Re: [Marxism] Antideutsche, once again

["Johannes Schneider" <Johannes.Schneider@xxxxxxx>]

> The discussion on "anti-Germans", based on a heavy dose of
> half-knowledge and speculation (this is, of course, a criticism
> towards my German compatriots posting on this list),

Henning,

your polemics here are totally unneccessary. If you know better say so, but 
indulging in generalizations will not help.

> is mixing up
> some things.
>
> Lüko Wilms mentioned two - in his opinion "petty-bourgeois" -
> organizations that he suspects to have been protagonists of
> anti-German politics: the Arbeiterbund für den Wiederaufbau der KPD
> (Workers league for rebuilding the KPD) and the Kommunistischer Bund
> (KB, Communist league). But actually, none of them has any relation
> to contemporary "anti-German" currents.
>

Sorry to correct you here. The KB does not longer exist. So as an organisation 
it can only have any relation to "historic" and not to contemporary debates.
After all you write it yourself that the KB initiated the anti-German current. 
Leading anti-Germans are former KB-members.
For the Arbeiterbund it is different: They still exist today as a tiny 
organization, mainly here in Munich. As such they are the core of the 
anti-Germans here. While you are correct to point out they are rooted in 
orthodox Leninism and thus ideologically very distant from the anti-German 
mainstream, they are still able to dominate the local anti-Germans from an 
organizational point through their front FDJ.
The FDJ shares the anti-German dogma of equating anti-zionism and 
anti-semitism. See:
http://www.fdj.de/pdf/nahost.pdf

But overall you are correct: Both former KB and present Arbeiterbund are only a 
minor influence within the Anti-Germans as a whole. Nevertheless the KB could 
be seen as the midwife of this idiocy.

> (clipped a lot of interesting stuff about Arbeiterbund)
> They are quite sensitive concerning
> anti-semitism. They do not support "anti-Americanism" and
> "anti-Zionism".

First of all they equate anti-zionism anti-semitism. In my eyes such a policy 
does a great harm to the fight against anti-semitism.

Seeing anti-semitism everywhere will make you blind for the real cases of 
anti-semitism. I cannot call such a policy "sensitive", but at best idiotic.

> In the late 1990s, they tried to build an "Alliance
> of the peoples of Europe against Germany," as far as I know they only
> found some allies in Poland. You may think of the Arbeiterbund
> whatever you want (their 1920s-style cabaret performances are quite
> funny), but anyway they are not "petty-bourgeois". Their opposition
> against growing German power is anchored within a strictly Leninist
> framework

Rather a caricture of Leninism. Supporting a colonial-settler state and 
favouring one-imperialist against the other is not Leninism in my eyes.

> (clipped lot of interesting stuff about KB)

Out of curiosity: because of your passionate defense of KB policies, are you a 
former member?


> Someone said
> that anti-Germans are "detached from class struggle." Of course, this
> statement is not wrong, but it does not explain anything. In my
> opinion, this dogmatic "Marxist" language is as useless as the Beavis
> and Butthead language from MTV.
>

Thank you for the final compliment. But in my eyes any Marxist analysis of an 
ideological current as to start from its relation to the class struggle and its 
position to the working class. Certainly an analysis or any kind or explanation 
can only start from there and has to go deeper and more detailed (as you did 
eg.).
But I did never intend to provide a full analysis but rather a short 
characterization.

Comradely

Johannes
--


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