[Marxism] Revolution and Religious Fundamentalism

[Jscotlive@xxxxxxx]

Ruthless Critic:
 
But Hamas is not just "religious". Hamas is also virulently
anti-semitic  (in the sense of "anti-jewish"), including assuming that
the "Protocols of  the Elders of Zion" (a well-known anti-semitic
forgery from Tsarist times) is  authentic:

Reply:
 
And this the result of a Marxist education, basing an entire  analysis of a 
resistance movement's suitability for your support and  solidarity on its 
deflected anger and not on the role it is playing within the  schema of the 
global 
struggle against imperialism?
 
I have to say, this descent to the level of Hamas  demonisation which has 
become the favourite sport of right wing news  commentators, Israeli 
propagandists, and their acolytes in the West over  the last year, intensified 
over the 
past few days and weeks, really does plumb  the depths on a Marxist discussion 
list.
 
The key aspect of the struggle between the Palestinians and the  Israelis is 
that it is a struggle between a people systematically immiserated,  
expropriated and brutalised, and an oppressor committed to continuing that  
process to 
their destruction as a national identity. Don't you think that under  such 
conditions of extreme oppression, those being oppressed and brutalised  may 
lose 
the luxury of distinguishing between the political orientation of  their 
oppressors and their religion or ethnicity?
 
To put it another way, would you really demonise a woman who as a  result of 
being raped develops a hatred of men in general? Wouldn't you  understand that 
irrational hatred as a direct result of the traumatising  experience of being 
raped and not resort to blaming the victim for holding such  views?
 
The fundamental aspect missing, either wilfully or out of ignorance,  from 
your easy lapse into this demonisation of an organisation whose  unstinting 
resistance to Israeli ethnic cleansing, their provision of  desperately needed 
social services to the most immiserated strata of their  people, has earned 
them 
the support of said people, are the  material conditions out of which Hamas 
emerged. Oppression breeds resistance,  but it can also breed deflected anger. 
 
The overriding goal of Israel's siege and now assault on Gaza is the  
destruction of the last holdout of Palestinian resistance to their writ in  
Palestine, this in order to continue with the subjugation of the  Palestinian 
people in 
their entirety and the continued slow but sure  erosion of their national 
identity. It happens that this resistance is currently  being led by Hamas, 
thus 
the reason for a determined attempt to  isolate them from their people and 
remove them from the stage. But Hamas merely  expresses Palestinian resistance 
in 
the current period. Remove Hamas  and resistance itself is defeated.
 
Your analysis, your fixation on the form the resistance currently  takes, 
joins in this process, unwittingly or otherwise. There is no nice  secular, 
Marxist-checklisted and pre-approved resistance waiting in the wings  ready to 
step 
up to the plate, as inferred from your morbid fixation on  Hamas Furthermore 
Hamas, like Hezbollah, consists of many former members of  secular 
organisations, who joined the ranks of Hamas precisely because of the  role 
they are 
playing in offering resistance to the oppression of their  people.
 
If religion is but a reflex of the material world, then even the most basic  
logic suggests that extreme oppression can and may give rise to religious  
extremism. Be that as it may, however, the Hamas fighters who as I write are  
currently laying down their lives in resistance to the most sustained and  
brutal 
and occupation in modern history, they are doing so in the cause of  the 
Palestinian people in their entirety. And given that the cause of the  
Palestinian 
people is the cause of humanity in our time, I know where my support  lies.  
 
What about you?
 
 
  
 
   
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