Adbusters Blames the Jews

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/conc_toc.htm

"Drawing attention to the Jewishness of the neocons is a tricky game. Anyone who does so can count on automatically being smeared as an anti-Semite. But the point is not that Jews (who make up less than 2 percent of the American population) have a monolithic perspective. Indeed, American Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat and many of them disagree strongly with Ariel Sharon’s policies and Bush’s aggression in Iraq. The point is simply that the neocons seem to have a special affinity for Israel that influences their political thinking and consequently American foreign policy in the Middle East."

But ending it with "and half of them are Jewish" just doesn't sit well with me.

It's obviously a shadowy, sinister conspiracy.

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/arts/PROPAGAN/octopus.JPG

Wikipedia's entry is a really good introduction, actually.

(their magazine is not free, go figure)
(also is that a Paul Heyman octopus?!)

Is the entire purpose of that magazine to just make everyone feel stupid and ashamed?

You could read it for free at many hanging-around areas at Hampshire, unsurprisingly.

November 26, 1999 - Participate by participating!
(Press release from http://tao.ca/~lombrenoire)

For the past eight years, a few self-described "culture jammers" from
Adbusters Magazine have dubbed the last Friday in November "Buy Nothing
Day."

From their stylish home base in Vancouver's upscale suburb of Kitsilano, the
Adbusters' brain trust has encouraged conscientious citizens worldwide to
"relish [their] power as a consumer to change the economic environment." In
their words, Buy Nothing Day "proves how empowering it is to step out of the
consumption stream for even a day."

The geniuses at Adbusters have managed to create the perfect feel-good,
liberal, middle-class activist non-happening. A day when the more money
you make, the more influence you have (like every other day). A day which,
by definition, is insulting to the millions of people worldwide who are too poor
or marginalized to be considered "consumers."

It's supposed to be a 24-hour moratorium on spending, but ends up being a
moralistic false-debate about whether or not you should really buy that loaf
of bread today or ... wait for it ... tomorrow!

Well, this year, while the Adbusters cult enjoys yet another Buy Nothing Day,
accompanied by their fancy posters, stickers, TV and radio advertisements
and slick webpages, a few self-described anarcho-situationists from
Montreal's East End are inaugurating Steal Something Day.

Unlike Buy Nothing Day, when people are asked to "participate by not
participating," Steal Something Day demands that we "participate by
participating." Instead of downplaying or ignoring the capitalists, CEOs,
landlords, small business tyrants, bosses, PR hacks, yuppies, media
lapdogs, corporate bureaucrats, politicians and cops who are primarily
responsible for misery and exploitation in this world, Steal Something Day
demands that we steal from them, without discrimination.

The Adbusters' intellegentsia tell us that they're neither "left nor right," and
have proclaimed a non-ideological crusade against overconsumption. Steal
Something Day, on the other hand, identifies with the historic and
contemporary resistance against the causes of capitalist exploitation, not its
symptoms. If you think overconsumption is scary, wait until you hear about
capitalism and imperialism.

Unlike the misplaced Buy Nothing Day notion of consumer empowerment,
Steal Something Day promotes empowerment by urging us to collectively
identify the greedy bastards who are actually responsible for promoting
misery and boredom in this world. Instead of ignoring them, Steal
Something Day encourages us to make their lives as uncomfortable as
possible.

As we like to say in Montreal: diranger les riches dans leurs niches!

And remember, we're talking about stealing, not theft. Stealing is just. Theft
is exploitative. Stealing is when you take a yuppie's BMW for a joyride, and
crash into a parked Mercedes just for the hell of it. Theft is when you take
candy from a baby's mouth.

Stealing is the re-distribution of wealth from rich to poor Theft is making
profits at the expense of the disadvantaged and the natural environment.
Stealing is an unwritten a tax on the rich. Theft is taxing the poor to
subsidize the rich. Stealing is nothing more than a tax on the rich. There is
solidarity in stealing, but property is nothing but theft.

So, don't pay for that corporate newspaper, but steal all of them from the
box. Get some friends together and go on a "shoplifting "spree at the local
chain supermarket or upscale mall. With an even larger mob, get together
and steal from the local chain book or record store. Pilfer purses and wallets
from easily identified yuppies and business persons. Skip out on rent. Get a
credit card under a fake name and don't pay. Keep what you can use, and
give away everything else in the spirit of mutual aid that is the hallmark of
Steal Something Day.

Download our detourned poster http://tao.ca/~lombrenoire, make copies and
stick it up wherever you can. And don't forget, send your scamming and
stealing tips to us at lombrenoire@tao.ca.

See you next Steal Something Day which, unlike Buy Nothing, happens
every day of the year.

Disclaimer: all opinions are those of the authors and this press release is reproduced for information purposes only.

xpost I'm not sure if that was a typo or not, Tep, but either way it's totally OTM.

Nevermind, that's actually not much of a contest at all. But I never bought a copy of adbusters.

I played Star Frontiers, man, not Battletech. But that was junior high. I don't know which direction that shifts my coolness.

(Did I mention I'm going to GenCon?)

-- Nate in ST.P (n***p*****550...), February 25th, 2004. (later)

Heyman pushed Raven in ECW and A-Train in WWE- IT'S A YID CONSPIRACY TO RULE WRESTLING! WHAT WOULD HERB ABRAHAMS SAY IF HE WERE STILL ALIVE????

http://www.lanceradvanced.com/Models/Images/Marauder.jpg

also known as the Zentradi Officers Pod(the Glaug?) in Macross/Robotech

i fiddled around with it for a little while, then I got a 486/33, and a copy of X-Wing, and that was it for Battletech.

I still have the painted mech somewhere...

also their covers suck and they are pedantic shits.

OR CAN IT?

that said, the ethnicity or religion of a view advancer often has relevance to why they advance the view, for sociological reasons - like the way some Irish Americans feel an affinity to Irish nationalism which manifests in support for the IRA, say.

ethnicity isn't always determinative.

i get knocked out by the pretensiousness of it all before i can even get past the cover.

If you don't believe me, perhaps you should take it from the godfather himself.

It's not a good idea to ignore what's happening on the right. Especially since the neo-cons are getting quite friendly with the Christian right, as Kristol points out in his article.

I've always wondered if Adbusters was bought out by someone. The first couple issues were sort on an anarcho hippie version of Whole Earth Review with a tongue or two in cheek but a couple years ago there was a design and editorial change that turned the mag into a shrill histrionic mouthpiece of left-wing fascism.

More of this kind of crap from Adbusters. This time it's the Gaza=Warsaw/Jews=Nazis trope that has become somewhat familiar recently. I guess it's cold comfort that Adbusters must have a pretty tiny circulation (compared to someone like that maniac Glenn Beck) but it's quite dismaying all the same. This Lasn guy is such a creep.

Is making this comparison exclusively a trope of "left-wing fascists" now?

I'm a Jew and I don't have a problem with that article (at least what I've read so far).

Jews /= Israel and there are plenty of legitimate parallels between Nazi policies and the state of Israel. PLENTY.

Though the stated goal of Israel has never been the complete destruction of the Palestinian people,

lol at the careful use of "stated" goal here tho

the phrase "this is how zionist israel started" hasn't caught on

xxpost. There are also plenty of illegitimate parallels between Palestinians and Warsaw Jews implied by this comparison. They are not particularly comparable.

tactics are comparable. scale is not, really.

I knew this Jewish Anarchist folk singer whose most frequent song subject was Zionist/Nazi comparisons.

psyched for this thread

^^lolz

sorry been reading Fisk's "Great War for Civilization", makin me kinda ashamed of my people.

tactics are comparable. scale is not, really.

Don't remember hearing about the Warsaw Jews firing rockets into Germany or sending out suicide bombers. Was their any Jewish organisations sworn to destroy Germany and make it into a Jewish state?

I didn't say EVERY tactic

Fair enough. I'm not a big Zionist Jew either but I dislike Adbusters and think Lasn is a creep. They are overstepping the mark with this kind of stuff.

comparing shit to the holocaust = a really good way to troll jewish people and pretty much the only purpose of an article like that

I hesitate to point out that the Germans didn't "occupy" Warsaw for 70 years. If the Jews had been under occupation that long (and were still alive) you can be damn sure their tactics would've evolved beyond the relatively simple combat tactics of the Warsaw resistance.

x-post

Well, the Warsaw Jews were only confined there until their execution could be arranged. Not many folks around thinking that's what's going on in Gaza.

I guess this comparison packs a rhetorical punch, but really what's the point? If the point of comparisons with history is to learn from the past, then what is learned from this? Israel must be defeated at all costs?

How about looking at an oppressor/oppressed relationship that, you know, got better.

xxxpooossts

or iatee OTM

True.

Probably best just to go back to ignoring this shitty magazine.

what a disaster for Adbusters

Nothing new there.

well this thread burned out quickly. good thing probably.

It's so long since Adbusters was anything but a lame duck that it's just not worth getting worked up about.

comparing shit to the holocaust = a really good way to troll jewish people and pretty much the only purpose of an article like that

^
this

the comparison doesn't need to be made and isn't really very accurate. there's this kind of smug rubbing-your-face-in-the-irony angle to it that i fuckin hate, too.

I will say this: it doesn't help that this article is written by an American of Pakistani-German descent. Its a little easier as a Jew for me to lob these criticisms of Israel, but this guy's not gonna make any real headway.

Well, the Warsaw Jews were only confined there until their execution could be arranged. Not many folks around thinking that's what's going on in Gaza.

I'm pretty sure Sharon or Netanyahu would engage in their mass slaughter if they thought they could get away with it. As it is, they kill pretty much as many Palestinians as they can without attracting too much international outrage.

Asking what the point of these comparisons is is totally fair - cuz yeah these comparisons more often than not silence debate than encourage it... at the same time, personally I find it really really depressing that right-wing Israelis, many who are survivors or relatives of survivors of the Holocaust, seem to learn, well, the *wrong* lessons from the Holocaust. That they have this blind spot about what the actual impacts of Israel's policies are, that they are unable to empathize with an oppressed minority, that the central lesson they take away from the Holocaust is one of violent, racist, paranoia... its just a bummer. They have this impregnable, moral self-righteousness that is weirdly blinding, and there are not a lot of rhetorical ways to penetrate it. Its like an emotional wall of entitlement that defies rational argument, a kind of ethical high-handedness that enables brutality and racism.

fwiw this magazine has always been pretty shitty and I don't pay attention to it, in general.

x-post

I find it really really depressing that right-wing Israelis, many who are survivors or relatives of survivors of the Holocaust, seem to learn, well, the *wrong* lessons from the Holocaust. That they have this blind spot about what the actual impacts of Israel's policies are, that they are unable to empathize with an oppressed minority, that the central lesson they take away from the Holocaust is one of violent, racist, paranoia... its just a bummer. They have this impregnable, moral self-righteousness that is weirdly blinding, and there are not a lot of rhetorical ways to penetrate it. Its like an emotional wall of entitlement that defies rational argument, a kind of ethical high-handedness that enables brutality and racism.

I too find this depressing. You describe it well. I'd guess this worldview arose in the immediate post-war years, when Israel's survival relied on violent and dogged resistance to any perceived threat. As Israel matured, part of the society moved away from this, part did not?

And personally I'm endlessly irritated by this debate continually being framed in mainstream politics and mass media with Israel as the ethical, virtuous victim in this situation - that they're the ones who are victimized, oppressed, constantly in danger. When in actuality Israel is a state that was founded on terrorism and the West's broken promises, has routinely violated UN resolutions as well as its own commitments (cf. Oslo), has the superior firepower that it excercises routinely, inevitably suffers fewer casualties in any conflicts with the Palestinians, operates murder squads, engages in all kinds of illegal and abhorrent activity... but no, the reason there's no peace in Israel/Palestine is because of those intransigent Palistinians, who are so non-human that they send their children out to die in suicide missions. I mean there's this completely lopsided narrative that gets presented, and its wrong.

a good example of this is Israel's continued, active denial of the Armenian genocide. They don't want anything else that happened (or happens) to another ethnic group to be characterized as "genocide" because (I assume?) they feel that that in some way will diminish the Jews' suffering. I mean, really - they pressured Elie Wiesel, of all people, to agree with this position!! WTF

I mean the lesson of the Holocaust should be that this shouldn't happen to ANYBODY, not that it just shouldn't happen to Jews.

That's a big thing in Fisk's book, isn't it. I haven't read it by the way, but would like to.

it is a book that i have 'put down for a bit' more than once and ended up not looking at for months

it is

i) good
ii) self-evidently cobbled-together, rather than composed as a whole
iii) (upshot of previous two maybe?) kind of unclear whether it's trying to educate the reader as to the whole status of the middle east or merely to present 1,300 pages of scenes of it at its worst

i mean, there's this sort of "and now, the armenian genocide" aspect to it that makes it hard going.

its a chapter. I was aware of the Armenian genocide (I have friends who's families escaped) but I wasn't aware of Israel's weirdo role in denying it. Obviously there's a geopolitical angle (gotta keep Turkey happy!) but its just so WTF... Fisk also makes some good points about the Nazis taking direct lessons from the Turks (cf Hitler quote "who remembers the Armenians?"), which of course also totally pissed off the Israelis.

it is a very hard book to read. basically just an endless catalogue of brutality.

the framing device of his father's generation - and the many conflicts in the Middle East stemming from the death throes of the British Empire - works pretty well. But yeah its clearly cobbled together.

Hey all you wild spirits out there,

Here is how the Global Spring begins:

A few lone wolves among us start pasting posters in and around Goldman Sachs HQ at 200 West Street, Manhattan, New York. Groups of two or three turn up and hand out leaflets at their branch office at Maria de Molina 6-5a, Madrid, Spain. People start gathering and having fun outside Goldman's offices in 50 cities…

Then … on Thursday May 23, when Goldman Sachs holds its annual shareholders meeting at 222 South Main Street, Salt Lake City, Utah, 500 people turn up and solidarity games are held across the world. It gets serious when thousands start playing on September 17 in front of Goldman's branches inLos Angeles, Toronto, Moscow, London, Buenos Aires,Melbourne, Beijing, Mexico City. The media picks up on this fledgling global revolt…

And, one fine day, the whole thing suddenly catches fire …#GOLDMAN becomes a rallying cry for people everywhere to rise up against the financial fraudsters who have been fucking around with our lives for far too long.

When the moment is ripe, all it takes is a spark.

for the wild,
Kono Matsu / k✧✧✧@adbust✧✧✧.o✧✧
Culture Jammers HQ
adbusters.org

P.S. Find teammates and Goldman Sachs locations atmeetup.com/goldman

Catch up on the gameplay thus far, read Adbusters Tactical Briefing #41.

Kick #GOLDMAN onto the world’s screens and into the streets … share, pin, reblog this visual blast … and let the games begin!

"He is the co-founder of Adbusters magazine and author of the books Culture Jam and Design Anarchy and is the co-founder of the Adbusters Media Foundation, which owns the magazine. He reportedly started Adbusters after an epiphany that there was something profoundly wrong with consumerism. It happened in a supermarket parking lot. Frustrated that he had to insert a quarter to use a shopping cart, he jammed a bent coin in so that the machine became inoperable. This act of vandalism was his first (quite literal) "culture jam"—defined as an act designed to subvert mainstream society.[2]"

Cool story Kalle

i wonder if he noticed the pregnant woman and the elderly dude waiting in line behind him.

guess they had a buy no groceries day

HAHA.

I go back and forth on whether the Goldman Sachs focus is in some way antisemitic. It does seem odd to me that the focus of the ire about the financial crisis is the bank with the jewiest sounding name and the jewiest (in the most bad stereotypical sense) looking CEO. Is Citigroup not an equal culprit of the financial crisis? What about Countrywide, now owned by Bank of America? If anything other parties probably did more to actually cause the crisis, GS was just the player that was smartest and came away the least scathed. Meanwhile, all-American Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase seem to continue get a pass despite mounting evidence that they're not really the exceptional bank they were made out to be. None of this is to say that GS isn't deserving of ire, I just think there's something a little bizarre about making them out to be some kind of sole orchestrator of the whole collapse.

Oh I don't think the choice is at all bizarre. They could have chosen any one of a dozen notorious financial institutions but chose the most Jewish sounding one. Quelle surprise. I think it is deliberate. Even in a minor way, like it almost certainly would have occured to them that people would have interpreted their choice as being anti-semetic but they went ahead with GS anyway. Also the images they are sending around of Lloyd Blankfein are quite revolting in this context.

And the #GOLDMAN thing is creepily reminiscent of Orwell's Goldstein.

i wonder if he noticed the pregnant woman and the elderly dude waiting in line behind him.

lol @ concern trolling

i'm imagining the scene as drawn by the onion editorial cartoonist

None of this is to say that GS isn't deserving of ire, I just think there's something a little bizarre about making them out to be some kind of sole orchestrator of the whole collapse.

well, there's the fact that the guy in charge at Treasury when it all turned to shit in September 2008 was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs (and is about as WASP as a person can be in this day and age) & and his firm was one of the few that was left standing when the dust cleared ...

I don't think Jamie Dimon gets a pass from the Adbusters types or the Taibbis. The latter, at least, don't seem to have any greater ire for GS than any other bank.

Culture Jammers HQ

lol the origin of adbusters is "WHAT?! A QUARTER?!"

yeah, a quarter which you get back after you're finished shopping. Bastards.

the capitalists have gone 25 cents too far with this one

Guess no-one paid attention last time so they're upping the ante (ante-semetic that is).

Yo meme warriors,

This May Day, let’s thrill the world by wiping the grin off Lloyd Blankfein’s face … First, blast this meme through the cyber-sphere and get your friends in a mischievous mood. Then we’ll take this fun offline in time for next Wednesday, when we swarm Goldman Sachs’ 73 locations around the globe, and shut down this criminal corporation for several hours, or more …

isn't he not even the ceo of goldman anymore? seems a little bit 200-LATE!

*2,000-Late... i fucked it up

no, cuz 200-LATE would be even more late

constantine is OVER adbusters! get with it!

this is such a depressing thread

I'm pretty sure Sharon or Netanyahu would engage in their mass slaughter if they thought they could get away with it. As it is, they kill pretty much as many Palestinians as they can without attracting too much international outrage.

what was anti-semitic about that quote in the latest revive?

idk what the reviver had in mind but i imagine same as last update + pig

Yeah, just the image of the most Jewish-looking CEO of the most Jewish-sounding bank depicted as a roast pig. By an organisation with a rep as being anti-semetic. Sad. On the plus side, it seems like no-one gives a shit about Adbusters any more.

Where three fuck do you have to pay a quarter for a shopping cart?

I'm pretty sure Sharon or Netanyahu would engage in their mass slaughter if they thought they could get away with it. As it is, they kill pretty much as many Palestinians as they can without attracting too much international outrage.

otm, no? You think Netanyahu is a nice guy or something?

I think this is definitely the right thread to accuse the Israeli PM of harboring secret genocidal impulses.

Plus they do attract international outrage, to imply the opposite is sneaky.

Where three fuck do you have to pay a quarter for a shopping cart?

― how's life, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 5:45 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

you put in a quarter but then you GET IT BACK when you put the cart back, it's to prevent people from just like leaving them rolling around the parking lot, it is totally reasonable and to point to it as an example of the evils of unchecked capitalism is incredibly hilarious

see, this is weird because i hate goldman sachs / the repercussions of the financialization of the economy and also hate netanyahu but i'm not anti-semetic, far from it, i was excited to learn a few months ago that i might have a jewish great grandfather. so the issue is really the "form" of adbusters' critiques, not their content? i agree that focusing on demonizing goldman and bankers' "greed" is a bad look because the real issue is system-wide changes in our society that allowed those institutions to become powerful. but i also feel like if lloyd blankfein asked me to swipe his metrocard one day -- he was out for the month -- i might just say no.

xp: no, i mean, I understood that from someone's explanation upthread. it's just I've been to a grip of grocery stores and never seen anything like this.

It's not common in most parts of the US

I don't think it's usually a problem most places. Except for the store in Louisiana near where my friends used to live where the parking lot was full of carts drifting around because no one returned them.

i think what adbusters is trying to do is rekindle a sort of populist left-wing propoganda, which involves demonizing corporate entities in ways that seem hackneyed and silly to more educated people, especially more educated left-wingers like many of the people on this board. and i agree - i cringe whenever i read adbusters. but if there is to be another major workers' movement, would it be able to avoid stoking public anger against "financiers" in ways that, unfortunately, resembles (even superficially) anti-semitic jewish banker conspiracy bullshit? will this be a hurdle for the left? i think what we see in adbusters is an attempt to mobilize right wing tactics for the left - in terms of using advertising techniques, appealing to the readers' reptile brain and not their intellect - but i am wondering if, as shitty as this seems, will it be necessary if the left is to have actual political success in the future? because right now, as far as i'm concerned we have two right wing parties in america.

i'm not endorsing adbusters, i think they suck, but i think their suckiness raising pertinent questions about their project. i don't know much about the labor movement, but i think a step that would need to be taken before american labor gets serious and organized again is that they need to learn to HATE their bosses, and not identify with their success anymore. and that would look ugly...

i haven't had coffee yet and i'm not sure if what i am saying is smart or not.

you're letting "unfortunately" do a lot of work in that first paragraph

is it worth it to revive anti-semitic jewish banker conspiracy bullshit to galvanize a populist leftist anti-corporate movement? i think not, but then again i'm a jew so who cares what i think.

i don't think it's worth it either, but i think we should maybe try to think of other ways -- propoganda tactics basically - to frame public anger against financial institutions and things like that, so this stuff doesn't creep into the discourse as it has repeatedly done.

the "pig" thing is a close call. The term "capitalist pig" is obviously a familiar one, and it's possible they were just thinking that. IT's also possible, given AdBusters' other kind of o_O moves, that someone thought "haha, pig isn't kosher, let's make blankfein a pig." Who knows? It's sort of like the "vampire squid" thing. Evil octopus caricatures weren't exclusively used as an antisemitic trope -- I just saw one of Rockefeller/Standard Oil for example. But it also does resonate with holocaust-era propaganda. I think it's better to avoid these lines where possible -- use other images, words, etc.

But once you throw "why won't anyone say they're jewish?" out there (as in the OP) it's hard for me not to think that that's what the magazine has in mind.

With all due respect I think you have this backwards. Adbusters is not tying anti-semitism to anti-corporatism as an ill-advised tactic. I believe they are using anti-corporate sentiment as a vehicle for expressing historical anti-semitic opinions. If this were 150 years ago it would be a Rothschild head on that pig. Financial crises are historically an opportunity to breed anti-Jewish sentiment as a way of postponing actual reform. Which is to say, Adbusters isn't just going about their anti-corporate agenda poorly - their agenda is implicitly reactionary and a way of maintaining the current systems of inequality by pinning the economic malaise on the Jews.

sorry, xp to Treeship

hmm, that is a more sinister reading of adbusters than i was considering. i haven't read this thread and don't know so much about the history of adbusters i was mostly responding to that image of blankfein as a suckling pig, and thought that any like caricature of a "greedy banker" would feel anti-semitic to me and make me uncomfortable, and wondering if that would be a problem for the left... that some anti-capitalist propoganda tropes are poisoned, basically

i wasn't even really considering that they were being explicitly anti-semitic, just sloppy, which is bad too -- not innocent -- in my view; people in 2013 have no excuse for not knowing what types of ideas their speech evokes, and what prejudices it is built upon

Why Won't Anyone Say They Are Jewish?
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/52/articles/jewish.html

that's an interesting take, mordy. seems sort of unnecessarily binary to me though - i believe adbusters is sincere with their anticorporatist agenda. i'm also willing to believe that they're irredeemably anti-semitic

that link is dead but i found the article somewhere else online and HOLY SHIT. sorry everyone; Adbusters are not just ignorant left-wing populists, they are anti-semites.

I think it's perfectly possible that they are sincerely both antisemitic and anticorporatist

probable even

I haven't read this in awhile but iirc it is applicable here:
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/antiglobalisms-jewish-problem

isn't it that, also, they don't separate their anticorporatism and their antisemitism? i don't think there's ever a moment where they'd think "is it weird we are always talking about goldman sachs and not citigroup" because to them the multinational financial institution is automatically and generically coded jewish.

xposts

But another element of the new anti-Semitism is often overlooked: The time frame for this resurgence of judeophobia corresponds with the intensification of international links that took place in the 1990s. "People are losing their compass," observes Dan Dinar, a historian at Hebrew University. "A worldwide stock market, a new form of money, no borders. Concepts like country, nationality, everything is in doubt. They are looking for the ones who are guilty for this new situation and they find the Jews." The backlash against globalization unites all elements of the political spectrum through a common cause, and in doing so it sometimes fosters a common enemy - what French Jewish leader Roger Cukierman calls an anti-Semitic "brown-green-red alliance" among ultra-nationalists, the populist green movement, and communism's fellow travelers. The new anti-Semitism is unique because it seamlessly stitches together the various forms of old anti-Semitism: The far right's conception of the Jew (a fifth column, loyal only to itself, undermining economic sovereignty and national culture), the far left's conception of the Jew (capitalists and usurers, controlling the international economic system), and the "blood libel" Jew (murderers and modern-day colonial oppressors).

The browns and greens are not simply plagiarizing one another's ideas. They're frequently reading from the same page. In Canada, a lecture by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Icke was advertised in lefty magazines such as Shared Vision and Common Ground. ("Canadians voted down free trade and we got it anyway," said one woman who saw the ads and attended the event. "So there has to be something to that.") Far-right nationalists, such as former skinhead Jaroslaw Tomasiewicz, have infiltrated the Polish branch of the international antiglobalization organization ATTAC. The British Fascist Party includes among its list of recommended readings the works of left-wing antiglobalists George Monbiot and Noam Chomsky. A Web site warning of the dangers of "Jewish Plutocracy, Jewish Power" includes links to antiglobalization NGOs such as Corpwatch and Reclaim Democracy. The Dutch NGO De Fabel van de illegaal withdrew in disgust from the anti-MAI movement when it learned that the campaign's activities were attracting the attention of far-right, anti-Semitic student groups. "By pointing to this so-called globalisation as our main problem, the anti-MAI activists prepare our thinking for the corresponding logical consequence – the struggle for ‘our own' local economy, and as a consequence also for ‘our own' state and culture," the director of De Fabel warned. "Left-wing groups are spreading an ideology that offers the New Right, rather than the left, bright opportunities for future growth."

I really dislike that sort of "websites that say this also link to this" pseudo-analysis. Fascists read Chomsky seems only a couple notches above Hitler was a vegetarian.

yeah i didn't know adbusters ever explicitly talked about "jews" i thought it was just like "arggghhh goldman sachs.... argghhhh the banks.... argggh international capitalism" and that, without talking about these issues in a nuanced way, but in terms of targeting "villains", were framing these sentiments in ways that seemed contiguous with historical anti-jewish positions. i still think that this, itself, could be a problem... any kind of discourse that is targed at the "elites" and not at the more impersonal machine of capitalism is something i try to avoid, because it never leads to insight.

from now on i am going to (try) to read up on the shit i am talking about.

What do you think about the critique that certain writers attract particular comments? I don't think it's unfair to look at who is reading who when you're trying to pinpoint ideological sympathies. nb I don't think Chomsky is an anti-semite, or a secret fascist. But I think his ideology is fucked up enough that actual anti-semites can view him as a fellow traveler, or at least use his critiques productively for their own conspiratorial ideas. xp

no, I think that's nonsense. Conspiratorial types are by nature incoherent, they like all sorts of things.

i agree with hurting

This is really the key: "Unfortunately, conspiracy theories must always have a conspirator, and all too often, the conspirators are perceived to be Jews." Anti-globalist leftists are conspiracy theorists; is it any surprise that when they locate the conspiracy it looks very familiar?

I don't really buy your truism that "anti-globalist leftists are conspiracy theorists"

When you locate the crimes of globalism in particular individuals as opposed to systemic issues isn't that the definition of conspiracy?

no anti-globalist leftists locate the problems of globalism in systemic issues?

Globalism is a pretty amorphous + nebulous concept tbh.

I definitely hear the critique that 'globalism' is an updated version of the 'rootless, cosmopolitan jew' trope.

Globalism is a pretty amorphous + nebulous concept tbh.

― Mordy, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 11:38 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well you're the one reducing a broad range of overlapping ideological views and goals to a three-word description

i.e. "the anti-globalist left"

Hurting otm

Is it just that you want me to carve out space for hostility towards Capitalism w/out the accompanying anti-Semitic baggage? Bc I'm broadly hostile towards Capitalism so I'm obviously not saying that the entire movement is illegitimate. I'm just pointing out that often anti-globalism is a smokescreen for Jew hatred. I don't even think that's controversial. Read the comments on any given Salon article, or Guardian article. It is certainly a vehicle for leftist anti-semites to hitch their agendas. Obviously not every leftist is an anti-Semite.

i think that people who can think about systems tend to do that, but in order to popularize anti-capitalist politics sometimes stuff gets boiled down into conspiracy theory narratives. so a right-winger who feels he knows in advance who his enemies are would get something very different out of chomsky than chomsky intended.

I do think it's a compelling argument that 'anti-globalism' as a trope is the anti-semitic wing of anti-Capitalism (as it focuses Capitalist resistance in this trope of cosmopolitan, rootless Capitalism cf Rothschild).

In Canada, a lecture by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Icke was advertised in lefty magazines such as Shared Vision and Common Ground. ("Canadians voted down free trade and we got it anyway," said one woman who saw the ads and attended the event

So David Icke. David Icke is a person who believes that the world is controlled by a race of 12 foot lizards. i don't understand how he can ever be trotted out as representing anything other than people who are fucking batshit? I get that there's a lot of anti-semitism in the makeup of what he believes - it owes a lot to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (and in general does its part to increase the treatment of TPOTEOZ as anything other than a historical fake); it believes in a secret background global elite who control society through their grip on the media and temporal power and he's never outright unlinked that from Jewishness (he's of the "i'm not saying ALL Jews are part of this" school). But calling him an "anti-semitic conspiracy theorist" makes it sound like he is someone with the creeping everyday malevolence of a Holocaust denier, rather than someone who claims the Queen or England is secretly a reptillian alien in a human suit.

haha i like that the magazines that advertised it are called "shared vision" and "common ground" as if to further support mordy's point

When you locate the crimes of globalism in particular individuals as opposed to systemic issues isn't that the definition of conspiracy?

― Mordy, mardi 30 avril 2013 11:35 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I believe Abuster are unable or unwilling to discernate between systems and individuals and symbols.

Sorry AbusterS, they are many of them.

let's do some discernatin

I'm culturejamming verbs, ok?

i think the reductionism of adbusters is a major part of the problem with them, if not the only problem. when you try to collapse your political positions into a slogan or a poster, you need to funnel complexity into a simplistic narrative, and this process involves a violent degree of obfuscation. that is why politics sucks, basically.

So glad this thread got revived on Tuesday...or is it really Jewsday???

The conflation of anti-Capitalism and anti-Semitism does have a long pedigree. Marx himself asserted that the dissolution of the Jewish identity is required for the political transformation of the State. This is one of the more uniques facets of anti-Semitism v. other racist movements - because Judaism is not racially bound (but some ethnic/cultural/religious/political hybrid) anti-Semitism often demands that the Jew disavow his own Jewishness. By contrast you never hear a racist demand that black people cease being black (it's a silly idea to begin with). Historically this was a Christian position (the demand that the Jew convert) but now is an anti-Capitalism position - Stanislas Marie Adelaide, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre: "We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals." Or in the contemporary case of Israel, that it cease to be a Jewish State and become an international State.

Not sure if this is directly relevant, and I do agree that post-colonialism plays a large role in this (personally I think the poco position is anti-leftist but that's really get far afield).

But for example, but that foreign affairs article:

Israel enjoys a unique pariah status among the antiglobalization movement because it is viewed as the world's sole remaining colonialist state - an exploitative, capitalist enclave created by Western powers in the heart of the developing world. "They're trying to impose an apartheid system on both the occupied territories and the Arab population in the rest of Israel," says Bove. "They are also putting in place - with the support of the World Bank - a series of neoliberal measures intended to integrate the Middle East into globalized production circuits, through the exploitation of cheap Palestinian labor."

from* that FA article

fuck kalle lasn.

The conflation of anti-Capitalism and anti-Semitism does have a long pedigree. Marx himself asserted that the dissolution of the Jewish identity is required for the political transformation of the State. This is one of the more uniques facets of anti-Semitism v. other racist movements - because Judaism is not racially bound (but some ethnic/cultural/religious/political hybrid) anti-Semitism often demands that the Jew disavow his own Jewishness. By contrast you never hear a racist demand that black people cease being black (it's a silly idea to begin with). Historically this was a Christian position (the demand that the Jew convert) but now is an anti-Capitalism position - Stanislas Marie Adelaide, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre: "We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals." Or in the contemporary case of Israel, that it cease to be a Jewish State and become an international State.

― Mordy, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 12:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes but marx said this in the context of believing all ethnic/religious identities should disolve. FWIW there's nothing "silly" about the idea that someone would ask black people to give up a "black identity" -- in fact people on the right in America do just that all the time.

I didn't say anything about "black identity" whatever that means.

"By contrast you never hear a racist demand that black people cease being black (it's a silly idea to begin with"

asking blacks to give up black identity would be the closest thing to an equivalent of asking Jews to give up Jewishness. Not to give up skin color, but to give up african american cultural identity.

Right, but my point was that Jewishness is not just a cultural identity but these other things as well.

you have to put a quid in trolleys over here, think how much angrier Adbusters wd be if they were British

So is "blackness" tbrr

Xp

lol

$0.25 isn't that much to spend, if you're buying shopping carts.

I'm just pointing out that often anti-globalism is a smokescreen for Jew hatred. I don't even think that's controversial. Read the comments on any given Salon article, or Guardian article. It is certainly a vehicle for leftist anti-semites to hitch their agendas. Obviously not every leftist is an anti-Semite.

― Mordy, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 3:43 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can certainly agree here: i semi-regularly find myself profoundly uncomfortable as a person (perhaps even a friend) makes some point that slowwwwly veers out of criticism of the israeli occupation or of capitalism and into discussions of the rothschilds. a few weeks ago i was producing an episode of a friend's radio program when the greyhair black power guest he was interviewing about the justice system & gentification in baltimore begin suddenly saying 'and look, these people on the council have one thing in common: israeli citizenship. now there's nothin wrong with that, i'm not sayin that, i'm just saying: these people are israeli, and you have to keep that in mind." i reeled and told the host we had to take a break, and they changed the subject, because i wasn't really sure what else to do.

i have always said that if you scratch any conspiracy theory you eventually get to some protocols of the elders of zion shit, it really is hardwired into that stuff

rational, tolerant discourse jamming

one of the funny things is, as soon as you tell people that bringing up the elders of zion is anti-semitic/has no place in rational discourse yr just feeding into their delusional "there must be something to hide cuz they don't want us to talk about it!" mentality

conspiracy theories eh

btw hoos I hope you reported that guy to the elders of zion

for sure.

i mean, anyone who would talk about the "elders of zion" is beyond reaching in my opinion. you're never going to convince them to change their position because their beliefs aren't beholden to any sort of reality principle. xp

btw hoos I hope you reported that guy to the elders of zion

fyi the elders of zion don't like snitches son

i think that stifling debate by refusing to even countenance the possibility of the lizard jewish council is nagl tbh

shine the light on that shit, discourse mayne, healthy discussion etc

one of the funny things is, as soon as you tell people that bringing up the elders of zion is anti-semitic/has no place in rational discourse yr just feeding into their delusional "there must be something to hide cuz they don't want us to talk about it!" mentality

this has resonances beyond the hardcore conspiracy community tho. you hear it whenever someone claims that charges of 'anti-semitism' are stifling debate or are used to justify X, Y, Z. with other racist accusations you only hear this elusion argument from the right (NRO crying about the race card) but w/ anti-semitism the left loves to suggest that the term is 'losing its meaning' or 'is overused.'

obv this is also concern-trolling ^ plz don't overuse the term anti-semitism! it'll lose its meaning!

i think people are afraid that criticizing israel will cause people to call them anti-semites, even if this has never happened to them, so they just pre-emptively complain about the term anti-semitism losing its meaning. i don't think (most of) the people saying that the anti-semitism charge is overused, like chomsky or like glenn greenwald iirc, deny for a second that there are actual, bona fide anti-semites out there.

some of the people saying that are probably anti-semitic though, no question. maybe even most. i don't know about numbers.

iirc this particular trope really got started when mearsheimer and walt published 'the israel lobby' which lets be honest was at the very least dog whistling to anti-semites if not out and out anti-semitism itself. the 'lost meaning' defense really only comes into play w/ this questionable dog whistle type stuff - like it's very popular at mondoweiss where some of the posters and like 80% of the comments are explicitly anti-semitism (or even greenwald/walt where u come for the "rational" critique of israel but stay for the psychotic community below the fold).

no this trope got started when anyone who criticized zionism got called an anti-semite. (or if they were jewish, a self-hating jew). and also when people who wrote books that weren't 'good for the jews' got called self-hating jews (c.f. roth).

here we go again

i love philip roth but i'm not surprised that when he wrote in 1969 about a jewish character surreptitiously masturbating over a shiksa on a train w/out her knowledge that some jews might've wondered whether he had some loathing about his heritage

or the old jewish dad perpetually taking a dump and screaming out into the home - i think he's a literary genius but yes, these were some grotesque depictions of jewish stereotypes

would it have somehow been better w/her knowledge? wtf

xp

ffs the book yr citing book was 2007. you have no sense of history.

well yeah, if she was into it xp

portnoy's complaint = 1969

oh, u mean israel lobby. no i disagree w/ u. i definitely saw this deflection explode around that time.

that's probably because you don't know history.

if you think it predates it tho i'd love to see some early examples

i don't think you can call characters as complex as those in roth novels "stereotypes". if you were going to hold him to a standard of portraying jews in a positive light, whatever that means, he would have written awful novels. he wrote about the people he knew in the fullness of their flawed humanity, idk, i don't think that implies he has mixed feelings about his heritage

I feel like other Jews have been shaming me into not speaking out against Israel my entire life

shakey, tbf u think bibi wants to slaughter the palestinians but only world opinion is holding him back. maybe you should be shamed a little.

tbf u think bibi wants to slaughter the palestinians but only world opinion is holding him back

I didn't say this yo. do all us anti-Israeli Jews look alike to you or something lol

sorry dude u wrote this: "I'm pretty sure Sharon or Netanyahu would engage in their mass slaughter if they thought they could get away with it. As it is, they kill pretty much as many Palestinians as they can without attracting too much international outrage."

ah I thought you were referring to a more recent poster's post

do you keep a file on me

no it's in this thread

finkelstein was getting blowback (and i'm not debating him per se just the arguments about him) since the mid-90s at least. roth's counterlife (where our beloved author actually _goes_ to isreal) was 1986 and even in that book you can see these arguments are treated as old-as-time.

see the responses to Hannah Arendt in 1963, for example (and i'm not even a proponent of her work or anything but...)

Half the length of the tunnel it takes me to unzip my zipper silently—and there it is again, up it pops again, as always swollen, bursting with demands, like some idiot macrocephalic making his parents’ life a misery with his simpleton’s insatiable needs.

“Jerk me off,” I am told by the silky monster. “Here? Now?” “Of course here and now. When would you expect an opportunity like this to present itself a second time? Don’t you know what that girl is who is asleep beside you? Just look at that nose.” “What nose?” “That’s the point—it’s hardly even there. Look at that hair, like off a spinning wheel. Remember ‘flax’ that you studied in school? That’s human flax! Schmuck, this is the real McCoy. A shikse! And asleep! Or maybe she’s just faking it is a strong possibility too. Faking it, but saying under her breath, ‘C’mon, Big Boy, do all the different dirty things to me you ever wanted to do.’ ” “Could that be so?” “Darling,” croons my cock, “let me just begin to list the many different dirty things she would like you to start off with: she wants you to take her hard little shikse titties in your hands, for one.” “She does?” “She wants you to finger-fuck her shikse cunt till she faints.” “Oh God. Till she faints!” “This is an opportunity such as may never occur again. So long as you live.”

ah "show all messages". wow this thread is old

I'm not contesting that the charge of anti-semitism may have predated the Israel Lobby. My claim is much more modest - that the deflection that 'loose anti-semitic charges devalue the term' is more recent.

if roth hates himself and his heritage and his sordid sexual fantasies that is his prerogative to work through in prose, and representing these things isn't the same as "endorsing" them or something. i think it's dangerous to literature to ascribe political meaning to a passage like the one quoted above. roth wasn't trying to "say" anything about anything except what the inner life of portnoy looks like, and it would have been disingenuous if he presented it as something other than tortured and uncomfortable. idk.

also like, the unflinching fidelity of roth's depiction of at least one sliver of the jewish experience in america in the 20th century seems like, if anything, a labor of love.

I don't think there's any question that Roth's work expresses some deep ambivalence about his own Jewishness, but I don't think that makes him worthy of the ugly label "self-hating Jew"

i think it's dangerous to literature to ascribe political meaning to a passage like the one quoted above

literature, film, art, music, everything tbh

You can't really be a part of a group that has been the subject of an extermination attempt within modern memory, not to mention has been a small minority virtually everywhere it has existed, and not have some uncomfortable feelings about being part of the group.

but to get back to adbusters a little, I'm not entirely convinced that they should be lumped in with people who literally think the protocols of the elders of zion is a set of meeting minutes

I'm not contesting that the charge of anti-semitism may have predated the Israel Lobby. My claim is much more modest - that the deflection that 'loose anti-semitic charges devalue the term' is more recent.

― Mordy, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 7:12 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well how the hell do you _think_ people responded to this in the past?

I don't think Philip Roth is a self-hating Jew. He is one of my favorite novelists of all time which is why I can point to passages in Portnoy's Complaint (and tbh in many of his other early works - 'Conversion of the Jews' is a troubling short story, as is 'Eli the Fanatic') and acknowledge that for Jewish readers in 1969 there was extreme discomfort reading about a lecherous Jewish figure masturbating over a sleeping shiksa, especially since unlike the literary landscape in 2013, Roth had an outsized presence representing the Jews. I think his career has proven that he has a lot of depth, but I don't think he was called a self-hating Jew bc ppl were being capricious and flinging around terms w/out any basis. If I was alive + reading Roth in 1969 I can't say for sure that I wouldn't have been more sympathetic to the critique. From my pov in 2013 obviously I think it was undeserved but he didn't have an entire career (and the stunning American Pastoral) in 1969. He was just a young kid who seemed to be trucking in the ugliest stereotypes about Jews

xp Disagreement != concern trolling

btw clover the Finkelstein book that I think you were referring to (beyond chutzpah) was written in 2005 - the original essay that formed the basis for the Israel Lobby was published in 2002

or not published but commissioned in 2002*

i think it's a very recent phenomenon in any case, even if u can find proto examples (probably primarily of the 'self-hating' variety i'd imagine bc i think jews have always felt freer to combat the ADL/institution historically)

mordy i am referring to every finkelstein book!!! beyond chutzpah is just one where he picks up the 'anti-semitism' charge particularly.

tbh i'm not intimately familiar w/ his entire oeuvre - if you say he's been mining this territory since 87 i believe u

i mean mining territory that gets him called names, moreso than necc. addressing the anti-semitism charge as such, tho i'm pretty sure he's touched on it earlier.

the surges and waves in these debates are tied into the history of the relation of israel and the palestinians of course. when things flare up there, things get heated all around in discourse, etc. so a revival of this debate circa the gaza war makes sense.

ok well i don't know if you're now agreeing w/ me or what - i'd still be curious to see early examples of the 'devaluing meaning of anti-semitism' deflection

this is a rhetorical issue that is very hard to sort out, because "antisemitism" is certainly capable of overuse, and yet there are also genuine antisemites who will fall back on "you're just using 'antisemitism' as a deflection" as a deflection themselves

not unlike how there is a theoretical basis for separating antizionism from antisemitism, and yet there are rabid antisemites who will say "I'm just antizionist"

yeah its almost like you have to actually examine what people are saying and think critically about it. wtf.

you're such a pleasure to talk to on the interwebz, s.clover

good talk guys, kudos all around.

ftr s clover check your clover priv

we weren't all born with four leaves nahmean

didn't know that in ilx politics threads v. 5.0 lengthy hand-wringing was in and dry irony was out. guess i'll wait until the wheel of zings turns again.

lol you're kidding right? lengthy hand-wringing has been the name of the ilx political game for at least 3 years now

i thought more people would begin their posts with "Listen, buster"

xpost

the lifespan of a drosophila in ilx-years.

I lost track of what we were actually talking about like 40 posts ago

don't worry i'm sure we'll rehash it in a month

culturejam sesh

sorry i'm being annoying.

does adbusters still exist

but i'm not anti-semetic, far from it, i was excited to learn a few months ago that i might have a jewish great grandfather

lol

adbusters still exists

they started occupy wall street you didn't hear?

ok well i don't know if you're now agreeing w/ me or what - i'd still be curious to see early examples of the 'devaluing meaning of anti-semitism' deflection

― Mordy, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 5:14 PM (3 hours ago)

i don't have any strong attachment to this issue, and i feel like i've been aware of the argument in question since i was of college age. for at least 20 years and probably longer.

as i understood it then, it went like this: critique of zionism is not necessarily antisemitic, and to automatically label it as such is not only simplistic, but disrespectful to the moral gravity of "real antisemitism" (i.e., the holocaust, of course).

that said, i'm not sure where i first encountered the idea. i can't attach it to any text. a little internet digging turns nothing up. for all i know, it was an argument a friend or classmate made in passing.

I find Finkelstein's arguments antisemitic at times

i bet you do.

you bet right

anyhow, adbusters is gross & obviously antisemitic.

putting that aside for a moment, the frequent selection of goldman sachs as the ultimate example of dangerously unconstrained capitalism is ostensibly grounded not in the jewishness of their name, but in perceived ties between the bank/hc and the federal government & reserve (e.g., timothy geitner, henry paulson, bill dudley, etc). wolf watching the henhouse thing. was listening to david stockman address the commonwealth club of california earlier today, and he spoke often of "goldmanites" in the fed. dog whistle or fair characterization? or both...

similarly, while antiglobalism can be a front for antisemitism, it can also be free of such baggage. i'm not hardline antiglobalist, but i do have big problems with the way globalism's been constructed and implemented over the past couple decades. i hope that doesn't make me a bigot.

geithner, srs

well that's the problem i was trying awkwardly to describe above: it's possible, sometimes, to say things that resemble anti-semitic positions without meaning to. goldman sachs is a shitty organization that is -- like all similarly large banks -- way too powerful, and it's weird to have to say that you shouldn't critique them too forcefully, or focus too much on them... idk. it's not a jewish organization, it just sounds jewish. hating them has nothing to do with anything except hating collusion between the public and private spheres. but still, using the term "goldmanites" sounds antisemitic, it just does. and even discussing "bankers" as evil seems weird, and conspiracyish, even if the financialization of the economy is as real a phenomenon as real gets

in terms of "globalism" i don't know what to think. my marxist friends say that anti-globalist movements are anti-leftist, as are post-colonial movements that lament the "contamination" of indigenous cultures by the west, and that the real struggle should just be to empower the workers of the world as much as possible. it still seems weird to me that american companies can just move their factories overseas in order to evade the labor regulations (minimum wage, decent hours, etc.) that were won through hard, sometimes bloody battles in america... i think it should be illegal for them to do that.

i'm actually interested in what mordy has to say about this, he seems versed in these debates within various factions of the left that i am just starting to really learn about, and he made a distinction between his own anti-capitalism and the various "anti-globalist" movements

they started occupy wall street you didn't hear?
--Chuck E was a hero to most (s.clover)

^^ actual irl post

and a funny one!

goldman sachs is a shitty organization that is -- like all similarly large banks -- way too powerful

some insist that the relationship between gs and the fed is remarkably cozy, a somewhat special instance of a common thing. i can't say how true that is overall, as i haven't studied it, but there are some obvious examples. agree about the creepiness of "goldmanites". i'm admittedly hypersensitive, but it didn't sit right with me.

i wouldn't say that it should be illegal to have work done overseas, but i sometimes think we should demand that a great many more of the protections and guarantees granted to american workers be extended to all workers who produce goods for sale in the united states. that is, any company that wants to sell goods in america must prove that they were manufactured by well-paid and well-protected workers. this would make american manufacturing more competitive in the international marketplace while also raising the wages and life-quality of workers in other countries. otoh, it would almost certainly mean fewer jobs in some of the poorest parts of the world, so i'm inclined to hedge.

yeah, sorry if i wasn't clear about what i meant by "illegal": the part that should be illegal is the evasion of US labor standards. i don't know what this would do to nations like china... i feel like manufacturing would still stay there because a lot of expertise, especially for computer/tech stuff, is there now, and raising wages in US-owned plants might force other wages in China up as well. this is just speculation though... i don't know what would happen.

one of the funny things is, as soon as you tell people that bringing up the elders of zion is anti-semitic/has no place in rational discourse yr just feeding into their delusional "there must be something to hide cuz they don't want us to talk about it!" mentality

this sometimes feels like a "takes two to tango" thing that leaves me very frustrated with just about everybody.

on the one hand, you have folks who see a jewish conspiracy lurking behind everything, for whom any opposing argument just feeds into the conspiracy theory. there are hard and soft versions of this, and it does sadden me that sometimes the softer versions get "air time" in the context of the American left.

on the other hand, you do have a wide network of american jewish organizations that pronounce "anti-semitism" wherever there is criticism of israel (e.g. the ADL(). to me these folks really do the discourse a real disservice by purposely eliding the distinction between "Jews" and "Israel," and elides in turn the distinction between "Israel" and "current Israeli government policy." all of this no doubt plays right into the conspiratorialist (sp?) fantasies, although I believe those fantasies would still exist without the ADL and other groups' posturing.

*that said I do recognize a distinction b/t the national ADL--which seems most concerned about criticism of Israel--and the local branches which do more well-meaning, albeit typically useless community-outreach and education programs.

btw just wanted to add that there is a statement attributed to a variety of 19th-c. socialist figures: "anti-semitism is the socialism of fools." which goes to show that these elements--and a response to them-- have been a part of the "left" for ages. lenin actually repeated this line, and even named a published pamphlet after it IIRC. weirdly I found that book (trans. into English) alongside some weird crypto-anti-Semitic texts at the old Pathfinder bookstore in NYC ca. 1999. that place was a repository of all the ideas and currents--good, bad, and ugly--in the left.

sorry for typos.

shakey, tbf u think bibi wants to slaughter the palestinians but only world opinion is holding him back. maybe you should be shamed a little.

wuht. fwiw I don't think Netanyahu has nazi-like exterminationist agenda, but he has made it clear he's pretty chill with Palestinians being killed as an instrument of policy, and would be happy to play on that instrument even more if it weren't for fwoabt 'world opinion'.

But adbusters. Yeah, definitely enough smoke to call the fire brigade.

to me these folks really do the discourse a real disservice by purposely eliding the distinction between "Jews" and "Israel," and elides in turn the distinction between "Israel" and "current Israeli government policy."

See, I don't ADL invented this elision. I think they're trying to combat what emerged first as tactics for anti-semites in modernity - see Postone on the USSR using anti-zionism as a handy buzzword for anti-semitic show trials (and its migration to the middle east). I love to hate to on Israeli government policy, but when I keep abreast of the contemporary "anti-Israel" movement (places like Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, the UN Human Rights Council, various NGOs, Middle East media in Iran, Egypt, Turkey, the BDS movement) it's clear that they are not against current Israeli policy but rather against Israel itself. This is obviously a complicated issue, and Ottomons + Zionists had some good posts recently arguing both sides of the case:
http://ottomansandzionists.com/2013/04/16/rethinking-the-idea-of-pro-israel/
http://ottomansandzionists.com/2013/04/22/actually-israel-is-unique/

Not to mention the explicitly anti-Semitic comments that don't even touch on Israel OR Israeli policy - just this week Egyptian papers published two articles reviving the Jewish blood libels, and the Miftah NGO did the same last month. I'm intentionally not mentioning Gaza/West Bank media propagating anti-Semitic tropes bc I agree w/ Postone that their anger at Israel comes from a different more understandable place.

I'm sure I don't have to link to the myriad of examples of all the aforementioned making it clear that they want Israeli disbanded. Best case scenario overwhelming the Jewish population w/ a radical Arabic majority (see the right of return discussion), or sending the Jews back to Poland (Helen Thomas style), or worst case driving the Jews into the sea (Iranian style). Like clover said above, you need to use your intellectual facilities to determine the difference between legitimate criticism and criticism aimed particularly at the largest population of Jews in the world (now a majority of the world's Jewish population lives in Israel).

I'm running out atm, Treeship but I have a long post for you about anti-Capitalism and post-colonialism/globalism - but I have to write it up, so incoming sometime today hopefully.

Ok, so essentially w/out too much tl;dr I consider myself a marxist historiographer, I guess. I agree w/ the Marxist project of analyzing conflict using social class as a context for analysis (which is I think the basic place that most historical materialists start at) but also I find Marx's theory of historical determinism very compelling*. The basic deployment is that Capitalism is a technological/economic process that ultimately results in Communism. The theory is that as technology advances, products become so cheap that it is more affordable to eg feed everyone than charge for food. In this view Capitalism is a massive producer of wealth that ultimately undermines itself by being too successful. I believe that the social capitalism movement is actually the process of transformation into Communism - that the social net/citizen's income/etc increases as jobs are eliminated. At the moment we're in a stressful transition since we have far more ppl who need jobs than we have jobs that need to be done. You can also see hints of this in the US treatment of food growth where the government pays farmers not to farm everything possible bc too much food would crash the market (which would bankrupt the farmers and ruin our food production). In this context, globalism is just a way of extending the production benefits of Capitalism throughout the world. Though it generates inequalities (like you mention the lax safety standards and low wages in third world countries), it also generates standard of living increases - I'm stealing this directly from the wiki page but you can hunt down the sources themselves;

There has been an absolute decrease in the percentage of people in developing countries living below $1 per day in east Asia (adjusted for inflation and purchasing power). Sub Saharan Africa, as an area that felt the consequences of poor governance and was less responsive to globalisation, has seen an increase in poverty while all other areas of the world have seen no change in rates.[61]

The world income per head has increased by more over period 2002–2007 than during any other period on the record.[62]

The increase in universal suffrage, from no nations in 1900 to 62.5% of all nations in 2000.[63]

There are similar trends for electric power, cars, radios, and telephones per capita as well as the percentage of the population with access to clean water.[64] However 1.4 billion people still live without clean drinking water and 2.6 billion of the world’s population lack access to proper sanitation.[65] Access to clean water has actually decreased in the world's poorest nations, often those that have not been as involved in globalisation.

So I don't love Capitalism but I think it's a necessary historical phenomenon to transition into something better. I am actively hostile to post-colonialism (which probably explains my extreme distaste for 'privilege' discourse) bc I think it often elevates reactionary nationalist/ethnocentric values above Western liberal enlightenment values (which makes this discussion super applicable here bc it explains a. why I think supporting Israel is actually a liberal cause, not a conservative one and b. why I think that post-colonialism and anti-globalism are often manifestations of reactionary anti-liberalism and ultimately anti-semitism. I don't think anti-globalism is coincidentally associated w/ some anti-semitism. The rootless cosmopolitan trope that originated in Stalinist USSR was the original way that the left tied together anti-semitism w/ anti-capitalism. As ppl become overwhelmed by the way that Capitalism has grown they naturally become reactionary, and I don't think it's a coincidence that this becomes a fixation on the Jews - and ties together with ideas like 'dual loyalty' and international banking conspiracies. One practical lacuna for this is protectionism which I reject - I'm not a fan of tariffs, etc, and I'm mostly concerned w/ things like real world quality of living increases (there have been numerous compelling arguments that eg Walmart has increased quality of life by making goods available for much cheaper, even as it eliminates better paying jobs). I just don't think there's any turning back** in this dialectical process.

Which is not to say that there are no illegitimate criticisms of 'globalism' (obv it produces horrific consequences and I even find the shock doctrine theory to be of value) but that its most frequent manifestation is conspiratorially, not as a practical resistance of Capital. idk, I feel like I'm throwing a lot of information out there and I could probably write 40 pages on this topic but this is pretty much the brain dump of my thinking on the topic.

*I suspect this is because of my religious upbringing but in general I am drawn to post-historical theories, either in messianic terms or in communist terms - the end of history.

**The biggest gap in my theory I think is the environment. Assuming we're looking at immense environmental devastation particularly re water supply, farming, etc, Capitalism will ultimately be a harbinger of inequality, and will not lead to this Communist post-history that I am hopeful for. I try to be optimistic (SSRI's help) and maybe technology will be able to mediate some of these effects. Otherwise we're fucked. On the plus side Siberia will become irrigable?

Sorry if this is jumbled -- I'm trying to dash this off quickly.

lol so much for tl;dr

waow

i know i really pulled a contenderizer there

everything's gone topsy-turvy

but thanks for taking the time to write all that out, m. i don't really disagree w any of it, though i'm more interested in the management of capitalism than its eventual overthrow/dissolution.

^^ actual irl post

― hoospanic GANGSTER musician (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, May 1, 2013 1:12 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha hoos I did it almost just for you. sorry i don't believe in adding winky-faces.

<3

That wasn't jumbled at all! But I don't know if support for any given position is restricted by ideology. Your reading of Marx is eerily a lot like the one my anti-Marxist pro-Sun Yat Sen polisci prof told us.

i don't think it's jumbled either. i am 180 degrees in disagreement on basically all its key points tho.

i don't think communism is inevitable or even a possible end-state of capitalism, i don't think "we have far more ppl who need jobs than we have jobs that need to be done", i don't think history necessarily dialectical, either.

i don't get why zionism can qualify as liberal and other forms of nationalism don't. i don't get why naming specific financial institutions or their heads as Bad Actors is "conspiratorial" rather than its opposite.

and i reeaally disagree with this "As ppl become overwhelmed by the way that Capitalism has grown they naturally become reactionary". i don't think this process, if it is even occurring, is natural. all the reactionaries i can name are deeply pro-capital (Laschian voices are pretty thin on the ground these days). "late stage capitalism" seems to be producing more and more boring middle-class obama liberals to me

anybody read this?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/09/real-karl-marx/?pagination=false

marx the anticommunist, who knew ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i don't get why zionism can qualify as liberal and other forms of nationalism don't.

Zionism is a red herring imho. Maybe it mattered in 1948 but now we're talking about a Western liberal democracy that guarantees human rights with an independent judiciary (independent enough that Salim Joubran, an Israeli Arab Supreme Court justice, gave the verdict to send Israeli president Moshe Katsav to prison in Ramla), robust media, booming tech sector, etc. Notably many Jews opposed the formation of Israel before independence was declared (the Lubavitcher Rebbe notably disapproved of the plan) but once Israel became a state they supported it. Other forms of nationalism (and we're really speaking here specifically of Islamic Palestinian nationalism) are hostile towards liberalism. max once asked me how I know that a Palestinian majority Israel would not protect the minority rights of non-Muslims, women, gays, etc and I think this recent Pew survey is pretty damning on that account. Which is not to say that I think the Palestinians shouldn't have a state (though I'll admit it is not an important issue to me at all), but that I don't think promoting a Palestinian state should have any resonance for a liberal perspective.

Regarding your other points, I don't believe that everyone needs to accept my - uh - teleological view of history and it is certainly my own idiosyncratic thing formed by my relationship to Chassidic Jewry and exposure to Marxism. I find it compelling. I understand that not everyone will.

my view of history and humanity in general is non-teleological and my politics are basically anti-utopian. so yeah!

i'll get to your first para in a sec (need to grab lunch), but i agree that the current existence of israel is the best argument for its continued existence (to be cheeky).

guarantees human rights with an independent judiciary

fucking LOL

haha wow what a shitty article: "The renewed popularity of Marx is an accident of history. If World War I had not occurred and caused the collapse of tsarism, if the Whites had prevailed in the Russian Civil War as Lenin at times feared they would and the Bolshevik leader had not been able to seize and retain his hold on power, or if any one of innumerable events had not happened as they did, Marx would now be a name most educated people struggled to remember."

yes because its not like there were other enormous parties (with more weight than the bolsheviks) that laid claim to marxist ideas all across europe or anything.

"don't think promoting a Palestinian state should have any resonance for a liberal perspective"

so a liberal perspective doesn't think people should be able to govern themselves? ah.

i mean if we take attitudes expressed in Pew surveys as the grounds on which ppl should be able to have some sort of vote then you know drive all Americans into the sea.

v. liberal!

All Israeli Palestinians can vote in Israeli elections. I don't really give a shit about their nationalist ambitions. All that matters is the franchise.

a'ight, peace out. i'm retreating to my 1967 boundaries and not even touching that.

Other forms of nationalism (and we're really speaking here specifically of Islamic Palestinian nationalism) are hostile towards liberalism.

you'll have to take my word for it but i really wasn't speaking of the palestinians! i was thinking in response to you, here, "I am actively hostile to post-colonialism (which probably explains my extreme distaste for 'privilege' discourse)", of basically all the OTHER anticolonial and postcolonial movements out there? i mean, what about toussaint l'overture. or gandhi.

i'm no 19th century historian, but the relationship between nationalism and liberalism is more complicated than mere opposition. they were pretty much the same thing, for a while, in certain places

I think nationalism and liberalism can be compatible but aren't necessarily so and in some cases where nationalism is explicitly anti-liberal (such as in the case of fascism, totalitarian theocracy) a liberal pov cannot support those nationalist strands.

I should clarify that my problem w/ post-colonialism is that it assumes that the nationalist impulse is inherently of value and worth supporting, rather than being value neutral and only worth supporting when incidentally married to other liberal causes.

Mordy I think that what's much clearer is that a liberal pov cannot support the continued occupation of the territories. I would say a liberal pov pretty much can't do other than support the end of that, so the only question is how. The most liberal thing to do, arguably, would be to fold everyone into a single democratic state, but if that's either impossible or unpalatable to you, the next option would be a Palestinian state. That's the clear cut case for liberal support of a Palestinian state, regardless of pew data.

I agree. Israel should annex the West Bank and give all residents the franchise.

Considering that the majority of Arabs in East Jerusalem refuse citizenship, though, I imagine that won't be particularly palatable to most Palestinian residents in the West Bank.

liberalism's answers of who among a group of people should hold power are pretty good but it starts to get shaky when one group of people are holding power over another, esp when the popular will of group A wants to continue doing it!

and whole question of who is in a given 'group' and how they got to be that way makes any clean separation of nationalism from liberalism impossible imo

why do you call it a "franchise" it's not a Taco Bell

idk http://www.thefreedictionary.com/franchised ?

Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, distinct from other rights to vote, is the right to vote gained through the democratic process.

is it really that shocking that Palestinians/Israeli Arabs aren't super-excited about citizenship in a country where they're basically guaranteed to be discriminated against

xp

I did picture LL Cool J admonishing us on what to call it.

I do not believe that's why they're not enthusiastic about citizenship in Israel.

sort of like how African Americans haven't always been super-excited about living in the US

xp

They will have more rights guaranteed as citizens of Israel than in any Muslim country in the Middle East, certainly including Gaza and theoretically including a future West Bank State.

Palestinian women will be allowed to work, drive, wear whatever they want, will be guaranteed an education. They will qualify for social programs. They will be able to become chiefs of medicine at major hospitals (as Israeli Arabs are now), members of parliament, members of the Supreme Court. Gay Palestinians will be protected by the State from discrimination. Etc.

In my opinion, from a human rights perspective, the best thing that could ever happen to the Palestinians in the West Bank is being annexed by Israel. The only reason why it wouldn't is if you believe nationalist aspirations should take precedence over human rights / quality of life. That's why I don't believe it's a liberal position.

being marginally better than a bunch of much shittier surrounding countries still not good enough imho

xp

Marginally?

you make being a second-class citizen in Israel sound like a paradise, its rather disingenuous

I'm sure like every other Western country on the planet things are not perfect in Israel and racism exists. However there is no institutionalized Jim Crow style discrimination against Israeli Arabs and Israeli Arabs can participate fully in Israeli life.

US State Dept kind of disagrees with you there

How so?

what I need to quote wikipedia entries to you now?

I'm sure like every other Western country on the planet things are not perfect in Israel and racism exists

you're sure, have you ever spoken to any of them about it?

Or do you just trust the brochures

A survey by Prof. Sami Smooha of the University of Haifa of Israeli looking at relations and coexistence between Jews and Arabs was published by Ha'aretz newspaper in May 2010 and presented to the Knesset within the context of the deterioration of such relations over the past decade. The poll revealed that 48% of Israel's Arab citizens are dissatisfied with their lives in the Jewish state, compared to 35% in 2003; the number of Arabs who are not willing to befriend Jews has doubled and, perhaps most seriously, 62% of Israeli Arabs fear "transfer" (forced migration or, as it has been called, "ethnic cleansing"), compared to just 6% who expressed that fear in 2003. It is also noted that 40% of the respondents expressed their distrust of Israel's judiciary system while almost 41% supported an Arab boycott of Knesset elections.

xp The United States has the largest gulag system in the world so I'm familiar with the flaws of Western societies.

..a poll devoted to the views of Jewish youth, conducted by the Institute of Studies, Maagar Mochot, which found that 50% of young Jews surveyed believe that Arabs should not have the same rights as Jews in Israel; 56% said that Arabs must be prevented from running for the Knesset and 48% reject any notion of evacuating the settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank. Such extremism is more prominent among young ultra-orthodox Jews, with 82% demanding that Arab citizens should not be granted equal rights and 82% opposing the election of Arabs to the Knesset; 56% say that their fellow citizens who are Arabs should not be allowed to vote in Israel's national democratic elections.

but hey, it's just a little institutionalized racism, think of how much WORSE things would be if you lived in, say, Lebanon! chin up, bucko!

Except that Arabs do have the same rights as Jews in Israel and can run for Knesset.

they don't have all the same rights

I know you know this, don't play dumb

Which rights don't they have?

Shakey in all honesty, I'd be happy to talk about inequalities in Israeli society but I don't think you're really educated on the topic. I think you have some skewed views about Israeli society and about the West Bank and Gaza. When you say that it's marginally better to be a Palestinian in Israel than an Arab in any other country (not to mention a Palestinian in any other country) you make me think that you're pretty ignorant on the topic. Lots of people living in America have a hard time because of racism, discrimination, etc. But I would never say that it's marginally better to be a minority in America than in Lebanon. To say that you must either be delusional or an ideologue. I'm playing dumb because I'm trying to figure out which one you are.

Are there a high percentage of Palestinians in Israeli prisons? Yes. Some of that is due to racism, I'm sure. Some is due to decades of conflict. Yet I'm sure it is better to live in Israel no matter who you are than Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Gaza, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, etc. And not just marginally.

does it make me an ideologue to take minorities' claims of discrimination at face value

xp

"no matter who you are"? really?

You're right. Better to be a Monarch in Saudi Arabia than an Arab citizen in Tel Aviv.

I think the Saudi royal family should consider that carefully before emigrating.

btw why'd you leave Jordan off your list

The only reason why it wouldn't is if you believe nationalist aspirations should take precedence over human rights / quality of life. That's why I don't believe it's a liberal position.

― Mordy, Wednesday, May 1, 2013 12:17 PM (1 hour ago)

i'd describe the conflict in terms of right to self-determination vs. the universal value of an externally-imposed vision of human rights/quality of life. what you seem to be advocating is similar to the neocon argument that democracy must be promulgated around the world, regardless of what non-democratic nations seem to want, by force if necessary.

you seem to be saying something like: "our way is the best way, better than yours anyway, and therefore you will be better served by being annexed into our grand and glorious nation than by being allowed to create one of your own." that's not illiberal, as liberalism can be autocratic, even imperial, but it's hardly the standard working definition of contemporary lefty/progressive liberalism. liberalism often emphasizes the right of the disenfranchised and dispossessed to determine their own fate. it sides with tibet, not china. with kuwait, not iraq. it does this not because kuwait and tibet are more liberal, but because they have a fundamental right not be annexed and owned, robbed of their independent identity. i value that much more highly that the right of relatively liberal states to force their admirably evolved values on their neighbors.

in my smartass way that's what I was getting at - that it's patronizing/paternalistic to tell people to suck up any perceived injustices and just accept it, after all it would be so much worse anywhere else.

I'm not saying that we should force anything on anyone, I'm just saying that we have no obligation to champion illiberal nationalist movements, even if they are pushed by the disenfranchised and dispossessed. You're right though that this is a disagreement between traditional liberal values and this amorphous post-colonial prime directive identity bullshit. I don't believe we should go around forcing countries to be democratic (not least because it doesn't work, though I do believe in soft peddling democratic liberal values) but I won't pretend like illiberal totalitarian values are better than Western liberal values.

xp Because I just named what came to mind while I was writing the post? It wasn't meant to be a comprehensive list. I missed UAE and Cyprus and I'm sure plenty of other places too.

figured the exclusion of UAE was deliberate lol

I didn't tell anyone to suck up anything. Israeli Arabs should exercise the tools available to them in a free democracy to make their lives better. They shouldn't bomb civilians though. Even if they're really really sure that'll work. xp

Dubai does seem pretty nice, even though I'm not allowed to visit.

And contenderizer, I'm sure you can think of multiple movements over the course of history where you would oppose the will of the masses.

should exercise the tools available to them in a free democracy to make their lives better.

kinda hard to exercise the tools when your minority status is perpetuated as a matter of policy

Yes, it's hard. Civil rights battles are often hard. What's your point? Might as well pack it in and join a fundamentalist Islamic country instead bc it's too hard to make things better in a liberal democracy?

Oops, too hard to fight for equality! Let's have honor killings and stone homosexuals instead!

what's wrong with regular flesh-and-bone homosexuals

lack of empathy speaking volumes there mordy

That's not fair. I'm empathetic about certain things - quality of life, education, safety, franchise. I'm not empathetic about the right to form your own theocratic terror state.

I would think that the endless in-fighting between Hamas and Fatah are evidence that there's no clear majority of Palestinians opting for a "theocratic terror state", as you so ceremoniously put it. fwiw, it seems like increasingly large numbers of Israelis are totally cool with turning Israel into a "theocratic terror state" of its own.

There are large numbers of Americans totally cool with turning the US into a "theocratic terror state" but neither Israel nor the US are going to become those. They are both democracies w/ laws that protect minorities and working legal systems. And that would be a good point except that Fatah is only less totalitarian than Hamas by degree. Fatah hasn't held scheduled elections, they want to impose radical theocratic law, and they are currently in ongoing unity talks w/ Hamas. This assumes that Fatah actually represents the will of the people, which the Hamas takeover of Gaza suggests is not so (and probably the real reason why Abbas refuses to negotiate w/ Bibi - bc he realizes a Palestinian state = the end of Fatah).

Fyi, Abbas' current preconditions to negotiating w/ Bibi are: End settlement building, release all 'political' prisoners, present final map that shows borders. This is all before negotiations begin. This is likely because the last time Israel withdraw from 'occupied territories' Hamas took over in a heartbeat.

If Israel was really on the brink of becoming a theocratic terror state we wouldn't see the Orthodox blocked out of the governing coalition and the recent (this last week!) expansion of religious rights at the Western Wall. If anything it's becoming less theocratic every day, not more. It's trending towards liberalism.

I'm just saying that we have no obligation to champion illiberal nationalist movements, even if they are pushed by the disenfranchised and dispossessed.

yeah, that's an eminently reasonable position to take. it's a tough call, afaic. personally, i'm not looking remake the world in the image of the liberal, democratic west. contemporary liberalism, it seems to me, is torn between two impulses: a utopian emphasis on the promotion of "universal values" and a more relativistically constructed emphasis on mitigating systemic power disparities between social groups. neither impulse is pernicious, necessarily, but they're often in conflict.

afaic, the ideal path walks a line between these two extremes, pushing towards what it considers right and just in human society, but leaving as much room for dissent and difference as possible, even (perhaps) where that might seem to threaten "right and just" power structures. "as possible" doing a lot of lifting there i know. in the case of the west bank, the only ethically and pragmatically sensible solution i can see is return/repatriation and the creation of a palestinan nation state operating under heavy constraints. that said, this is probably not in israel's best interest, so i understand why sensible and fair-minded liberals might oppose it.

I have never heard of Fatah imposing radical theocratic law what are you basing that on (I'm assuming you aren't making it up). and yeah the infighting and opportunism and corruption and abuses are rampant, there's no disputing that - what kind of ruling structure do you expect to emerge from a community that's been systematically oppressed and harassed for decades on end

lol @ trending towards liberalism, that runs counter to most commentary I've read about Israel in recent years, most of which has decried the steady rightward tilt of the electorate, see polling noted upthread etc

xp

The electorate is trending right-wing with regard to the settlements, the West Bank, and the two State solution. As I understand it, on every other issue it is trending left. And I notice that the systematically oppressed and harassed and murdered Jewish population created a democratic (and for a long time, explicitly socialistic) ruling structure when they finally got a State, so I don't buy this bullshit about how the hard time the Palestinians have had is responsible for their illiberalism. Re: Fatah, that'll have to wait until after dinner. I'll have to dig through my bookmarks for relevant links.

when they finally got a State

yeah, after decades of acting like terrorists, it seems relevant to point out. and after the Holocaust garnered international sympathy and the west through the entirety of its substantial weight behind a repatriation scheme etc. but you know this.

through threw

As I understand it, on every other issue it is trending left.

50% of young Jews saying Arabs shouldn't have the same rights as they do = "trending left", in your analysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFAKBt_kHo8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af2G_AZUmLs

This is pretty well annotated, though it's from the Middle East Forum which isn't particularly impartial and almost all the sources are in Arabic so it's hard to follow-up (the author is a professor at University of Haifa): http://www.meforum.org/1874/fatahs-embrace-of-islamism -- but it seems to be primarily about Islamic roots of Fatah which is not really what I was referring to. It was my understanding that over the last few years the Fatah secular revolution doctrine has become increasingly unpopular, which is most expressed through their reconciliation attempts w/ Hamas, a tacit admission that Hamas holds the vast popular support and Fatah's secular ideology is pretty much defunct. That's really a secondary point, though, because more importantly Fatah would still augur a radical government that would imprison ideological opponents, journalists, even facebook commenters without any commitment to democracy: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/19/slow_death_palestinian_democracy_fayyad_abbas - I assume it goes without saying that despite being nominally more secular than Hamas, Fatah still supports violence against civilians, as recently as this week.

xpost to hungry, so apparently that "nuke israel" video isn't a parody? wtf

mordy, israel holds a lot of responsibility (no, by no means ALL the responsibility) of strengthening Hamas as a political "counterweight" to the PLO during the first intifada. one could also argue that israel's continued pattern of making deals w/ the PA and breaking them (w/r/t settlements in particular) was a deliberate attempt to undermine their authority.

the settlements question is the one that sticks in my craw b/c I have a hard time seeing it as anything other than (a) appeasement of the haredi elements of Israeli society, testament to their power despite the ups and downs of their electoral representation; (b) deliberate altering of "facts on the ground" to make a West Bank-centered Palestinian state more and more untenable. there's frankly no reason for a country with the population density of Israel to be persistently intruding upon land that is almost universally agreed upon to be "contested" at the very least in order to build settlements for jews.

i'm more sympathetic to you than other folks here in your frustrations. I don't have a lot of illusions about what a one-state solution with a palestinian majority might look like, at least at the present time. anyway, nobody but nobody involved in the situation is really advocating that (which in a way is too bad, even if its unworkable it's a scenario that would be useful to have on the table).

and btw although you seem to be arguing that in most respects israel is becoming "more liberal," i think what we're really seeing is a lot of currents and counter-currents and contradictions and nothing has resolved yet. in other words i think you're being a bit... pollyanna-ish.

israel is subject to the same ironies as any liberal democracy. it's not likely to become a theological terror state in the immediate future, but the power of the far right (which I would say has more access to the mainstream than at nearly any point in Israel's history) means that certain fundamentally outrageous and anti-democratic policies can't be reversed for politicians' fear of their constituencies revolting and/or their coalitions crumbling.

http://ottomansandzionists.com/2013/05/02/freedom-houses-funhouse-definition-of-israeli-press-freedom/

In case you are wondering why Israel and its supporters constantly decry double standards and Israel being unfairly singled out for criticism, here is Exhibit A. Nobody claims that Israel is perfect, least of all me, but there’s no shortage of Israeli missteps to criticize without making new ones up. The idea that Israel’s press is not completely free is ridiculous, particularly to anyone who has spent even five minutes reading Israeli newspapers or watching Israel television, and if Freedom House wants to credibly assert differently, it’s going to have to come up with something better than a bunch of “yes, but” speculation.

I don't know why I'm still using this thread. Please ignore that I posted that here. I'm moving it over to the Middle East thread.

:-(

Fatbusters blames the Charleston Chews.

paging Treeship: I think this is relevant to the discussion in this thread about post-colonialism + marxism-
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/04/how-does-the-subaltern-speak/

thx for that

thanks mordy. i actually had that bookmarked but i forgot about it! i feel like i am probably mostly on your side on this question: i have been skeptical of the more simplistic end of postcolonialism ever since reading of grammatology... there is nothing progressive about theorizing the other as "absolutely Other," and romanticizing non-western, pre-industrial cultures is really just the other side of the colonialist coin. still though, i sometimes also find myself making relativist arguments and being reticent to judge the beliefs of people who seem to be very culturally different from me. this is a tough question

New Adbusters book has another defaced Jew on the cover. This time it's Zuckerberg. http://subscribe.adbusters.org/products/ab118

Eh, in isolation that doesn't bother me much. Maybe considering their past work I'd want to at least see what kind of language they use with respect to him.

Zuckerberg's a shbag

There's nothing about the cover that says "Jew" to me, although I also just don't get what it's supposed to be conveying.

first line of the profile: "Zuckerburg, a be-horned Yid, is literally Satan."

Zuckerberg and his soul-stealing Punimshmata

A famous jew once said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a detested megabillionaire is just a detested megabillionaire.

obv if u subscribe to the idea that bigotries form a structural context in which all conversations occur, it is probably not incidental that the detested megabillionaire they focused on happens to be jewish, esp considering adbusters history. i remember a debate re goldman sachs about whether its bad press relative to other banks was due to particularly bad behavior, or bc of the name.

in either case i'm not worried i think zuckerburg can take care of himself

the detested megabillionaire they focused on happens to be jewish, and also has the useful plausible deniability of not publicly associating himself with jewishness in quite the same way others do, or being a common target of lurid antizionist types

i think he was in AEPI

A famous jew once said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a detested megabillionaire is just a detested megabillionaire.

― Aimless, Wednesday, 28 January 2015 19:18 (9 minutes ago)

there are probably lots of famous jews who said that, neither jews nor famous people are immune to the eternal appeal of crap sayings, though the one you are thinking of didn't

at the very least it's apocryphal

There aren't a lot of peer companies. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are also at least Jewish by birth. And Zuckerberg is kind of high-profile (no pun intended) publicly for whatever reason, I guess the movie plus the fun of his story.

xp, it probably was a semi-famous Jew who said that, but more likely the kind who played the Catskills

http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/blog/jmason.jpg

"sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"

it probably was a semi-famous Jew who said that, but more likely the kind who played the Catskills

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Wednesday, 28 January 2015 19:36 (3 minutes ago)

ha yeah i think Fred R Shapiro, the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, would have better spent his time searching newspaper comedy reviews of the 1930s than successfully showing it isn't anywhere in freud or the secondary literature

And Zuckerberg is kind of high-profile (no pun intended) publicly for whatever reason, I guess the movie plus the fun of his story.

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Wednesday, 28 January 2015 19:35 (11 minutes ago)

yeah his main asociation with jewishness in the public consciousness is probably that 'jews/asians' scene in the social network

the billlionaire most speculated about by antizionist paranoids and judaeophobes globally is surely george soros, the least jewish jewish billionaire of them all

soros for the right and adelson for the left?

someone tried to claim to me a few weeks ago that the koch bros were jewish. i was like "no way you're pinning those guys on us."

adelson in america but in europe, russia and beyond soros and his foundation is a source of confusion and vitriol across the spectrum

to the uk left he will always be hated because of his shorting of sterling in 92

how could anyone think the kochs, the least jewish non-jewish billionaires of them all, were jewish?

seriously! that's what i said.

leftist antisemites are a special kind of moron

Culture jamming is the primary means through which Adbusters challenges consumerism.[24] The magazine was described by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in their book The Rebel Sell as "the flagship publication of the culture jamming movement."[25]

In 1999 Adbusters won the award for National Magazine of the Year in Canada.[49]

who the fuck still reads this shit

http://images.soundspike.com/artists/phish_061012.jpg

culture jamming

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=culture+jamming+coca+cola&source=lnms&tbm=isch

surely george soros, the least jewish jewish billionaire of them all

wtf

Koch is sometimes a Jewish name.

i hear more about soros being an antisemite here in the USA

I thought Soros was believed to have escaped the holocaust through his sinister cunning though

sorry discussions of "who's more Jewish" get my hackles up

that was more a sarcastic reference to what goole is alluding to, the way he is demeaned for his father's activities and ideas, his atheism/rationalism/globalism etc, his expressions on israel and antisemitism, nothing to do with his own identification which is clearly as a jew

parallel forms of mischarachterization to that of the antizionist crowd

ah gotcha