tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386961472024-03-13T08:58:21.280-07:00That's Funny, You Don't Look Anti-SemiticAn anti-racist analysis of left anti-semitism by Steve Cohen (ZT"L), edited by Libby Lawson and Erica BunnanUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431070997257842007-02-01T17:53:00.000-08:002009-03-18T03:14:00.270-07:00There Must Be Some Way Out of HereIn 1984 I wrote a booklet against anti-Semitism. For this I was denounced as a Zionist.<br /><br />In 2005 I wrote <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2005/08/i-am-anti-zionist-zionist-by-steve.html"target="blank">a pastiche poem criticising Zionism</a>. For this I was denounced as an anti-Semite by some people on the <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/home/">Engage</a> website. What is happening here?<br /><br />It seems to me that one of the things that is happening is that whatever the fundamental political distinction between anti Semitism and anti Zionism (a distinction I see as absolute) yet on an emotional and existential level the two have become hopelessly intertwined—and this itself is political. Something else which is happening is the confirmation as far as I'm concerned of a political analysis of anti-Semitism which in my naivety, strikes me as obvious but which I've never seen articulated anywhere else. This is that the Jewish Chronicle and Socialist Worker are both correct. And incorrect. Zionism is anti racist. And Zionism is racist. I cannot see how Zionism in its triumphant form (the Israeli state) is anything except essentially racist. It was founded on the dispossession of the Palestinians. And it continues on the super exploitation and humiliation of the Palestinians as the "other". To deny this strikes me as fundamentally immoral. I also happen to think that two states, one of which by definition has to be exclusively Jewish is similarly immoral. I think majoritarianism (the legitimisation of an entity through numbers) is immoral wherever it presents itself—it leads at the very least to forced population movement and at its most extreme to ethnic cleansing and all that implies. I'll leave open to discussion and personal judgement the point on this continuum that Israel may already guilty and at which a divided state would become guilty.<br /><br />On the other hand it seems to me equally undeniable that Zionism in its inception was anti-racist. It was a reaction against, a way of dealing with, European anti-Semitism. Maybe as a revolutionary socialist writing in Prestwich in 2005 it would not be my way. However as a Jew of whatever political persuasion in Europe after the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 or the defeat of the revolution in Spain in 1939 I may well have had a different position. And if fascism ever took over here and Jews were barred entry elsewhere then I guess I might take a different position. I empathise with the "bolt hole" theory of Zionism. I appreciate the significance of the remarks by Isaac Deutscher, the Polish Marxist ex-rabbi, who wrote in later life "In this controversy (between socialism and Zionism) Zionism has scored a horrible victory, one of which it could neither wish nor expect; six million Jews had to perish in Hitler's gas chambers in order that Israel should come to life ... If instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s I had urged European Jewry to go to Palestine, I might have saved some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler's gas chambers" (Israel's Spiritual Climate). I take it as axiomatic that any revolutionary of that pre-war period would have fought for the absolute right of Jews to enter Palestine. To have argued otherwise, to have argued for immigration controls, would have meant support for the British Mandate whose army tried to prevent entry. However the tenets of revolutionary socialism (tenets to which I still hold even in these days of Blair, Bush, Sharon and ... Bin Laden) would demand that entry into the then Palestine would/should have lead to an attempt to forge an alliance between Jewish workers and Palestinian workers and peasants against the Zionist leadership, the absentee Palestinian landlords and the British soldiery. Of course the task would have been enormous. But the failure of that historic task has lead to what we have today—Israel the perpetual blood bath.<br /><br />It is because Zionism is both racist and anti-racist that I call myself an anti-Zionist Zionist. It is also because Zionism is racist and anti racist that there is an even more urgent need to rigorously distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism. This itself requires a rigorous definition of both—otherwise how is it rationally possible to ever distinguish the two? I do not think there is ever the question of anti-Zionism discourse "becoming" or "sliding into" anti-Semitism. If a position is anti-semitic then it is anti-semitic in its origins—it does not become so. It is nothing whatsoever to do with Zionism. So, fascistic critiques of Israel are not about Zionism. They are about Jews. And this is the point. Anti-Zionism is about solidarity with the Palestinians. Anti-Semitism is about the Jewish conspiracy. Not all critiques of Israel are based on Jewish conspiracy theories. And anti-Semitism is not going to help progress the Palestinian cause. Just as August Bebel famously described the equation of capital with Jew as the socialism of fools then the equation of Zionism with world domination with Jew is the anti-zionism of fools.<br /><br />It often feels like the wisdom of Solomon is required to know how to deal politically with this grotesque foolishness. One issue is the actual (the "cleansing" of Jews from Jerusalem in 1948, the suicide bombings of today) or threatened ("drive them into the sea") repression of Israeli Jews which fuels a fortress mentality and to which sections of the left retain an ambivalent or agnostic attitude. Another issue that should be a matter of concern is that anti-semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism drives away those who would otherwise want to give solidarity to the Palestinian cause. For myself, this is what I found unfortunate in the debate over the boycott of some or all Israeli universities. Whatever the motive of those proposing the boycott (and like Engage I'm opposed to exceptionalising Israel) there is still an imperative need to offer real, material, political support to the Palestinians. I think for myself the best way of dealing with any particular proposed boycott is to come to a decision on whether the boycott would help the Palestinians irrespective of its proposers—and organise independently against anti-Semitism. Which perhaps meaning building a movement that simultaneously is dedicated to Palestinian solidarity and opposition to anti-Semitism.<br /><br />It is apparent from what I've said that I also disagree with what I take to be the dominant position within Engage—namely that in our contemporary world anti-Zionism must inevitably equate with anti-Semitism. Paradoxically I also disagree with Engage's position that in the modern world the form that anti-Semitism takes is through (foolish) anti-Zionism. I think it is worse than that. Obviously this is one form that is taken by the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy. However it seems to me that this is merely concealing more classic forms—Jew as all-powerful (the "Zionist lobby" running the USA), Jew as financial manipulator (the world being supposedly run by trans-national corporations and not imperialist states), Jew as murderer (take your pick—the blitzing of Iraq comes in there somewhere through its constant equation with the repression of the Palestinians). Jew as the subject of the blood libel (ditto but add the surreal accusation that Jews are responsible for September 11th), Jew as the killer of the first born (double ditto), Jew as poisoner of the wells (the anti-urbanisation of much Green politics—with Jews being the urban people par excellence). These images, these world-views, are powerful enough to split off from any anti-zionist base. And they have begun to split off within sections of the anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist movement. It is here that the anti-Zionism of fools emerges with a vengeance but is still subservient to the classic socialism of fools and also to the pre-capitalist feudalism of fools—the real McCoy of jew hatred. This is because anti-capitalism is shared by socialists who aspire to post-capitalist formations and right-wing organisations who hark back to an earlier pre-capitalist age—which is one of many reasons why genuine socialists have to be vigilant against any equation of capital with Jew.<br /><br />Anti-Semitism on the left has for too long been a taboo subject—probably since the inception of the socialist project itself. I know because in 1984 I was that taboo! I became for a short period a political pariah in sections of the socialist/communist movement (my movement) for daring to raise the subject. Actually when I began writing my book I had no intention of writing anything on anti-Semitism, left or right. I wanted to write and condemn the (latest) Israeli onslaught on Lebanon. I used the left press as source material—and became horrified by what I was reading. And what I was reading was gross stereotyping of the Jew via the stereotyping of Israel as the most powerful force in the universe. All this was redolent of all the old-time European, Christian imagery—just stopping short it seemed of accusations of desecrating the wafer. So I did some research and quickly realised that this left anti-Semitism did not spring from nowhere but unfortunately had a long and dishonourable tradition—going back at least to the successful agitation for immigration controls against Jewish refugees and the 1905 Aliens Act. As it so happened, I was at that time thinking of writing another book just on this agitation—but Pluto Press told me that "Jews don't sell". To which I replied that I thought this was what we've always been accused of doing too much of. To show Pluto they were not being true Marxists I quoted Marx's own piece of self-hatred from his On The Jewish Question: "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling". And then bizarrely I started to come across references and allusions (illusions) in parts of the left press to the wealth and power of Jews, of Jewry, all in the service of Israel—or maybe Israel was in the service of Jews and Jewry. Who knows? It was all rubbish anyway—but extremely dangerous rubbish.<br /><br />And without managing (with the support of some comrades in the Jewish Socialist Group—the JSG) to keep fixed in my head the absolute distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, I guess I could have gone schizophrenic. There were two great successive nights when I was evicted from a mosque then a shul. I'm always sorry I never made the hat-trick of our common enemy—a church. The mosque incident involved picketing (along with some Asian youth) some local anti-Jewish ayatollah. The shul incident was wonderful. It was in Liverpool. I went with other members of the JSG to picket a meeting that was being held in support of the invasion (a shul supporting a military invasion? This really was Old Testament stuff). What we didn't know was that the guest speaker was some Israeli General—we should have recognised him by his ripped jeans and tee shirt. As we were being lifted horizontally, face downwards, out of the shul by the stewards I looked down on a face looking up at me. The face looking up said "Weren't we at Oxford together?". To which I replied "I think so—were you at Trinity?" That to me is a classic example of tribalism. Mea culpa. I always regret not screaming out "Let my people go!".<br /><br />That's Funny You Don't Look Anti-Semitic did create ripples. It managed to split the JSG whose then dominant leadership thought it might offend the Socialist Workers Party. It resulted in some pretty dreadful correspondence over many weeks in journals like Searchlight and Peace News. A pamphlet was written denouncing me as a "criminal". There was a particular review—in Searchlight—one sentence of which I will never forget. Every Jew on the left will know that terrible syndrome whereby, whatever the context and wherever one is, we will be tested by being given the question "what is your position on Zionism?" Wanna support the miners—what's your position on Zionism? Against the bomb—what's your position on Zionism? And want to join our march against the eradication of Baghdad, in particular the eradication of Baghdad—what's your position on Zionism? And we all know what answer is expected in order to pass the test. It is a very strong form of anti-Semitism based on assumptions of collective responsibility. Denounce Zionism, crawl in the gutter, wear a yellow star and we'll let you in the club. Which is one reason why I call myself an Anti-Zionist Zionist—at least that should confuse the bastards. Anyhow this particular review, noting that my book actually did attack Zionism, said "It is not enough to trot out platitudes, as he does, about being against Zionism and in support of the Palestinian struggle". So I'm not allowed into the club even though I fulfil the entry requirements. I'm not allowed in because I recognise and oppose the existence of anti-Semitism on the Left—and this therefore renders all support for Palestinians a "platitude". Well it ain't me who's here confusing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.<br /><br />An accusation greeting the publication of That's Funny was that even if anti-Semitism existed, it was trivial compared to other forms of oppression—not least that being inflicted on the Palestinians. I find this argument abhorrent. The struggle for communism is not about establishing some equitable scale of oppression and exploitation. It is about smashing all such oppression and exploitation. Switch to Germany 1925—"Comrades why are you harping on about anti-Semitism? It's trivial. If it ever became significant we will deal with it. Honest".<br /><br />But there were positives back in 1984. There were allies out there—for instance the then Manchester and Liverpool branches of the JSG. I discovered that a similar political battle was going on within the feminist magazine Spare Rib and a kind of informal alliance was formed here. I remember that a large debate was organised in the Peace Studies department at Bradford University—where I shared some dope with a member of the PLO. It was Lebanese! And then the three of us who had published the book (we called ourselves The Beyond The Pale Collective) organised a biggish conference in Manchester. And Pluto Press was wrong—we sold a lot of books. We sold enough books to publish another one—on Holocaust Denial by Gill Seidel. This had been accepted by Pluto but then pulped after it had been typeset! I guess this was part of their reality denial.<br /><br />As far as I'm concerned I'm still prepared to stand behind most of what I wrote those two decades ago. However there is one issue where my position has somewhat changed. And there is a second where I think I missed the plot entirely. First I think the book was, in its critique of assimilation, far too uncritical of the concept of "Jewish culture". In fact I think it was implicitly far too generous towards Bundism in this respect (though I still support the Bundist championing of political self-organisation). I no longer see Jewish (or any) culture as monolithic. It is fractured and determined by issues of class. I have been in too many situations where the need to fight racism (racist attacks, immigration controls, fascist mobilisations) has been counter-posed by some suggestion about having an "ethnic" evening with "ethnic" clothes and "ethnic" food. It's got to the stage where, to paraphrase Goebbels, whenever I hear the word multiculture I want to reach for my gun. In particular I am now ruthlessly opposed to denominational schools—be they Jewish, Muslim, Catholic or Church of England. Some of this has been informed by the racist admission practices of the Jewish School in Manchester (no Jewish mother no entry). However the substantive point is that as a militant atheist I am opposed to the state subsidising the garbage of religion—any religion. And anyhow, I'm for the unity of people of all ages not their division. At the same time I'm equally opposed to the (political) drive towards assimilation—I don't see incorporation into the norms of imperialism as a step forward for humanity. The latest example of this drive towards incorporation is the suggestion by the Home Office Minister, Hazel Blears, following the London underground bombings that 'minorities should be described as, for example "Asian-British" rather than simply as "Asian"'. (Times 8 August 2005). The idea of the labelling and re-labelling of human beings as a method of protecting the citizenry of London is as ludicrous as all other justifications used for restricting the free movement of the same human beings. In the past slaves were branded—literally and with fire. Under the modern market economy it is people. This commoditisation of the alien reduces her or him to a piece of capital, to a new form of enslavement - the enslavement of a forced identity within a hostile society ever ready to deport and expel.<br /><br />Second I come to missing the plot. This is not about what I wrote. It is about what I did not write. In fact it was what I explicitly refrained from writing. So I said "The book says nothing about socialist or liberation movements in the third world, deliberately so, because countries in the third world have not historically been within the grip of Christianity, and thus have no tradition of conspiracy theories. For example within Islam both Jew and Christian were seen as infidels—and certainly there was no constant mythology of universal Jewish domination. If notions about Jewish power entered the third world, then that is a product of imperialistic and Christian penetration".<br /><br />Looking back on this from today's realities it clearly is inadequate. For instance I cannot see any basis for conspiracy theories (i.e. classic anti-Semitism) within Islam historically, however badly Jews (usually alongside Christians) were sometimes mistreated. I guess for this we have to be thankful we never bumped off Mohammed as well as Jesus. However it would be a matter of interesting political investigation to see precisely how conspiracy theories have subsequently entered the Muslim world—to see how they have become the Islam of fools. Moreover whatever the significance today of Left anti-Semitism, its influence and social weight is insignificant compared to that within Muslim communities (an anti-Semitism which is possibly matched by racism within the Jewish community). So the Elders of the Protocols of Zion is a best seller in Arabic speaking countries. So I've read how Islamicists blame "world Jewry" for both the New York and London underground bombings. And this junk needs to be challenged. And it needs to be challenged by the Left—and it isn't. In fact it is encouraged—if only obliquely.<br /><br />It is encouraged by Israeli exceptionalism—by the constant depiction and caricaturing of Israel as somehow being the pre-eminent world imperialist power. Inasmuch as I might be for some boycott of Israeli universities then I'm equally in support of a boycott of British universities because of their collusion in the institutionalised apartheid of immigration controls—that is either collusion by their silence or by their active co-operation with the Home Office in developing controls (which appears to be the case with University College London). It is encouraged by the emergence on demonstrations against the American invasion of Iraq, of the denunciation of Israel's occupation of the West Bank—as though there was some intrinsic connection between the two which is not shared with other imperialist interventions. It is encouraged by the sycophantic, uncritical relationship that the SWP/Respect has towards the Muslim leadership as organised, for instance, around the mosques—these Muslim machers are as right-wing and often as anti-Semitic as their Jewish macher counterparts organised around the shuls are anti-Islam. In the beginning was the Board of Deputies? Today there is the Muslim Association of Britain. Macherism, the political reliance on a self-appointed leadership (the macherites) is a political disease which needs to be challenged and destroyed—instead sections of the Left are cultivating it at its most dangerous points.<br /><br />Is there any way out of this mess? Particularly is there any way out of this mess for socialists in this country trapped politically between the existential linkage of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism? Is there a wisdom of Solomon? In all humility I think so. Of course we can all have our own politics on the way forward as regards Israel/Palestine. My own vision is of a federated secular and socialist middle east. This maybe is utopic but so is socialism. So is the revolution. So is all meaningful change. However there is going to be no way forward without a recognition of the fundamental block towards any change whatsoever—namely the world wide antagonism between Jews and Muslims. The international nature of this cleavage is central. Only joint and grassroots solidarity between the players in the game can possibly open up any dialogue. In Israel/Palestine this means between the Jewish and Palestinian masses. For instance let there be a march of a hundred thousand Israeli peaceniks into the occupied territories—and let them stay until the Israeli army and the settlers march out (or co-operate with the Palestinians in the sharing of resources—including the opening up of the new townships to Palestinians). Let Engage encourage this with its co-thinkers in Israel!<br /><br />In this country it means joint activity between Jews and Muslims (and socialists) with the Jewish and Muslim communities. And what this boils down to is joint activity against fascism and racism. I suggested above the necessity to start to develop a movement simultaneously based on struggle for Palestinian rights and against anti-Semitism. This is presently an abstraction. However another real movement does exist against racism which can draw the two communities together in struggle. This is the disparate movement against immigration controls—for whom the Jews were the first and Muslims the latest victims. Of course controls need to be challenged in their own right—not just as a device for unity. However the challenge can also forge a unity which presently seems a million miles away. What is more the history of the last thirty years of struggle by migrants, immigrants and refugees against controls shows something that SWP/Respect have utterly missed. This is that real, meaningful, progressive political activity within the Muslim community (and all third world communities) comes from the grassroots either by by-passing or defeating the community machers. Let Engage become involved in these struggles both because of their intrinsic political importance and as part of its commitment to challenging left anti-Semitism by building meaningful alliances!<br /><br />It could begin by supporting the campaign of Samina Altaf and her two children to fight deportation. Samina's is just one of countless stories—though I guess more immediately poignant. Having fled Pakistan to avoid repeated domestic abuse she was refused asylum here. Like all asylum seekers she is outside of the welfare state and has been forcibly dispersed into Salford by the so-called National Asylum Support Service (NASS—a wing of the Home Office). And now as a failed asylum seeker who is refusing to return "voluntarily" to the country from she fled she is being threatened by NASS with eviction onto the streets. And I forgot to mention this—Samina is disabled with rickets. And her children are crippled with rickets. Get involved with the campaign! Write a letter of support to her constituency MP—Hazel Blears that well known re-labeller of third world identity and warrior against international terrorism (address House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1). Blears happens to be a Home Office MP—so terrorise her with letters of support. And invite a speaker from the campaign to one of your meetings—whilst sending money to the campaign (address Samina Altaf Defence Campaign, c/o Bury Law Centre, 8 Banks St, Bury BL9 ODL).<br /><br />Finally I think that not one iota of the above can ever be resolved through communalism, through tribalism, through uncritically supporting Jews as Jews or Muslims as Muslims. My religion right or wrong! And all due to an accident of birth. I guess I recoil when I read on the Engage website the reflection on being Jewish—"frankly I can't get enough of it". Jewish identity as an addiction is not much of an advert for clarity of political thought. I was shocked by a news report I read a few years ago. It is a story that deserves creative fictionalisation. It concerned a guy who was raised in a highly Zionist family (I guess High Zionism is the Jewish version of High Church). He was raised as a conscious racist towards the Palestinians. Dirty Arabs! Until he discovered he was one of them—He was an adopted son. His biological parents were, I think, Libyan. Overnight (or maybe it took a little longer) he became a vehement anti-Zionist—and Jew hater. Dirty Jews! I was struck by two very powerful televisual images during the recent eviction of the Gaza settlers by the (Orwellian entitled) Israeli Defence Force. One was that of Israeli soldiers crying. The Israeli army in tears? One of the most powerful militaries in the world! Why no tears when the Palestinians were evicted? The second image was just bizarre in its tribalism. This was that of the settlers being evicted and the soldiers evicting them temporarily desisting from their civil war and praying together on shabbos—with the evictions resuming as soon as shabbos ended. Compared to this crazy chauvinism the legendary Christmas Day football match in the trenches of World War One between German and British soldiers was a genuine act of internationalism. However there can be no genuine internationalism, no genuine international solidarity, no meaningful working together of ordinary people wherever tribalism or communalism dominates. And at the moment it is precisely these reactionary formations that dominate both Muslim and Jewish communities—and the tragedy is they are hardening. It would be good if Engage put its energy into helping soften them.<br /><br />Steve Cohen<br />2005<br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-is-this-book-different-from-all.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431335148943592007-01-31T18:01:00.000-08:002007-02-27T09:26:44.399-08:00Why is this book different from all other books?In all other books we are not allowed to see anti-semitism, let alone the anti-semitism of the Left.<br />But in this book we can.<br /><br />In all other (non-feminist) books we do not identify the links between Jews, Blacks and women.<br />But in this book we do.<br /><br />In all other books we are told to assimilate or go to Israel.<br />But in this book we need not do either.<br /><br />In all other books we can be either Jewish or Left.<br />But in this book we can be both.<br /><br />Beyond the Pale Collective comprises:<br />Erica Burman and Libby Lawson.<br /><br />We would like to thank the Collective for being there when we needed them, for endless cups of tea, for providing help and encouragement when the going got rough while editing, producing and publishing this book. They made it all possible!<br /><br />Beyond the Pale Collective<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/02/there-must-be-some-way-out-of-here.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/contents.html" title="Contents">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431255326929172007-01-29T17:58:00.000-08:002007-03-02T15:08:30.991-08:00Contents<p><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/introduction.html" name="introduction">Introduction</a></p><br /><p></p><h3>Chapter 1: <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/socialism-of-fools.html">The Socialism of Fools</a></h3><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism.html">Anti-semitism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism-without-jews.html">Anti-semitism without Jews</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-anti-semitism.html">Left anti-Semitism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/socialism-anti-semitism-thatcherism.html">Socialism, Anti-semitism, Thatcherism and Fascism</a><p></p><br /><p></p><h3>Chapter 2: <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism-of-english-socialisms.html">The Anti-Semitism of English Socialism's Formative Years</a></h3><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism-of-english-socialisms.html">Background</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/immigration-controls.html">Immigration controls</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/english-and-jewish-opposition-to.html">English and Jewish opposition</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/rich-jew-poor-jew-conspiracy-theory-in.html">Rich Jew, poor Jew; the conspiracy theory in practice</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-alienism-or-anti-semitism.html">Anti-alienism or anti-semitism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/imperialism-and-history.html">Imperialism and history</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/fascists-reclaim-history.html%20">Fascists reclaim history</a><p></p> <br /><p></p><h3>Chapter 3: <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-returns-to-zion-left.html" title="The Left returns to Zion">The Left returns to Zion</a></h3><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-returns-to-zion-left.html">The Left organizations</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/issues.html">The Issues</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/zionism-and-theory-of-world-domination.html">Zionism and the theory of world domination</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/equating-zionism-with-imperialism-anti.html">Equating Zionism with imperialism; anti-Zionism without Zion</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/collective-guilt-of-all-jews-for.html">The Collective Guilt Of All Jews For Zionism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/lebanon-invasion-and-theory-of-jewish.html">The Lebanon Invasion and the theory of Jewish collective responsibility</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/zionisms-dominant-position-within-jewry.html">Zionism's dominant position within Jewry</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/distortion-of-jewish-predicament.html">The distortion of the Jewish predicament</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/alternative-to-zionism.html">The alternative to Zionism</a><p></p> <br /><p></p><h3>Chapter 4: <a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/ressources/funny/chap4.html">The Left's Advice to Jews—Assimilate and Stop Being Jewish</a></h3><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/assimilationism.html">Assimilationism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-orthodoxy.html">Left orthodoxy</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/assimilation-as-answer-to-anti-semitism.html">Assimilation as an answer to anti-semitism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/jewish-survival-through-anti-semitism.html">Jewish survival through anti-semitism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/determinism-and-fatalism.html">Determinism and Fatalism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/01/are-jews-people-class.html">Are the Jews a people-class?</a><br /><a href="http://www2.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=38696147&postID=116943125532692917">Marx the assimilated Jew</a><br /><a href="http://www2.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=38696147&postID=116943125532692917">Jewish self-organization</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/assimilation-and-jewish-establishment.html">Assimilation and the Jewish establishment</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/chauvinism-or-anti-semitism.html">Chauvinism or anti-semitism?</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/jewish-behaviour-seen-as-responsible.html">Jewish behaviour seen as responsible for anti-semitism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/politics-of-terminology.html">The politics of terminology</a><p></p><br /><p></p><h3>Chapter 5: <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/chapter-5-left-responses.html">Left Responses</a></h3><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-responses.html">Jews exaggerate their predicament</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/there-are-jews-on-left.html">There are Jews on the Left</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/criticism-of-left-anti-semitism-plays.html">Criticisms of Left anti-semitism plays into the hands of anti-communists</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/anti-semitism-is-series-of-mistakes.html">Anti-semitism is a series of "mistakes"</a><p></p> <br /><p></p><h3>Chapter 6: <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/chapter-5-left-responses.html">How The Left Does Not Fight Anti-Semitism</a></h3><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/left-modesty.html">Left modesty</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/complicity-in-anti-semitism.html">Complicity in anti-semitism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/denying-significance-of-material.html">Denying the significance of the material consequences of anti-semitism</a><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/denying-significance-of-anti-semitism.html">Denying the significance of anti-semitism as an ideology.</a><p></p><br /><p></p><h3>Chapter 7: <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/chapter-5-left-responses.html">The Non-Jewish Question</a></h3><p></p><br /><p></p><h3><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2006/12/chapter-5-left-responses.html">Bibliographical Sources</a></h3><p></p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-is-this-book-different-from-all.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/introduction.html" title="Contents">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431459532757142007-01-28T18:02:00.000-08:002007-02-27T09:26:10.057-08:00IntroductionThis book is written from a perspective of communism and anti-racism. It is, naturally, opposed to anti-semitism in whatever guise. In particular, it is a polemic against manifestations of anti-semitism by those who claim to be part of the socialist or communist tradition. It has been a painful piece to write, intellectually and emotionally. I guess it will be painful to read. Leon Trotsky once said that "only the truth is revolutionary". This was his answer to those who refused to criticise Stalinism for fear that imperialists would jump on these criticisms, to further attack the very real achievements of the Bolshevik revolution. The facts in the book might well provide some perverse ammunition to reactionaries of all kinds, who want to denounce revolutionary change. So be it. Reaction has to be defeated honestly, not by defending the indefensible; what is written here is not in any way presented as a last word, rather it is an attempt to open up a genuine debate on the Left. Hopefully, something positive will emerge from the dissection of such negative material.<br /><br />Even in draft form, the book has been attacked by individuals on the Left and the Right. However, what has made it possible and worthwhile has been the tremendous encouragement from so many different people (many of whom I have never met). Not least are those who have donated the entire cost of the production. I would like to thank Manchester Jewish Socialist Group for their support—in particular Joe Garman and Jeremy Green for their midnight discussion. I would also like to thank all those women in the women's caucus at the national Jewish Socialist Group day school on Left anti-semitism, who forcefully expressed their desire for publication. Francesca Klug and Judy Keiner wrote me extremely long and constructive letters, helping to clarify many points and raising further ones. Bill Williams spent years, literally, discussing the issues raised in the book. Finally, limitless thanks to Libby Lawson and Erica Burman who kidnapped the manuscript after it had been through countless drafts and, by editing it, made sure that it is Kosher and fit for human consumption.<br /><br />All money that is received through sales will go to Shifra magazine, which is about to be produced by a Jewish feminist collective. So buy!<br /><br />Steve Cohen<br />1984<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/contents.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/socialism-of-fools.html" title="Contents">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431546935775362007-01-26T18:04:00.000-08:002007-02-05T21:25:09.497-08:00The Socialism of FoolsTo struggle as a Jewish socialist it is a distinct advantage to have been born with three hands—at least three hands. On the one hand it is necessary to struggle against the anti-semitism of daily life both in its casual and its organised forms. On the other hand, it is necessary to struggle against the reactionary Jewish communal leadership which simultaneously advocates zionism in Israel and a form of assimilation in the diaspora as the fulfilment of Jewish identity. On the third hand, it is necessary to resist the anti-semitism that has permeated much of the socialist tradition and which was described by August Bebel, German Social Democrat leader, as the "socialism of fools".<br /><br />This book is about Left anti-semitism and is written as a contribution to the anti-racist struggle. Contemporary socialist practice is self-critical enough, albeit to a limited and inadequate extent, to acknowledge that an examination of its own anti-black racism is a legitimate exercise. At the very least, socialists will be prepared to admit that national chauvinism may be present in their own groups. Whatever commitment there is to this, self-criticism has only come about through the existence and pressure of autonomous black organisations and black resistance. However, any attempt to raise even a discussion about the anti-semitic nature of much socialist practice is almost invariably met with apoplexy and vilification. It is virtually a taboo subject.<br /><br />The reasons why it is essential to study Left anti-semitism are self-evident. Firstly, just as we look to reject the reactionary elements within the Jewish heritage and seek to build only on what is positive, so likewise we have to disregard all reactionary elements that have entered socialism. This is particularly the case with socialism, as it is a movement aimed at changing the entire world and claims to be based on theories of consciousness: hence lack of consciousness of anti-semitism within socialist practice opens up major questions about that practice. Secondly, the Left has often found itself complicit in anti-semitism, and this has had a profound effect on Jewish identity: it has driven many Jews away from socialism, despite the fact that Jewish people played an important role in the development of the socialist movement from its inception. The Jewish masses were active from the Bund (the revolutionary union of Jewish workers) of Russia and Poland to the major movements of Jewish anarchists and communists in this country. These movements were also of significance within the Jewish community itself and were often able to challenge the Jewish establishment. Today this has all but disappeared. Socialists who have an awareness of their Jewishness are isolated inside the Left and have almost no base within the Jewish community.<br /><br />There are many reasons for this—not least the triumphant anti-communism of the communal leadership. However, one other particular reason is that socialism has appeared to offer no answers to Jewish people and has been seen as tainted with anti-semitism. This is highly significant within the Stalinist tradition because of the generations of Jews who joined or identified with the Communist Parties of the Third International, only to be disillusioned. The socialism of fools, though, also appears both with the reformism of social democracy and with the revolutionary groupings that have dissociated themselves from both reformism and Stalinism. It is not surprising therefore, that so many Jews have turned away from socialism.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/introduction.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism.html" title="Contents">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431663550248842007-01-25T18:07:00.000-08:002007-01-25T10:41:43.413-08:00Anti-Semitism<p>It is not difficult to construct a catalogue of grotesque statements and actions by socialists with respect to Jewish people. These are bad enough in themselves and should be opposed from any anti-racist perspective. However, the purpose of this book is to show that Left anti-semitism cannot be understood empirically, merely as a series of unrelated descriptions or examples: rather there is a pattern, a methodology, of Left anti-semitism.</p> <p>This methodology is by no means confined to the Left. It exists in society at large. It provides anti-semitism with its uniqueness as a form of racism and hence with its definition as a specific category.</p> <p>Anti-semitism is not simply a type of national chauvinism that happens to be directed against Jews—although this is obviously an important aspect of it. Though Jewish people have suffered and are suffering horrifically from the material consequences of anti-semitism, its uniqueness cannot be located merely in this material suffering. The peculiar and defining feature of anti-semitism is that it exists as an ideology. It provides its adherents with a universal and generalised interpretation of the world. This is the theory of the Jewish conspiracy, which depicts Jews as historically controlling and determining nature and human destiny. Anti-semitism is an ideology which has influenced millions of people precisely because it presents an explanation of the world by attributing such extreme powers to its motive force—the Jews. For instance, Arnold White, a fanatical advocate of Jewish immigration control into the U.K. at the turn of the century, wrote that</p> <blockquote><b>"Jewish power ... baffled the Pharaohs, foiled Nebuchadnessar, thwarted Rome, defeated feudalism, circumvented the Romanovs, balked the Kaiser and undermined the Third French Republic."</b> (<i>The Modern Few</i>)</blockquote> <p>The ancient roots of anti-semitism as ideology can perhaps be found in the pre-Christian world. From the time of the Babylonian exile in the 6th century B.C., most Jews lived outside Palestine and were subjected to accusations of disloyalty because of their allegiance to a god which was not only monotheistic and therefore omnipotent, but which was also supra-national. Jews had a loyalty beyond that to the particular kingdom in which they resided. However, the development of anti-semitism as a theory is a consequence of Christianity.</p> <p>Christianity transformed notions of Jewish disloyalty into a fundamentally demonic view of the entire world: it equated Jewry with a universal satanic influence. Such an equation is probably inherent within Christianity, as a theology, because of the identification of Jews with the crucifixion. As the Gospel of St. John says of Jews:</p> <blockquote><b>"You are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning."</b></blockquote> <p>The Christian church was promulgating such a theory as early as the 2nd century, whilst engaging in a highly political struggle with the synagogue for converts in the Hellenistic world and when, indeed, each was still struggling to win adherents from the other. As Norman Cohn has written in <i>Warrant For Genocide</i>:</p> <blockquote><b>"It was to terrorise the judaising Christians of Antioch into a final breach with the parent religion that St. John Chrysostom called the synagogue 'the temple of demons ... the cavern of devils ... a gulf and an abyss of perdition' and portrayed Jews as habitual murderers and destroyers, people possessed by an evil spirit. And it was to protect his catechumens against Judaism that St. Augustine described those who had been the favourite sons of God as now transformed into sons of Satan. Moreover the Jews were brought into relation with that fearsome figure Antichrist 'the son of perdition' whose tyrannical reign, according to St. Paul and the Book of Revelations, is to precede the second coming of Christ. Many of the fathers taught that Antichrist would be a Jew and that the Jews would be his most devoted followers."</b></blockquote> <p>This mythology flowered with a vengeance and gained popular acceptance during the Catholic church's most militant period—the crusades. Here Jews were presented as the Devil's offspring—ritually murdering Christian children, poisoning the wells and torturing the consecrated wafer. Apart from anything else, this led to murderous attacks on many Jewish communities in Europe. For instance, the Third Crusade (1189-92) commanded wide support in England where it led to attacks by the assembled crusaders on Jews in various towns, especially York. It would be patently inadequate to regard the crusades simply as a war with Islam. They also represent the final victory and consolidation of Christian hegemony within Europe itself. This was the period when Christianity finally began routing paganism—both physically and by expropriating myths. On one hand, pagan festivals were incorporated into Christian holy days, on the other hand, popular folk perceptions of the evil eye were synthesised into anti-semitism.</p> <p>It is possible to develop a materialist and class analysis of anti-semitism which relates the ideology of Jewish domination to underlying economic and social changes. The most obvious example of this is the way the conspiracy theory became secularised in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was at the end of the 19th century that the mass circulation of the <i>Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion</i> began. This document purported to show that there actually existed a Jewish government which met in secret and which exercised international political power through its control of the media and of the banks. It metamorphosised the devil into a world parliament of Jews. This secularisation was, in reality, nothing more than a reflection of the secularisation of social life as a whole—not least as manifested through the development of the national secular state.</p> <p>However, a crude deterministic analysis is out of place here. The form of anti-semitism as ideology may change but its essence remains intact, independent of the economic formation under which it is operating. Indeed, the supposed secularisation of the conspiracy theory in the age of rationalism was inevitably flimsy—as the theory itself is profoundly irrational: it grew out of demonology and it always returns to demonology. Ultimately, anti-semitism is about the cosmos and not simply a world parliament. This demonology surfaced in its most powerful way in the middle of the 20th century with the rise of Nazism. Nazism had no pretence that anti-semitism was anything other than devil-power. As Hitler is quoted as saying:</p> <blockquote><b>"It is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination ... Two worlds face one another, the men of God and the men of Satan. The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another God ... I set the Aryan and the Jew ever and against each other"</b> (Davidowicz—<i>The War Against the Jews</i>).</blockquote> <p>Anti-semitism is a classic example of how not simply pre-capitalist, but also pre-feudal formulations, can flourish in capitalist (and in the case of the U.S.S.R.) post-capitalist societies.</p> <p>As an ideology anti-semitism is irrationalism par excellence. Moreover, its proponents do not deny this irrationalism—they exalt it. Since anti-semitism takes as given that Jew-power determines history, then the fact that it determines it in seemingly contradictory ways is simply part of the conspiracy. Hence Jews can apparently be dominating the world simultaneously through capitalism and through communism; through sexually corrupting non-Jews and through keeping themselves isolated sexually by not intermarrying; through being cosmopolitans without a nation state and through being zionists. Literally everything can fit into the conspiracy. It is infinite. Even Nazism can, since its defeat, be seen as part of the conspiracy. The Australian fascist Eric Butler in his book <i>The International Jew, The Truth about the Protocols of Zion</i>, claims that Hitler was himself a tool of the conspiracy and was seeking to further the international dispersal of Jews. One of the fearsome features of anti-semitism is that while its essence remains the same its shape is constantly shifting and enlarging as it accumulates more myths. This increase can either be gradual or explosive, depending on the social and political situation. Its nearest equivalent in the realm of natural phenomena, is that of the ever-expanding universe where the constant energy source of the initial big bang is represented in Christian culture by the ceaseless responsibility given to Jews for the crucifixion.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/socialism-of-fools.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism-without-jews.html" title="Contents">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431787424724412007-01-24T18:08:00.000-08:002007-02-05T21:25:56.887-08:00Anti-Semitism without Jews<p>The ultimate 'full-circle' irrationalism of anti-semitism as an ideology is that it does not actually need Jews. There can be anti-semitism without a single Jew. This is precisely because anti-semitism is an ideology which claims to provide cosmic understanding. Central to the ideology are demonic notions which quite clearly transcend the material presence of Jews. Many examples can be given of this. Thus the identification of Jewry with the devil makes Jewry responsible for all satanic influences, including humanity's original sin—the Fall in Eden—which, even according to Judeo-Christian mythology, took place before the identifiable existence of Jews.</p> <p>Again, if the almost unimaginable had occurred and the holocaust had been successful in its declared aim, then it would be ludicrous to think this would have been the end to anti-semitism. If anything, it would have been its historical triumph. The ideology would have remained, and if Nazism would ever have felt the need for a material presence of Jews it would simply have designated particular individuals as Jews. Indeed, Nazi law did invent its own definition of Jewry which did not necessarily relate to Jews' self-definition. Apparently in the Warsaw ghetto there was a Catholic church which opened for practising Catholics, who were designated as Jews by the Nazis, and who were destroyed in the same gas chambers as Jews (see David Ruben, 'Marxism and the Jewish Question', <i>Socialist Register</i> 1982). Similarly, in Poland today anti-semitism, under the guise of anti-zionism, exists even though the bulk of the Jewish population has been destroyed. Anti-semitism is apparently unique in that not only does it perceive its victim, the Jew, as having ultimate power, but this perception also remains even when there are no victims left alive.</p> <p>Perhaps the ideologies of all class societies are based on a completely negative form of irrationalism—because such societies combine both irrationalism and negativity. Maybe if all other assumptions were swept away, then sexism and anti-black racism would also be exposed as resting on the fear by men, or white people, that women or black people had ultimate control. However, sexism and anti-black racism are different phenomena which operate in different ways from each other, and both operate differently from anti-semitism.</p> <p>The distinguishing feature of anti-semitism is that for its ideologues the conspiracy theory operates on the surface—it is visible. No other assumption has to be pulled away for it to be revealed—it is the assumption. For instance, according to National Front mythology, even the very presence of black people in the U.K. is part of a Jewish conspiracy.</p> <p>It is of course true that there have been historical periods where sexism has operated as an almost explicit conspiracy theory. For example, in medieval times, witches and homosexuals, men and women, formed, along with Jews, the unholy trinity of the Antichrist. In particular, images of Jews and of witches as sorcerers and defilers, were often interchangeable. Again, beneath the surface of much anti-black racism lurks fear of voodoo and occult rituals.</p> <p>What gives sexism and racism their own unique irrationalism, however, is precisely the fact that notions of conspiracy are rarely explicit. They are normally quite hidden and therefore in this way harder to combat. It is not coincidental, nor any more reassuring, that there is not a plethora of explicit literature on a supposed world conspiracy of women, gays or black people. Indeed medieval witch massacres had to make a profoundly nonsensical distinction between witches and "good" women. There is no hierarchy of oppression but each operates in its own frightening way.</p> <p>There is no reason to assume that individual anti-semites have an explicit world conspiracy theory—just as there is no reason to assume, for example, that capitalist traders have a fully worked-out theoretical appreciation of bourgeois economics. Many Jew-haters just seize on particular anti-semitic images of Jews—as bloodsuckers, usurers or whatever. These images have been within Christendom and accumulating, one on another, for nearly two millennia. In terms of individual psychology, false consciousness of the conspiracy theory is usually quite fragmented—individuals will carry around some anti-Jewish images in an ad hoc manner.</p> <p>The distinguishing feature of anti-semitism is the success and persistence of the attempts which its most powerful ideologues, from the early Christian fathers, to the crusaders, to the Protocols, to the Nazi philosophers, have made to theorise it in terms of the conspiracy of Jews. The anti-semitism of daily life, whether or not it is understood by its adherents, all takes place within this theoretical framework. Moreover, popular consciousness about Jews, however individually fragmented, is sufficiently potent to be regularly stimulated by demagogues into a mass psychology—by demagogues who have genuine awareness of conspiracy theory. Fascist politicians in this century have well understood this.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-anti-semitism.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431897837892302007-01-23T18:11:00.000-08:002007-02-05T21:26:59.389-08:00Left Anti-Semitism<p>Anti-semitism on the Left is essentially identical to, and has the same methodology as, that of society at large. It is the expression of the conspiracy theory—but under the false guise of socialism. Usurping the language of class struggle it negates the very idea of class struggle and replaces it with anti-Jewish struggle.</p> <p>Of course, socialist practice is not a monolith. Some of it has accorded with socialist theory and has <b>not</b> been anti-semitic. Inasmuch as that has any relevance to the present debate, however, it is relevant only to the <b>weight</b> of the anti-semitic tradition within socialist practice. It neither explains nor denies that tradition. Moreover, there is no balance sheet with any form of racism. It is hardly worthwhile to subtract the number of racist statements made from the number of non-racist statements to calculate how racist a movement is. Why bother? It is intolerable that socialist practice should contain any anti-semitism and it is equally intolerable that a wall of silence, often to the point of censorship, should have been thrown around its existence. Indeed, there is some hypocrisy present here. Many socialists, and many socialist organisations, will wish to distance themselves from any insinuations about their own anti-semitic practice, precisely by claiming that the Left tradition has not been monolithic. However, if it has not been so monolithic in their eyes, then it is perfectly legitimate to ask why they have consistently remained silent and complicit in the face of Left anti-semitism.</p> <p>This book is primarily about socialist practice in the U.K. in general, and England in particular. However, this practice also comes out of a European tradition of socialism, so inevitably, references are made to other movements outside the U.K.—including those in the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. The book says nothing about socialist or liberation movements in the third world, deliberately so, because countries in the third world have not historically been within the grip of Christianity, and thus have no tradition of conspiracy theories. For instance, within Islam both Jew and Christian were seen as infidels—and certainly there was no constant mythology of universal Jewish domination. If notions about Jewish power have entered the third world, then that is a product of imperialistic and Christian penetration.</p> <p>Left anti-semitism has gone through two distinct, if related and overlapping, stages. The first coincided with the establishment of the modern socialist movement itself, at the end of the 19th century. Here, the particular mythology of Jew as finance capitalist took root within important sectors of the emergent socialist and industrial labour movement. This was crucial, as it meant that socialist practice had a tradition of anti-semitism almost from its birth. The second stage developed around the question of zionism—particularly after the war which created Israel in 1948. A significant feature of contemporary socialist practice is, on the one hand, the expansion of zionism to equate it with world imperialist domination and, on the other hand, the reduction of the entire Jewish experience to equate <b>that</b> with zionism. It is a combination of the conspiracy theory with that of collective guilt.</p> <p>Quite clearly, anti-zionism is not in itself anti-semitic. However, much of what the Left poses as anti-zionism is transcendental: it relates neither to the struggle of the Palestinians nor to what the Israeli state is actually doing. Rather it is concerned with ascribing world power to zionism and holding all Jews in the world responsible for this. Left practice presents as anti-zionism something which is neither about zionism nor about Palestinian liberation, but is about some alleged responsibility of Jews on a global scale. This is anti-semitism. The fact that this book is written in full support of the Palestinian struggle is absolutely irrelevant. Left anti-semitism has to be condemned irrespective of one's position on zionism. However, socialist Jews who are committed equally to solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle and to the fight against anti-semitism, are put in an impossible "catch 22" situation by the Left. Any mention of anti-semitism is seen as a diversion from the struggle against zionism. Moreover, the merest suggestion that the Left can itself be anti-semitic is equated with an attack, both on communism, and on the Palestinian cause. An example, which is almost a caricature, occurred in an editorial in the journal <i>Big Flame</i> which stated that an "obsession" with anti-semitism detracted from the need to "focus" on zionism (October, 1982).</p> <p>There is, manifestly, an ideological link between the anti-semitism present at the birth of a definitive socialist practice in the last century, and Left anti-semitism in relation to zionism in this century. It would be anti-dialectical to expect the disappearance of ideological deformations without their being consciously challenged. There is also a specific ideological linkage uniting the two historical periods and running like a chain between them. This is assimilationism. The general chauvinism which permeates the Left on matters of cultural and national identity has assumed such a form that an independent Jewish identity is seen as either conceptually impossible or hopelessly reactionary. The relationship between assimilationism and anti-semitism as ideology is a problematic one, and is looked at later. What is being emphasised here is the strength of assimilationism within socialist thought.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism-without-jews.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/socialism-anti-semitism-thatcherism.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169431931039708432007-01-22T18:11:00.000-08:002007-02-05T21:27:50.797-08:00Socialism, Anti-Semitism, Thatcherism and Fascism<p>Anti-semitism on the Left is harmful to Jews and degrading to socialists, irrespective of the precise historical period in which it manifests itself. However, there is a particular urgency in facing up to it today. We are now witnessing a popular resurgence of the New Right, best exemplified by Thatcherism in the U.K. As well as being a direct attack on the working class this represents chauvinism in all aspects-racial, national and sexual. It is arguable whether anti-semitism could become an explicit part of Tory philosophy. It certainly has popular appeal and is an important component of the "Victorian Values" that this government is so fond of espousing. However, it may well be that even the Tory Party could not incorporate anti-semitism institutionally in the direct way that all parliamentary parties now incorporate anti-black racism. Arguably, this requires a party of open fascism.</p> <p>In any event, it is inconceivable that a socialist movement which is shot through with its own anti-semitism could face up to any of the aspects of Tory, let alone fascist, chauvinism. Over the last few years, sections of the socialist movement, mainly stimulated by the ideas and attitudes of feminism, have been re-evaluating their practice in order to develop a socialist practice which is both aware of the aspirations of the oppressed and is unoppressive in itself. This book about Left anti-semitism is written in that spirit.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-anti-semitism.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism-of-english-socialisms.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169432479768315812007-01-21T18:13:00.000-08:002007-02-27T08:39:39.621-08:00The Anti-Semitism of English Socialism's Formative Years<h4>The Background</h4> <p>The period 1880 to 1914 is central to understanding how anti-semitism has permeated much of the socialist tradition. This was an epoch which witnessed:</p> <p>(a) the consolidation of world imperialism.</p> <p>(b) the formation of the first self-styled socialist organisations such as the Social Democratic Federation—the S.D.F.—and the Independent Labour Party—the I.L.P.</p> <p>(c) the development of industrial trades unionism.</p> <p>The impact of imperialism was to imbue the labour movement and the socialist organisation with national and chauvinistic ideas—ideas which persist today. Another phenomenon also occurred in these years—the mass immigration of Jews into England as they fled from the progroms of Russia and Eastern Europe.</p> <p>The immigrants arrived into a country that was already deeply anti-semitic. Anti-semitism in England had existed well before imperialism or capitalism. It was pre-feudal and rooted in Christianity. The entire Jewish population had already been forcibly expelled by Edward 1st in 1290. Readmitted by Cromwell, they were ghettoised and portrayed through popular mythology as Shylocks and Fagins. It is not surprising, therefore, that Jews in the 1880's were greeted by anti-semitism on arrival. A significant consequence of this was that the chauvinism of the socialist and labour movement became fuelled by a specific and virulent anti-semitism. Like all anti-semitism this was based, to a greater or lesser extent, on notions of the world Jewish conspiracy.</p> <p>The most obvious example of this was the equation of Jews with capitalism—the classic socialism of fools. For instance, <i>Today, the monthly magazine of Scientific Socialism</i>, in its first issue of 1884 printed an article where it was taken for granted that "economically and socially Jews are our antagonists". This equation was not simply of Jews with capitalism. It was an equation of Jews with imperialist domination—a domination that was conscious and conspiratorial. <i>Justice</i>, the paper of the S.D.F., claimed that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Jew moneylenders now control every Foreign Office in Europe"</b> (5.4.1884)</blockquote> <p>and that:</p> <blockquote><b>"It seems to be an open secret that the government of France is too much in the grip of Jews to take active measures against them as a body"</b> (25.6.1898).</blockquote> <p>This latter quote was taken from the time of the Dreyfus affair in France. Similarly, Robert Blatchford's journal, <i>The Clarion</i> (around which the Clarion Clubs were organised), quoted with approval the claim that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Modern imperialism is really run by half a dozen financial houses, many of them Jewish, to whom politics is a counter in the game of buying and selling securities and the people are convenient pawns."</b> (24.2.1900)</blockquote> <p>It was frequently alleged that all imperialist wars were organised and manipulated by Jews, in the interest of Jewish finance. Sometimes it was suggested that this was channelled through just one family—the Rothschilds. <i>Labour Leader</i>, the paper of the I.L.P., stated that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Wherever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumours of war circulate and men's minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity, you may be sure that a hooked-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbances"</b> (19.12.1891).</blockquote> <p>In particular, the Boer War and the events leading up to it were frequently pictured as being in defence of Jewish financial interests in South Africa. H.M. Hyndman, the leader of the S.D.F., warned against the construction of an</p> <blockquote><b>"Anglo-Hebraic empire in Africa"</b> (<i>Justice</i>, 25.4.1896).</blockquote> <p>Not only did Jews allegedly control the world through financial and military domination—but also, apparently, through control of the media. <i>Justice</i> spoke of supposed Jewish press power in England acting</p> <blockquote><b>"in accord with their fellow capitalist Jews all over the world"</b> (5.7.1890).</blockquote><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/socialism-anti-semitism-thatcherism.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/immigration-controls.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-82759579617515769592007-01-21T08:38:00.000-08:002007-02-27T08:40:58.785-08:00The Background<p>The period 1880 to 1914 is central to understanding how anti-semitism has permeated much of the socialist tradition. This was an epoch which witnessed:</p> <p>(a) the consolidation of world imperialism.</p> <p>(b) the formation of the first self-styled socialist organisations such as the Social Democratic Federation—the S.D.F.—and the Independent Labour Party—the I.L.P.</p> <p>(c) the development of industrial trades unionism.</p> <p>The impact of imperialism was to imbue the labour movement and the socialist organisation with national and chauvinistic ideas—ideas which persist today. Another phenomenon also occurred in these years—the mass immigration of Jews into England as they fled from the progroms of Russia and Eastern Europe.</p> <p>The immigrants arrived into a country that was already deeply anti-semitic. Anti-semitism in England had existed well before imperialism or capitalism. It was pre-feudal and rooted in Christianity. The entire Jewish population had already been forcibly expelled by Edward 1st in 1290. Readmitted by Cromwell, they were ghettoised and portrayed through popular mythology as Shylocks and Fagins. It is not surprising, therefore, that Jews in the 1880's were greeted by anti-semitism on arrival. A significant consequence of this was that the chauvinism of the socialist and labour movement became fuelled by a specific and virulent anti-semitism. Like all anti-semitism this was based, to a greater or lesser extent, on notions of the world Jewish conspiracy.</p> <p>The most obvious example of this was the equation of Jews with capitalism—the classic socialism of fools. For instance, <i>Today, the monthly magazine of Scientific Socialism</i>, in its first issue of 1884 printed an article where it was taken for granted that "economically and socially Jews are our antagonists". This equation was not simply of Jews with capitalism. It was an equation of Jews with imperialist domination—a domination that was conscious and conspiratorial. <i>Justice</i>, the paper of the S.D.F., claimed that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Jew moneylenders now control every Foreign Office in Europe"</b> (5.4.1884)</blockquote> <p>and that:</p> <blockquote><b>"It seems to be an open secret that the government of France is too much in the grip of Jews to take active measures against them as a body"</b> (25.6.1898).</blockquote> <p>This latter quote was taken from the time of the Dreyfus affair in France. Similarly, Robert Blatchford's journal, <i>The Clarion</i> (around which the Clarion Clubs were organised), quoted with approval the claim that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Modern imperialism is really run by half a dozen financial houses, many of them Jewish, to whom politics is a counter in the game of buying and selling securities and the people are convenient pawns."</b> (24.2.1900)</blockquote> <p>It was frequently alleged that all imperialist wars were organised and manipulated by Jews, in the interest of Jewish finance. Sometimes it was suggested that this was channelled through just one family—the Rothschilds. <i>Labour Leader</i>, the paper of the I.L.P., stated that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Wherever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumours of war circulate and men's minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity, you may be sure that a hooked-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbances"</b> (19.12.1891).</blockquote> <p>In particular, the Boer War and the events leading up to it were frequently pictured as being in defence of Jewish financial interests in South Africa. H.M. Hyndman, the leader of the S.D.F., warned against the construction of an</p> <blockquote><b>"Anglo-Hebraic empire in Africa"</b> (<i>Justice</i>, 25.4.1896).</blockquote> <p>Not only did Jews allegedly control the world through financial and military domination—but also, apparently, through control of the media. <i>Justice</i> spoke of supposed Jewish press power in England acting</p> <blockquote><b>"in accord with their fellow capitalist Jews all over the world"</b> (5.7.1890).</blockquote><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/socialism-anti-semitism-thatcherism.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/immigration-controls.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169485154326946372007-01-20T08:53:00.000-08:002007-02-07T21:35:00.122-08:00Immigration Controls<p>The Aliens Act of 1905 is almost entirely forgotten today by the Jewish community and by socialists. It was the natural corollary to the anti-Jewish ideology described above, namely the successful demand for immigration control on Jews. The Act was passed by a Tory government with the full support of its leadership and of the Tory Party. It was enforced by a Liberal government. However, in many ways it was the result of nearly twenty years of agitation by the English working class.</p> <p>This agitation took two main forms. Firstly, there was the grassroots proto-fascist organisation in London's East End—the British Brothers League. Between its inception in 1901 and its victory in 1905, the Brothers organised constant demonstrations and rallies through the East End against Jewish immigration. Secondly, there was the organised labour movement itself. From 1892, the T.U.C. was formally committed to a resolution excluding Jews. This was not a passive 'paper' position, indeed the issue of immigration control was included in a list of questions to be asked of all Parliamentary candidates, which was compiled by a special conference of the T. U. C. in 1895 (<i>Manchester Evening News</i>, 11.7.1895). Indeed, the T.U.C. sent a delegation to the Home Secretary demanding control (<i>Times</i>, 6.2.1896).</p> <p>This was only the tip of the iceberg. W.H. Wilkins, a fanatical campaigner for control, in his book <i>The Alien Invasion</i>, published in 1892, named 43 labour organisations, not including the T.U.C., advocating restrictions on Jews. These ranged from the National Boiler Makers and Iron Ship Builders Society to the Miners Association of Durham to the Oldham Provincial Card and Blowing Room Operatives. It also included the Liverpool Trades' Council. Many other trades' councils were to come out in favour of control. These included London, where control was supported by the renowned rank and file dockers' leaders Ben Tillett and Tom Mann (<i>London Evening News</i>, May 27th and June 19th 1891), Manchester (<i>Trades Council Report</i>, 1892) and Leeds (evidence of its secretary, to the 1903 <i>Royal Commission on Alien Immigration</i>). J.H. Wilson, who was an M.P. and also secretary of the Seamen's' Union, was actually one of the first to propose legislation in Parliament (Hansard, 11.2.1893).</p> <p>The attitude of most of the emergent socialist organisations to all of this, varied from agreement to inconsistency. For instance, <i>The Clarion</i> came out eventually for total exclusion. In an article just after the Act became law, <i>The Clarion</i> stated that Jewish immigrants were:</p><blockquote><b>"a poison injected into the national veins"</b>, they were the <b>"unsavoury children of the ghetto"</b>, their numbers were <b>"appalling"</b> and their attitudes <b>"unclean"</b> (22.6.1906).</blockquote><p>The S.D.F.'s position was, to put it mildly, fainthearted. Hyndman at a meeting called ostensibly to oppose controls, declared that he was against <i>"free admittance of all aliens"</i> and went on to attack Jews for living in ghettos and refusing to intermarry (<i>Jewish Chronicle</i>, 1.4.1904).</p> <br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-semitism-of-english-socialisms.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/english-and-jewish-opposition-to.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169485377436952412007-01-19T09:00:00.000-08:002007-02-07T21:36:43.177-08:00English and Jewish Opposition to Controls<p>Fortunately for the communist movement today, there is an alternative socialist tradition in relation to the Aliens Act from which we can learn. There were pockets of protest against the agitation for immigration control from within the emergent socialist movement and, to an even lesser extent, from within the labour movement as a whole. However, such protest was relatively small and could not swim against the tide. The most honourable example of this was the Socialist League, which split from the S.D.F. in 1885, and whose most well-remembered figure is William Morris. The League's journal, <i>Commonweal</i>, showed a totally principled position in its opposition to anti-semitism and immigration control. In one article—sarcastically called <b>"Blarsted Furriners"</b>—the journal attacked the other Left groups for their chauvinism and anti-semitism, asking them:</p> <blockquote><b>"Are we then to allow the issues at stake in the struggle between the robbers and the robbed to be obscured by anti-foreigner agitation?"</b> (28.4.1888).</blockquote> <p>The same article also then offered solidarity to the Aborigines, Maoris, American Indians and black people everywhere, against their exploitation by the colonising English. In another article, John Burns of the I.L.P. was criticised for claiming that <b>"England was for the English"</b> (23.8.1890). However, the League and its journal ceased to exist in the early 1890's—unable and unwilling to compete with the increasing chauvinism of its rival organisation. Nonetheless, individuals and individual branches within the S.D.F. and I.L.P. occasionally kept the torch of protest alight. Again, individual trades unionists occasionally tried to speak out. Thus there was some opposition on the London Trades Council to Tillett and Mann—Mr. Taylor (a lithographic artist) spoke out against restriction and in favour of the <b>"solidarity of the workers international brotherhood"</b> (<i>London Evening News</i> 19.6.1891).</p> <p>It must be said, that with the honourable and important exceptions of the Socialist League and odd individuals, the remaining opposition to immigration control by the English socialist and labour movement was not only spasmodic, but was despite itself, and was the result of pressure put on it by its Jewish members. This was certainly the case with the S.D.F.—where it was essentially only its London East End branch (that is, its Jewish branch) which organised activity against the Act. In May 1904, the East London S.D.F. convened a conference composed of "delegates from the Jewish trade unions and others" to plan some disruption of Parliament over the proposed Act (<i>Jewish Chronicle</i> 6.5.1904). After the Act became law the East London S.D.F. organised a meeting of protest in the Wonderland, Whitechapel Rd. The meeting was conducted in Yiddish and English (<i>Jewish Chronicle</i>, 19.9.1905). In fact the S.D.F. meeting, where Hyndman had turned up and spoken in favour of control, had been organised by its East London branch as a meeting against control. Likewise, the I.L.P. held protests—but again apparently only through the pressure of its Jewish members. <i>Labour Leader</i> reported a protest meeting in Tib Street in Manchester and advised those who wanted to follow up the protest to get in touch with the I.L.P. through J. Deschman, who was secretary of the Jewish Tailors Union in Manchester (3.6.1904).</p> <p>The only organised trade union opposition which included British trade unionists, was when Jewish workers took the initiative. The major example of this was the meeting attended by over 3,000 people, organised in the East End by the Federated Jewish Tailors Union of London, where the speakers included W.P. Reeves of the Women's Union League, Margaret Bondfield, secretary of the National Union of Shop Assistants and Frank Brien of the Dockers Union (<i>Eastern Post</i>, 20.9.1902). The way in which at least some English workers were forced into action against anti-semitism by the independent initiative of Jewish workers is obviously mirrored today, when women and black organisation have placed sexism and racism on the political agenda of the Left.</p> <p>Given the backward role of most of the English labour and socialist organisations, Jewish workers were compelled to take independent action against the agitation for immigrant control. An Alien Defence League was established by Jews to fight control and was based at 38 Brick Lane in London (<i>Jewish Chronicle</i>, 24.1.1902). Moreover, Jewish trade unionists took initiatives that were directed specifically against the anti-semitism of the English labour movement. In 1895, Jewish trade unionists in London circulated a leaflet called <i>The Voice of the Alien</i> which attacked the T.U.C.'s support for immigration control. This was written by Joseph Finn, a Jewish socialist from Leeds (see his letter to the <i>Jewish Chronicle</i>, 14.2.1902). Alongside this, <i>Der Arbeiter Freund</i> (The Worker's Friend, a Yiddish anarcho-communist journal) consistently attacked the English labour movement for its chauvinism and anti-semitism. It correctly understood the alignment of forces when it attacked the T.U.C. and <b>"its papa—the State"</b> (17.4.1903 quoted in <i>Immigrants and the Class Struggle</i> by Joe Buckman).</p><br /><div align="center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4973/4230/1600/320339/24.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4973/4230/320/789055/24.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><p>It could be argued that this Jewish fight-back, within and against the English labour movement, did have some limited success, in that one or two trade unions did alter their position. Thus, by 1903, Manchester Trades Council had become simply indifferent to the question of control and had ceased to campaign for it (<i>Manchester Evening News</i>, 28.1.1903). A similar neutralisation occurred with respect to Leeds Trades Council. Again, in 1905, James Sexton, the President of the T.U.C. personally denounced control at the T.U.C. conference (1905 T.U.C. Annual Report).</p> <p>In conclusion, there are two points which can be made. Firstly, it was all far too little and too late. Only one or two labour movement bodies actually stopped campaigning for control. The T.U.C. was not one of these. No organised union body ever campaigned against control. In any event, after 1901 the working class movement for control had taken to the streets with a vengeance, under the leadership of the British Brothers League. Secondly, insofar as one or two union organisations <b>did</b> ameliorate their position, it was more due to the (belated) recognition that the militancy and high degree of unionisation of Jewish workers were actually helping raise the living standards of English workers than the result of Jewish opposition to control. For instance, Tom Mann and Ben Tillett were prepared to speak at the inaugural meeting of the Federation of East London Labour Unions in 1889. G. Kelley, secretary of the Manchester Trades Council, explaining why the Council no longer supported control, emphasised the good example that the Jewish Tailors Union in Manchester had set for English workers (<i>Manchester Evening News</i>, 28.1.1903). In other words, even this small group of labour organisation did not renounce anti-semitism. Rather they concealed it behind a newly discovered economic identification with Jewish workers.</p><br /><div align="center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4973/4230/1600/832514/26.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4973/4230/320/615584/26.png" alt="" border="0" /></a></div><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/immigration-controls.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/rich-jew-poor-jew-conspiracy-theory-in.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169486267673096812007-01-18T09:16:00.000-08:002007-02-07T21:37:27.899-08:00Rich Jew, Poor Jew; the conspiracy theory in practice<p>Arguments often used in favour of control were that Jewish workers were taking away English people's jobs, undercutting wages, weakening unionisation and taking away housing from the English. An obvious question that arises is the connection between an anti—semitic movement which was directed against working class Jews, and the anti-semitic notion of Jewish capitalist domination. Of course, there could be no rational connection, but given assumptions about the world Jewish conspiracy, then links could be made on the most irrational and transcendental of levels.</p> <p>One way of dealing with this was to try and make some distinction between "rich Jews" and "poor Jews". It is at this point some of the socialists' apparent opposition to control becomes quite ambiguous, as opposition was also couched in anti-semitic imagery. For instance, in 1904 the I.L.P. actually issued a pamphlet against control—<i>The Problem of Alien Immigration</i>. On its first page it mounted an attack on:</p> <blockquote><b>"The rich Jew who has done his best to besmirch the fair name of England and to corrupt the sweetness of our national life and character"</b></blockquote> <p>and to compare this to the <b>"poor Jew"</b> who should be allowed in.</p> <p>More frequently, the socialist groups tried to discover actual links between "rich Jews" and "poor Jews", in order to attack the latter as being in some way a pawn of the former. For instance, Beatrice Potter, one of the founders of the Fabians, constantly argued in her investigation of East End life that the only aim of a Jewish worker was to become a capitalist. In one essay she wrote that:</p> <blockquote><b>"The love of profit distinct from other forms of money earning" is "the strongest impelling motive of the Jewish race"</b> (<i>Nineteenth Century</i>, vol XXIV).</blockquote> <p>This is not so much a picture of the poor Jew as pawn, but rather of the poor Jew as embryonic capitalist, clone and biological imperialist. The Fabians, as an organisation, never opposed control—they merely abstained and let it happen. Moreover, Beatrice Potter deliberately lied about Jews in the East End by concealing all reference to the powerful Jewish labour movement developing there. Indeed, in the essay quoted above, she claims that Jews, as embryonic capitalists:</p> <blockquote><b>"Have neither the desire nor the capacity for labour combination".</b></blockquote> <p>Potter combined very well the prejudices of the attack on rich Jews and on poor Jews.</p> <p>Ben Tillett had another angle. He argued that it was ultimately the British government which was a pawn in the hands of Jewish capitalists and was therefore reluctant to enact controls. He asserted:</p> <blockquote><b>"Our leading statesmen do not care to offend the great banking houses or money kings"</b></blockquote> <p>and went on to say:</p> <blockquote><b>"For heaven's sake, give us back our own countrymen and take from us your motley multitude"</b> (<i>London Evening News</i>, 19.6.1891).</blockquote> <p>So it seems, Tillett perceived Jewish financiers—<b>"money kings"</b>—as somehow engineering and manipulating the immigration of the Jewish masses—<b>"your motley multitude"</b>. Tillett was quite willing to speak on the same platform as the most infamous Jew baiters, none of whom cared whether Jews were rich or poor. He spoke on the same platform as Arnold White at a meeting of an early control organisation—<i>The Association for Preventing the Immigration of Destitute Aliens</i> (<i>London Evening News and Post</i>, 25.7.1891). At this meeting he was supported by J.H. Wilson of the Sailor's Union, J. Tanter of the Progressive Union of Cabinetmakers, J. Cross of the St. Helens Colliery Enginemen's Society and "many other delegates from trade unions in London and the country". In 1900, at the T.U.C. Conference, a new dimension was introduced when John Ward, leader of the Navvies' Union argued that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Practically £100,000 of the taxpayer's money has been spent in trying to secure the gold fields of South Africa for cosmopolitan Jews, most of whom had no patriotism and no country"</b> (<i>T.U.C. Annual Report</i>, 1900).</blockquote> <p>In other words, all Jews, rich or poor, were cosmopolitan with gold on their mind-particularly South African gold.</p> <p>It is relevant to note another way the conspiracy theory operated. Whilst "socialists" were attacking Jews as either imperialist financiers or lumpen scabs, the bourgeoisie were attacking them as militant trade unionists and anarchists. <i>The London Evening News</i> proclaimed that:</p> <blockquote><b>"The advance of socialistic and anarchical opinion in London is commensurate with the increased volume of foreign immigration"</b> (21.5.1891).</blockquote> <p>Given the conspiracy theory, the bourgeoisie had no need even for themselves to be consistent about this. So S.H. Jeyes, another ardent restrictionist, argued in his essay <i>Foreign Pauper Immigration</i> In A. White (Ed.) <i>The Destitute Alien of Great Britain</i> that Jews deliberately did not organise in unions, in order to suppress the general level of wages, and so incite the English to revolution. As he put it:</p> <blockquote><b>"To strengthen the spirit of discontent and disorder on which the agitators live and batten and which in time would pollute England with the visionary violence of continental socialism".</b></blockquote> <p>Finally, in this context of the conspiracy theory in action, it is worth noting that the British Brothers League attracted members who regarded themselves as socialists. At least one member of the Independent Labour Party left that organisation to join the Brothers (<i>The Eastern Post</i> 19.10.1901). Someone signing themselves "Mile End Socialist" wrote to the <i>Jewish Chronicle</i> (21.11.1902) stating that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Jew versus Gentile" will be my battle cry at every election as long as life is spared ... the Jew has made himself obnoxious through the incarnate instinct of his race to every nation where he has now emigrated. This is an historical fact and beyond controversy".</b></blockquote><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/english-and-jewish-opposition-to.html"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-is-this-book-different-from-all.html">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169751818950061852007-01-17T11:02:00.000-08:002007-02-07T22:25:29.625-08:00Anti-Alienism or Anti-Semitism?<p>Bourgeois historians—and these are the only historians who have hitherto examined this subject—have argued that the struggle for the Aliens Act was based on xenophobia against all foreigners rather than on anti-semitism. Colin Holmes in his book Anti-Semitism in British Society argues that:</p> <blockquote><b>"It is more important to categorise the 1905 Act as anti-alien rather than anti-semitic"</b></blockquote> <p>and that:</p> <blockquote><b>"The legislation was aimed at aliens rather than specifically at Jews as Jews".</b></blockquote> <p>According to this viewpoint, it was just bad luck and coincidence that Jews were restricted—it could have been any foreigner. Now this attempt to deny the specificity of immigration controls is extremely reactionary. Exactly the same argument is used in relation to the current Immigration Act—where attempts are constantly being made to deny its specific anti-black racism by the assertion that it keeps out all foreigners. As socialists we should oppose all immigration controls. This is precisely because any immigration control is inevitably based on national chauvinism—namely the belief that foreigners are in some way inferior to the English. It is crucial to appreciate the political dimension of controls, that they are never brought in against the whole world, in the abstract, but are always brought in against a specific non-English victim group, through the use of specific imageries.</p> <p>Obviously, one aspect of the movement for the Aliens Act was a generalised chauvinism against all foreigners. England is the imperialist country par excellence and therefore popular ideology is inevitably chauvinistic. Many examples of this can be found within the early socialist movements. Bruce Glasier of the I.L.P. argued in <i>Labour Leader</i> that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Neither the principle of the brotherhood of man nor the principle of social equality implies that brother nations or brother men may crowd upon us in such numbers as to abuse our hospitality, overturn our institutions or violate our customs"</b> (3.4.1904).</blockquote> <p>Such phrases as "our institutions" clearly substitute a chauvinistic analysis for a class one.</p> <p>However, it is inadequate to regard the Aliens Act as being simply based on such general chauvinism against all-comers. This underestimates the strength of anti-semitism and misunderstands the history of immigration control—and thus fails to understand the real relationship between the two. The Aliens Act was aimed specifically at Jews by invoking specifically anti-semitic imagery. In essence, running right through the movement for control, were variants of the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy. Moreover, much of the actual imagery used by 'socialists' was of the basest anti-semitic kind—harking back to medieval Christianity and looking forward to Nazism. The frequent reference in <i>The Clarion</i> to Jews as "The Nose" (1.9.1892) is not a trivial example. Again, much of the language used to describe alleged Jewish capitalist domination was itself of a classic anti-semitic mould. A.J. Hobson's writings are typical. Hobson was a well-known radical journalist of the day, who later became prominent in the Labour Party and made his name covering the Boer War as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian. It was his opinion that the Transvaal was controlled by <b>"Jew power"</b> and</p> <blockquote><b>"those who came early made most and then left leaving their economic fangs in the carcase of their pray"</b> (<i>Contemporary Review </i>vol LXXVII).</blockquote> <p>The image of the Jew as parasite and bloodsucker is an historical constant within anti-semitism.</p> <p>The history of immigration control, itself, illustrates the nonsense of regarding the 1905 legislation as being simply the product of an anti-alienism, to which anti-semitism was peripheral. The significant point is that prior to 1905 England had never had serious immigration control (at least since the expulsion of the Jews by Edward 1st). Today, it is difficult to appreciate that a century ago immigration control was a novel concept, and it needed the struggle against the Jews to legitimise it. Even this required a prolonged struggle which lasted nearly two decades—1885 to 1905. A comparison between the response to Jews and to other immigrants is illuminating. Irish immigration into England throughout the 19th century was greeted with almost total hostility. Anti-Irish chauvinism was as enormous as it is today. In one way, the Irish were even more vulnerable than the Jews—their own country had been devastated and colonised by the English. But whatever else it did, the agitation against the Irish did not lead to immigration control.</p> <p>Similarly, at the same time as agitating against Jews, some parts of the labour movement were agitating for controls against non-Jewish workers. For instance, Keir Hardie, a founder member of the I.L.P., gave evidence at the 1889 House of Commons Select Committee on Immigration. He spoke on behalf of the Ayrshire Miners Union and the Scottish Labour Party. As well as opposing Jewish immigration save for those fleeing persecution—these organisations were opposed to Polish Christians being allowed to come and work in the mines, in iron and steel mills and on British ships. The essential objection to this was the importation of scab labour to work these industries in times of industrial unrest. However, no legislation was ever introduced against immigrant strike-breakers. This was in spite of the fact that Hardie, who incidentally himself voted against the Act, introduced an amendment to the Aliens Bill calling for the exclusion of immigrant strike-breakers. In the end the only controls enacted were those which were aimed at Jews.</p> <p>Of course, particular reasons can be advanced as to why the bourgeoisie did not exclude other groups. They had no material interest in excluding scab labour and they did have a material interest in the use of manual Irish labour. Moreover, if one were to look at the matter purely from the point of view of imperialist material self-interest, then the bourgeoisie should not have included the Jews—as Jews organised whole sections of the garment and footwear industries. However, such an economically deterministic approach to history simply ignores the role of ideology as a factor in politics.</p> <p>Thus it was anti-semitism which was the ingredient necessary to popularise the ideology of immigration control, so that such control became politically viable. This is no coincidence and relates in part to the nature of anti-semitism. All movements for control against any foreigner invoke the image of the alien horde taking over Britain. What distinguished anti-Jewish agitation was the conspiracy theory. This asserted that the Jew had a conscious plan to take over, not simply Britain, but the entire world. This was an extremely comprehensive and therefore powerful justification for control. In the end it was irresistible. In other words anti-semitism, far from being simply an example of, or peripheral to, anti-alienism, was the force which ensured anti-alienism would be given statutory authority for the first time.</p> <p>The legitimisation of immigration control has had enormous repercussions in the 20th century, not least because it kept out tens of thousands of Jews from England in the 1930's—thus resulting in their deaths. It also meant that the equally racist agitation for controls against black people was successful, in a relatively rapid period. It took just four years after the race attacks in 1958 in Notting Hill and Nottingham, before control was legislated. The labour movement did not campaign either for or against it: controls were accepted as "natural" and being based on "common sense". It was the active, if forgotten, struggle for controls by the labour movement over 60 years earlier, which had legitimised them.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/rich-jew-poor-jew-conspiracy-theory-in.html" title="Rich Jew, Poor Jew"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/imperialism-and-history.html" title="Imperialism and History">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169751845676451102007-01-16T11:03:00.000-08:002007-02-07T22:27:30.625-08:00Imperialism and History<p>Socialists, Marx in particular, correctly emphasise the need for a consciousness of history, so that we may learn from it. However, socialist historians have simply ignored the Aliens Act which has led to a serious gap in the understanding, not just of anti-semitism, but of imperialism. It is obviously not possible to appreciate the history of immigration controls without understanding the Aliens Act, nor is it possible to understand how false ideology penetrated both the trade union movement and large sections of the early socialist movement. Indeed the struggle for immigration controls against Jews is a classic example of how imperialism, particularly English imperialism, works in practice. It is a crystal clear instance of how the English ruling class repeatedly attacks immigrant masses, whether they be Jewish, Irish or black—through an alliance not only with the English masses but through attempted alliances with the leaders of the immigrant community. Hence there were three major social forces which were attacking the Jews.</p> <p>The first such force was the English bourgeoisie who won English workers away from their class interests by the false consciousness of 'national interests'. The Prime Minister of the Tory government which passed the Aliens Act was Arthur Balfour. Balfour is regarded by zionists as a major friend of the Jewish people as it was his Declaration in 1917 that promised a Jewish 'national home' in Palestine. To regard Balfour as a friend of the Jewish people reveals much about zionist philosophy. Balfour was an anti-semite who wanted to exclude Jews from England on the grounds that, as he stated in the 1905 debate on the Aliens Act, Jews were not</p> <blockquote><b>"to the advantage of the civilisation of this country"</b></blockquote><p> and </p><blockquote> <b>"they are a people apart and not only hold a religion differing from the vast majority of their fellow countrymen but only intermarry amongst themselves".</b></blockquote> <p>Again, Joseph Chamberlain M.P. is well known in history books for his 'social imperialism'. This was his attempt to win British workers over to imperialism by offering social reforms. He is famous for his unsuccessful campaign for protectionism and import controls against 'foreign' goods but there seems to be little knowledge that he combined this with propaganda for 'Jew controls'. Moreover, the Liberal government of 1906, combining as it did massive social reforms with the enforcement of immigration controls against Jewish people, is a variant of social imperialism.</p> <p>Exactly the same can be said about the post-1945 welfare state and about the ideology of 'welfarism' itself: it combined social reforms with increasing immigration controls against black people. The battle for these politics had been won decades earlier over the struggle for the Aliens Act. The welfare state has now taken this one stage further against black people through the implementation of internal controls by the Home Office or by the 'caring' agencies of the state who assess entitlement to welfare benefits through the criteria of nationality and residence.</p> <p>The second element in the attack on the Jewish masses was the Jewish establishment, who were won over by the British ruling class. The Jewish communal leadership in this country did not immigrate here as an already formed block, but was created through its treacherous alliance with the British bourgeoisie. Class interest was stronger than any 'communal' interest. The Jewish establishment policed the Jewish masses on behalf of the British ruling class, by pressurising them into assimilation and anglicisation. Moreover, major sections of the Jewish leadership actually advocated immigration control.</p> <p>Benjamin Cohen was an M.P. and President of the Jewish Board of Guardians. In 1894 he told the annual general meeting of the Board that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Jews should make it clear not to endeavour to oppose any action which the responsible advisors to the Crown may deem necessary for the national interests which we are as desirous to protect as our fellow citizens"</b> (quoted by Gartner in <i>The Jewish Immigrant in Britain</i>).</blockquote> <p>Cohen was created a Baronet in the Resignation Honours of 1905, immediately after voting for the Aliens Act. Harry Samuels, another Jewish M.P., spoke on the same platform as the British Brothers League, at a rally organised by them in the East End which attracted an audience of 4,000 (<i>East London Observer</i>, 18.1.1902). Samuels declared his <b>"intention to discharge his duties as an English citizen"</b>. Also speaking at this meeting was Arnold White—who manifestly regarded Jewish Tory M.P.'s like Samuels, and British trade union militants, such as Tillett, as equal allies in his restrictionist crusade.</p> <p>Actually, the Jewish establishment did not need the Aliens Act—it was quite prepared to use its own initiative and send Jews back to Russia and to further pogroms. Lionel Alexander, Secretary to the Board of Guardians, told the House of Commons Select Committee on Immigration in 1888 that:</p> <blockquote><b>"My Board does not favour unwarranted immigration but ·do their utmost to check it by warnings rather than prohibitions ... it is one of our largest operations sending people back who, having wandered here, prove useless".</b></blockquote> <p>In other words, a section of the Jewish leadership was prepared to do the dirty work for the British ruling class and to police the Jewish community as an alternative to legislative control.</p> <p>Of course some elements of the Jewish bourgeoisie did take a principled opposition to the demand for control and the anti-semitism that stimulated it. However, this was tiny. There were few communal organisations that came out in opposition, and those which did were reluctant and only acted under pressure of the Jewish masses. It took the <i>Jewish Chronicle</i> until a few weeks before the Act became law to recognise the strength of grassroots Jewish opposition and to suggest that it might be amended through a 'write-in' campaign to Members of Parliament (<i>Jewish Chronicle</i>, 9.6.1905). Propelled by the activities of Jewish workers, this obviously fell well short of what was required.</p> <p>The third element in this story is the role of the English working class. This is the concern of the present book. It is undeniable that the working class played an important role in the agitation for controls; it is arguable that without their intervention controls would not have been introduced. Certainly, the campaigning of the organised labour movement and the British Brothers League was far in excess of the demagogy of the bourgeois politicians and their press. It was as though the working class agitation assumed a relative autonomy of its own. Behind this, 'socialist' groups such as the S.D.F. and the I.L.P. provided false rationalisations. All this is important today—not least because the present Labour Party was constituted precisely on trade union affiliation and was supported by organisations such as the I.L.P. and the Fabians.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/anti-alienism-or-anti-semitism.html" title="Anti-alienism or anti-semitism"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/fascists-reclaim-history.html" title="Fascists reclaim history">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169751245797701382007-01-15T10:53:00.000-08:002007-02-07T22:21:09.918-08:00Fascists Reclaim History<p>At its best, the Left ignores the history of anti-semitism and therefore of imperialism within the labour movement. At its worst, it is even prepared to rewrite history. An example of this is the quaintly titled pamphlet "<i>Zionism ... anti-semitism's twin in Jewish Garb</i>". by Tony Greenstein and produced by Brighton Labour Briefing (a grouping within Brighton Labour Party). In its opening paragraph it makes the incredible assertion that zionism exploited <b>"the natural hatred of the labour movement for anti-semitism".</b> It is as though the political agitation by the trade union movement, which was anti-semitic to the core and supported by many socialists, to keep Jews out just did not happen. The labour movement is now claimed to be 'naturally' (whatever that means) opposed to anti-semitism.</p> <p>This ignorance and dishonesty does itself have political consequences. Groupings within the fascist movement today have an acute awareness of the history of early socialism—and embrace this history as their own! For instance there was an article in the National Front magazine, <i>Spearhead</i>, in March 1980 called 'Nationalism and the Old British Socialists'. This was produced at a time when a faction of the N.F., led by Martin Webster, was arguing that the organisation had to have a working class base with the politics of 'national socialism'. With justification, this article could claim that such a tradition already existed. <i>Spearhead</i> began by stating:</p> <blockquote><b>"Modern socialists who support the so-called 'Anti Nazi League' and other anti-racialist organisations would be highly embarrassed to learn of the nationalist and racialist attitudes displayed by many early British socialists".</b></blockquote> <p>The article then praised particular groups and individuals—Robert Blatchford's Clarion Clubs, the Fabians, the S.D.F., the LL.P. and various trade unionists. Blatchford's book <i>Merrie England</i>, which combined the demand for import controls with virulent anti-semitism, was said to be</p> <blockquote><b>"echoed by the Nationalist Movement which blossomed all over Europe in the 1920's and 30's".</b></blockquote> <p>The Fabians, Beatrice Potter and Sydney Webb, were praised for describing Jews in the book <i>Industrial Democracy</i> as a <b>"constant influence for degradation"</b> and George Bernard Shaw for characterising the Jews as</p> <blockquote><b>"the real enemy, the invader from the East, the Druze, the ruffian, the oriental parasite"</b> (<i>Morning Post</i>, 13.12.25).</blockquote> <p>Pete Curran, a leading member of the Gasworkers' Union and the I.L.P. was approved for advocating controls against Jews. Hyndman of the S.D.F. was claimed as the first National Socialist. The article ends by stating:</p> <blockquote><b>"The obvious patriotism and candid racialism of these early socialists is in marked contrast to the attitudes and views held by socialists today. The triumph of internationalism and the changes from an open-minded and well-meaning approach to a mindless religious fanaticism is a reflection of the changing genetic complexion of Socialism's own advocates".</b></blockquote> <p>Presumably the 'changing genetic complexion' means that Jews are now supposedly controlling the Left, as well as everything else. The reality is that anti-semitism still exists today on the Left. One aspect is the refusal even to acknowledge the anti-semitism of much of our own tradition. Unless, as socialists, we undertake this re-evaluation, then we are ideologically powerless to prevent fascists embracing the anti-semitism of our history.</p><br /><div align="center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4973/4230/1600/425415/37.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4973/4230/320/120996/37.png" alt="" border="0" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/imperialism-and-history.html" title="Imperialism and history"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-returns-to-zion-left.html" title="The Left returns to Zion">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-1169432565568847762007-01-14T18:22:00.000-08:002007-02-27T06:26:52.583-08:00The Left Returns to Zion<h3><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-returns-to-zion-left.html" title="The Left returns to Zion">Chapter 3: Contents</a></h3> <br /><p><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-returns-to-zion-left.html">The Left organizations</a>—<a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/issues.html">The Issues</a>—<a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/zionism-and-theory-of-world-domination.html">Zionism and the theory of world domination</a>—<a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/equating-zionism-with-imperialism-anti.html">Equating Zionism with imperialism; anti-Zionism without Zion</a>—<a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/lebanon-invasion-and-theory-of-jewish.html">The Lebanon Invasion and the theory of Jewish collective responsibility</a> —<a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/zionisms-dominant-position-within-jewry.html">Zionism's dominant position within Jewry</a>—<a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/distortion-of-jewish-predicament.html">The distortion of the Jewish predicament</a>—<a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/alternative-to-zionism.html">The alternative to Zionism</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-88189669319607179092007-01-13T06:23:00.000-08:002007-02-27T06:27:17.090-08:00The Left Organisations<p>It would be surprising if the anti-semitism which flourished within the English socialist tradition at its formation had simply disappeared. False consciousness has to be challenged—and there was little opposition to the socialism of fools. Today, however, it has assumed a very different form. Rather than the caricature of the Jew as all-powerful capitalist, there is now the frequent equation of zionism with world domination and of all Jews being zionists, or at least responsible for zionism. This equation can be found in an explicit form within the Stalinist tradition. A classic case was the intended show trial, cancelled in the wake of Stalin's death, of the five 'Jewish doctors' from the Kremlin's own hospital, who were accused in 1953 of attempting, under 'zionist influence', to poison Stalin and most of the communist hierarchy. Similarly, in Poland today, the regime has attacked both Solidarity and K.O.R. (the intellectual group influential with Solidarity) as being controlled by a 'zionist clique'. Two articles by Zbigniew Kot in the paper of the Polish communist party—described K.O.R. as having the:</p> <blockquote><b>"Pseudo-left programme of the Trotskyite International which is inspired by zionist circles"</b></blockquote> <p>and:</p> <blockquote><b>"K.O.R. openly confesses to having sympathies for free-masonry and for the cosmopolitan fatherland-negating concepts promoted in the West by zionist and free-thinking circles".</b> (<i>Trybuna Ludu</i>, 22/23.12.81 quoted in <i>Research Report of the Institute of Jewish Affairs</i> May 1982)</blockquote> <p>Anti-semitism posing as anti-zionism is particularly frightening within Stalinism, as Stalinism has state power in many countries. It occurs sometimes in a confused and sometimes in an unambiguous way, in the new Left groups consolidated since the 1960's in this country. Attitudes within the Labour Party are far more complex for various reasons. Firstly, given the coalition of interests within the Labour Party, there is no guarantee that the leadership ever reflects the will of the Party. Secondly, the commonly-held belief that historically the Labour leadership has been pro-zionist, does itself need serious revision.</p> <p>It is undoubtedly the case that the Labour Party has made many outspoken statements of sympathy for zionism. As early as December 1917, at a special conference of the Labour Party and the T.U.C. to draw up a 'war aims memorandum', it was acknowledged that Palestine was a land <b>"to which such of the Jewish people as desired to do so may return and work out their salvation".</b></p> <p>In the following years numerous similar resolutions were passed. (See documents collected in <i>British Labour Policy on Palestine</i>, edited by Levenberg). Indeed Poale Zion, the pro-zionist Jewish workers party, has long been affiliated to the Labour Party, but it is simply a myth to regard the Labour leadership as having a genuine commitment to zionism. Ultimately, its position on the Middle East was, and is, guided by purely diplomatic considerations—that is by considerations of imperialism.</p> <p>The Labour government of 1945 emulated the Tories in relation to Palestine as in India, by playing off the conflicting communal groups through false promises to both. Again, it was the same Labour government which mobilised the British army to prevent Jewish refugees fleeing to Palestine. Indeed in 1947, Labour ordered two destroyers to intercept the refugee boat Exodus on its way to Palestine with over 4000 Jews on board and forced it to divert to Germany. The rationale was that Germany was the</p> <blockquote><b>"only territory under British jurisdiction outside of Cyprus where such large numbers of people can be housed and fed at such short notice".</b> (<i>Palestine Post</i>, 21.8.47)</blockquote> <p>The Hamburg docks saw the survivors of Nazism being dragged by British soldiers back onto German soil.</p> <p>Since the creation of Israel, Labour's politics have been determined solely by the need for imperialism to secure a base within the Middle East, and rationalised by a typically social democratic confusion that Israel is in some way a socialist state. At no time has the politics of the Labour Party ever been motivated by genuine commitment to the freedom of either the Jewish or the Arab masses. In a very real sense this is anti-semitism by default: there is no consideration of either the relationship, or lack of it, between zionism and Jewish liberation in Labour's attitude towards zionism.</p> <p>The emphasis of the rest of this chapter is on the Trotskyist and neo-Trotskyist groups which constitute the New Left. Some of these, or at least their individual members, have in fact virtually dissolved themselves into the Labour Party. Of course such organisations are extremely small, but they represent a significant continuation of socialist politics following the degeneration of Stalinism. The New Left groups of today claim to be preserving the traditions of revolutionary socialism. This claim is in many positive ways justified. However, much of their purported anti-zionism rests on a tradition which, whatever the revolutionary rhetoric, has always been anti-semitic.</p> <br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/fascists-reclaim-history.html" title="Fascists reclaim history"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/issues.html" title="The Issues">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-89421400561143737922007-01-12T21:43:00.000-08:002007-02-27T06:28:23.131-08:00The Issues<p>Any attempt at even a discussion of the relationship between anti-semitism and anti-zionism is normally calculated to cause apoplexy on the Left. This is no reason to censor the discussion, it is a reason for clarity and several points need to be clarified:</p> <p>(1) It would be patently absurd to regard all socialist writings antagonistic to zionism as being based on anti-semitism. The present book is not about zionism—but it is certainly hostile to it. Nathan Weinstock's book, <i>Zionism the False Messiah</i>, is a brilliant communist work. There are others. Anti-semitism is a relative not an absolute phenomenon on the Left.</p> <p>(2) It is not only absurd but reactionary to make a direct equation between anti-zionism and anti-semitism, on a theoretical level. The two are obviously not identical. Indeed it is grossly insulting to define the struggle of the Palestinians for liberation as being in any way intrinsically anti-semitic. It is similarly insulting to condemn as anti-semitic any solidarity with that struggle. It is a tragedy there is not more solidarity—there cannot be enough.</p> <p>(3) It is equally tragic that much of what passes for 'anti-zionism' on the Left is profoundly anti-semitic. It is a debatable point as to whether or not this is the dominant view on the Left. All that matters is that anti-semitism is now an important and legitimate tendency within the Left. It is the existence of this tendency which allows the zionist leadership to condemn all Left critiques of zionism as being anti-Jewish. It feeds the anti-communism of this reactionary leadership. The Left claims it makes a rigorous distinction between anti-zionism and anti-semitism yet it is manifestly not rigorous in practice. In practice, any condemnation by Jewish people of anti-semitism is somehow seen as an attempt to justify zionism.</p> <p>(4) It is insufficient and unserious merely to assert that some, but not other, 'anti-zionist' politics are anti-semitic without distinguishing between a principled anti-zionism and anti-semitism. Without a scientific definition of anti-semitism the whole debate becomes useless and painful. In fact, anti-semitism in this context, as in every other context is rooted in a variant of the world Jewish conspiracy. This has two linked aspects in relation to notions of 'zionism': (a) the concept of zionism is expanded to equate it with world domination; (b) the entire Jewish experience is reduced to 'zionism'—and likewise all Jews are held to be responsible for zionism. This is the concept of collective guilt which is intrinsic to theories of the world conspiracy. It is the presence of these ideas which distinguishes anti-semitism from genuine anti-zionism.</p> <p>(5) The distinction between anti-zionism and anti-semitism is absolute. Methodologically, there is no question of anti-zionism 'merging into' or 'becoming' anti-semitism. We are talking about two completely different phenomena. If an analysis is anti-semitic then it is anti-semitic in its origins and absolutely so—it does not become so. There is no such concept as anti-zionism 'tinged' with anti-semitism. To take an example, Fascist organisations in this country are consistently anti-Israel. Issue number 15 of <i>Nationalism Today</i> (a National Front magazine) had an article attacking Israel and concluding with the exhortation—"Anti-zionists of the world unite and fight!" The September, 1982 issue of <i>Spearhead</i> (the private magazine of John Tyndall) had a three page supplement on "The Jewish rape of Lebanon". The National Front even tried to infiltrate the first anniversary commemoration demonstration for the Sabra-Chatilla massacres. They had 'anti-zionist' leaflets. It would be grotesque to characterise groups like the National Front as 'anti-zionist'. They are anti-semitic plain and simple.</p> <p>The starting point for genuine anti-zionism is full support for the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation. This inevitably involves some analysis of the penetration of imperialism into the Middle East and the undoubted role of Israel in furthering this. It also has to involve a recognition of the fact that zionism is itself an attempt by Jews to escape the scourge of anti-semitism, in a world where no other escape routes have become apparent. Conversely, the starting point for anti-semitism is the blaming of everything on Jews collectively and internationally—especially whatever happens in the Middle East. This is also its finishing point. The examples given below are not about solidarity with the Palestinians, but are about Jews—Jews everywhere. The attempt to expropriate the language of anti-zionism does not disguise the deep anti-semitism. These examples concern themselves not with zionism, but with Jews.</p> <br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/left-returns-to-zion-left.html" title="Left Organisations"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/zionism-and-theory-of-world-domination.html" title="Zionism and the theory of world domination">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-40089715129178483402007-01-11T22:00:00.000-08:002007-02-27T14:18:46.064-08:00Equating Zionism With Imperialism: Anti-Zionism Without Zion<p>The Left, or a section of it, obviously considers zionism a pretty powerful force. It controls the media. It finances British diplomacy. It rewrites history—and it also runs British Caledonian Airways. This is not merely reminiscent of the world conspiracy theory—it also has an uncanny resemblance to the hyperbole of that theory. It sounds very similar to Arnold White's belief, already seen, that Jews have done everything from 'baffling the Pharaohs to undermining the Third French Republic'.</p> <p>In fact, the Left's conspiracy views are not just anti-semitic, they are also explicitly anti-Marxist. Thus zionism is not seen as merely furthering the interests of imperialism in the Middle East-which nowadays it undoubtedly does. Rather it is seen as in some way being the same as imperialism with the same international power. In other words the Left has not only an anti-semitic analysis of zionism but, in common with all other adherents of the conspiracy theory, it has an anti-semitic analysis of the world. Indeed at times, zionism is portrayed as a form of world domination that is on an even higher level than imperialism itself, and is actually pictured as controlling imperialism. Thus <i>Newsline</i> (9.4.83) speaks of a zionist power <b>"stretching through Downing Street channels right into the White House"</b>. <i>Newsline</i> has obviously discovered a new law of the world's development. Lenin was presumably wrong when he analysed imperialism as being the highest form of capitalism: zionism is apparently even higher, as it is able to control the two main nerve centres of imperialism! This method of analysis has more in common with Stalinism than with revolutionary socialism. For instance <i>Pravda</i> (4.10.67) claimed that the United States—the most powerful state ever known to history—was itself a <b>"Zionist colony"</b> (quoted in Wistrich). This is truly looking at reality upside down.</p> <p>This form of 'anti-zionism' transcends anything done by the Israeli state—or even the very existence of that state. It could just as easily exist without Israel, without zion and even without zionism. A 'socialism' which perceives zionist influence throughout the world, from Downing Street to the White House, stopping off at the B.B.C., is no different from the classic anti-semitic imagery of Jews being 'rootless cosmopolitans', without a state of their own, feeling no loyalty to any particular state but only to themselves. This imagery was much in vogue before the creation of the state of Israel. Stalinists still use it today—as in the Polish government's condemnation of K.O.R.¹. The imagery is the same, the existence of Israel is quite irrelevant. Anti-zionism without Zion has the same transcendental qualities as anti-semitism without Jews; it has no necessary relationship to anything a real zionist, or real Jew is doing. It exists in the air quite apart from material reality—except for the reality it creates for Itself. Thus <i>Newsline</i> is full of imagery about 'links' and 'channels' and 'connections' that zionism is making between Caledonian Airways, the White House, the B.B.C. and the <i>Jewish Chronicle</i>. It also manages to make another 'zionist connection'—with the Manpower Services Commission whose chairperson happens to be the brother of the omnipotent Stuart Young. In exactly the same way, Arnold White in his book <i>The Modern Jew</i> talks of a Jewish <b>"subterranean and invisible influence"</b> and of the existence of a <b>"complex and mysterious power denied to any other living race"</b>.</p><br />¹KOR—Intellectual group Influential with Solidarity in Poland<br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/zionism-and-theory-of-world-domination.html" title="Zionism and the Theory of World Domination"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/collective-guilt-of-all-jews-for.html" title="The Collective Guilt Of All Jews For Zionism">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-55551490851098201192007-01-11T21:45:00.000-08:002007-02-27T06:28:57.924-08:00Zionism and the Theory of World Domination<p>The equation of zionism with world domination shares a similar incoherence with the notion of the Jewish world conspiracy. It is unclear whether zionism is already supposed to have international power or whether it is still trying to achieve it via the Israeli state. The section that follows contains many examples.</p> <p>A glaring example occurred in the paper of the Workers Revolutionary Party (<i>Newsline,</i> 8.12.79). This managed to combine the long-standing belief in international Jewish financial power with modern political zionism. The paper quoted with approval a member of the National Union of Mineworkers who said: <b>"It was Britain who sold the Palestinian people out to Zionist money power"</b>. The reference here is presumably to the period before 1948 when Britain was the Mandate authority ruling Palestine. One would have thought that a supposedly Marxist journal would at least have commented that Britain "sold out" the Palestinians because of Britain's imperialist interests. However, the quotation continues without comment as though it were from <i>Der Stürmer</i> (propaganda newspaper of the Nazi party in Germany), <b>"Many promises were made to the Palestinians but none were delivered for fear of upsetting the Jewish '£' sign"</b>. In fact, the sentiments behind this are remarkably similar to the "explanation" given by the National Front as to why the United States government allowed Israel to invade the Lebanon—<b>"because America's economy, mass media and political system is totally dominated by the Zionist-Jewish Money Power"</b> (<i>National Front News</i>, August 1982).</p> <p><i>Newsline</i> has in fact managed to reproduce the notion of the media as under zionist influence—a typical instance of the conspiracy theory. In March 1983, the B.B.C. "Money Programme" purported to show that the W.R.P. was financed by the Libyan regime. One response to this by <i>Newsline</i> was an editorial which claimed that the programme was <b>"zionist sponsored"</b> (9.4.83). The same editorial then pointed out that Stuart Young had recently been appointed chairman of the B.B.C. Young was described as being a director of the <i>Jewish Chronicle</i>. No explanation was given of the politics of the <i>Jewish Chronicle</i> to the readers of <i>Newsline</i>—most of whom had probably never before heard of the newspaper. The implication was that the B.B.C. was under the influence of, or controlled by, zionists. <i>Newsline</i> also gave the irrelevant information that Young was a director of British Caledonian Airways. It is difficult to draw from this any other conclusion than that not only is the media zionist controlled but that zionism itself, a movement of the Jewish masses, was in fact created by Jewish capitalists. The National Front has also emphasised that the B.B.C. is chaired by a <b>"leading zionist"</b> (<i>Nationalism Today</i>, number 17). Fortunately for the credibility of communism this outburst from the W.R.P. was condemned by at least one other organisation as coming straight out of the <i>Protocols of Zion</i> (<i>Socialist Organiser</i>, 18.11.82).</p> <p>The Socialist Workers Party has also articulated its own variant of the conspiracy theory—making the fantastic allegation about zionism that:</p> <blockquote><b>"It's essence is that a 'chosen people', the Jews, are superior to everyone else and should trample on the rights of other peoples"</b> (20.10.73).</blockquote> <p>This is incredible. A Marxist approach to the 'essence' of zionism would look at its social roots—which manifestly lay in the reaction of the Jewish masses to the pogroms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to Nazism. It seems that <i>Socialist Worker</i> imagines that zionism emanates from a mysterious plot in which Jews see themselves as the "chosen people"—a biblical reference which is seemingly equivalent to modern 'master race' theories and in which Jews believe themselves 'superior to everyone else'. The S.W.P. has substituted, at least on this occasion, a materialist analysis of zionism for an idealistic one—and one that is completely anti-semitic.</p> <p>The logic of these politics within the S.W.P. was shown several years later (31.5.80) when it printed a letter from a certain Anthony Jones. Its ostensible purpose was to argue that the T.V. film "Death of a Princess" (which portrayed some of the more reactionary aspects of life in Saudi Arabia) somehow gave support to zionism. In reality the letter was grossly anti-semitic and was full of innuendos about Jewish control of the media. To quote:</p> <blockquote><b>"Such is zionist influence in Britain-particularly in the media ('Lord' Lew Grade, 'Lord' Bernstein) -that this film was bound to be shown and therefore used to stir up anti-Arab feeling".</b></blockquote> <p>Anthony Jones was, in fact, one of the organisers of the National Front in Tameside. Even if the S.W.P. did not know this then the nature of the letter should have alerted them. However, <i>Socialist Worker</i> was seen to be quite unable to distinguish anti-zionism from blatant anti-semitism.</p> <p>The attempt to invoke biblical images of the 'chosen people' to explain zionism as the latest example of Jewish power-seeking, is in fact found in diverse political sources. The unifying theme is that the Judaic religion is viewed as both the basis of zionism and as a faith which preaches genocide and the enslavement of gentiles.</p> <p><i>Spearhead</i> (December 1982) claimed that zionism was based on the belief by Jews that they were "God's chosen people". The Stalinist soviet academic Kichko has written in his book <i>Judaism and Zionism</i> that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Judaism teaches that Jews should force the subjugated people in the invaded lands to work for them as a people of priests".</b></blockquote> <p>The Stalinist Vladimir Begun similarly wrote in his <i>Creeping Counter Revolution</i> that:</p> <blockquote><b>"Zionist gangsterism ... has its ideological roots in the scrolls of the Torah and the precepts of the Talmud"</b> ('Anti-zionism in the USSR' in <i>The Left Against Zion</i>, ed. Wistrich, in which both the above books are quoted).</blockquote> <p>Even a revolutionary socialist magazine on the Middle East claims that the politics of zionism come from the Talmud. (Israel Shahak, 'The Jewish Religion and its Attitude to Non-Jews', <i>Khamsin</i>, issue 8, 1983). Actually, this particular article has a certain uniqueness amongst Left conspiracy theories, in that its author makes the claim, remarkable in a revolutionary socialist journal that:</p> <blockquote><b>"An examination of radical, socialist and communist parties can provide many examples of disguised Jewish chauvinists and racists who joined these parties merely for reasons of 'Jewish interest' and are, in this region, in favour of 'anti-gentile' legislation".</b></blockquote> <p>In other words, just as the Right claim that Jews enter communist groups in order to subvert capitalism so now a member of the Left claims that they enter such groups in order to subvert communism!</p> <p>In 1982, <i>Labour Herald</i> (produced by several people prominent on the left of the Labour Party) published a book review and letter by H.C. Mullin (March 19th and May 28th respectively). In his letter, Mullin said:</p> <blockquote><b>"I assert that the Zionists use the lie that the Western democratic forces made no attempt to rescue Europe's Jews from the Nazi terror to instil guilt in the members of Western society. The reason being, of course, that guilty persons are easily manipulated in the services of zionism".</b></blockquote> <p>In accomplishing this manipulation Zionists are allegedly able to control <b>"the right wing propaganda organs"</b>—in other words, the media. This really is 'revisionist' history of a major order.</p> <p>Far from being a lie that the "democratic" forces made no attempt to rescue Europe's Jews, it is a patently obvious fact. Indeed for six years after the Nazis came to power, the Allies remained silent, attempting a policy of appeasement and an alliance with Nazism against the Soviet Union. At the same time, all the major imperialist countries imposed rigid immigration controls against Jewish refugees which continued to exist throughout the war, both in this country and in the U.S.A. For instance in 1942, the Vichy regime in France agreed to hand over 19,000 Jews to the Germans for slave labour and then extermination in Poland. Appeals were made to the British Foreign Office to take these Jews into the U.K., to which one official replied:</p> <blockquote><b>"We cannot turn our country into a sponge for Europe".</b></blockquote> <p>Those Jews who did manage to get here before the war were put into internment camps as 'enemy aliens'. Many were deported to Canada or Australia—a ship-load of deported Jews was sunk when the Arandora Star was torpedoed in July 1940. For many years even the exitence of the concentration camps was denied or minimised on the grounds that (quoting another Foreign Office official):</p> <blockquote><b>"As a general rule, the Jews are inclined to magnify their persecution".</b></blockquote> <p>Throughout the war Jewish organisations made repeated requests to the Allies to bomb the gas chambers and incinerators at Auschwitz. They were told that such pin-point bombing was impossible. However, in September 1944 the U.S. airforce was able to bomb the I.G. Farben industrial complex which was immediately adjacent to Auschwitz. All these facts are well known to the survivors and have been documented in such books as <i>Britain and the Jews of Europe</i> by Bernard Wasserstein (from which the above quotations have been taken).</p> <p>Mullin's writings mirror the attempt by Nazi 'revisionist' historians to deny the murder of six million Jews. This is part of a similar attempt to portray Jews as manipulators of historical truth. As has been said in previous chapters, the Left has accused Zionists of exploiting <b>"the natural hatred of the labour movement for anti-semitism"</b>. It is also a Nazi ploy, as seen in a fascist magazine <i>Holocaust News</i>, to accuse Jews of 'exploiting' and exaggerating the holocaust. The opening line of its first editorial stated:</p> <blockquote><b>"The Zionists used the 'Holocaust' myth to create a smoke screen of international public sympathy".</b></blockquote> <p>As a socialist paper, <i>Labour Herald's</i> printing of Mullin's letter without comment, must be seen as complicity in the perpetration of anti-semitic myths. Furthermore, the real lie peddled by the Western bourgeoisie—namely that the last war was somehow a war against 'fascism and anti-semitism—remains unchallenged. The reality was that it was a war between two rival imperialisms, British and German—a rivalry that was perceived as too great to permit a joint alliance against the U.S.S.R. The fascistic and anti-semitic nature of the Nazi regime was absolutely irrelevant to Britain and the U.S.A., as neither declared war until their imperialist interests were threatened.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/issues.html" title="The Issues"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/equating-zionism-with-imperialism-anti.html" title="Equating Zionism With Imperialism: Anti-Zionism Without Zion">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-45110929054100774382007-01-10T22:01:00.000-08:002007-02-08T13:52:35.095-08:00The Collective Guilt Of All Jews For Zionism<p>The elevation of zionism to the equivalent of world imperialism and beyond is just one half of the conspiracy theory. The other half is the reduction of all Jews and all Jewish history to the zionist experience. There is a systematic tendency on the Left to define Jewish identity simply in terms of zionism. The natural corollary of this is to hold all Jews, wherever in the world, responsible for zionism, irrespective of what they actually believe. This is the theory of collective responsibility. In addition to all the examples given above, here are others which relate directly to the perceptions of collective guilt:-</p> <p>A bizarre example, important not in its own right but for what it indicates, was the conversion in 1979 of Bob Dylan from the Jewish religion to Christianity. <i>Socialist Challenge</i> (the paper of the then International Marxist Group, now renamed the Socialist League) did not respond to this by any Marxist critique of the Christian religion or the Christian church. Rather it denounced Dylan as a zionist. In fact it denounced him as a millionaire zionist (27.9.79). This incidentally was just over a year after the paper had been raffling Dylan concert tickets!</p> <p>Far more serious was the response by the Left to the Paris synagogue bombing on the Rue Copernic in October 1980. This was an openly fascist attack and was condemned by the entire Left, but this condemnation was equivocal. Most of the commentary actually concentrated on the <b>"opportunity"</b> the bombing presented to zionism! <i>Socialist Challenge</i> proclaimed that:</p> <blockquote><b>"The Israeli government is doing its best to exploit the bombing"</b> (October 9th).</blockquote> <p>Its editor Geoff Sheridan, in a letter to the paper, stated that:</p> <blockquote><b>"The Israeli government is quite cynical about the benefits it hopes to accrue from the fascist attacks in the diaspora"</b> (November 27th).</blockquote> <p>It is incredible that the significance which 'socialist' organisations accord to fascist attacks on Jews is mainly in relation to the reaction on the Israeli government. The Left in this instance reduced the experience of even dead Jews, murdered by anti-semites, as being nothing more than tools of zionist propaganda. Is the main criticism of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust now to be that it provided the "opportunity" for zionism? In fact, the National Front takes this to its logical conclusion by claiming that <b>"everybody in France knows"</b> that the Rue Copernic Shul was actually bombed by <b>"zionist terrorists"</b>—just as it claims the Holocaust was itself a zionist invention (<i>National Front News</i>, November 1982).</p> <p>Equally significant was the Left's response to the machine gun and grenade attack on the synagogue in Vienna in August 1981, resulting in yet more deaths. Unlike the Paris bombing this met with virtual silence. There only can be one explanation for this: responsibility for the attack was claimed by a Palestinian splinter group. So it seems that all Jews are seen as legitimate targets because all Jews are somehow responsible for zionism. It is interesting to note that when this was raised with two of the larger Left papers they both denied such motives and claimed they did not have the 'space' to report such attacks (<i>Socialist Challenge</i>, 17.9.81; <i>Socialist Worker</i>, 26.9.81). The excuse of 'we haven't the space' has almost been developed into a scientific theory by the Left whenever outrages are committed against Jews. In the case of the Vienna attack, it would be farcical, if it were not tragic, and it is dishonest given the coverage of the openly fascist bombing a year previously.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/equating-zionism-with-imperialism-anti.html" title="Equating Zionism With Imperialism: Anti-Zionism Without Zion"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/lebanon-invasion-and-theory-of-jewish.html" title="The Lebanon Invasion and the theory of Jewish collective responsibility">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-59427585810384584992007-01-09T22:01:00.000-08:002007-02-08T13:50:31.832-08:00The Lebanon Invasion and the theory of Jewish collective responsibility<p>The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was quite obviously an action that all socialists should have energetically condemned. However, it brought to the surface the ways in which the Left ascribes collective guilt to all Jews—for zionism in general and the Israeli government in particular. This was perhaps seen most clearly in the newspaper <i>Big Flame</i>—precisely because it was prepared to respond openly to criticisms made of its editorial policy.</p> <p><i>Big Flame</i> in its editorial of October 1982 stated that the massacres at Sabra and Chatilla <b>"cannot fail to spark off acts of revenge through-out the world"</b>. By "acts of revenge" is meant, presumably, the bombings and other attacks on Jewish institutions and individuals that occurred throughout the diaspora, following the invasion. What is remarkable is that <i>Big Flame</i> seems to think that these are 'natural' or 'inevitable'. The paper seems to consider that Jews who were bombed in, for example, Sydney Australia were legitimate targets—as if by being Jewish they were somehow responsible for what was happening in the Lebanon. It would be interesting to know why <i>Big Flame</i> doesn't think that acts of revenge were inevitable against Christians—given that the Phalangists were at least as responsible as the Israeli government for the massacre. It does explain, however, the complete silence of <i>Big Flame</i> in response to the actual attacks made on diaspora Jewry—they were never mentioned.</p> <p>Once Jews everywhere are assigned a particular responsibility for what happened in the Lebanon, then other horrific assumptions follow. In particular, it is assumed both that Jews are under a greater moral obligation than anyone else to speak out against the invasion and also that we have to speak out against it explicitly 'as Jews'. Why should we be obliged to speak out 'as Jews' about what is happening in the Middle East any more, for example, than Italians should speak out 'as Italians'? To be accepted as 'good' Jews apparently, the onus is on us to make public disavowals of zionism. Occasionally another hypocrisy creeps in; Jews 'of all people' should know better because of the history of our own oppression (<i>Big Flame</i> editorial, Sept. 1982). This is the ultimate double-standard. Jews are now expected to be on a higher level of morality than anyone else because of the oppression inflicted on us; but if we act immorally, or if any one Jew misbehaves, then we also have to apologise more than anyone else and make public penance. In fact, the theory that our own suffering should have cleansed our souls owes more to the gospels than to Marxism. What our suffering points to is the need to combat anti-semitism. It is no advertisement for the purity of our morals.</p> <p>The entire Left described the Lebanon invasion by invoking the language of the 'holocaust' and the 'final solution'. This use of language is itself anti-semitic. This is not because the invasion was not murderous. It was. It is not because the slaughter of the Palestinians has not reached the number of Jewish people massacred by the Nazis—numbers are irrelevant. There is no scale of injustice as far as murder is concerned. The reason why the use of language such as 'holocaust' and 'final solution', when applied to zionism, is anti-Jewish is because these words are no longer neutral or objective. They have a particular political significance. They refer to Jewish people. In fact they refer to all Jewish people—because it was the genocide of all Jewish people that was contemplated in the final solution.</p> <p>It is because these words have this precise political significance, a significance well understood by Jews, that they reinforce the idea all Jewish people everywhere are responsible for the invasion and the massacres. Words used to describe the collective predicament of Jews now prescribe the collective guilt of Jews. The September <i>Big Flame</i> in responding to criticism, said that in describing bloody events</p> <blockquote><b>"One's language can all too easily become looser, using terms that fall into the hands of the oppressor. With Israel this is particularly the case".</b></blockquote> <p>It is difficult to know whether this is meant as an apology. It doesn't even begin to explain why the actions of the Israeli government should "particularly" reduce the Left to anti-semitism. Should we now expect a racist analysis the next time a government of black Africa operates in an oppressive way?</p> <p>It is seen later that the ultimate trap placed in front of Jews by the Left is that Jews themselves are responsible for anti-semitism. The anti-semites are correct—everything is our own fault! This is the destination to which the theory of collective responsibility leads. Sometimes it is expressed quite explicitly. <i>Big Flame</i> (October, 1982) stated that:</p> <blockquote><b>"zionism is the monster that is doing most to fuel anti-semitism in the modern world".</b></blockquote> <p>This stands reality on its head. The crime of Begin, Sharon and the rest of the Israeli government was the attempted destruction of the Palestinians as a nation. This is why they are to be condemned—and not for any consequences their actions may have had on diaspora Jewry (namely <b>'revenge'</b> which <i>Big Flame</i> seems to see as rational). Neither Begin nor any other Jew, zionist or otherwise, is responsible for anti-semitism. This is solely the responsibility of anti-semites. <i>Big Flame</i> did apologise for this statement in its following issue, but attitudes such as this are not simply 'mistakes'. They are intrinsic to the way sections of the Left hold the entire international Jewish community responsible for the actions of one, or some, or many, Jews.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/collective-guilt-of-all-jews-for.html" title="The Collective Guilt Of All Jews For Zionism"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/zionisms-dominant-position-within-jewry.html" title="Zionism's Dominant Position Within Jewry">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38696147.post-6992484429434707342007-01-08T22:03:00.000-08:002007-02-27T06:10:26.505-08:00Zionism's Dominant Position Within Jewry<p>The fact that within certain Jewish communities, particularly those in Europe and the U.S.A., zionism holds a hegemonic position, does not render the notion of 'collective responsibility' for zionism any less anti-semitic. This is not simply because, even within these communities, there are countless Jews who are not zionists. More important is the fact that the anti-semitism of the 'collective guilt of Jews' is based on the bizarre premise that non-Jews cannot be zionists or supporters of zionism. Indeed in a political sense, Jewish people are the least significant, the least powerful, advocates of zionism, since zionism is hegemonic throughout the body politic of all Western imperialism. There is no major political party which does not provide it with its backing.</p> <p>The creation of Israel was naturally impossible without Jewish struggle within Palestine, irrespective of outside help (which if anywhere came from Eastern Europe). However, the continued existence of Israel is due neither to its own resources nor to the help of diaspora Jewry. It is due to the political, economic and military support of the U.S.A. and its allies. There is a supreme historical irony present here. For two millennia Jewish people have been held collectively accountable for the action of any one Jew. This is simply one consequence of the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy to which zionism was a political response. Yet it is the hegemonic position of zionism within some Jewish communities which is today being invoked in order to 'prove' the conspiracy theory and to hold all Jews collectively liable. A frequent example is the way in which the full spectrum of political opinion refers to the 'Jewish lobby' in the U.S.A. as somehow controlling the foreign policy of the most powerful country in the world.</p><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/lebanon-invasion-and-theory-of-jewish.html" title="Lebanon Invasion and the theory of Jewish collective responsibility"><< Back</a> | <a href="http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.com/2007/01/distortion-of-jewish-predicament.html" title="The distortion of the Jewish predicament">Next >></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com