Psycho the Zio

http://www.revleft.com/vb/zionism-anti-semitism-t180720/index.html

15th May 2013, 09:42

freepalestine  Banned Committed User Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Maqdesie Posts: 1,770 Tendency: Revolutionary Marxists Rep Power: 0 Reputation: 1884

Zionism anti semitism.. ZIONISM ANTI SEMITISM.. Last Modified: 14 May 2013 14:49 Joseph Massad Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. RSSColumbia University Books Jewish opponents of Zionism understood the movement since its early age as one that shared the precepts of anti-Semitism in its diagnosis of what gentile Europeans called the “Jewish Question”. What galled anti-Zionist Jews the most, however, was that Zionism also shared the “solution” to the Jewish Question that anti-Semites had always advocated, namely the expulsion of Jews from Europe. It was the Protestant Reformation with its revival of the Hebrew Bible that would link the modern Jews of Europe to the ancient Hebrews of Palestine, a link that the philologists of the 18th century would solidify through their discovery of the family of “Semitic” languages, including Hebrew and Arabic. Whereas Millenarian Protestants insisted that contemporary Jews, as descendants of the ancient Hebrews, must leave Europe to Palestine to expedite the second coming of Christ, philological discoveries led to the labelling of contemporary Jews as “Semites”. The leap that the biological sciences of race and heredity would make in the 19th century of considering contemporary European Jews racial descendants of the ancient Hebrews would, as a result, not be a giant one. Basing themselves on the connections made by anti-Jewish Protestant Millenarians, secular European figures saw the political potential of “restoring” Jews to Palestine abounded in the 19th century. Less interested in expediting the second coming of Christ as were the Millenarians, these secular politicians, from Napoleon Bonaparte to British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston (1785-1865) to Ernest Laharanne, the private secretary of Napoleon III in the 1860s, sought to expel the Jews of Europe to Palestine in order to set them up as agents of European imperialism in Asia. Their call would be espoused by many “anti-Semites”, a new label chosen by European anti-Jewish racists after its invention in 1879 by a minor Viennese journalist by the name of Wilhelm Marr, who issued a political programme titled The Victory of Judaism over Germanism. Marr was careful to decouple anti-Semitism from the history of Christian hatred of Jews on the basis of religion, emphasising, in line with Semitic philology and racial theories of the 19th century, that the distinction to be made between Jews and Aryans was strictly racial. Assimilating Jews into European culture Scientific anti-Semitism insisted that the Jews were different from Christian Europeans. Indeed that the Jews were not European at all and that their very presence in Europe is what causes anti-Semitism. The reason why Jews caused so many problems for European Christians had to do with their alleged rootlessness, that they lacked a country, and hence country-based loyalty. In the Romantic age of European nationalisms, anti-Semites argued that Jews did not fit in the new national configurations, and disrupted national and racial purity essential to most European nationalisms. This is why if the Jews remained in Europe, the anti-Semites argued, they could only cause hostility among Christian Europeans. The only solution was for the Jews to exit from Europe and have their own country. Needless to say, religious and secular Jews opposed this horrific anti-Semitic line of thinking. Orthodox and Reform Jews, Socialist and Communist Jews, cosmopolitan and Yiddishkeit cultural Jews, all agreed that this was a dangerous ideology of hostility that sought the expulsion of Jews from their European homelands. The Jewish Haskalah, or Enlightenment, which emerged also in the 19th century, sought to assimilate Jews into European secular gentile culture and have them shed their Jewish culture. It was the Haskalah that sought to break the hegemony of Orthodox Jewish rabbis on the “Ostjuden” of the East European shtetl and to shed what it perceived as a “medieval” Jewish culture in favour of the modern secular culture of European Christians. Reform Judaism, as a Christian- and Protestant-like variant of Judaism, would emerge from the bosom of the Haskalah. This assimilationist programme, however, sought to integrate Jews in European modernity, not to expel them outside Europe’s geography. When Zionism started a decade and a half after Marr’s anti-Semitic programme was published, it would espouse all these anti-Jewish ideas, including scientific anti-Semitism as valid. For Zionism, Jews were “Semites”, who were descendants of the ancient Hebrews. In his foundational pamphlet Der Judenstaat, Herzl explained that it was Jews, not their Christian enemies, who “cause” anti-Semitism and that “where it does not exist, [anti-Semitism] is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations”, indeed that “the unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America”; that Jews were a “nation” that should leave Europe to restore their “nationhood” in Palestine or Argentina; that Jews must emulate European Christians culturally and abandon their living languages and traditions in favour of modern European languages or a restored ancient national language. Herzl preferred that all Jews adopt German, while the East European Zionists wanted Hebrew. Zionists after Herzl even agreed and affirmed that Jews were separate racially from Aryans. As for Yiddish, the living language of most European Jews, all Zionists agreed that it should be abandoned. The majority of Jews continued to resist Zionism and understood its precepts as those of anti-Semitism and as a continuation of the Haskalah quest to shed Jewish culture and assimilate Jews into European secular gentile culture, except that Zionism sought the latter not inside Europe but at a geographical remove following the expulsion of Jews from Europe. The Bund, or the General Jewish Labor Union in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, which was founded in Vilna in early October 1897, a few weeks after the convening of the first Zionist Congress in Basel in late August 1897, would become Zionism’s fiercest enemy. The Bund joined the existing anti-Zionist Jewish coalition of Orthodox and Reform rabbis who had combined forces a few months earlier to prevent Herzl from convening the first Zionist Congress in Munich, which forced him to move it to Basel. Jewish anti-Zionism across Europe and in the United States had the support of the majority of Jews who continued to view Zionism as an anti-Jewish movement well into the 1940s. Anti-Semitic chain of pro-Zionist enthusiasts Realising that its plan for the future of European Jews was in line with those of anti-Semites, Herzl strategised early on an alliance with the latter. He declared in Der Judenstaat that: “The Governments of all countries scourged by anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain [the] sovereignty we want.” He added that “not only poor Jews” would contribute to an immigration fund for European Jews, “but also Christians who wanted to get rid of them”. Herzl unapologetically confided in his Diaries that: “The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.” Thus when Herzl began to meet in 1903 with infamous anti-Semites like the Russian minister of the interiorVyacheslav von Plehve, who oversaw anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia, it was an alliance that he sought by design. That it would be the anti-Semitic Lord Balfour, who as Prime Minister of Britain in 1905 oversaw his government’s Aliens Act, which prevented East European Jews fleeing Russian pogroms from entering Britain in order, as he put it, to save the country from the “undoubted evils” of “an immigration which was largely Jewish”, was hardy coincidental. Balfour’s infamous Declaration of 1917 to create in Palestine a “national home” for the “Jewish people”, was designed, among other things, to curb Jewish support for the Russian Revolution and to stem the tide of further unwanted Jewish immigrants into Britain. The Nazis would not be an exception in this anti-Semitic chain of pro-Zionist enthusiasts. Indeed, the Zionists would strike a deal with the Nazis very early in their history. It was in 1933 that the infamous Transfer (Ha’avara) Agreement was signed between the Zionists and the Nazi government to facilitate the transfer of German Jews and their property to Palestine and which broke the international Jewishboycott of Nazi Germany started by American Jews. It was in this spirit that Zionist envoys were dispatched to Palestine to report on the successes of Jewish colonization of the country. Adolf Eichmann returned from his 1937 trip to Palestine full of fantastic stories about the achievements of the racially-separatist Ashkenazi Kibbutz, one of which he visited on Mount Carmel as a guest of the Zionists. Despite the overwhelming opposition of most German Jews, it was the Zionist Federation of Germany that was the only Jewish group that supported the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, as they agreed with the Nazis that Jews and Aryans were separate and separable races. This was not a tactical support but one based on ideological similitude. The Nazis’ Final Solution initially meant the expulsion of Germany’s Jews to Madagascar. It is this shared goal of expelling Jews from Europe as a separate unassimilable race that created the affinity between Nazis and Zionists all along. While the majority of Jews continued to resist the anti-Semitic basis of Zionism and its alliances with anti-Semites, the Nazi genocide not only killed 90 percent of European Jews, but in the process also killed the majority of Jewish enemies of Zionism who died precisely because they refused to heed the Zionist call of abandoning their countries and homes. After the War, the horror at the Jewish holocaust did not stop European countries from supporting the anti-Semitic programme of Zionism. On the contrary, these countries shared with the Nazis a predilection for Zionism. They only opposed Nazism’s genocidal programme. European countries, along with the United States, refused to take in hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors of the holocaust. In fact, these countries voted against a UN resolution introduced by the Arab states in 1947 calling on them to take in the Jewish survivors, yet these same countries would be the ones who would support the United Nations Partition Plan of November 1947 to create a Jewish State in Palestine to which these unwanted Jewish refugees could be expelled. The pro-Zionist policies of the Nazis The United States and European countries, including Germany, would continue the pro-Zionist policies of the Nazis. Post-War West German governments that presented themselves as opening a new page in their relationship with Jews in reality did no such thing. Since the establishment of the country after WWII, every West German government (and every German government since unification in1990) has continued the pro-Zionist Nazi policies unabated. There was never a break with Nazi pro-Zionism. The only break was with the genocidal and racial hatred of Jews that Nazism consecrated, but not with the desire to see Jews set up in a country in Asia, away from Europe. Indeed, the Germans would explain that much of the money they were sending to Israel was to help offset the costs of resettling European Jewish refugees in the country. After World War II, a new consensus emerged in the United States and Europe that Jews had to be integrated posthumously into white Europeanness, and that the horror of the Jewish holocaust was essentially a horror at the murder of white Europeans. Since the 1960s, Hollywood films about the holocaust began to depict Jewish victims of Nazism as white Christian-looking, middle class, educated and talented people not unlike contemporary European and American Christians who should and would identify with them. Presumably if the films were to depict the poor religious Jews of Eastern Europe (and most East European Jews who were killed by the Nazis were poor and many were religious), contemporary white Christians would not find commonality with them. Hence, the post-holocaust European Christian horror at the genocide of European Jews was not based on the horror of slaughtering people in the millions who weredifferent from European Christians, but rather a horror at the murder of millions of people who were thesame as European Christians. This explains why in a country like the United States, which had nothing to do with the slaughter of European Jews, there exists upwards of 40 holocaust memorials and a major museum for the murdered Jews of Europe, but not one for the holocaust of Native Americans or African Americans for which the US is responsible. Aimé Césaire understood this process very well. In his famous speech on colonialism, he affirmed that the retrospective view of European Christians about Nazism is that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before [Europeans] were its victims, they were its accomplices; and they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimised it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilisation in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack. That for Césaire the Nazi wars and holocaust were European colonialism turned inwards is true enough. But since the rehabilitation of Nazism’s victims as white people, Europe and its American accomplice would continue their Nazi policy of visiting horrors on non-white people around the world, on Korea, on Vietnam and Indochina, on Algeria, on Indonesia, on Central and South America, on Central and Southern Africa, on Palestine, on Iran, and on Iraq and Afghanistan. The rehabilitation of European Jews after WWII was a crucial part of US Cold War propaganda. As American social scientists and ideologues developed the theory of “totalitarianism”, which posited Soviet Communism and Nazism as essentially the same type of regime, European Jews, as victims of one totalitarian regime, became part of the atrocity exhibition that American and West European propaganda claimed was like the atrocities that the Soviet regime was allegedly committing in the pre- and post-War periods. That Israel would jump on the bandwagon by accusing the Soviets of anti-Semitism for their refusal to allow Soviet Jewish citizens to self-expel and leave to Israel was part of the propaganda. Commitment to white supremacy It was thus that the European and US commitment to white supremacy was preserved, except that it now included Jews as part of “white” people, and what came to be called “Judeo-Christian” civilisation. European and American policies after World War II, which continued to be inspired and dictated by racism against Native Americans, Africans, Asians, Arabs and Muslims, and continued to support Zionism’s anti-Semitic programme of assimilating Jews into whiteness in a colonial settler state away from Europe, were a direct continuation of anti-Semitic policies prevalent before the War. It was just that much of the anti-Semitic racialist venom would now be directed at Arabs and Muslims (both, those who are immigrants and citizens in Europe and the United States and those who live in Asia and Africa) while the erstwhile anti-Semitic support for Zionism would continue unhindered. West Germany’s alliance with Zionism and Israel after WWII, of supplying Israel with huge economic aid in the 1950s and of economic and military aid since the early 1960s, including tanks, which it used to kill Palestinians and other Arabs, is a continuation of the alliance that the Nazi government concluded with the Zionists in the 1930s. In the 1960s, West Germany even provided military training to Israeli soldiers and since the 1970s has provided Israel with nuclear-ready German-made submarines with which Israel hopes to kill more Arabs and Muslims. Israel has in recent years armed the most recent German-supplied submarines with nuclear tipped cruise missiles, a fact that is well known to the current German government. Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Der SPIEGELin 2012 that Germans should be “proud” that they have secured the existence of the state of Israel “for many years”. Berlin financed one-third of the cost of the submarines, around 135 million euros ($168 million) per submarine, and has allowed Israel to defer its payment until 2015. That this makes Germany an accomplice in the dispossession of the Palestinians is of no more concern to current German governments than it was in the 1960s to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer who affirmed that “the Federal Republic has neither the right nor the responsibility to take a position on the Palestinian refugees”. This is to be added to the massive billions that Germany has paid to the Israeli government as compensation for the holocaust, as if Israel and Zionism were the victims of Nazism, when in reality it was anti-Zionist Jews who were killed by the Nazis. The current German government does not care about the fact that even those German Jews who fled the Nazis and ended up in Palestine hated Zionism and its project and were hated in turn by Zionist colonists in Palestine. As German refugees in 1930s and 1940s Palestine refused to learn Hebrew and published half a dozen German newspapers in the country, they were attacked by the Hebrew press, including by Haartez,which called for the closure of their newspapers in 1939 and again in 1941. Zionist colonists attacked a German-owned café in Tel Aviv because its Jewish owners refused to speak Hebrew, and the Tel Aviv municipality threatened in June 1944 some of its German Jewish residents for holding in their home on 21 Allenby street “parties and balls entirely in the German language, including programmes that are foreign to the spirit of our city” and that this would “not be tolerated in Tel Aviv”. German Jews, or Yekkes as they were known in the Yishuv, would even organise a celebration of the Kaiser’s birthday in 1941 (for these and more details about German Jewish refugees in Palestine, read Tom Segev’s book The Seventh Million). Add to that Germany’s support for Israeli policies against Palestinians at the United Nations, and the picture becomes complete. Even the new holocaust memorial built in Berlin that opened in 2005 maintains Nazi racial apartheid, as this “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” is only for Jewish victims of the Nazis who must still today be set apart, as Hitler mandated, from the other millions of non-Jews who also fell victim to Nazism. That a subsidiary of the German company Degussa, which collaborated with the Nazis and which produced the Zyklon B gas that was used to kill people in the gas chambers, was contracted to build the memorial was anything but surprising, as it simply confirms that those who killed Jews in Germany in the late 1930s and in the 1940s now regret what they had done because they now understand Jews to be white Europeans who must be commemorated and who should not have been killed in the first place on account of their whiteness. The German policy of abetting the killing of Arabs by Israel, however, is hardly unrelated to this commitment to anti-Semitism, which continues through the predominant contemporary anti-Muslim German racism that targets Muslim immigrants. Euro-American anti-Jewish tradition The Jewish holocaust killed off the majority of Jews who fought and struggled against European anti-Semitism, including Zionism. With their death, the only remaining “Semites” who are fighting against Zionism and its anti-Semitism today are the Palestinian people. Whereas Israel insists that European Jews do not belong in Europe and must come to Palestine, the Palestinians have always insisted that the homelands of European Jews were their European countries and not Palestine, and that Zionist colonialism springs from its very anti-Semitism. Whereas Zionism insists that Jews are a race separate from European Christians, the Palestinians insist that European Jews are nothing if not European and have nothing to do with Palestine, its people, or its culture. What Israel and its American and European allies have sought to do in the last six and a half decades is to convince Palestinians that they too must become anti-Semites and believe as the Nazis, Israel, and its Western anti-Semitic allies do, that Jews are a race that is different from European races, that Palestine is their country, and that Israel speaks for all Jews. That the two largest American pro-Israel voting blocks today are Millenarian Protestants and secular imperialists continues the very same Euro-American anti-Jewish tradition that extends back to the Protestant Reformation and 19th century imperialism.But the Palestinians have remained unconvinced and steadfast in their resistance to anti-Semitism. Israel and its anti-Semitic allies affirm that Israel is “the Jewish people”, that its policies are “Jewish” policies, that its achievements are “Jewish” achievements, that its crimes are “Jewish” crimes, and that therefore anyone who dares to criticise Israel is criticising Jews and must be an anti-Semite. The Palestinian people have mounted a major struggle against this anti-Semitic incitement. They continue to affirm instead that the Israeli government does not speak for all Jews, that it does not represent all Jews, and that its colonial crimes against the Palestinian people are its own crimes and not the crimes of “the Jewish people”, and that therefore it must be criticised, condemned and prosecuted for its ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people. This is not a new Palestinian position, but one that was adopted since the turn of the 20th century and continued throughout the pre-WWII Palestinian struggle against Zionism. Yasser Arafat’s speech at the United Nations in 1974 stressed all these points vehemently: Just as colonialism heedlessly used the wretched, the poor, the exploited as mere inert matter with which to build and to carry out settler colonialism, so too were destitute, oppressed European Jews employed on behalf of world imperialism and of the Zionist leadership. European Jews were transformed into the instruments of aggression; they became the elements of settler colonialism intimately allied to racial discrimination…Zionist theology was utilised against our Palestinian people: the purpose was not only the establishment of Western-style settler colonialism but also the severing of Jews from their various homelands and subsequently their estrangement from their nations. Zionism… is united with anti-Semitism in its retrograde tenets and is, when all is said and done, another side of the same base coin. For when what is proposed is that adherents of the Jewish faith, regardless of their national residence, should neither owe allegiance to their national residence nor live on equal footing with its other, non-Jewish citizens -when that is proposed we hear anti-Semitism being proposed. When it is proposed that the only solution for the Jewish problem is that Jews must alienate themselves from communities or nations of which they have been a historical part, when it is proposed that Jews solve the Jewish problem by immigrating to and forcibly settling the land of another people – when this occurs, exactly the same position is being advocated as the one urged by anti-Semites against Jews. Israel’s claim that its critics must be anti-Semites presupposes that its critics believe its claims that it represents “the Jewish people”. But it is Israel’s claims that it represents and speaks for all Jews that are the most anti-Semitic claims of all. Today, Israel and the Western powers want to elevate anti-Semitism to an international principle around which they seek to establish full consensus. They insist that for there to be peace in the Middle East, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims must become, like the West, anti-Semites by espousing Zionism and recognising Israel’s anti-Semitic claims. Except for dictatorial Arab regimes and the Palestinian Authority and its cronies, on this 65th anniversary of the anti-Semitic conquest of Palestine by the Zionists, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, the Palestinian people and the few surviving anti-Zionist Jews continue to refuse to heed this international call and incitement to anti-Semitism. They affirm that they are, as the last of the Semites, the heirs of the pre-WWII Jewish and Palestinian struggles against anti-Semitism and its Zionist colonial manifestation. It is their resistance that stands in the way of a complete victory for European anti-Semitism in the Middle East and the world at large. Joseph Massad teaches Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians.  You can follow the editor on Twitter: @nyktweets The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s pro -….editorial policy. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opi…829430527.html

Tweet this Post!   #2  15th May 2013, 10:35

psycho  תיקון עולם Admin Global Moderator Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Mokum Organisation: judeo-communist conspiracy Posts: 9,276 Tendency: The Imaginary Party Rep Power: 173 Reputation: 15855

What a load of crock, I don’t even know where to begin… __________________ There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and organizational control; between the ‘come one, come all’ of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of a paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off, and repeating, with a corpse-filled mouth, that planting carrots is enough to dispel this nightmare – the coming insurrection

Tweet this Post!   #3  16th May 2013, 03:12

MarxSchmarx  Rabble Forum Moderator Global Moderator Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: My parents’ garage. Organisation: My business union 😦 Posts: 3,617 Tendency: Revolutionary Marxists Blog Entries: 48 Latest Blog Entry: tl;dr post #1 Rep Power: 43 Reputation: 3441

Quote: Originally Posted by psycho  What a load of crock, I don’t even know where to begin… I think it would help the discussion if you could. There’s a lot in the guys’ piece to respond to, perhaps it will help the analysis by dissecting it with finer toothed comb. For instance, starting with his characterization of “scientific anti-Semitism” seems like a very loaded phrase on many levels. __________________ la luz de un Rojo Amanecer anuncia ya la vida que vendrá. -Quilapayun

Tweet this Post!   #4  16th May 2013, 09:57

psycho  תיקון עולם Admin Global Moderator Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Mokum Organisation: judeo-communist conspiracy Posts: 9,276 Tendency: The Imaginary Party Rep Power: 173 Reputation: 15855

The whole premise “zionism is anti-semetic because anti-semites wanted Jews out of europe” is already factual wrong, AFAIK the only non-jewish project/call to move Jews from Europe instead of ghettozation, murder or forced intergration was the autonomous oblast in the soviet union, which wasnt founded on anti-semitism (even when it became so later). The author has a agenda (the same as freepalestine) to make Zionism equalizing anti-Semitism to absolve himself/”anti-zionism” from it, make them anti-anti-semites and is willing to construct that argument on false premissises. It’s like those strasserist neonazi’s claiming to be the real anti-fascist because a. they are opposed against fascists as proven by the night of long knives etc and b. leftwing anti-fascists are the real fascists because they surpress their freedom of speech and association. It’s not an argument, its an agenda. __________________ There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and organizational control; between the ‘come one, come all’ of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of a paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off, and repeating, with a corpse-filled mouth, that planting carrots is enough to dispel this nightmare – the coming insurrection

Tweet this Post!   #5  16th May 2013, 11:17

psycho  תיקון עולם Admin Global Moderator Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Mokum Organisation: judeo-communist conspiracy Posts: 9,276 Tendency: The Imaginary Party Rep Power: 173 Reputation: 15855

Also, the argument that Jews shouldn’t be in Palestine because of race is just as disgusting as the argument as that they should. I mean common; Quote: The Jewish holocaust killed off the majority of Jews who fought and struggled against European anti-Semitism, including Zionism. With their death, the only remaining “Semites” who are fighting against Zionism and its anti-Semitism today are the Palestinian people. Whereas Israel insists that European Jews do not belong in Europe and must come to Palestine, the Palestinians have always insisted that the homelands of European Jews were their European countries and not Palestine, and that Zionist colonialism springs from its very anti-Semitism. Whereas Zionism insists that Jews are a race separate from European Christians, the Palestinians insist that European Jews are nothing if not European and have nothing to do with Palestine, its people, or its culture. Quote: That a subsidiary of the German company Degussa, which collaborated with the Nazis and which produced the Zyklon B gas that was used to kill people in the gas chambers, was contracted to build the memorial was anything but surprising, as it simply confirms that those who killed Jews in Germany in the late 1930s and in the 1940s now regret what they had done because they now understand Jews to be white Europeans who must be commemorated and who should not have been killed in the first place on account of their whiteness. Since the OP posted this article without any comment I can only assume he agrees with statements like these ^, its disgusting and anything but leftist. __________________ There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and organizational control; between the ‘come one, come all’ of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of a paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off, and repeating, with a corpse-filled mouth, that planting carrots is enough to dispel this nightmare – the coming insurrection

Tweet this Post!   #6  16th May 2013, 12:03

cynicles  Banned Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Harperate of Canuckistan Organisation: Lemon Party Posts: 703 Tendency: Luxemburgists Rep Power: 0 Reputation: 1012

Quote: Originally Posted by psycho  The whole premise “zionism is anti-semetic because anti-semites wanted Jews out of europe” is already factual wrong, AFAIK the only non-jewish project/call to move Jews from Europe instead of ghettozation, murder or forced intergration was the autonomous oblast in the soviet union, which wasnt founded on anti-semitism (even when it became so later). The author has a agenda (the same as freepalestine) to make Zionism equalizing anti-Semitism to absolve himself/”anti-zionism” from it, make them anti-anti-semites and is willing to construct that argument on false premissises. It’s like those strasserist neonazi’s claiming to be the real anti-fascist because a. they are opposed against fascists as proven by the night of long knives etc and b. leftwing anti-fascists are the real fascists because they surpress their freedom of speech and association. It’s not an argument, its an agenda. Your argument is basically that there was no project to remove jews from europe, which the author already already disproved and then you launch into a personal attack on him and freepalestine? Quote: Also, the argument that Jews shouldn’t be in Palestine because of race is just as disgusting as the argument as that they should. This completely ignores the point made earlier in the article about the racialization of judaism that occured in the 19th century that was the basis of modern anti-semitism. This statement also doesn’t make any sense even if jews we’re a race since it has nothing to do with anything he said, it’s a non-sequitor. He doesn’t make the argument that jews living in palestine now should be kicked out, he favours one secular state. Quote: It was the Protestant Reformation with its revival of the Hebrew Bible that would link the modern Jews of Europe to the ancient Hebrews of Palestine, a link that the philologists of the 18th century would solidify through their discovery of the family of “Semitic” languages, including Hebrew and Arabic. Whereas Millenarian Protestants insisted that contemporary Jews, as descendants of the ancient Hebrews, must leave Europe to Palestine to expedite the second coming of Christ, philological discoveries led to the labelling of contemporary Jews as “Semites”. The leap that the biological sciences of race and heredity would make in the 19th century of considering contemporary European Jews racial descendants of the ancient Hebrews would, as a result, not be a giant one. Furthermore the claim of whiteness of european jews isn’t a stretch given the broadening of the white category that occured over the 20th century later integrating the irish, eastern europeans, italians and finns. Quote: That a subsidiary of the German company Degussa, which collaborated with the Nazis and which produced the Zyklon B gas that was used to kill people in the gas chambers, was contracted to build the memorial was anything but surprising, as it simply confirms that those who killed Jews in Germany in the late 1930s and in the 1940s now regret what they had done because they now understand Jews to be white Europeans who must be commemorated and who should not have been killed in the first place on account of their whiteness. That the statement isn’t sugar coated and pleasent to the ears is no excuse to write it off. If europeans(including white canadians, americans and austrailians) had really gained a conscience after the holocaust, in response to what had occured, then why are roma still so heavily discriminated against in europe? Why are other groups who were victims of genocide not afforded an escape from institutionalized discrimination. The only way jews could have been sympathized with to such a level in the post war period is if they had been integrated into whiteness.

Tweet this Post!   #7  16th May 2013, 12:30

psycho  תיקון עולם Admin Global Moderator Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Mokum Organisation: judeo-communist conspiracy Posts: 9,276 Tendency: The Imaginary Party Rep Power: 173 Reputation: 15855

The whole “argument” is reduced to a racialist one while the history of both the holocaust as a specific and anti-semitism (and its reaction of Zionism) needs a class analysis, to claim that; Quote: That a subsidiary of the German company Degussa,which collaborated with theNazisand which produced the Zyklon B gas that was used to kill people in the gas chambers, was contracted to build the memorial was anything but surprising, as it simply confirms that those who killed Jews in Germany in the late 1930s and in the 1940s now regret what they had done because they now understand Jews to be white Europeans who must be commemorated and who should not have been killed in the first place on account of their whiteness. instead of capitalism being capitalism at its most disgusting opportunist cynicism is deeply insulting to those (like me) who had their whole families gassed. This whole article is basically victim blaming and the fact that it doesn’t get recognized (an article like this about slavery and black sepratism would have met a tsunami of condemnation) is very telling. __________________ There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and organizational control; between the ‘come one, come all’ of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of a paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off, and repeating, with a corpse-filled mouth, that planting carrots is enough to dispel this nightmare – the coming insurrection

Tweet this Post!   #8  16th May 2013, 13:39

cynicles  Banned Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Harperate of Canuckistan Organisation: Lemon Party Posts: 703 Tendency: Luxemburgists Rep Power: 0 Reputation: 1012

Quote: Originally Posted by psycho  The whole “argument” is reduced to a racialist one while the history of both the holocaust as a specific and anti-semitism (and its reaction of Zionism) needs a class analysis, to claim that; He specifically address the issue of class in noting the media protrayal of the victims of the holocaust and who the majority of the victims were, namely the classist narrative of the holocaust that exists both in the media and by historians. Furthermore race intersects with class in addition to being a social creation of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism therefore making it an important issue to address. Again I reference back to his point about the emergence of scientific racism in the 1800s. The dominant class in society create an ‘other’ to discriminate against. It’s no less true in the case of the labels ‘african’, ‘indian/native american/first nation’, ‘gay’, ‘straight’, ‘male’ and ‘female’. Quote: Since the 1960s, Hollywood films about the holocaust began to depict Jewish victims of Nazism as white Christian-looking, middle class, educated and talented people not unlike contemporary European and American Christians who should and would identify with them. Presumably if the films were to depict the poor religious Jews of Eastern Europe (and most East European Jews who were killed by the Nazis were poor and many were religious), Quote: instead of capitalism being capitalism at its most disgusting opportunist cynicism is deeply insulting to those (like me) who had their whole families gassed. Why can’t it be both? Why are you insulted by his point about the company that produced Zyklon B being racist and white supremacist? Is this now mutually exclusive from capitalism now? Don’t we already acknowledge that capitalism is racist? Quote: This whole article is basically victim blaming and the fact that it doesn’t get recognized (an article like this about slavery and black sepratism would have met a tsunami of condemnation) is very telling. No, it isn’t based on victim blaming, his point is specifically that a minority of jews were influenced by european nationalism and adopted the exact position that european anti-semites adopted, that jews had to be ‘dealt with’ or expelled from europe. Zionists accepted and supported this point and engaged in craven collaboration with these antisemites in order to achieve their own vision of ethno-nationalism(in their case in palestine through colonization). Mean while the majority of jews rejected both these positions and opposed both in favour of either integrationism, the Haskalah, or the right to preserve their own culture and beliefs. What would an article like this look like if it we’re done about slavery and black separatism? How are those even comparable? If black separatism involved the ethnic cleansing of the mohawk from upstate new york then yes there would be a tsunami of criticism, and so what? Your last point is just stupid and based on consensus reality, because his argument isn’t supported by white institutional intellectuals and academics in the west its telling? Telling of what? Apparently us non-white folks require the white mans approval to do things.

Tweet this Post!   #9  16th May 2013, 14:49

psycho  תיקון עולם Admin Global Moderator Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Mokum Organisation: judeo-communist conspiracy Posts: 9,276 Tendency: The Imaginary Party Rep Power: 173 Reputation: 15855

Dude… You have any clue what your saying? What your defending here? Fuck this, ill let other people explain… I’m a Zionist anti-semite after all.. __________________ There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and organizational control; between the ‘come one, come all’ of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of a paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off, and repeating, with a corpse-filled mouth, that planting carrots is enough to dispel this nightmare – the coming insurrection

Tweet this Post!   #10  16th May 2013, 15:00

cynicles  Banned Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Harperate of Canuckistan Organisation: Lemon Party Posts: 703 Tendency: Luxemburgists Rep Power: 0 Reputation: 1012

You haven’t addressed any of my points, further more I don’t think you actually understand what Massad is saying. This isn’t the first time people who’ve never read Massad’s work or understood it have tried to argue against it and failed. His work on the history of sexuality in the arab world seems to have flown 10 miles over most people’s heads. There needs to be more education on these forums about what orientalism is.

Tweet this Post!   #11  16th May 2013, 16:36

Rurkel  Lekrur Join Date: Jan 2013 Posts: 193 Rep Power: 3 Reputation: 278

Quote: AFAIK the only non-jewish project/call to move Jews from Europe instead of ghettozation, murder or forced intergration was the autonomous oblast in the soviet union, which wasnt founded on anti-semitism (even when it became so later). However, anti-semites like lord Balfour or von Pleve (to be fair, nothing really came out of Hertzl’s talk with Pleve anyway) were perfectly willing to support the Zionist project. This article is indeed correct in many thing it says. Despite this, I’ve found it to be disingenuous, attempting to advance both reasonable and unreasonable positions simultaneously to protect himself from criticism. __________________ Immortal Classic Poem on Revolutionary Morality against Humanism

Tweet this Post!   #12  17th May 2013, 04:18

blake 3:17  Senior Revolutionary Forum Moderator Global Moderator Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Toronto Organisation: NOTA Posts: 2,552 Rep Power: 38 Reputation: 2952

From a recent interview from the same author: Quote: FE&SM: Your work has challenged the politics of gay internationalism espoused by Western NGOs and by their potential partners in the Arab world. What are the political consequences of this challenge, especially in the struggle against the heterosexualization of the world? JM: American neoliberal imperialism since the 1980s—and in a much more intensified way since the fall of the Soviet Union—has sought to supplant all independent civil society activism and organization across the world with non-governmental organizations that it creates and/or coopts, that it trains and finances, and that are beholden to an internationalized American agenda (underwritten by a Western sexual epistemology and ontology) dealing with identities, rights, governance, the economy, administration, laws, transnational finance and investment, religion, culture, the arts, literature, etc. The goal was to destroy all existing efforts in those societies which organize the population against pro-Western dictatorship, neoliberal economics, and US and European imperial control, to name the most salient. The export of the particular and limiting white middle class urban-based Protestant American liberal value system as a universal system of values which (after having been imposed on Western Europe at the elite and popular levels) must be imposed on the rest of the world as a precursor to the imposition of American understandings of the future of (a neoliberal) humanity necessitated these NGOs, which would do much of the footwork already prepared for them by the International Monteray Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in earlier decades—and which created the debt crisis of the 1980s. Of course this was a model already imposed inside the United States to control societal activism and organizing, and which replaced 1960s-style organizing by groups who opposed and resisted societal and state definitions of racialized and gendered citizenship as well as sexual normativity, among other struggles. Much of that energy was coopted by the 1970s and organized in NGOs funded by the state or private foundations with long-term experience in advancing US imperial policies during the Cold War (the Ford Foundation should be mentioned here as being at the forefront of that effort). The occupied Palestinian territories would be the largest scale theater for the execution of this program outside the United States, by which the large majority of West Bank and Gaza civil society was being decimated and supplanted by Western NGOs linked to the peace process and subject to the regulations of the American and European alliance with the Jewish settler colony and its interests. In the case of Gaza and less so the West Bank, this effort would be resisted politically, but would take the same form—namely that of Islamist NGOs with local and international, though non-Western, financing. It is in this context that the internationalization of gayness, being a more public and specific effort, compared to the internationalization of straightness and heterosexuality, which is a far more protracted and general project, gets to be championed by neoliberal white American (and European) gay men—while imperialist white American (and European) women would busy themselves in projects of saving non-white women globally from non-white men—seeking to spread freedom and liberty for the oppressed “homosexual” masses around the world while half the American states meanwhile had laws on the books that criminalized homosexuality—laws which it became necessary to remove from the books in one swoop in 2003 by the US Supreme Court in order to better advance this universalizing agenda of American liberal values. In this context, only one Arab Gay Internationalist organization was created in Lebanon, and a few more in Israel that are staffed by Palestinian citizens of Israel who insist that the adoption of the homo-hetero binary as definitional is essential to the struggle of liberating the sexually oppressed in their countries and beyond them, while unwittingly (or by now wittingly) advancing the repression of those who are not beholden to the Western hetero-homo binary. Their attempt to normalize the Arab world by transforming it into a copy of Euro-America, proceeds from their naïve and indeed pernicious belief—which does take the form of a religious belief that they pursue with a missionary zeal—that Arabs are already subject to the homo-hetero binary and that the task is simply to liberate the homosexuals among them. However, what their intervention participates in is the heterosexualization of the majority of Arabs and the homonormativization of a minority of them. What these organizations want to impose as part of the Gay International is a regime of sexuality predicated on a recent western ontology, wherein one’s sexual desires become the TRUTH of one, of one’s identity, of who one is. They are assisted in this effort by diaspora Arab Gay Internationalist groups located in the United States and Europe, who are part and parcel of the white imperial Gay International. While Gayatri Spivak in an earlier era diagnosed a situation in which white men wanted to save brown women from brown men, in the era of the Gay International and the rightwing investment and abduction of the notion of “agency,” the situation has become much more complicated. What we have today is a situation where brown women (gay and straight) and brown gay men (located in the Euro-American metropole and those who work for NGOs with Euro-American funding in their home countries), and their white allies of all genders and sexualities, are engaged in saving brown women (“straight” and “gay”) and brown “gay” men (in the Third World and in Europe and the United States) from brown “straight” men. Meanwhile, Gay and Straight Internationalist efforts are assisted by the Western internationalization of homophobia into areas of the world where neither homosexual identities nor homophobic identities existed. Conservative secular and religious American homophobic ideologies and organizations are intervening all the over the world to export American “family values” which aim to heterosexualize non-Europeans and to instruct them in homophobia, which is always a simultaneous effort. This is being carried out not only though social engineering projects executed by Western-funded NGOs but even by interference in legislation with calls to criminalize certain kinds of sexual conduct that are seen as not helpful to the imposition of American hetero-homo binarization, which, in this case, is known as Christian and American “family values,” while Gay Internationalists insist that they should be “decriminalized” to facilitate their project of hetero-homo binarization, known in their case as “liberation” of sexual minorities. We know what this has led to in Uganda with American Gay Internationalists and American evangelicals fighting it out, ostensibly on behalf of Ugandans, and increasingly with the intervention of American rightwing Islamophobic and homophobic evangelist Pat Robertson in places like Kenya and Zimbabwe, where he has opened chapters of his American Center for Law and Justice. So what we see then is an export of Western cultural wars, wherein both sides are equally racist and colonialist, and they both have one joint major imperial export, namely the hetero-homo binarization of the world, which will essentially bring about the massive heterosexualization of non-Europeans who heed the call of the binary by accepting heterosexuality, and the minoritization of those among them who heed the call by accepting homosexuality and gayness or fail to heed the call by refusing to accept the binary, wherein they both become targets of another western export, namely homophobia. FE&SM: How do you respond to your critics who accuse you of rendering Arabs who identify as gay invisible and of rendering Arab LGBT organizations as agents of imperialism? JM: I have never sought to render anyone invisible. Indeed, nothing I can do could render Arabs who identify as “gay” or “homosexual” invisible. Those among Arabs who live in the Arab world and who adopt this identity as a public social identification and seek its internationalization through the rubric of Western-funded organizations (I should say in one “organization” located in Beirut to be numerically precise) in order to impose it on others are championed, funded, and defended by a huge imperial apparatus that not only makes them visible, but which makes invisible the many more numerous Arabs who desire and/or engage in different-sex and same-sex contact and who refuse the hetero-homo binary as a way to organize their identities, much less render their sexual desires as their inner truths as required by the western regime of sexuality. The production of the gay (and her/his correlate, the straight) Arab is predicated on the invisibilization of the majority of Arabs whose ontology is not dependent on this Euro-American formation nor on its imperial missions and who do not live under a Western regime of sexuality. I have never called “LGBT Arabs” agents of imperialism, as Gay Internationalists often misquote me. One should assert here that the academic wing of the Gay International suffers from an egregious theoretical illiteracy. I have however said that Gay Internationalist Arabs are complicit with imperialism, and their complicity is not unlike the complicity of nationalist Arabs or Islamist Arabs (in my book Desiring Arabs, I study how all three groups came to be complicit with Euro-American imperialism and Orientalism). The fact that all of these groups (and in the case of Gay Internationalists, I am referring here to those who are located in Beirut and Israel) are anti-imperialist in the sense that they oppose the imperial political, economic, and military presence of the United States or European countries in the Arab world, that they oppose US wars on the Arab and Muslim worlds, that they oppose Israeli and Zionist aggression against Palestine and the Palestinians, is well established in the official statements of their organizations and their literature. I am speaking of complicity at the level of epistemology and ontology, where all of these groups begin to understand themselves through a European universalized ontology and epistemology that is disseminated through imperial channels. That Arab nationalists begin in the late nineteenth century to see themselves and their history in cultural and civilizational terms follows this imperial universalization. That Muslims begin in the same period to speak of something amorphous called “Islam” that opposes itself to something called the “West” and that some of them begin to think of Islam as a “religion” or a “civilization” is also an effect of Orientalist and imperial impositions and internalization. Similarly, the tiny number of gay-identified Arabs organized in Gay Internationalist organizations are complicit with an imperial sexual regime that rearranges the world along the hetero-homo binary, which they fully adopt without questioning and insist on reproducing and disseminating across the Arab world as the road to liberation. In this sense, the imperial complicity of the Gay International, including its Arab members, lies in their calling upon all Arabs who refuse the imperial hegemony of the hetero-homo binary to unlearn and unthink the way they desire, and that they learn and think their desires along the lines of the hetero-homo binary, indeed that the way they exist and the way they are, their very ontology, is a form of false consciousness, which they must shed, as the truth of who they are, according to this logic, lies in their adoption of the imperial hetero-homo binary through which they must apprehend themselves and their desires, which will lead, according to the Gay International, to their emancipation. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index…-with-joseph-m

Tweet this Post!   #13  17th May 2013, 05:02

Turinbaar  The Specter Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: San Francisco, California Posts: 176 Tendency: Narco-Socialists Blog Entries: 16 Latest Blog Entry: A Man Among Gods Rep Power: 6 Reputation: 213

Quote: Originally Posted by josseph massad It is in this context that the internationalization of gayness… huh? __________________ The call for the people to give up the illusions about their condition is a call for them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The Narco-Socialist Manifesto

Tweet this Post!   #14  17th May 2013, 09:03

Devrim  Left Communist Committed User Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Central Europe Posts: 7,230 Tendency: Left Communists Rep Power: 95 Reputation: 8023

Quote: Originally Posted by cynicles  Furthermore the claim of whiteness of european jews isn’t a stretch given the broadening of the white category that occured over the 20th century later integrating the irish, eastern europeans, italians and finns. Quote: That a subsidiary of the German company Degussa, which collaborated with the Nazis and which produced the Zyklon B gas that was used to kill people in the gas chambers, was contracted to build the memorial was anything but surprising, as it simply confirms that those who killed Jews in Germany in the late 1930s and in the 1940s now regret what they had done because theynow understand Jews to be white Europeans who must be commemorated and who should not have been killed in the first place on account of their whiteness. That the statement isn’t sugar coated and pleasent to the ears is no excuse to write it off. If europeans(including white canadians, americans and austrailians) had really gained a conscience after the holocaust, in response to what had occured, then why are roma still so heavily discriminated against in europe? Why are other groups who were victims of genocide not afforded an escape from institutionalized discrimination. The only way jews could have been sympathized with to such a level in the post war period is if they had been integrated into whiteness. This whole thing about ‘whiteness’ comes across as really weird to me. Obviously the author of the piece, and the poster quoted above a products of the North American education system, where this whole narrative about ‘whiteness’ emerged. I think it is a pretty dodgy analysis anyway, but it is a narrative that makes absolutely no sense at all when taken out of its context and transposed upon post-war Europe. Nobody in post war continental Europe would have considered a group such as the Irish mentioned above to have not have been white, and would have been bemused to hear it suggested that they were not in some way ‘white’. There was no racism in continental Europe against the Irish. Where racism against the Irish existed (i.e. Britain), it wasn’t because they were in some way ‘not white’, but based on religion. Saying that the Jews were integrated into some concept of ‘whiteness’ doesn’t make any sense at all in the context of the time. Devrim

Tweet this Post!   #15  17th May 2013, 12:23

freepalestine  Banned Committed User Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Maqdesie Posts: 1,770 Tendency: Revolutionary Marxists Rep Power: 0 Reputation: 1884

Mira Sucharov http://angryarab.blogspot.gr/2013/05…-in-daily.html

Tweet this Post!   #16  17th May 2013, 13:04

L1NKS  libertarian socialist Join Date: May 2013 Location: Germany Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0 Reputation: 24

One secular state in the region for all ethnicities and religious groups that have a legitimate claim on living there in peace represents a solution that is out of reach. Therefore I think we should focus on what the United Nations decided in 1947: Creating two viable states in the region. Unfortunately only one of the two states has been created so far: Israel. __________________ Slaves went along with it, women went along with it, oppressed people often go along with it. Until they—I mean, to learn that you are being oppressed, and you donʼt have to be, is hard. — Noam Chomsky

Tweet this Post!   #17  17th May 2013, 13:28

cynicles  Banned Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Harperate of Canuckistan Organisation: Lemon Party Posts: 703 Tendency: Luxemburgists Rep Power: 0 Reputation: 1012

Quote: Originally Posted by Devrim  This whole thing about ‘whiteness’ comes across as really weird to me. Obviously the author of the piece, and the poster quoted above a products of the North American education system, where this whole narrative about ‘whiteness’ emerged. I think it is a pretty dodgy analysis anyway, but it is a narrative that makes absolutely no sense at all when taken out of its context and transposed upon post-war Europe. The narrative of whiteness was and is not exclusive to North America(have we forgotten about the past and current attitude towards eastern europeans and roma?), and your attempt to dismiss mine and Massad’s point by calling us “products of the North American educational system” again is nothing more then an attempt to avoid addressing the argument in favour of personal attacks, it’s petty and pathetic. It also fails to note once again that these narratives are real and used to divide the world into ‘normals’ and ‘others’ for political reasons and the issue isn’t being used to ascribe any essentialist characteristics. Furthermore your point about it being ‘dodgy’ is never explained, just an empty dismissal that ignores the context established in the article where he establishes time and again the intimate connection between antisemitism and zionism and the mutually reinforcing relationship they share historically. Quote: Nobody in post war continental Europe would have considered a group such as the Irish mentioned above to have not have been white, and would have been bemused to hear it suggested that they were not in some way ‘white’. There was no racism in continental Europe against the Irish. Where racism against the Irish existed (i.e. Britain), it wasn’t because they were in some way ‘not white’, but based on religion. ?????? Where was it suggested that the Irish in postwar europe we’re not considered white? The point about the Irish was specifically about England. And no one is disputing the lack of racism against the Irish on continental Europe(now you’re just making up strawmen). Again you miss the point entirely, we’re not saying racism against the irish was based on them not being considered white, they weren’t considered white because of their political status, you’re confusing the cause and affect. No racism against the Irish was not based on religion. Quote: Saying that the Jews were integrated into some concept of ‘whiteness’ doesn’t make any sense at all in the context of the time. Again, explain please.

Tweet this Post!   #18  17th May 2013, 13:34

cynicles  Banned Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Harperate of Canuckistan Organisation: Lemon Party Posts: 703 Tendency: Luxemburgists Rep Power: 0 Reputation: 1012

Quote: Originally Posted by Rurkel  However, anti-semites like lord Balfour or von Pleve (to be fair, nothing really came out of Hertzl’s talk with Pleve anyway) were perfectly willing to support the Zionist project. This article is indeed correct in many thing it says. Despite this, I’ve found it to be disingenuous, attempting to advance both reasonable and unreasonable positions simultaneously to protect himself from criticism. Explin what parts you found disingenuous and cut the crap with the personal attacks already people. Quote: Originally Posted by Turinbaar  huh? He’s refering to the internationalizing effects of capitalism and imperialism that seeks to homogenize cultural norms and identities globally(homogenizing entire continents and peoples etc.); and the fact that defining identity based on who one has sexual relations with is a creation of 19th century Europe and never existed outside of the west or within the west prior to that time.

Tweet this Post!   #19  17th May 2013, 14:44

Turinbaar  The Specter Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: San Francisco, California Posts: 176 Tendency: Narco-Socialists Blog Entries: 16 Latest Blog Entry: A Man Among Gods Rep Power: 6 Reputation: 213

Quote: Originally Posted by cynicles  He’s refering to the internationalizing effects of capitalism and imperialism that seeks to homogenize cultural norms and identities globally(homogenizing entire continents and peoples etc.); and the fact that defining identity based on who one has sexual relations with is a creation of 19th century Europe and never existed outside of the west or within the west prior to that time. I doubt this very much. Is it irrelevant to mention leviticus? __________________ The call for the people to give up the illusions about their condition is a call for them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The Narco-Socialist Manifesto

Tweet this Post!   #20  17th May 2013, 14:45

Devrim  Left Communist Committed User Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Central Europe Posts: 7,230 Tendency: Left Communists Rep Power: 95 Reputation: 8023

Quote: Originally Posted by cynicles  The narrative of whiteness was and is not exclusive to North America(have we forgotten about the past and current attitude towards eastern europeans and roma?), I think that this concept of ‘whiteness’, like the concept of privilege, was specifically created to try to explain relationships in North America. I don’t think either of them are useful concepts even in their original setting, but when transposed onto other situations they just come across as absurd. Attitudes to Eastern Europeans are very different, and have been very different historically in different parts of Europe. For example in the UK, where today Polish is the second most widely spoken language, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, I would say that there were virtually no racist attitudes towards eastern Europeans. Today this attitude certainly exists, and is developed in the media, with all of these stories about ‘Polish plumbers coming over here and taking our jobs’. However, in the years following the Second World War, there were large numbers of Polish immigrants in certain areas, and there was very little if any at all, negative feelings towards them. How does this narrative about ‘whiteness’ help us to explain this? Were the Poles in the UK ‘white’ from the ’40s to the mid ’90s, and then for some reason ceased to be white? This doesn’t make any sense at all. The Roma are a different case. In Eastern Europe there is a very clear narrative based on skin colour. People talk openly and Gypsies and white people. To lump all of these things together into a framework worked out in the USA to explain relationships between different waves of immigrants just doesn’t seem to me to help us to understand what is going on in any way. Quote: and your attempt to dismiss mine and Massad’s point by calling us “products of the North American educational system” again is nothing more then an attempt to avoid addressing the argument in favour of personal attacks, it’s petty and pathetic. I don’t think that it is, and I think that it is quite obvious where these ideas come from. Communists accept that ideas have a material base, and I think it is very clear where these ideas come from. Quote: Furthermore your point about it being ‘dodgy’ is never explained, just an empty dismissal that ignores the context established in the article where he establishes time and again the intimate connection between antisemitism and zionism and the mutually reinforcing relationship they share historically. Actually, I think that to a certain extent Zionism and anti-antisemitism have certainly shared a mutually reinforcing relationship. What I was commenting on was the concept of ‘whiteness’ being applied to a situation where it makes no sens at all. When I said I thought it was a ‘dodgy’ idea, I was merely stating that I don’t think it is a very useful idea in itself. I didn’t dwell on it though as I what I was trying to get across was that even if the general theory were right within its own context, it doesn’t work at all when transposed onto a completely different one. Quote: ?????? Where was it suggested that the Irish in postwar europe we’re not considered white? The point about the Irish was specifically about England. And no one is disputing the lack of racism against the Irish on continental Europe(now you’re just making up strawmen). I’d say that it was suggested here that the Irish were not considered to be white: Quote: Furthermore the claim of whiteness of european jews isn’t a stretch given the broadening of the white category that occured over the 20th century later integrating the irish, eastern europeans, italians and finns. Now it wasn’t made directly in direct reference to continental Europe. It was a general assertion, which shows how useless this framework it is when applied to other situations. The development of racism is specific to different circumstances. I don’t think that it is even relevant to England though. If you had told people in Britain in the 1970s, a time when anti-Irish racism in the UK was very common, that the Irish somehow weren’t ‘white’. They would have been completely bemused by it. Quote: Again you miss the point entirely, we’re not saying racism against the irish was based on them not being considered white, they weren’t considered white because of their political status, you’re confusing the cause and affect. As I have mentioned, they weren’t in any way considered to be non-white. Quote: No racism against the Irish was not based on religion. I think if you go back into the history of anti-Irish racism in Britain you will actually find that anti-Catholicism has played a very large part in it. Devrim