anti germans

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

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

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.

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!

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).

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

Do you have any links to these texts by Wildcat?

Please explain.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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:

i know:he knew.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

haha, you´ve clearly thought that one through.

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.

It's set in stone now.

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?

yeeeeeeah....

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

well if you find me some struggles outside of capitalism I'll be sure to check them out.

You, on the other hand, have absolutely nothing to say, yet you still won't shut up!

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 automatic 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.