anti germans

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?

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

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

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.

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.

just saw this.

Genuinely upset by the stupidity of this

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).

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

Sounds exactly like Nazism, only in reverse.

Er, no

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?

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.

Shorty mentioned this in his post on the first page:

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.

So it’s supposed to be a parody?

Sorry I fail at humour.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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 (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.

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".