Re: [Marxism] FW: Report on Gaza demo on Berlin

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ian Drury wrote:
> The second panel of the day included a speaker from the Communist
> Party of Lebanon whose talk was a basic (anti-Zionist) history of
> the formation of Israel. He was met with questions focused
> entirely on insisting that the problem is "capitalism" in Israel
> and "not the Israeli people". These paranoid attitudes blocked
> discussion from moving any further... 

Comrades might remember "angelus novus" who was on Marxmail until 
something pissed him off and he unsubbed (can't remember what). He is 
fairly typical of what Ian was describing above. He never pushed this 
line on Marxmail as heavily as he did on Doug's list but here is a taste 
of this pro-Israel propaganda wrapped in Marxist jargon:

Many people I know would argue that the justificaton for Zionism is the 
continued existence of anti-semitism, that Zionism should not be viewed 
as an affirmative nationalism like other 19th Century varieties, but a 
"negative" nationalism whose claims are supported by the unique nature 
of anti-semitism as a universal phenomenon in capitalist societies in 
moments of crisis.

Moishe Postone's National Socialism and Anti-Semitism is a key text for 
this school of thought, as well as some obscure passages in Marx's 
Critique of Political Economy concerning interest-bearing capital and 
its tendency to be a "target for superficial criticism."

The argumentation concludes that the conditions that make Zionism 
necessary will be abolished when Capital and State are abolished as 
social categories. The concomitant to this argumentation is that any 
point of view that holds Zionism to be particularly odious or dubious 
when compared with other nationalisms is anti-semitic.

I suppose the argumentation is somewhat esoteric, but I think claims of 
Palestinian "nationhood" are arguably just as dubious. And besides, I 
think Leftists and other progressive-minded peoples should avoid 
naturalistic arguments for any sort of nationalism. That sort of "Blut 
und Boden" argumentation is best left to Neo-Nazis.

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