RE: [Marxism] Hank Roth

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Brady wrote:

I have to give Hank a lot of credit.  How often have you argued with
someone and felt that your discussion had morphed into a pissing contest
instead of a collaborative effort to get to the bottom of the issue?
Scholastic academics have built reputations that they sell in the
market, so if you dispute a position held by one of these intellectual
mercenaries, you are not really addressing an idea but attacking an
individual.  It is sad, pathetic, counter-productive, and yet another
reason to switch out of capitalism to a saner system.  I know Hank would
agree.

Hank's problem was one all activists share: they don't just sit there.
But what if we're wrong?  De omnibus dubitandem.  Do we stubbournly
persist, like that stupid Emperor with no clothes guy?  Actually, that
is more characteristic of the defenders of capitalism.

I hope the guy gets well soon.


Response Jim C: Beautifully put. The force of an idea and the
establishment/"proof" of an asserted "fact" do not depend upon--nor are
they enhanced by--the degree of virulence, loudness or vitriol of
response to questioners or doubters of the idea or the asserted "fact."

And on anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: Just because the Zionists have
traditionally used--and even welcomed--anti-Semitism (see below) as a
vehicle for building phony unity among disparate Jewish and non-Jewish
elements and for legitimating their own atrocities and racism, we should
never be blind to the reality of anti-Semitism and to the reality that
there are ugly forces calling themselves "anti-Zionists" who are in
reality nothing more than the usual Holocaust deniers, neo-fascists and
outright anti-Semites; and we should be very careful about which
supposed "anti-Zionists" work we choose to quote. Because the Zionists
have cynically used--and even helped to promote--anti-Semitism, we
should never be cavalier about the reality and ugly consequences of
anti-Semitism.


>From Brenner's book:

"To be a Good Zionist one must be Somewhat of an Anti-Semite:

Although blut was a recurrent theme in pre-Holocaust Zionist literature,
it was not as central to its message as boden. As long as America's
shores remained open, Europe's Jews asked: if anti-Semitism could not be
fought on its home ground, why should they not just follow the crowd to
America? The Zionist response was double-barrelled: anti-Semitism would
accompany the Jews wherever they went and, what was more, it was the
Jews who had created anti-Semitism by their own characteristics. The
root cause of anti-Semitism, Zionists insisted, was the Jews' exile
existence. Jews lived parasitically off their 'hosts'...

These tenets combined were known as 'shelilat ha'galut (the Negation of
the Diaspora), and were held by the entire spectrum of Zionists who
varied only on matters of detail. They were argued vigorously in the
Zionist press, where the distinctive quality of many articles was their
hostility to the entire Jewish people. Anyone reading these pieces
without knowing their source would have automatically assumed that they
came from the Anti-Semitic press. The Weltanschauung of the youth
organization Hashomer Hatzair (Young Watchmen), originally composed in
1917, but republished again as late as 1936, was typical of these
effusions:

 The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both
pysically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and
throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor
discipline. (pp22-23)

Similarly, in 1935 an American Ben Frommer, a writer for the ultra-right
Zionist-Revisionists, could declare of no less than 16 million of his
fellow Jews that:

The fact is undeniable that the Jews collectively are unhealthy and
neurotic. Those professional Jews who, wounded to the quick, igdignantly
deny this truth are the greatest enemies of their race, for they thereby
lead them to search for false solutions, or at most palliatives." (p.
23)

And:

In 1925 the most vehement protagonist of total abstentionism, Jcob
Klatzkin, the co-editor of the massive "Encyclopedia Judaica", laid down
the full implications of the Zionist approach to anti-Semitism.

If we do not admit the rightfulness of antisemitism, we deny the
rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and
willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body thrust
into the nations among whom it lives, an alien body that insists on its
own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right
therefore, that they should fight against us for their national
integrity...Instead of establishing societies for defense against
antisemites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish
societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our
rights." (p. 30)

And from Hertzl himself:

In June of 1895, the first entry into his new journal on Zionism,
Theodor Hertzl wrote:

"In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward
anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to
pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to
'combat' anti-Semitism."


Jim C.

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