prejudice, the Revolutionary Cells put out a paper called "Beethoven and McDonalds". On Anti-Semitism, I like Moishe Postone's "Anti-Semitism and National Socialism". And on Anti-Zionism as a form of Anti-Semitism, again the Revolutionary Cells with the paper "Gerd Albertus is dead". Also on Anti-Zionism, the paper by the Autonome l.u.p.u.s. Gruppe, "Die verlorene Unschuld".

Those are all key texts for the discussions of themes that the Anti-Germans have attempted to monopolize for themselves, but the texts are better than anything the Antis have put out.

I guess I see this whole anti-German thing as so tragic, not just because it's so full of shit

Again, what's full of shit? ISF/Bahamas? I'd agree there, though ca ira is a great publishing house. Konkret under Gremliza's auspices? I think it's a really good communist monthly, and I'm glad they stopped publishing assholes like Horst Pankow. Phase 2? I agree with Robert Kurz that they are too close to the event horizon of the Antifa movement, but they do publish some great stuff, including interviews with Michael Heinrich and some excellent articles on Queer Theory by Georg Klauda. Jungle World? That paper will publish everything from Sergio Bologna to Bahamas assholes to French Trotskyists. One of their regular economics reporters is a heavy in the IWW Germany.

but because the German autonomist and radical left had been an inspiration to myself and many US anarchists.

Yes, I have the feeling that US anarchists indulge in a lot of myth-making and fantasy about the German Autonomen. This is not helped by the existence of mediocre books like Katsiaficas.

The sad truth is, the Autonomen don't exist in any meaningful sense anymore. It was a social movement which was bound to the conditions of reproduction that are only at hand in a Fordist capitalism with a generous welfare state and a realistic option of dropping out of the routine existence of the time. With the collapse of the Fordist social compromise and the neo-liberalization of social life, that movement has disappeared.

There are still a very few surviving Infoshops and occupied houses, but they really are the last surviving relicts of a past era. I think perhaps you use the term "Autonomist" as a general term for the anti-parliamentary left, but as a rule it means something more specific than that, referring to a very specific period in history which is long gone.

One of the better groups on the left here, felS http://fels.nadir.org, are a post-autonomist formation who came out of that movement and had a developed critique ("the autonomen don't have problems, they *are* the problem"). Unfortunately, those texts don't seem to be on their website, or I just can't find them.

So while I am decidedly anti-anti-German. I share some of the concern about anti-Jewish racism in the left.

The comment here about "Jewish imperialism" which got a free pass from the rest of the board is a testament to how the left really hasn't worked out its attitude towards Anti-Semitism (which I would argue is not the same thing as racism, since it works with different prejudices and different codes, but that's another discussion).

P.S.

mK ultra

In the 90s when a Berlin squatter/info-shopper told me that they weren't joining the mass movement to oppose social spending cutbacks because "the Germans have it too good as it is" I thought it was a youthful folly that would soon pass.

This sort of thing irritated me as well during the Anti-Hartz IV protests.

Not because I give a shit about "mass movements" or "mass politics", but because Hartv IV was a vicious piece of anti-social legislation that potentially threatened everyone. If people can't get of their asses to fight for their own material interests, then they have no business blathering about communism.

On this much we can agree.

Angelus Novus

P.S.

mK ultra

In the 90s when a Berlin squatter/info-shopper told me that they weren't joining the mass movement to oppose social spending cutbacks because "the Germans have it too good as it is" I thought it was a youthful folly that would soon pass.

This sort of thing irritated me as well during the Anti-Hartz IV protests.

Not because I give a shit about "mass movements" or "mass politics", but because Hartv IV was a vicious piece of anti-social legislation that potentially threatened everyone. If people can't get of their asses to fight for their own material interests, then they have no business blathering about communism.

On this much we can agree.

True. Furthermore, the abandonment of working class social struggles by parts of the left in Germany concedes this ground to the right, which is more than happy to pick up the slack. In this way, such exclusionary attitudes, anti-German or not, facilitate the growth of that which they citique, namely reactionary attitudes within the 'German' working class. I see the same phenomenon here in the Boston area with anarchists moving into the city from surrounding small towns. They are rightly critical of the racism in their home communities, but rather than use this critique as a motivation to organize there, they flee to the big city where they can be as radical as they want. These small towns are now the home base for the anti-immigrant movement in Massachusetts.

Carrr-aaaa-zzy...

Angelus Novus

One of the better groups on the left here, felS http://fels.nadir.org, are a post-autonomist formation who came out of that movement and had a developed critique ("the autonomen don't have problems, they *are* the problem"). Unfortunately, those texts don't seem to be on their website, or I just can't find them.

I think this might be what you're looking for:

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/fels/archiv/selbst/english.html

A quote from this interview - http://cafecritique.priv.at/interviewIN.html - for anyone interested in diving deeper into these ideas and critiquing on more than a surface level.

In the context of anti-German criticism, "German" should always be understood in the sense of criticism of ideology. It is not a matter of an hereditary national character, but a political-economic constellation which favors extermination, where others in the West pursue certain goals with the help of certain means. So, this is not about a special mentality, but a specific form of capitalist socialisation, which then indeed does create "typical German" social characters. In Germany, a special form of relationship between state, bourgeoisie and society has eventually led to the shoah. And this relationship still exists. As Clemens Nachtmann has once pointed out so accurately, this constellation can be described as "German", because it was first established in Germany where it was able to display its bestial potential. But this constellation is not a phenomenon that can be limited to a specific historical period or a specific territory, thus neither to the German state nor the time of National Socialism. It results from a socialisation that is committed to the realization imperatives of the capital and the ruling imperatives of the state. Therefore, "German" can also be generalized.

yoshomon

A quote from this interview - http://cafecritique.priv.at/interviewIN.html - for anyone interested in diving deeper into these ideas and critiquing on more than a surface level.

Thanks for the link. The interview provides some background for English speakers.
Here are some interesting quotes I found in the text:
Stephan Grigat

The discussions within the German left during the gulf war in 1991 were important for many people - also for me, as I still lived in Berlin at that time. While people in Israel had to hide in shelters wearing gas masks and feared coming under fire by Iraqi Scud-rockets equipped with German poison gas every hour, the German left celebrated its anti-war rallies

German weapons are used for murder everywhere, not just when they were sold to Iraq, but also, the nuclear missile capable submarines that Germany gave Israel. Do the anti-Deutsch celebrate this weapons transfer?

Stephan Grigat

It is not only compatible, but partisanship for Israel is a compelling consequence of communist criticism....
Solidarity with Israel, in any case, should be a matter of course without the need to be explained in great detail.
...
In this context, Zionism is not the right answer to anti-Semitism, but for the time being, it is the only answer possible.
...
As long as there are people, who feel committed to Marx's imperative, but don't succeed in implementing it in any way, we try to follow Adorno's imperative by providing the physical integrity of Jews with force.

It doesn't surprise me that there are some pro-imperialist loons out there calling themselves communists. What does surprise me is that they have cajoled and hoodwinked the majority of the German speaking left into not expressing solidarity with struggling Palestinians and to declare as Verboten any questioning of the right of the settler-colony apartheid state of Israel to exist.

this is just insane.

purely nuts.

mK ultra

It doesn't surprise me that there are some pro-imperialist loons out there calling themselves communists. What does surprise me is that they have cajoled and hoodwinked the majority of the German speaking left into not expressing solidarity with struggling Palestinians and to declare as Verboten any questioning of the right of the settler-colony apartheid state of Israel to exist.

Speaking for myself, I don't understand why I'm obligated to express any solidarity with people who don't share my goals.

I aim for a stateless society without commodities or money. If there are groups within Palestinian society advocating the same goals, then I would definitely be encouraged to hear about them. Otherwise, perhaps the Palestinians are entitled to my pity, or my sympathy, or whatever due to the rotten situation they're in as a result of the combined actions of their own leadership, the Arab states, and Israeli occupation.

BTW, what is a "setter-colony apartheid state"? Is that a long-winded, roundabout way of saying "nation-state"?

not really, no.

Tacks

not really, no.

So what does it mean? I assume there must be some substance behind the usage. Some substance that would indicate that it's not simply meant to mean a nation-state which is particularly eeeeevil.

all nation states are essentially evil. Well done.

In the case of israel, there are ongoing activities - colonial ones - which kick people out of their homes to house settlers. We can talk about this, and act if we want to, in the here and now.

Quite tame compared to the golden age of empire, but that is not my problem or yours; so Zionists have chosen to do this sort of thing about 100 years out of date, more people have spoken out about it than would have done back in 1850, are these people speaking out racists, no.

No they aren't.

Are you some kind of muppet obsessed with one stupid element of left thought which you have nurtured into the most ridiculous abberation of politics we have seen yet?

Yes you are.

You haven't answered my question. What is a "setter-colony apartheid state"?

Your last post indicates you don't really have an answer, which is about as much as I suspected, but I held you for one of the more intelligent sort of anti-semite, the sort that usually has at least a superficially convincing justification for his ressentiments.

ha ha ha :D

"the anti semite"

He's fucking everywhere mate! Its a conspiricaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

You are the fucking anti semite if anyone pal. You conflate an entire nation of people with one race, and that entire race with the choices of that nations ruling class. Now that my son, that, is racist. Would you call a critic of Mugabe's zimbabwe 'anti-black'?

Maybe you would, your pretty fucking nuts evidently.

Angelus Novus

You haven't answered my question. What is a "setter-colony apartheid state"?

It's in the dictionary under 'Israel' :D

sorry, i must apologise for my racism against the jews, it must come from my israeli jewish anarchist comrades. They are apparently 'self hating jews' in the eyes of right wing zionists (and also 5 people and a magasine in Berlin).

Tacks

Angelus Novus

You haven't answered my question. What is a "setter-colony apartheid state"?

It's in the dictionary under 'Israel' :D

Imagine that: make an anti-semitic argument, and someone dares to call you an anti-semite!

With approximately 194 nation-states in the world, this particular nation-state seems to inspire an inordinate amount of activity among western leftists. Hmm.

BTW, unless you have any actual arguments to make, I'm through indulging your hallucinatory Weltanschauung on this thread. Ciao!

With approximately 194 nation-states in the world, this particular nation-state seems to inspire an inordinate amount of activity among western leftists. Hmm.

If you bothered to read all the posts in this thread you would see that quite a few people said that Israel is just a state like every single one of them. Bourgeoisie. It is not a unique case in any sense.

Khawaga

With approximately 194 nation-states in the world, this particular nation-state seems to inspire an inordinate amount of activity among western leftists. Hmm.

If you bothered to read all the posts in this thread you would see that quite a few people said that Israel is just a state like every single one of them. Bourgeoisie. It is not a unique case in any sense.

If you bothered to read what I wrote, I referred to "western leftists", not "people writing in this thread".

Angelus Novus

Tacks

Angelus Novus

You haven't answered my question. What is a "setter-colony apartheid state"?

It's in the dictionary under 'Israel' :D

Imagine that: make an anti-semitic argument, and someone dares to call you an anti-semite!

With approximately 194 nation-states in the world, this particular nation-state seems to inspire an inordinate amount of activity among western leftists. Hmm.

thats because...

because....

THEY JUST HATE JEWS!!!!!!!!!111111111111111111

i see it now!

Angelus - Fuck off.

I'm fucking sick of non-Jews claiming to have any sort of special knowledge of what Jews want or need in order to be safe, whether they be ultra-right Christian Zionists or anti-Deutsch.

Telling me that, because I'm Jewish, I have more in common with Ehud Olmert than with non-Jewish workers right here in New Zealand, is far closer to antisemitism than anything Tacks has said in this thread.

In solidarity (but not with you),
Asher (about as Jewish a name as you can get!)

Asher

Angelus - Fuck off.

I'm fucking sick of non-Jews claiming to have any sort of special knowledge of what Jews want or need in order to be safe, whether they be ultra-right Christian Zionists or anti-Deutsch.

Telling me that, because I'm Jewish, I have more in common with Ehud Olmert than with non-Jewish workers right here in New Zealand, is far closer to antisemitism than anything Tacks has said in this thread.

In solidarity (but not with you),
Asher (about as Jewish a name as you can get!)

Wow, absolutely none of these assertions were made in this thread. Your hostility is without basis.

That is exactly what anti-Deutsch thought says though, sphinx, even if not explicitly. In supporting Israel because it is the only place Jews can be safe, they are stating that, as I said in my last post, "I have more in common with Ehud Olmert than with non-Jewish workers right here in New Zealand".

Angelus Novus

Speaking for myself, I don't understand why I'm obligated to express any solidarity with people who don't share my goals.

I aim for a stateless society without commodities or money. If there are groups within Palestinian society advocating the same goals, then I would definitely be encouraged to hear about them. Otherwise, perhaps the Palestinians are entitled to my pity, or my sympathy, or whatever due to the rotten situation they're in as a result of the combined actions of their own leadership, the Arab states, and Israeli occupation.

In general I am moved to express solidarity with people strugling against oppresion. In this case Palestinians are struggling to regain land taken from their families, struggling against military occupation and struggling against a second class status in an apartheid like system. Only supporting people who agree with you politically is myopic and heartless.

Angelus Novus

BTW, what is a "setter-colony apartheid state"? Is that a long-winded, roundabout way of saying "nation-state"?

Israel has been settled by colonists in living memory. Many of the previous inhabitants of that land and their families are living in exile. The remaining nonJewish inhabitants live in an apartheid like system with different laws and priveledges for Jews and non Jews.

I am speaking about Israel and not every other oppresive country in the world because the US gives it billions and survivors of Israel are struggling against the continued theft.

Asher

That is exactly what anti-Deutsch thought says though, sphinx

Except that, as I've stated repeatedly in this thread, I'm ****NOT ANTI-GERMAN****, so I'll *THANK YOU NOT TO ATTRIBUTE THEIR POLITICAL POSITIONS TO ME*.

mK ultra

In general I am moved to express solidarity with people strugling against oppresion. In this case Palestinians are struggling to regain land taken from their families, struggling against military occupation and struggling against a second class status in an apartheid like system

I dunno, I guess if one takes the example of an Israeli whose house is destroyed by a rocket, it's just as a shitty as losing it to a military demolition. This sorting out of "good oppressed Palestinians" and "bad oppressing Israelis" seems to be an expression of the ever present leftist desire to sort out nationalists into good guys and bad guys.

Only supporting people who agree with you politically is myopic and heartless.

So how do you propose people "support" Palestinians?

Many of the previous inhabitants of that land and their families are living in exile.

No strip of land anywhere on this planet is occupied by its "original" inhabitants. Throughout history, ethnically defined collectives have expelled other ethnically defined collectives from land they claimed for themselves.

I think the Ruthless Criticism website gets it exactly right:

"Treated by Israel as well as by the Arab refuge countries as a foreign people, the Arab refugees also drew a wrong conclusion from their situation. Instead of rejecting the just as absurd as brutal volkish assortment – which makes the conditions of people dependent on affiliation to the correct people - and insisting on useful living conditions for themselves and the Jewish citizens, they understood their miserable situation - trained by their political leaders – as caused by the absence of their own state committed to Palestinian nationality and therefore, similarly to Israel, set as a goal the volkish organization of that area of the world for themselves - only with a reverse sign. The practical representatives of this conclusion, those in the PLO as a quasi-representative government of organized Palestinian politicians, since then pursued the project of establishing their own state of “Palestine” in the area claimed and occupied by the Israelis.

Such a program can only be asserted militarily against Israel. The bad luck of the PLO consists in the fact that their opponent is - owing to military and financial support of the USA - the hopelessly superior regional superpower Israel."

http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/middleeast.htm

The ironic thing about the anti-Germans is how German they actually are. They hold an ideology, which has no resonance on an international level. In fact most people looking from abroad see it as a uniquely German movement. They are the most German of all the German leftists.

Devrim

So how do you propose people "support" Palestinians?

Ever heard of Anarchists Against the Wall, Tayyush, ISM, IWPS, ICHAD etc.? They do wonderful work supporting Palestinians, and Israelis, without supporting any nationalist outfit be they in command of a state, a Vichy regime or a handful or insurgents with AKs.

"Treated by Israel as well as by the Arab refuge countries as a foreign people, the Arab refugees also drew a wrong conclusion from their situation. Instead of rejecting the just as absurd as brutal volkish assortment – which makes the conditions of people dependent on affiliation to the correct people - and insisting on useful living conditions for themselves and the Jewish citizens, they understood their miserable situation - trained by their political leaders – as caused by the absence of their own state committed to Palestinian nationality and therefore, similarly to Israel, set as a goal the volkish organization of that area of the world for themselves - only with a reverse sign. The practical representatives of this conclusion, those in the PLO as a quasi-representative government of organized Palestinian politicians, since then pursued the project of establishing their own state of “Palestine” in the area claimed and occupied by the Israelis.

They might have got it right if, and only if, they are discussing the diaspora. After all there are plenty of Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and for them the fight for sovereignty (regardless of what one might think of it) is directly linked to survival. The first intifada was a response to the inability of the PLO to come from the outside as military saviours. It was a very working class revolt, which unfortunately was recuperated by both the PLO and Hamas.

No strip of land anywhere on this planet is occupied by its "original" inhabitants. Throughout history, ethnically defined collectives have expelled other ethnically defined collectives from land they claimed for themselves.

This is very true. But this is not a justification for the colonization and occupation of anyone.

Angelus: You called labelling Israel as a "setter-colony apartheid state" as antisemitic. This is entirely consistent with anti-Deutsch politics.

Devrim: Definately. Anti-Deutsch are every bit as German as those they decry, it just comes out on a different angle.

Asher

Angelus: You called labelling Israel as a "setter-colony apartheid state" as antisemitic.

No, I asked people to supply a definiton for "settler-colony apartheid state". Your inability to accurately represent what I wrote suggests severe reading comprehension problems, or perhaps some mild form of mental retardation.

This is entirely consistent with anti-Deutsch politics.

Which Anti-Germans? ISF/Bahamas? Konkret? ex-BgR/Phase 2? Some of the Jungle World editors?

Oh wait, I forgot, you have no clue about the above groups, and therefore are simply talking out of your ass when you suggest that something is "consistent" with Anti-German politics.

Anti-Deutsch are every bit as German as those they decry, it just comes out on a different angle.

This isn't an argument, it's merely moralism. Are you an indignant teenager?

Khawaga

Ever heard of Anarchists Against the Wall, Tayyush, ISM, IWPS, ICHAD etc.? They do wonderful work supporting Palestinians, and Israelis, without supporting any nationalist outfit be they in command of a state, a Vichy regime or a handful or insurgents with AKs.

Some of the names sound familiar. ISM is International Solidarity Movement right? This is the group that recruits people to stand in front of Israeli tanks and things like that? I'd be curious to know what the specific activity of these groups consists of.

What is the benchmark for success in terms of the work these groups do?

he first intifada was a response to the inability of the PLO to come from the outside as military saviours. It was a very working class revolt, which unfortunately was recuperated by both the PLO and Hamas.

"Recuperation" is such a passive term. It makes it sound as if Fatah and Hamas are supernatural forces which just somehow "recuperated" something, rather than actual political entities which people have *chosen* to support.

This is very true. But this is not a justification for the colonization and occupation of anyone.

There's always a "justification" for colonization and occupation. It's just that such justifications mean very little to people on the receiving end.

It's likewise the case for the other ethnically-defined national collective in this dispute. The desperate and grievous situation of people living in the occupied territories is unlikely to move someone who's kid has just been blown up on a bus as the result of a suicide bombing.

Devrim

The ironic thing about the anti-Germans is how German they actually are. They hold an ideology, which has no resonance on an international level. In fact most people looking from abroad see it as a uniquely German movement. They are the most German of all the German leftists.

Devrim

Gosh, you seem like you know so much about the Anti-German tendencies! Tell me, what did you make of that dust-up between Hermann Gremliza and Matthias Küntzel a few years back? Also, did you think Udo Wolter's critique of that open letter Elfie Müller and Klaus Holz sent to Jungle World back in 2002 was fair and accurate? Why or why not?

Angelus Novus

Gosh, you seem like you know so much about the Anti-German tendencies!

No, I know almost nothing about them, nor did I claim to, nor am I particularly interested. To me it seems, as I said, to be a very German phenomenon with little international resonance.

Angelus Novus

With approximately 194 nation-states in the world, this particular nation-state seems to inspire an inordinate amount of activity among western leftists. Hmm.

Including the anti-Germans too actually. It comes as no surprise to see that there are different leftists backing different national states, or national liberation struggles. It is part of the stock trade of leftism. The mainstream left supports Palestinian nationalism, and the Anti-Germans support Israeli nationalism. I am not particularly interested in the theoretical gymnastics they go through to end up supporting a different nationalist group.

Angelus Novus

Tell me, what did you make of that dust-up between Hermann Gremliza and Matthias Küntzel a few years back? Also, did you think Udo Wolter's critique of that open letter Elfie Müller and Klaus Holz sent to Jungle World back in 2002 was fair and accurate? Why or why not?

I have never heard about any of these people, and your whole attitude to this is in my opinion very elitist. You are basically saying that because people in other countries aren't aware of all the details, they shouldn't discuss it.

Devrim

revol68

why would he need to know such details to point out that anti deutsch is a hilariously german centric set of ideas with no resonance with the rest of the world? Afterall I don't need to know the difference between various steam powered boats to prcolaim them essentially obsolete to modern long distance transport.

No, but you would have to know what a steam-powered boat [b]is[/b].

Angelus Novus

Tacks

Angelus Novus

You haven't answered my question. What is a "setter-colony apartheid state"?

It's in the dictionary under 'Israel' :D

Imagine that: make an anti-semitic argument, and someone dares to call you an anti-semite!

Thats you labelling Tack's calling Israel a "settler-colony apartheid state" an antisemitic argument, right there. Perhaps it's you who has the comprehension problem?

revol68

why would he need to know such details to point out that anti deutsch is a hilariously german centric set of ideas with no resonance with the rest of the world? Afterall I don't need to know the difference between various steam powered boats to prcolaim them essentially obsolete to modern long distance transport.

revol answered your "point" sufficiently there, I won't bother saying anything else on that.

Angelus Novus

is unlikely to move someone who's kid has just been blown up on a bus as the result of a suicide bombing.

Tell that to the mothers of children murdered in suicide bombings that I talked to when I was last in Israel in 2004. I have a feeling they might disagree with you though, considering they (there was about 10 of them in the conversation) were at a demonstration calling for immediate withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank. Oh, and they were yelling at some Israeli Labour Party people almost as much as some anarchists I saw later in the same demo, for similar reasons (although, unlike what happened to one anarchist, no Labour Party hack dared to try to punch any of the mothers).

revol68

I mean do you actually disagree with Devrims point

When the point being made is phrased in terms of "Anti-Germans are..." or "Anti-Germanism is..." then my agreement or disagreement is predicated upon clarification concerning which Anti-Germans, [b]which[/b] tendencies of Anti-Germanism.

What is even more irritating is that whenever I point out the double-standards and partisan nationalism of the left, then someone counters with "But the Anti-Germans are also..." or "The Anti-Germans are just as guilty of...", as if I have any interest in [b]defending my political opponents[/b].*

* (but at least I know [b]why[/b] they are my opponents)

Angelus Novus

whenever I point out the double-standards and partisan nationalism of the left,

There is no 'partisan nationalism' coming from me.
Devrim

Asher

Thats you labelling Tack's calling Israel a "settler-colony apartheid state" an antisemitic argument, right there.

Tack wasn't "calling Israel a settler-colony apartheid state", Tack was claiming that "setter-colony apartheid state" is a synonym for Israel. Do you have difficulties grasping the difference? In absence of providing an *argument* as to what distinguishes Israel from other nation-states, he merely asserts some metaphysical status that distinguishes Israel from all other nation-states. Arguments concerning the particularity of Jews is classic anti-semitism.

Tell that to the mothers of children murdered in suicide bombings that I talked to when I was last in Israel in 2004. I have a feeling they might disagree with you though, considering they (there was about 10 of them in the conversation) were at a demonstration calling for immediate withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank. Oh, and they were yelling at some Israeli Labour Party people almost as much as some anarchists I saw later in the same demo, for similar reasons (although, unlike what happened to one anarchist, no Labour Party hack dared to try to punch any of the mothers).

Was there an actual argument buried within this personal anecdote?

Devrim

There is no 'partisan nationalism' coming from me.

Nor me.

Tack was claiming that "setter-colony apartheid state" is a synonym for Israel

He was trying to be funny...

Asher

Devrim

There is no 'partisan nationalism' coming from me.

Nor me.

I'm sure you believe that, but when you start doling out portions of "solidarity" to one side in an ethnic conflict simply because that side happens to have the bad luck of not having a powerful army and high-tech weaponry, then you are in fact engaging in partisan activity for a particular nationalism.

Angelus Novus

Tack wasn't "calling Israel a settler-colony apartheid state", Tack was claiming that "setter-colony apartheid state" is a synonym for Israel. Do you have difficulties grasping the difference? In absence of providing an *argument* as to what distinguishes Israel from other nation-states, he merely asserts some metaphysical status that distinguishes Israel from all other nation-states.

Tacks was joking, you fucking moron, as evidenced by the green grinning face accompanying his post.

And as for:

Angelus Novus

Aguments concerning the particularity of Jews is classic anti-semitism.

No argument from me there. Anti-Deutsch thought however, is based on arguments of the particularity of antisemitism as opposed to other prejudices (as supposedly the only inherently extinctive prejudice, etc), which to my mind fits the argument in your quote (that I agreed with) like a glove.

Angelus Novus

Was there an actual argument buried within this personal anecdote?

It was a comment on your statement that:

Angelus Novus

The desperate and grievous situation of people living in the occupied territories is unlikely to move someone who's kid has just been blown up on a bus as the result of a suicide bombing.

Asher

Tacks was joking, you fucking moron, as evidenced by the green grinning face accompanying his post.

Ah. Joke as substitute for argument. Hm.

No argument from me there. Anti-Deutsch thought however, is based on arguments of the particularity of antisemitism as opposed to other prejudices

So take it up with an Anti-German. Why am I obligated to defend a political perspective I don't agree with?

Angelus Novus

I'm sure you believe that, but when you start doling out portions of "solidarity" to one side in an ethnic conflict simply because that side happens to have the bad luck of not having a powerful army and high-tech weaponry, then you are in fact engaging in partisan activity for a particular nationalism.

Eh? Who's doing that?

I extend my solidarity to Palestinian proletarians and Israeli proletarians. I certainly don't extend it to members of the Palestinian bourgeoisie (unlike Trots and some liberals and others) nor to members of the Israeli bourgeoisie (unlike anti-Deutsch, Christian Zionists and others).

Hell, to quote something I wrote for the magazine of a local Palestinian solidarity group during the most recent Israeli invasion of Lebanon last year arguing against the predominant leftist support of Hezbollah (that certainly caused some arguments!):

Asher

Surely, as revolutionaries, we should be expressing our solidarity with the working class of Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, not with their reactionary oppressors. We should be supporting the work of Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli leftists, anarchists and all those working for that old cliche, peace with justice and self-determination.

revol68

Is the only solidarity work going on in Palestine that of cheerleading Fatah or Hamas?

In this, anti-Deutsch share a similar tactic (and I'm not equating them here) to the Israeli state (and also many of the large US Jewish institutions) - they are extremely good at convincing their target audiences that there is no such thing as autonomous resistance by Palestinians, and that every piece of resistance is driven by Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad etc. And when they can't do this, they deny the resistance even exists, as happens to much of the "day to day" resistance, such as bypassing roadblocks to find work in Israel or to pick olives in closed military zones, and much of the co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians, such as the fantastic work of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (www.icahd.org).

During the year and a bit I spent in Israel, I witnessed or heard about massive resistance against the occupation that never makes the evening news, never gets talked about - these are the sorts of things that working class Palestinians do to survive on a day to day level, but also to build co-operation with working class Israelis (both of Jewish and Palestinian descent).

revol68

And if working class palestinians fight back against road blocks, harrasment, house demolition and the like and people express solidarity it becomes immediately equatable to support for a particular nationalism?

Maybe we just have different ideas as to what "solidarity" means. "Solidarity" is something I extend to people who share my (anti-)political goals.

If I decide to give 5 euros to a homeless guy, I don't do it out of "solidarity", but out of kindness, pity, sadness, guilt, empathy, or a thousand other sentiments.

If someone wants me to cotribute some blankets and canned food to the occupied territories, I'm game. I won't pretend it has anything to do with struggling for communism.

Asher

In this, anti-Deutsch share a similar tactic (and I'm not equating them here) to the Israeli state (and also many of the large US Jewish institutions) - they are extremely good at convincing their target audiences that there is no such thing as autonomous resistance by Palestinians, and that every piece of resistance is driven by Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad etc. And when they

Who is *they* in the example above?

Unless you can specify what tendency you are referring to, there is absolutely no substantive point being made above.

Do you understand the point being made here at all? If I posted a statement like:

"Anarchists share a similar tactic with trailer trash, in that they both like to fuck their sisters"

you would reasonably ask me to specify which anarchists, no?

revol68

so are you suggesting there are 'anti german' tendencies with resonance and relevance outside of germany?

I am suggesting that some anti-germans, just like some anarchists, some council communists, some trotskyists, and some social democratics, [b]sometimes[/b] say things which are true or relevant.

For example, Phase 2 published an excellent special issue a year or two ago concerning Foucault and Biopolitik. Some of the contributions in that issue I would gladly translate, especially given the interest in Biopolitik sparked by Hardt & Negri's book in most western countries. The fact that the editors of Phase 2 are Anti-Germans is irrelevant.

Who is *they* in the example above?

As I defined it - anti-Deutsch, the Israeli state and many of the large US Jewish institutions. Which tendencies of anti-Deutsch? I don't know the names, and couldn't care less - it has certainly been a defining feature of all the anti-Deutsch material I have read (a fair amount, although certainly not what I would define as extensive) and the anti-Deutsch people I have talked to, both in person and online (a handful). I have seen nothing to indicate that this might not be a recurring feature across the various strains of anti-Deutsch thought.

If I posted a statement like:

"Anarchists share a similar tactic with trailer trash, in that they both like to fuck their sisters"

That is completely different, in that I can damn near guarantee that fucking your sister is not a common argument in the anarchist theory you have read, whereas what I was talking about is obviously pervasive in the propaganda and theory of anti-Deutsch, the Israeli state and many of the large US Jewish institutions.

edit - just wanted to add my agreement with revol's two posts above this one.

edit 2 - its 2:17am and i'm going to bed, so no more from me tonight...

revol68

and where exactly does communism come from? is it a fully formed political goal that people straight forwardly fight to implement or is it a potentiality that stems from working class self organisation and concrete struggles against alienation, exploitation and the day to day tedium, humiliation and poverty of everyday life?

Should we open up a new thread? I think this has the potential of being an interesting discussion.

Short answer: I don't think communism is "the real movement", and I think the analysis of the fetish character of the commodity in Capital indicates that Marx broke with such historical-philosophical conceptions.

In The Communist Manifesto and the German Ideology, Marx still argues that with the bourgeoisification of society, that social relations become more transparent. In Capital, he argues exactly the opposite. Social relations in capitalism are in fact [b]mystified[/b], it's a different type of mystification than that which exists in pre-capitalist societies.

revol68

Are such relevant insights exclusive to or even relevant to their actual anti germanism?

Exclusive? Perhaps not. But definitely relevant. When someone like Andrea Trumann criticizes thinkers like Agamben for insufficiently theorizing the differences between German national socialism and Italian fascism, it has at least something to do with the specificity of her political background.

Asher

it has certainly been a defining feature of all the anti-Deutsch material I have read (a fair amount, although certainly not what I would define as extensive)

Assertion. Sources?

I have seen nothing to indicate that this might not be a recurring feature across the various strains of anti-Deutsch thought.

Then you would be completely wrong. For one, because groups like Cafe Morgenland take the position that German leftists shouldn't formulate a position on Israel-Palestine one way or the other. And second, because for the hardcore racist Anti-Germans in the Bahamas milieu, the existence of an autonomous Palestinian resistance independent of Hamas or Fatah would be an [b]irrelevancy[/b], since Palestinians as a national entity are condemned as eliminatory anti-semites.

So you're talking out of your ass again.

whereas what I was talking about is obviously pervasive in the propaganda and theory of anti-Deutsch

Sources, please.

revol68

why I said the it is a 'potentiality', that is it still needs to made.

"Potentiality" here is pretty weak concepts. When I leave my house every morning, there's a potentiality that someone will hand me a 500 euro note, but it's not very likely.

The idea that Marx makes some break is absolute shit.

I disagree, but if we argue this, it should be in a new thread. I don't want to taint such a discussion with all the half-assed speculation on this one.

revol68

The fact that some anti germans say some interesting and relevant things on some topics doesn't change the fact the central tenant of it is german centric and irrelevant to the rest of the world. Even the example you give there is one of them emphasising the particularism of German fascism.

You think the particularity of National Socialism is irrelevant to the rest of the world? I disagree. For one thing, it's just piss-poor analysis to subsume it under the label of "fascism", which is a bad theoretical inheritance from the Stalinist conceptions formulated by Dimitroff.

revol68

National Socialism was a form of fascism, yes.

And you think it's a question that has no relevance outside of Germany to ask why Anti-Semitism is an end in itself for this form of "fascism"? Why did these particular fascists endanger their own war effort by diverting valuable resources to the destruction of Jews?

This is a serious question, if you want to discuss it, again, new thread. I don't want it to be embedded in wild speculations about what an Anti-German is by people who've seen as many Anti-Germans as they have unicorns.

And you think it's a question that has no relevance of Germany to ask why Anti-Semitism in an end in itself for this form of "fascism"? Why did these particular fascists endanger their own war effort by diverting valuable resources to the destruction of Jews?

Ffs, he is saying that it has no relevance outside of Germany. Which has been his point all along.

Khawaga

And you think it's a question that has no relevance of Germany to ask why Anti-Semitism in an end in itself for this form of "fascism"? Why did these particular fascists endanger their own war effort by diverting valuable resources to the destruction of Jews?

Ffs, he is saying that it has no relevance outside of Germany. Which has been his point all along.

Let me get this straight: The Holocaust has no relevance outside of Germany?

Fuck's sake, no wonder you're so tone deaf about anti-semitism on the left.

revol68

The point was that the central political tenant of 'anti deutsch' has little relevance or resonance outside of Germany.

What [b]is[/b] the central political tenant of all those diverse tendencies?

Careful, your credibility rests upon your ability to give a correct answer.

Let me get this straight: The Holocaust has no relevance outside of Germany?

Damn, you just choose to read things in the most peculiar way.

I wasn't referring to the holocaust. We're discussing the anti-germans no? They have little relevance outside of Germany. You might loose sight of the discussion, but unless I've completely misunderstood Asher, Devrim and Revol they have consistently referred to the anti-Germans. And how on earth could anything called anti-Deutsch have relevance outside of Deutschland since it is rooted in the specifics of the German collective experience.

no wonder you're so tone deaf about anti-semitism on the left.

You can think what you want. You seem to be blind to anti-arabism left, right and center and also seems to think that the jews are the chosen people indeed. Anti-semitism does figure on the left, but it is far from the preposterous proportions that is sometimes claimed. It doesn't come from being anti-semitic, just piss poor class analyses.

Khawaga

I wasn't referring to the holocaust. We're discussing the anti-germans no?

No, you idiot, the passage from me you quoted was concerning the specificity of National Socialism, and whether it can accurately be subsumed under the label of "fascism", given the centrality of the Holocaust and anti-semitism.

also seems to think that the jews are the chosen people indeed.

Citations, please.

It seems a bit facetious to accuse the anti-Germans of being 'irrelevant' outside of Germany when communism as an organized movement is not very relevant anywhere.

But that claim is false in itself. There are Austrian and Swiss groups who derive positions from groups which came out of the anti-german groups. Some anti-germans have also contributed articles to the Engage webjournal which indicates that they find a certain sympathy in the UK.

Khawaga

Anti-semitism does figure on the left, but it is far from the preposterous proportions that is sometimes claimed. It doesn't come from being anti-semitic, just piss poor class analyses.

So anti-semitism is just a matter of bad class analysis huh...
I suppose we can say the same about racism, fagbashing, wifebeating etc. I mean why stop at anti-semitism? Anything could be usefully flattened into this category.
Fortunately however it is the anti-Germans (along with others who try to theorize the form of socialization) who try to determine _why_ the workers have bad class analysis.

P.S. Asher, still looking forward to your comments on Steal this Film II, don't forget!

accidental double post

sphinx

So anti-semitism is just a matter of bad class analysis huh...
I suppose we can say the same about racism, fagbashing, wifebeating etc. I mean why stop at anti-semitism? Anything could be usefully flattened into this category.

Yeah, according to this worldview, racists are never simply racists. Wifebeaters are never simply wifebeaters. Anti-semites are never simply anti-semites.

No, racists, wifebeaters, and anti-semites are all rather misled proletarian heroes, they all really want to do the right thing, it's just they have a bad class analysis.

Incidentally, the group Wildcat (Germany) pissed away a lot of its credibility in the 1990s with this sort of nonsense. When racist pogroms happened in places like Rostock-Lichtenhagen and Solingen, the Wildcat people tried to act like pogroms are simply a misconceived form of social protest.

If the Anti-Germans were able to win so much influence in the extra-parliamentary milieu, then it's at least partially due to the fact that groups like Wildcat were simply incapable of conceiving of proletarians as anything other than superheroes.

Fortunately however it is the anti-Germans (along with others who try to theorize the form of socialization) who try to determine _why_ the workers have bad class analysis.

Yeah, but the Anti-Germans do a rather poor job of it. :-) The sources they claim as influences are far better. Down with Joachim Bruhn and Stephan Grigat! Read Adorno and Postone instead!

So anti-semitism is just a matter of bad class analysis huh...
I suppose we can say the same about racism, fagbashing, wifebeating etc. I mean why stop at anti-semitism? Anything could be usefully flattened into this category

With reference to the Western left it is, since they've probably used a class analysis. I wasn't talking about workers in general. Also, I wasn't very clear. My point is that there is no point to call it anti-semitism, just call it racism, bigotry or whatever. No need for any special categories, even the category zionism and anti-zionism does this (though not conflating it with anti-semitism).

Khawaga

My point is that there is no point to call it anti-semitism, just call it racism, bigotry or whatever.

But anti-semitism isn't racism. They operate with entirely different codes. Just as sexism isn't the same thing as racism.

Angelus Novus

Incidentally, the group Wildcat (Germany) pissed away a lot of its credibility in the 1990s with this sort of nonsense. When racist pogroms happened in places like Rostock-Lichtenhagen and Solingen, the Wildcat people tried to act like pogroms are simply a misconceived form of social protest.

If the Anti-Germans were able to win so much influence in the extra-parliamentary milieu, then it's at least partially due to the fact that groups like Wildcat were simply incapable of conceiving of proletarians as anything other than superheroes.

Do you have any links to these texts by Wildcat?

But anti-semitism isn't racism. They operate with entirely different codes. Just as sexism isn't the same thing as racism.

Please explain.

Khawaga

So anti-semitism is just a matter of bad class analysis huh...
I suppose we can say the same about racism, fagbashing, wifebeating etc. I mean why stop at anti-semitism? Anything could be usefully flattened into this category

With reference to the Western left it is, since they've probably used a class analysis. I wasn't talking about workers in general. Also, I wasn't very clear. My point is that there is no point to call it anti-semitism, just call it racism, bigotry or whatever. No need for any special categories, even the category zionism and anti-zionism does this (though not conflating it with anti-semitism).

Unlike other racist ideologies, anti-semitism is a complete worldview and explanation of history and also a "critique" of finance capital. Historically it has expressed itself as a drive to exterminate jews (not enslave or imprison or make 'second class citizens'). I think it has a very different dynamic than say racism against chicano or black people.

yoshomon

Khawaga

So anti-semitism is just a matter of bad class analysis huh...
I suppose we can say the same about racism, fagbashing, wifebeating etc. I mean why stop at anti-semitism? Anything could be usefully flattened into this category

With reference to the Western left it is, since they've probably used a class analysis. I wasn't talking about workers in general. Also, I wasn't very clear. My point is that there is no point to call it anti-semitism, just call it racism, bigotry or whatever. No need for any special categories, even the category zionism and anti-zionism does this (though not conflating it with anti-semitism).

Unlike other racist ideologies, anti-semitism is a complete worldview and explanation of history and also a "critique" of finance capital. Historically it has expressed itself as a drive to exterminate jews (not enslave or imprison or make 'second class citizens'). I think it has a very different dynamic than say racism against chicano or black people.

No doubt prejudice against Jews has its particular characteristics. Anti-semitism is a problematic term in many contexts because there are other speakers of semitic languages than Jews. Using anti-semitism to refer exclusively to anti-Jewish prejudice disappears Arabs and what is being done to them today by Israel, the U.S., Britain etc. Also, if you don't think anti-Black, anti-native racism etc. has its genocidal manifestations, you haven't been paying attention.

Angelus Novus

No strip of land anywhere on this planet is occupied by its "original" inhabitants. Throughout history, ethnically defined collectives have expelled other ethnically defined collectives from land they claimed for themselves.

The differences here are:
-the land theft happened in living memory
-the survivors of the colonization and their families are strugglinng for the right of return

The way you try and make harmless modern crimes is like claiming German brutality in WWII is nothing special because the Romans did it all 2000 years before.

Angelus Novus

If the Anti-Germans were able to win so much influence in the extra-parliamentary milieu, then it's at least partially due to the fact that groups like Wildcat were simply incapable of conceiving of proletarians as anything other than superheroes.

This is simply nonsense. Beside the fact Wildcat never conceived proletarians as "superheroes" (maybe you just don't understand them), Wildcat and other groups that still insist in classwar as the motor of history never had much impact on the radical-left milieu in Germany. The fact that anti-deutsch was in vogue for some years is far more due to the fact that being vegan stopped being too attractive. The kids are always looking for the most thrilling and upsetting ideas. Within the life-stylist social biotop that makes most of the German radical left there has a always been a competition for the most radical attitude with least impact in real life. Just as old Charly Marx said "Das gesellschaftliche Sein bestimmt das gesellschaftliche Bewusstsein". One funny thing about this is that the self-proclaimed "anti-Germans" idealistic ideology is something very German.

I read a bit on the bikinbottom blog and some of it was a bit surprising to me, well after reading this thread not very surprised but I just wonder what kind of conclusion they draw from a quote like this, from the group sinistra:
It became clear that an emancipatorical left cannot rely on the German working-classes but must stand in opposition to the vast majority in this country; a majority who advocates racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism, a majority with a deep authoritarian disposition and a majority that did not change too much since their parents or grandparents committed the most horrible crime in mankind’s history: the mass murder of six million European Jews.

Well, if history have shown something, it would be apparent that the working class cant rely on the left for emancipation either. But if sinistra things like this, who do they expect to "do the job"? Both in more immidiant social change and revolution. Are they in favor of a coup or what?

Kim Müller

Well, if history have shown something, it would be apparent that the working class cant rely on the left for emancipation either. But if sinistra things like this, who do they expect to "do the job"? Both in more immidiant social change and revolution. Are they in favor of a coup or what?

Most of the are not expecting anybody "to do the job", because they are not interested in immidiant social change and revolution anymore. Some of those just like beeing some sort of watchtower or lighthouse within an ocean of anti-semitism prepared to fight til the last bullet. Others refer to the "Wertkritik" developed by Robert Kurz and the "Krisis" group. This is a hyper-deterministic theory that explains how capitalism will crush on its inherent antagonisms without the need for a social protagonist to smash it. Those guys sometimes mix up with the so-called "post-operaists" in the Negri/Hardt tradition line, promoting an pseudo-operaist theory (not practise) without clase operaia.

It became clear that an emancipatorical left cannot rely on the German working-classes but must stand in opposition to the vast majority in this country; a majority who advocates racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism, a majority with a deep authoritarian disposition and a majority that did not change too much since their parents or grandparents committed the most horrible crime in mankind’s history: the mass murder of six million European Jews.

That is just loony. Do they mean disposition biologically, or as the 'Geist' of Germans/Germany?

to rectify some of the historical falsifications made earlier in the thread:

zarathustra

no knowledge of what Eichmann and co. were up to. Who knows if Hitler even knew?

i know:he knew.

jesse blue

as far as i know, my grandparents knew everything one would want to know, and they liked it. they were workers and peasants. and i do not know anybody who dared tell me her/his grandparents didn't.

that, however, only shows in what kind of milieu you are living. after all, one of the big myths of post-war german society was and is that the german population didnt know anything, repeated over and over again with the same pseudo-innocent deciciveness with which bart simpson wants us to believe that he "didnt do it". in the "opa war kein nazi/ grandpa wasn´t a nazi"-study published in 2002 a chapter is dedicated to that question and it is shown how the notion that nobody knew nothing is upheld by the witness generation, despite obvious contradictions in their stories, and willingly repeated by children and grandchildren. an excerpt in english can be found here: www.memory-research.de/cms/download.php?id=2

zarathustra

Hitler never got more than 30% of the vote, and when he achieved power his popularity was lower even than that.

except in july 1932 (37.4%), november 1932 (33.1%), march 1933 (43.9%), and june 1933 (115.2%). oh wait, i made that last one up, i guess you inspired me.

zarathustra

Also, since I don't think you can quantitatively look at massacres of innocents, we should remember Dresden

ah, the great dresden swindle, always a classic. i´ve looked around the site and it seems the only text dealing with dresden available on libcom is one by the icg, which is correct in that the name of the city is actually dresden. the rest: bunch of shit. that doesn´t come as much of a surprise though if one looks at the only source that is given in the whole article which is that guardian of historical accuracy, david irving.
to correct the biggest mistake: the bombing of dresden left 25,000-40,000 dead, with the actual number probably being towards the lower end of that range. the claim made in the icg´s article, 250,000 dead, was a fabrication of the german propaganda ministry that simply added a zero to all the numbers that were reported to it. the myth was then taken up by the gdr as a propaganda tool in the cold war.
that the icg reproduces a number that irving himself had to admit to be wrong in the mid-60´s already, in an article written in the 90´s, shows how much research they do and that any "fact" in their articles should probabl be taken with a rock of salt.
i think that dresden article should be deleted or at least be given a disclaimer.

Terry

If the German public were made up of exterminationist anti-semites as you suggest they wouldn't have bothered hiding the holocaust and Himmler wouldn't have spoken of what was it a glorious chapter in our history that must never be written, ie keep quiet about this one lads.

this assumes that the nazis knew the opinions of the german population regarding a potential holocaust and then made that knowledge the most importnt factor in their decision to demand of those directly involve in the holocaust not to speak of it. logic doesn´t get much more faulty than this.
and while it is true, that the 300,000 directly involved weren´t allowed to tell anyone about the death camps, the nazis behaviour was ambiguous. hitler openly talked about extermination of the jews not only in mein kampf, but also in numerous speeches given before and during the war. there were reports by those who had passed the camps on their way from or to the front, and yes, there were newspaper reports, obviously nothing too detailed, but enough for everyone who wanted to know to know what was happening.

the stuff zarathustra posted about the "resistance" isn´t even worth commenting on.

what planet are you people on? all of the nonsense you posted could have been avoided by doing some very basic research. but it´s of course a lot easier to hallucinate yourself into some know-it-all position where reality has the honey-sweet characteristic of fitting all your ideological needs. this shit is

zarathustra

Carrr-aaaa-zzy...

ah, the great dresden swindle, always a classic.

So 25-40.000 dead is a swindle? You echo those Holocaust deniers/skeptics that argue that there were work camps, but only a few thousands died because of disease not intentional murder.

What's your point anyway tastypudding? That Germans are evil, or have a special capacity for evil?

Khawaga

ah, the great dresden swindle, always a classic.

So 25-40.000 dead is a swindle? You echo those Holocaust deniers/skeptics that argue that there were work camps, but only a few thousands died because of disease not intentional murder.

haha, you´ve clearly thought that one through.

What's your point anyway tastypudding? That Germans are evil, or have a special capacity for evil?

yes, that´s exactly my point. which is why i didn´t say anything even remotely close to it.

I am actually interested in what your point is/was. I couldn't see any point to your previous post so I asked. Ffs.

tastypudding

What's your point anyway tastypudding? That Germans are evil, or have a special capacity for evil?

yes, that´s exactly my point.

It's set in stone now.

Yoshomon

Unlike other racist ideologies, anti-semitism is a complete worldview and explanation of history and also a "critique" of finance capital. Historically it has expressed itself as a drive to exterminate jews (not enslave or imprison or make 'second class citizens'). I think it has a very different dynamic than say racism against chicano or black people.

Each of these prejudices or whatever you call them is different in various ways from each other one. What is the difference that makes a difference? Beyond the claim that one of these is a world view, what is it about the differences we might talk about that requires a communist praxis to focus on them?

Yoshomon

Unlike other racist ideologies, anti-semitism is a complete worldview and explanation of history and also a "critique" of finance capital. Historically it has expressed itself as a drive to exterminate jews (not enslave or imprison or make 'second class citizens'). I think it has a very different dynamic than say racism against chicano or black people.

yeeeeeeah....

RedHughs

Yoshomon

Unlike other racist ideologies, anti-semitism is a complete worldview and explanation of history and also a "critique" of finance capital. Historically it has expressed itself as a drive to exterminate jews (not enslave or imprison or make 'second class citizens'). I think it has a very different dynamic than say racism against chicano or black people.

Each of these prejudices or whatever you call them is different in various ways from each other one. What is the difference that makes a difference? Beyond the claim that one of these is a world view, what is it about the differences we might talk about that requires a communist praxis to focus on them?

I am not defending the anti-german thesis nor do I think anti-semitism should be the 'focus of communist praxis'. I am only saying there are clear differences between anti-semitism and other racist ideologies I've come across (especially in relation to the Left).

It is very possible that there are other racist ideologies that I'm unaware of that have a similar dynamic to anti-semitism, but they certainly don't have the global reach or historical significance.

It is very possible that there are other racist ideologies that I'm unaware of that have a similar dynamic to anti-semitism, but they certainly don't have the global reach or historical significance.

The point is that it is still racism, and as we all know there is plently of bigotry to around for everyone so why should the bigotry towards one group of people be treated as some special case?

This thread has been really great.

One of the best, i say.

Kim Müller

Do you have any links to these texts by Wildcat?

Not all of the stuff from that period is online, but one text is:

http://www.wildcat-www.de/wildcat/60/w60rosto.htm

Awful, awful stuff. Wildcat is a very worthwhile publication with a lot of useful articles on developments in capitalism, but their operaist sympathies really get in the way of a clear analysis of fascist tendencies in the BRD.

mK ultra

Anti-semitism is a problematic term in many contexts because there are other speakers of semitic languages than Jews. Using anti-semitism to refer exclusively to anti-Jewish prejudice disappears Arabs and what is being done to them today by Israel, the U.S., Britain etc.

Don't be a cretin. You're playing semantic games. Anti-semitism is the historical name adopted and [b]self-applied[/b] by anti-Jewish political parties in Wilhelmine Germany. Anti-semitism is near universally understood in most European languages to refer to antipathy towards Jews.

mK ultra

the survivors of the colonization and their families are strugglinng for the right of return

Since we're playing semantic games, a formulation like "right" has literally no meaning outside of the framework of codified legal structures. Insistence upon this or that "right" is a strange game for alleged anarchists or anti-state communists to play.

robot

classwar as the motor of history never had much impact on the radical-left milieu in Germany

Class struggle as the motor of history is an incredibly stupid idea. Certainly class struggle has been a consistent aspect of all known recorded history, but one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that it's the motor of history. You might as well argue that atoms are the motor of history, or infectious disease.

RedHughs

what is it about the differences we might talk about that requires a communist praxis to focus on them?

Finally, a substantive question.

I won't presume to speak for the Anti-Germans, just give my own perspective. I maintain that the Shoah poses serious problems for an optimistic conception of the struggle for communism, anticipated by Walter Benjamin in his theses on the philosophy of history with the critique of the German workers movement believing that it was marching with the tide of history, etc.

The German workers movement, Social Democratic, Stalinist, Trotskyist, anarchist, failed to prevent the rise of National Socialism, and the German working-class participated in the war and in the destruction of the European Jews.

Besides the sheer irrationality of a nation-state diverting essential and valuable resources from its war effort in order that it could eliminate a racially-defined minority, I think it's worth investigating the phenomenon of modern Anti-Semitism (as opposed to the religious Jew hatred of the middle-ages) as a foreshortened form of anti-capitalism focused on the circulation sphere. I think where the Wertkritiker and their Anti-German cousins go wrong is in trying to directly derive anti-semitism from the commodity-form, but I do think the opacity of fetishized social relations in capitalism makes people susceptible to all sorts of ideological ways of coming to terms with their position in society. At the very least, this should call into question the notion that struggles within capitalism automatically have a potential to transcend capitalism.

You're talking shit mate.

Tacks

You're talking shit mate.

You, on the other hand, have absolutely nothing to say, yet you still won't shut up!

revol68

well if you find me some struggles outside of capitalism I'll be sure to check them out.

I think struggles against proletarianization, whether historical (artisans and peasants resisting expropriation and proletarianization) or contemporary (Zapatistas), have an anti-capitalist logic, even if they are not temporally or geographically outside of capitalism.

Struggles over wages or working time within capitalism, however, have no [b]automatic[/b] anti-capitalist dynamic. There's no getting around the fact that the idea of communism needs propagation. For that reason, I think intellectual honesty demands that communists make clear, transparent arguments for their ideas, rather than hoping to find a golden ticket in some struggle in which they project their revolutionary hopes.

Here in Germany at the moment, there seems to be a real "reading Capital" movement, a development that I find very encouraging. I think more communists should read Capital, rather than projecting the arrival of revolution everytime Walnut Shellers Local 832 strikes for an extra 32 cents an hour.

STRUCTURE / AGENCY REVISITED and Die Antideutschen?

On the one extreme we are plagued by a massive rise in conspiracy theory - the various 9/11 truth cults and the like represent only a tip of the iceberg. In this view an all powerful but tiny and secretive ruling elite makes every move in history, and understandings of the social processes that generate and perpetuate capitalism are eclipsed. The spread of such pernicious crap threatens to engulf and disarm critical resistance, and is easily infected by anti-semitism and other mystifications.

At the other extreme you have the likes of Die Antideutschen - who acknowledge only abstract social process, because they want to claim any attempt to describe a ruling class is somehow anti-Semitic.

The first things to say to this is that if one was to map the personnel of the ruling class the obvious fact would emerge that most of its 'members' are not Jewish. Perversely the Antideutsch here seem to be reproducing in inverse the notorious old 'Socialism of Fools' .

But taking a step back from the immediate questions of Racism(s), Zionism and Imperialism, another aspect of this dumb polarity reminds me of the old Structure / Agency conundrum in social theory. Staying on either end or of this polarity obscures how history is made. Suffice it to say that we can talk of the personification of capitalism, that social processes are not abstract and disembodied, and that actual human beings form classes through their mutual antagonism around relations of production. Er, so....

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past" The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx 1852 Etc etc.

But it seems the Antideutsch like the pose of taking the extreme, like all infantile leftists. They take this pose in their theories, by determinedly grasping only one part of history's dialectic. They also like the shock value of the extreme pose of parading the flags of ethno-nationalist supremacists and colonialists or celebrating the bombing of working class people in Dresden. Shame.

Angelus Novus

Tacks

You're talking shit mate.

You, on the other hand, have absolutely nothing to say, yet you still won't shut up!

i'll say this much:

you are a racist idiot, i hope you soon receive the sort of reception you'd get in england with your dangerous nonsense.

Go home and die.

Tacks

Angelus Novus

Tacks

You're talking shit mate.

You, on the other hand, have absolutely nothing to say, yet you still won't shut up!

i'll say this much:

you are a racist idiot, i hope you soon receive the sort of reception you'd get in england with your dangerous nonsense.

Go home and die.

What?

jews=zionism

is

racism

Tacks

jews=zionism

is

racism

Who argued that all Jews were Zionists?

anti-germans you fucking numpty!!!

thats the whole point - criticise zionism, and in their eyes you are criticising ALL JEWS and are an anti-jewish racist.

Funking bananas i know, but that's the crux of it.

Whilst the jerries aren't exactly a race, their suppositon that they are somehow essentially evil and can never be anything but, is pretty racist too.

anti-germans are sad, divisive idiots. As i said, the uk has as shit a political scene as they come, but at least they couldn't pull this kind of thing here.

...but Angelus Novus isn't an anti-German.

Tacks

you are a racist idiot, i hope you soon receive the sort of reception you'd get in england with your dangerous nonsense.

Go home and die.

Maybe you should re-read that post Devrim made about youth gangs.

Maybe you should see which bathroom bleach you prefer the flavour of.

yoshomon

...but Angelus Novus isn't an anti-German.

Tacks has severe reading comprehension problems.

Antinationalist Nationalism - The Anti-German Critique and Its All-Too-German Adherents:

http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/rollingthunder/antinationalist.php

so far liking that...

yep. Good info in that. Fair play to the primmo.

very good article.

thats the whole point - criticise zionism, and in their eyes you are criticising ALL JEWS and are an anti-jewish racist.

is it?

and is it racist?

and is it really jews = zionism? i think it says that all jews stand in some relation to zionism; it seems almost mystical rather than actually racist.

not that i care i just hate tacks when he's like this :p

mel

thats the whole point - criticise zionism, and in their eyes you are criticising ALL JEWS and are an anti-jewish racist.

is it?

and is it racist?

and is it really jews = zionism? i think it says that all jews stand in some relation to zionism; it seems almost mystical rather than actually racist.

i don't really know what your asking there... If you are asking if this is the case, then yes, it is.

In my experience of the comparatively tame zionist movment in the UK, abti-semitic is the first thing they call you. A zionist mature student beat up a SSWP kiddy for putting up palestine stickers at my university; he pre-empted his arrest by going to the police FIRST and claiming he was being racially harassed by the trot.

not that i care i just hate tacks when he's like this :p

are you a returning poster of s different name?

Ant-Deutsche thinking has penetrated all levels of german politics - well done guys, Merkel is on board

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/germany.secondworldwar

are you a returning poster of s different name?

mel = lem

and s/he's come back here under other nicks as well as far as I can tell.

thats the whole point - criticise zionism, and in their eyes you are criticising ALL JEWS[

i don't think it follows from that that jews = zionism.

if you criticize A in any criticism of B, i don't think it means that A = B. sure it makes alot of sense to suppose that A = B, but identity is a pretty strong relation and this is religion [i.e. bonkers] we are talking about.

and that more or less sums up my feelings on the anti-deutsch.

EDIT maybe zionism has nothing to do with religion i assume that it did.

Tacks didn't say that Lem. Jews do not equal zionism, but zionists often conflate criticism of zionism with jews in general to label you an anti-semite. So zionists are often the ones that posits zionist=jew. This is obviously stupid.

I still have a really hard time figuring out what you're trying to convey Lem. And it's not because you don't think/write in a linear fashion, I think you just need to spend more time writing your posts. I am sure they make perfect sense for you, but having a Lem only language makes it hard for everyone else to understand.

yeah i did know that tacks wasn't saying that jews = zionism. i was asking whether if someone believes

criticise zionism, and... you are criticising ALL JEWS

it follows that they believe that jews = zionism.

my opinion is not very important tho, sorry.

My german is not quite what it used to be, so I haven't fully read the massive amount of text in this article ( http://www.schattenblick.de/infopool/politik/report/prber025.html ), but it seems a demonstration hosted by a coalition of leftist and christian-democrats (!!) pro-zionists tried to shut down the leftist cinema B-movie in Hamburg a while back for showing a film about Israel (made by some Jewish leftist, i think). Not that anti-imps are the sexiest people on the planet, but isn't that totally fucked up, or did i misunderstand something?

Are there any sensible Germans out there who'd care to enlighten us what the hell is going on? Is it a respons to the IL move to get total hegemony within the antifa-movement through the Dresden Nazifrei mobilisation, are Plan B total pro-taliban über-anti-imps that deserve it, or is this just totally mad. My money is on the last option, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

It's the opposite; there were anti-imps trying to shut down a film by a Lanzmann called 'Why Israel' for what they considered its all too pro-zionist message.

Aah, ok. But there pictures show a pro-israel demo outside some kind of venue with red and palestinian flags - whats the deal with that? Are things particullary tense between pro-zionists and anti-imps in Hamburg, or is this (demos withing the left against each other) normal for bigger German cities?

No, it seems things are a bit tense in Hamburg. The FAU local there is apparently a bit soft on anti german ideas if not even supporting them, maybe some of the german posters can throw some light on the subject.

http://syndikalismus.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/mal-wieder-ein-einblick-hinter-die-ver-di-gewerkschafts-kulissen-vor-geld-nicht-laufen-konnen-aber-bei-%E2%80%9Eeigenen-angestellten%E2%80%9C-einsparen/

-

47Strnr: you do realize that this discussion ended a year ago?

Khawaga

47Strnr: you do realize that this discussion ended a year ago?

damn, i just read "13th of February" : |

47Strnr

Khawaga

47Strnr: you do realize that this discussion ended a year ago?

damn, i just read "13th of February" : |

Honest mistake! :p

It happens... just wanted to point that out to you in case you were expecting replies If you're up for discussing the anti-Deutsche I suggest you start a new thread.

Any new thread on the Anti-Germans doesn't belong in the "theory" forum, but rather in "history". :p

Angelus Novus

Any new thread on the Anti-Germans doesn't belong in the "theory" forum, but rather in "history". :p

or libcommunity?

on german guilt