Tag Archives: Racism

Imperialism, Middle East, Palestine, White Supremacy

More victories against Israeli apartheid

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As the Obama administration reversed its decision to force a freeze on West Bank settlements as a pre-condition for restarting the so-called “peace process,” more important developments were happening in Palestine solidarity.

The first is the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation officially endorsed the call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

The second is the largest union federation in Britain, the Trades Union Congress, also endorsed the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli government.

These votes indicate a shift towards BDS strategies among the progressive and trade unionist Left that is part of a nine year development since the 2nd Intifada began. It could be argued there was an acceleration of this shift since December with the attack on the Gaza ghetto.

What is needed now is a return to the wave of divestment activity that specifically targeted institutions–campus, union and city investments. Support for Israeli apartheid is at the center of U.S. imperialism. Seven million Palestinians live either in bantustans and ghettos, or are in exile, faced with legal and de facto discrimination and segregation. The “peace process” is a sham to legitimize this situation under the watchful eye of a “native administration” in the Palestinian Authority.

The elites are wedded to this regime as a demonstration of their “liberal” credentials. By striking at the link between these institutions of university, union and city, and the apartheid regime, organizers expose its racist and undemocratic character. Finally, this is a an important tactic for the tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim people who have demonstrated and organized during the 2nd Intifada, the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, and the 2008 attack on the Gaza ghetto. It is on this basis that a new Arab and Muslim movement in this country can form and fight back against white supremacy.
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Imperialism, Queer Liberation, Racism

A Queer Imperialism?

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You only have to go back to the justification of the occupation of Afghanistan as a “war for women” to know that one way imperialism justifies itself is through its supposedly progressive credentials. But this could also be said for white supremacy. The new racism, whether by the ruling class or its populist variants, presents itself as anti-racist, anti-patriarchal. Even queer politics is not escaping this dynamic and it’s no accident that the Israeli apartheid regime recently kicked off a “gay friendly” public relations campaign.

Diamond Walid’s critique over at MRzine is timely.

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Beirut: City of Projected Fantasies

by Diamond Walid

Beirut has been labelled the Paris, sometimes the Switzerland, of the Middle East. According to one recent New York Times article, it is now the region’s Provincetown (the Cape Cod resort favoured by gay visitors). This ever-changing city seems to have become a mirror where people project their own fantasies.

Comparing Beirut with another city, whether Paris, Rome or Provincetown is a denial of its uniqueness. Beirut’s gay culture is also unique and specific. As a gay man who has lived in the city for more than 30 years, I know that notions such as “gay”, “straight”, “public displays of affection” and “homophobia” can take on completely different forms and meanings in this part of the world. Yet there was no mention of these nuances in the New York Times article, obviously built on a series of denials.
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Asian American, Imperialism, Labor, Racism

On the Origins of Anti-Asian Racism and How We Have Fought Back

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by Jomo, Mamos, and Will

In the United States, racist views of Asian-Americans are promiscuous and self-contradictory. On the one hand, we are told that we are model minorities, hard working citizens living out the classic American story of immigration and upward mobility. On the other hand, we are painted as perpetual foreigners, never quite American even after multiple generations of citizenship. On the one hand, we are supposed to be passive, docile, and submissive, while on the other hand they fear we are the yellow peril, a rising, ruthless, and aggressive empire that will someday destroy the white race.

The fact that these stereotypes are so contradictory show their ludicrousness. Racists project their own fears, anxieties, desires, and aspirations onto us in order to suppress our self-government and make us into who they want us to be, even if what they want us to be makes no sense. But racist fears, anxieties, desires and aspirations are not simply the product of individual ill will – they are shaped by powerful institutions. For example the U.S. military reproduces stereotypes of Asians as an aggressive, brainwashed Mongolian horde in order to raise support for their base expansion projects aimed at containing Chinese military power. Without U.S. military interests in Asia, this stereotype could have died out but instead it is growing.

That’s why liberal strategies of “anti-racism” will not liberate us. Liberals encourage white people to question their stereotypes as part of confronting their “privilege.” They do not attempt to abolish the institutions like military bases that produce and reproduce these stereotypes to keep us subordinated. This editorial will examine the historic political, economic, and social origins of anti-Asian racism. Our goal is not to enlighten anyone’s consciousness but rather to expose the institutions that oppress us so we know who our enemies are and what we need to smash.
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Imperialism, Racism, University

Purging the University

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There has been a long history of repression by the U.S. government, college administrations and faculty against the Palestinian struggle and Arab organizers. In the 1960s the Palestinian issue arrived on the radar of the state when it became a source of solidarity for internationally-minded people in the United States and around the world. The General Union of Palestinian Students has long been a target of FBI intimidation. Islamic activists and secular nationalists alike have been subject to state harassment, arrest and deportation for decades on college campuses and in the community. They were a threat to U.S. empire precisely because they attempted to educate American people about the realities of colonialism and racism abroad. What’s more, their activity showed the possibilities of an effective people-to-people foreign policy inevitably in opposition to the aims and interests of the ruling class.

In Detroit in 1967 the Palestinian struggle became a crisis for the Wayne State University administration when John Watson, one the founders of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and then-editor of the campus newspaper the South End, ran a series of editorials against Israeli colonialism and supportive of Palestinian armed self-defense. Watson’s work expressed a vibrant current in radical Black politics at that time. It put forward perspectives that challenged the racist view of governments and ruling classes worldwide that Palestinians and Black people cannot govern themselves. It drew comparisons between the struggles of Arab peoples in the Middle East (and Detroit) and Black people in America. Watson was eventually forced out by the university administration and city government as they worked to regain control of the newspaper. What scared them was that students on campus were breaking the illusion of the separation of the university and the community—especially the false separation between mental and manual labor—making it possible to discuss ideas and plan for self-government in political, economic, judicial, military, and cultural affairs.
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Imperialism, Islam, Racism, Religion

The Trouble with Irshad Manji

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Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam, has taken official society by storm with her attacks on the culture and politics of the Muslim and Arab world. As a South Asian lesbian who grew up alienated attending a Muslim school in Canada, she represents a multicultural voice in solidarity with the great liberal values of the secular state. Her message and identity are marketed as the latest, best selling popular criticism of “Islamic fundamentalism.”

In promoting her book and ideas, she has spoken on cable news shows, in the official papers, at Washington think-tanks and Zionist audiences throughout North America. Manji claims to be taking up a project of self-criticism and innovative thinking in the Muslim community. The inspiration for her criticism is the “enlightened” states and societies of the West, in particular the U.S. and Israel. To her audience, she is the quintessential “Good Muslim.”

The Irshad Manji phenomenon can perhaps be understood in three ways. First, it is an extension of the logic of liberal multicultural racism. Second, is the attempt to refine a general liberal racist doctrine based on secular chauvinism, which has justified imperialism for more than a century, in the battle to consolidate Western control of the Middle East. Third, like the shallow white male conservatives who falsify the history of democratic traditions from Ancient Greece to Judeo-Christian ethics, Manji falsifies the history of the Arab world and Islamic traditions. She posits a “free” secular West where in fact worship of God is generally subordinated to mayors and police chiefs. This is contrasted to an imaginary Middle East where Allah mandates “tyranny” and where all independent thinking is crushed. Manji, like all good imperialists, tells us lies about the history of those we wish to be in solidarity with and about our own history.
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