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Max Shachtman on Democratic Workers Councils and the “Workers’ Government”
Published May 28, 2020 Marxism , Theory Leave a CommentShall economic life be democratically managed and controlled?
Absolutely! It is the maintenance of capitalist domination of society that demands, more and more, the abandonment of democracy. A Worker’s Government would have to extend democracy continually, not merely because it is a desirable ideal, but because it is indispensable to the planning of production for use. …
If, however, production were carried on for use, to satisfy the needs of the people, the question immediately arises: Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of government planners? No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. The democratically-adopted decision of the people would have to guide the course of production and distribution. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being carried out.
Otherwise, the government and its planning would undergo a complete perversion of its purpose. At best, we would have a benevolent regimentation of the people “for their own good.” A government which declares itself to be “for” the workers, but is not a government of and by the workers, is a Workers Government only in name. Instead of being regulated by the blind market, as under capitalism, production would be regulated by the autocractic, uncontrolled will of a bureaucracy. Economic distortions, social conflict, exploitation and oppression would inevitably result. Production for use, aimed at satisfying the needs of society and freeing all the people from class rule, would be impossible.
Democratic control, the continual extension of democracy, is therefore an indispensable necessity under a Workers Government. The idea of a Workers Government is this inseparably connected with the idea of nationalization of the means of production and exchange, the centralized organization and planning of production and distribution, and the continual extension of democracy and democratic control. No one of these can exist in the absence of others. To have democratic control of industry, there must be planning of production. To plan production, the economic machinery of the country must be socially owned and centrally operated. To nationalize the means of production and exchange, a Worker’s Government must be established with power to act. For it to be a Workers’ Government, it must be democratically run and controlled by workers. None of these is possible without having all. ….
[Shachtman then argues that initially the Workers’ State would have to remain an instrument of force, in order to hold back reactionary attempts to end the revolution; and that the new State would inherit social inequality from the prior, capitalist society—something the Workers State would struggle against.]
These characteristics of the Workers’ Government show its similarities with the preceding state. But it is in its fundamental differences with it that the workers’ state shows, as the founders of scientific socialism have put it, that it is no longer a state in the classic sense of the word. A whole world of difference separates the two.
First, the force at the disposal of the workers’ state would not reside in bodies of armed men separated from the people, and under capitalism or feudalism or slavery. The arms would be in the hands of the workers themselves. The government which could summon these arms into action would be in the hands of the workers themselves.
Second, the state power would no longer be the instrument of an exploiting minority for the domination of the exploited majority. For the first time in history, the state would be in the hands of the majority to be used whenever necessary against the reactionary or anti-social minority.
Third, the state power would no longer be governed by a special or professional bureaucracy. It would be ruled and controlled by the people. It would have no permanent officials, and all elected officers would be subject to immediate recall by their electors. By virtue of its system of democratic representation, which will be dealt with in detail further on, every worker will participate directly in the affairs of government, from the humblest to the most prominent.
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The parliamentary form of government, supposed to be the best expression of the will of the people, is nicely suited to cover up the actual rule of the enormously wealthy minority which monopolizes industry, banking and transportation.
The workers cannot possibly rule by means of such a governmental machine. It will have to be replaced from top to bottom by an entirely different form and machinery of government. A workers’ government has as its main task the centralization and planned organization of production, under democratic control, for the welfare of the people. This task can be accomplished only if there is a form of government suited to it.
If the workers are to be assured of control of the administration of industry, and if the centralized planning of production and distribution is to be under their democratic control, it follows that the government must be based directly on the workers and under their constant control. The only way in which this can be effectively done is by having the government elected directly by the workers in the industries. Just how would this work?
Every factory and other center of production or distribution would be administered by a Council, elected by the workers and subject to recall at any time. These Workers’ Councils themselves would run the factory and see to it that the plans [145] and other decisions of the national planning council, or board, are carried out promptly and properly. At the same time, however, these Councils, which are the direct representatives of the producers, would have to have the power to participate democratically in the selection of the national planning council and in the decisions that it makes. Without such democratic participation and control, planning would soon become bureaucratic and would not represent the interests of the masses.
The municipal, state and federal governments would therefore be composed of direct representatives of the Workers’ Councils, elected by popular ballot and likewise subject to recall at any time. (In the agricultural regions, the Councils would of course be elected by the agricultural workers and farmers.) The National Congress of Councils would elect its officers, committees and boards, again under its direct control and subject to recall. Legislative and executive functions would be exercised by a single power. The decisions of the Council government would not be carried out by a professional bureaucracy, separated from the people and beyond their control. They would be carried out, instead, by the state, municipal and industrial Councils, composed of workers themselves and constantly subject to their control.
Only under such a form of government can we have a genuine workers’ democracy, in which millions and ten of millions actually rule, in contrast with the most advanced capitalist democracy in which thousands, or tens of thousands at most, are the actual rulers.
If the laws adopted or the work carried out by the National Councils’ Congress are not satisfactory, it can be recalled and replaced by the direct action of the Workers’ Councils, without having to wait for two or four or even six years to change the government. If the decisions and plans of the National Congress are satisfactory, but are not being carried out satisfactorily by the Municipal or Factory Council, the latter can be recalled and replaced by the same direct action.
Every worker becomes a direct part of the government administration. His power is not confined to marking a ballot once a year. He exercises his power, his control, his participation in making decisions and carrying them out, every day in the year, year-in and year-out.
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From Max Shachtman, The Fight for Socialism: The Principles and Program of the Workers Party (New York: New International Publishing Co, 1946).
first section is from “Chapter VII: A Workers Government and Socialism”: pp. 115, 116-17, 125.
second section is from “Chapter VIII. The Need for a Revolutionary Party”: pp. 144-46.
Transcriptions from the original book; it is available online as both text and PDF at Marxists.org.
The U.S. Neo-Nazi Rise Above Movement’s 2018 European Vacation
Published May 9, 2020 Counterculture & Punk , Fascism Leave a Comment… As had been announced in advance, martial artists from the US competed at the “Kampf der Nibelungen” (Fight of the Nibelungs) tournament in Ostritz, eastern Saxony, Germany. Inquiries revealed that meant leaders of the Rise Above Movement (RAM), known neo-Nazis from southern California.
RAM was established in early 2017 and for a while also called itself DIY Division; journalists in the US call them the “Alt-Right Fight Club.”[1] “Alt-Right” is the designation for the far-right activist wing of Donald Trump’s supporters, comparable with the European “New Right.” Europe’s New Right, characterized by groups like Identitäre Bewegung [Identitarian Movement], has in fact been a significant influence on RAM.
RAM has its own training spaces in California, where it primarily trains for street fights. Additionally, in late 2017, the group created its own line of clothing called Right Brand Clothing. Their online store also sells gear from Ukrainian neo-Nazi brand Svastone.
Robert Rundo attacking a counterdemonstrator in Huntington Beach.
In its rather short history, RAM participated in every major physical altercation connected to Alt-Right marches in 2017, including the Make America Great Again march in Huntington Beach, California, in March and in Berkeley and Charlottesville in August. It coordinated its participation with Identity Evropa, the American offshoot of Identitäre Bewegung.
Ben Daley (r.) of Rise Above Movement with another RAM member (Photo: EXIF-Recherche)
In Ostritz, RAM was represented Robert Rundo, Ben Daley, and one other unknown person who apparently is originally from Eastern Europe. Daley was briefly imprisoned for possession of a revolver without a permit, while Rundo is looking at twenty months in jail for repeatedly stabbing and seriously injuring a Latin American man in Queens, New York, in 2009.
Robert Rundo as a fighter in Ostritz 2018 (Photo: EXIF-Recherche)
The stated goal of both RAM and its Right Brand Clothing is to enable “the youth” to defend themselves through MMA so that they can “confront the left-wing onslaught of degeneracy and the drug culture through which it is promoted”—a cliché that can be found, in some form or another, in the self-description of every far-right martial arts brand.
RAM wants to expand and eventually sponsor its own martial artists. Its presence at the Shield & Sword Festival in Ostritz, where the “Kampf der Nibelungen” took place, might therefore be seen as a step in that direction. The group is getting ardent support in that regard from Denis Nikitin, whose own White Rex clothing brand will also soon be available through the online Right Brand Clothing store.
Robert Rundo, Denis Nikitin, and an unknown member of RAM (left to right) in Kiev, April 2018 (Photo: Facebook screenshot).
But Ostritz was only one leg of RAM’s European tour. Only a week later, Rundo and Daley together with Denis Nikitin and Tomasz Skatulsky were hosted in Kiev, Ukraine. There, Rundo and Skatulsky not only participated in a right-wing rock concert organized by Svastone and featuring German Nazi hardcore band Brainwash, but they also fought in a tournament sponsored by the “Reconquista Club.” This neo-Nazi gym and the Svastone brand are believed to be important supporters of the Ukrainian fascist volunteer Azov Regiment.
After their brief stay in Ukraine, the RAM members also visited Italian fascist party and organization Casa Pound. In practical terms, theirs was a journey to the centers of Europe’s militant neo-fascist movement, from which RAM will undoubtedly take inspiration for developing its own affiliations in the US.
Skyler Segeberg (left side) and Spencer Currie (right side). The center photo shows both with Hammerskins insignia. (Photo: nocara.blackblogs.org).
RAM’s connection with the Hammerskins is also interesting. This also represents another link to the German structure of the “Kampf der Nibelungen,” which is known to be staffed by leading Hammerskins. At least three RAM members are also part of this Nazi fraternity, including Spencer Currie and Skyler Segeberg. Currie was also involved in RAM’s attacks on counterdemonstrators during an Alt-Right march in April 2017. Both Currie and Segeberg are members of the Huntington Beach, California-based band Hate Your Neighbors, which is considered a Hammerskin band. In October 2016, the band played at Hammerfest in Georgia, an event organized by the Confederate Hammerskins. There, they shared the bill with Definite Hate, a band that once included Wade Michael Page, a Hammerskin who shot six people at a Wisconsin Sikh temple before killing himself in August 2012. This is only one indication of just how dangerous the Hammerskins really are.[2]
….
The international network of organizations, the concept of a “pan-Europe,” and the adoption of a society-wide fitness trend allow neo-Nazis to appear progressive and accessible. Moreover, the example of American neo-Nazi group Rise Above Movement, which was present in Ostritz, makes it clear that combat sports are not for casual competition but rather for effective preparation for street fighting.
[1] Anti-Defamation League: “Rise Above Movement (R.A.M.)”, adl.org/resources/backgrounders/rise-above-movement-ram
[2] Antifaschistisches Infoblatt, no. 96: “Soundtrack zum Rassenkrieg”; antifainfoblatt.de/artikel/soundtrack-zum-rassenkrieg
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translation by Joe. Original in German: “Kein Handshake mit Nazis Rückblick und Auswertung des Kampfsportturniers „Kampf der Nibelungen“ auf dem Neonazi-Festival „Schild & Schwert“ am 21.04.2018,” Runter von der Matte – Kein Handshake mit Nazis!, May 14, 2018.
1970s Soviet Antisemitism
Published November 15, 2019 Antisemitism , Marxism , Zionism/Israel/Palestine Leave a CommentThe antisemitism of Stalin’s Doctors’ Plot — and to a lesser extent the Polish, Czech and other pseudo-antizionist antisemitic purges of the 1950s and ’60s — are remembered today. However, much less attention is paid to the Soviet Union’s conspiracy theory turn starting in the 1960s, where the previous hegemony of Orthodox Marxism was rivaled by various pro-Soviet conspiracy theories, often anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist in character. As part of this a vicious antisemitism – usually cloaked in anti-zionist terms – returned as well, and was exported to Soviet-allied groups in the Arab world, including the PLO. With the revival of antisemitism in Russia after the Soviet collapse, this period of Soviet antizionism can be seen as part of an unbroken link in the history of Russian antisemitism.
Roland Evans and Robert Novak, “Moscow vs Zionism”
“For one thing, the official state newspapers [of the Soviet Union]—Pravda and Izvestia—have been preaching fearsome anti-zionism for years. Following the first Brussels Conference On Soviet Jewry in 1971, Pravda labeled Zionism “an enemy of the people”—a phrase echoing the great purge of the 1930s. After a brief respite, the new, more virulent anti-Zionist campaign was triggered by the second Brussels conference.
The new state-supported campaign is manifested by an official Communist Party lecturer named Valery Yemelyanov, a candidate of economic sciences and a professor in the prestigious Institute of Foreign Languages. What makes Yemelyanov’s anti-Zionist campaign so insidious is that his harshest rhetoric came in a Moscow interview with a newspaper closely connected to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Yemelyanov delivered opinions that must have startled even anti-Israel PLO activists who are trying to establish a mini-state of their own on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “World Zionism has become a great power in the world,” he said, elaborating as follows in a breathtaking spiral of charges:
Eighty-percent of the economy of non-Communist nations is concentrated in the hands of “Zionist capitalists.” 95% of the propaganda efforts undertaken in the capitalist world are concentrated in the hands of the Zionists, 99% in the United States.
In words reminiscent of the notorious “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Yemelyanov told his PLO interviewers that the world Zionist organization “works in a strictly secret framework” which includes “all the presidents and parliaments of the developed capitalist countries.” The only way to fight this “world” Zionist movement is to establish a world countermovement with the Arabs themselves should lead “because they are the prime objective of the Zionist movement and the leaders of the world struggle against one of its agents—the state of Israel.”
Such nonsense would not be worth a second glance were it not for the likelihood….that behind it is the weight of the Soviet state and its multiple propaganda apparatus.
Yemelyanov’s appeal directly to militant PLO members is obviously designed to thwart American efforts to find a political solution to the Arab-Israeli wares. As such, it plays on… anti-Israeli Arab passions (Deeply felt by all Palestinians) in a way calculated to arouse them to the highest pitch.”
from “Moscow vs Zionism,” Roland Evans and Robert Novak
“World Front” syndicated column, November 14-15, 1976.
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More on Yemelyanov
“Evidence that the Soviet new right wants a “final solution of the Jewish problem” is found… in the secret memorandum presented to the 25th Soviet Communist Party congress in 1975, a partial text of which reached Israel early this year.
Its author is Yemelyanov, a well-known ideological lecturer. The memorandum claims “that the Jewish Masonic order, B’nai B’rith, is the visible top of the invisible international Judaeo-Masonic pyramid ruling the non-Communist world and influencing Soviet policies through its agents inside the USSR.’
To deal with the Jewish menace, Yemelyanov proposes: ‘The creation of a world-wide anti-Zionist and anti-Masonic front on the model of the anti-fascist fronts of the 1930s and 1940s because the threat of Zionist rule over the world planned for the year 2000 threatens all the gentiles on our earth irrespective of their race, religion and party affiliation.’
Like Hitler, “Yemelyanov does not spell out in detail how he proposes to eliminate the Jewish menace. But he argues throughout his memorandum that Soviet Jews must not be expelled or allowed to leave, for those who go to Israel reinforce the potential of a fascist state, while the others who emigrate to the United States or other Western countries reinforce the Judaeo-Masonic pyramid.”
from “Behind the Headlines Anti-semitism May Replace Marxism-leninism As Official Soviet Creed,” JTA, December 27, 1978, http://www.jta.org/1978/12/27/archive/behind-the-headlines-anti-semitism-may-replace-marxism-leninism-as-official-soviet-creed
(See also “B’nai B’rith Accuses Soviet Lecturer of Rampant Anti-Semitism,” JTA, August 24, 1976, http://www.jta.org/1976/08/24/archive/bnai-brith-accuses-soviet-lecturer-of-rampant-anti-semitism)
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Ruth Okuneva, “Anti-Semitic Notions: Strange Analogies”
Excerpts from various works of Soviet propaganda, compiled by Russian historian Ruth Okuneva.
* “The chief strategic aim of the Zionist movement is the establishment of its domination of the world.”
* “Their obsession with the idea of world domination is the primary cause of the crimes which humanity has witnessed.”
* “… [A] group of people who profess a doctrine which alleges that they have been chosen by God to dominate the world.”
* “To sow poison and demonization,” i.e., to corrupt and destroy society, to deceive the peoples… the Zionists could not do this without having control of the most powerful propaganda apparatus—the mass media. That is why their first objective is to always take control of the newspapers and magazines, telegraph agencies, publishing houses, radios and television, the entire history of the world. In this pursuit they have already achieved a great deal.
* “Zionism is fascism… The basic content of Zionism is anticommunism, implacable hostility to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, to the international revolutionary movement, and to all the anti-imperialist forces today.”
* “If we review the Torah form the standpoint of modern civilization and progressive Communist morality, it proves to be an unsurpassed textbook of blood-thirstiness and hypocrisy, treachery, perfidy, and licentiousness—of every vile human quality.”
* “The peculiarities of Jewish religion are hatred of mankind, preaching genocide, cultivating a love for power, and glorifying criminal means of achieving power.”
* “The chauvinistic idea of world domination has been particularly repulsive; formulated in the ‘Holy Scriptures,’ it has been reflected in their prayers.”
* “[I]n official abstracts of the prescripts of Judaism, repeated emphasis is given to the ‘exclusiveness’ of the Jews, their innate superiority to the goyim, their right to world domination.”
* “‘God’s chosen people’ have their own laws, their own sphere, their own destiny, whereas the despised goyim are suited only to be ‘tools with the power of speech,’ slaves.”
* “The Jews want to have slaves, but the slaves must not be Jews.”* “The teachings of Judaism are pervaded with hatred for the work and contempt for the man who spends his day in toil. The entire ideology of Judaism is not imbued with the idea of work, but with a narrow practicality, the means for making a profit, a mania for silver, the spirit of egoism, and the craving for money.”
* “The Talmud teaches that one is forbidden to steal only from a khaver (a fellow man). One is permitted to take everything from anyone else (goyim), because God has reserved all non-Jewish wealth for the Jews.”
From Ruth Okuneva, “Anti-Semitic Notions: Strange Analogies, 1980s” in Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds., Antisemitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 251–53. Taken in turn from Theodore Freedman, ed, Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union (NY: ADL, 1984).
Alexander Berkman: “we kissed the image of the social revolution”
Published November 4, 2019 Anarchism Leave a Comment[from a letter to Emma Goldman]
“To grasp your hand, to look down for a mute, immortal instant into your soul, and then die at your hands, Beloved, with the warm breath of your caress wafting into peaceful eternity – oh, it were bliss supreme, the realization of our day dreams, when, in transports of ecstasy, we kissed the image of the Social Revolution.”
……
“Every penny spent for ourselves was so much taken from the Cause. True, the revolutionist must live. But luxury is a crime; worse, a weakness. One could exist on five cents a day. Twenty cents for a single meal! It was robbery.”
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Alexander Berman, Prison Memoirs (NY: New York Review of Books, 1999), 148-49, 72.
Sinclair Lewis – Profile of an American Demagogue (excerpt from ‘It Can’t Happen Here’)
Published June 6, 2019 Antisemitism , Christianity , Fascism , Nationalism , Theory Leave a CommentSinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, portrays a world where several of the popular Far Right and populist demagogues of the 1930s—including Louisiana Senator and corrupt oligarch Huey Long, antisemitic priest and radio show host Father Coughlin, and pro-Nazi Kansas minister Gerald Winrod—combine forces. They win the presidency and turn the country into a dictatorship wrapped in a kitschy Americana. (Although Long was assassinated before the 1936 presidential campaign, Coughlin and several others did join together, forming the far right Union Party. Their candidate, William Lemke, received over 900,000 votes in the race.)
It Can’t Happen Here’s protagonist is Doremus Jessup, a liberal who is the editor of a small town Vermont newspaper. Senator Buzz Windrip—based on Long—is the book’s successful presidential candidate and, soon after, the first dictator of the United States. Lee Sarason is Windrip’s Steve Bannon—a circus-show svengali who guides Windrip’s ambitions and later takes the crown himself.
The famous passage below isn’t so much an eerie prognostication of Donald Trump—although it is that, too—so much as a description of the canned shtick of the American right-wing demagogue. Trump is merely the latest incarnation of this hackneyed role, which seems to have a perpetual audience. Far RIght demogaguery allows talented speakers to harness the emotion of the public and tap into their disenchantment at the systemic problems of capitalism. But instead of directing this anger at the system, it is channeled toward Jews, blacks, immigrants, and finance capital; and the the very structures that created these problems are reinforced.
* * *
“Doremus Jessup, so inconspicuous an observer, watching Senator Windrip from so humble a Boeotia, could not explain his power of bewitching large audiences. The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas” almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.
Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill. Seven years before his present credo—derived from Lee Sarason, Hitler, Gottfried Feder, Rocco, and probably the review Of Thee I Sing—little Buzz, back home, had advocated nothing more revolutionary than better beef stew in the country poor-farms, and plenty of graft for loyal machine politicians, with jobs for their brothers-in-law, nephews, law partners, and creditors.
Doremus had never heard Windrip during one of his orgasms of oratory, but he had been told by political reporters that under the spell you thought Windrip was Plato, but that on the way home you could not remember anything he had said.
There were two things, they told Doremus, that distinguished this prairie Demosthenes. He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect.”
But below this surface stagecraft was his uncommon natural ability to be authentically excited by and with his audience, and they by and with him. He could dramatize his assertion that he was neither a Nazi nor a Fascist but a Democrat—a homespun Jeffersonian-Lincolnian- Clevelandian-Wilsonian Democrat—and (sans scenery and costume) make you see him veritably defending the Capitol against barbarian hordes, the while he innocently presented as his own warm-hearted Democratic inventions, every anti-libertarian, anti-Semitic madness of Europe.
Aside from his dramatic glory, Buzz Windrip was a Professional Common Man.
Oh, he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity of thick buckwheat cakes with adulterated maple syrup, in rubber trays for the ice cubes in his electric refrigerator, in the especial nobility of dogs, all dogs, in the oracles of S. Parkes Cadman, in being chummy with all waitresses at all junction lunch rooms, and in Henry Ford (when he became President, he exulted, maybe he could get Mr. Ford to come to supper at the White House), and the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded spats, walking sticks, caviar, titles, tea-drinking, poetry not daily syndicated in newspapers, and all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate.
But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised hands to him in worship.”
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Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (NY: New American Library/Penguin, 1935/2005), pages 70–71.
Seymour Martin Lipset on the Black Panthers and Antisemitism
Published May 5, 2019 Antisemitism , Marxism , Nationalism , Zionism/Israel/Palestine Leave a CommentThus Stokeley Carmichael who was a leader of both the Student Nonviolent (now “National”) Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and of the Black Panthers before abandoning the struggle in America for residence abroad, accounted for the resentment expressed toward Jews by black militants as a result of “the exploitation [of blacks] by Jewish landlords and merchants,” in an article published in The New York Review of Books in 1966. Elsewhere, he wrote: “You let just one Negro get a Molotov cocktail and throw it at some Jew’s liquor store and they call out the whole damn National Guard.” In an interview with David Frost on April 13, 1970, Carmichael declared that, in his judgment, Adolf Hitler “was the greatest white man.” He went on to say that he could not describe men like Johnson, Nixon, Truman or Churchill as “great people,” since they “were doing things against my people.”
The most overt expressions of anti‐Semitism have come generally from the most militant of the black organizations, the one with closest ties to sections of the white New and Old Lefts, the self‐described Marxist‐Leninist Black Panther party. The party goes out of its way to identify as Jews those in the Establishment who oppose it and who happen to be Jews. Thus, in the Dec. 21, 1968, issue of The Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver attacked Judge Monroe Friedman, who presided over the Oakland, Calif., trial of Huey Newton in the following terms: “If the Jews like Judge Friedman are going to be allowed to function, and come to their synagogues to pray on Saturdays, or do whatever they do down there, then we’ll make a coalition with the Arabs, against the Jews….”
The Panthers have even argued that Judge Julius J. Hoffman gave the Jewish defendants in the Chicago conspiracy trial better treatment than he gave Bobby Seale. Connie Matthews, international coordinator of the party, wrote in The Black Panther of April 25, 1970, that there was an alliance between the Jewish judge and the Jewish defendants:
“It was a Zionist judge, Judge Hoffman, who allowed the other Zionists to go free but has kept Bobby Seale in jail and sentenced him to four years for contempt charges. Bobby Seale alone stands trial again in April on conspiracy charges. With whom did he conspire? The Zionists?
“The other Zionists in the… trial [i.e., Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin] were willing and did sacrifice Bobby Seale and his role in the conspiracy trial to gain publicity.”
Now clearly Rubin and Hoffman are in no way “Zionists.” This is simply a code word for Jew, just as it has become in Eastern Europe.
Though opposed to all capitalists, the Panthers single out Jewish businessmen for attack. Thus, a statement in the May 19, 1970, issue of the party newspaper declares that they are against “Zionist exploitation here In Babylon, manifested in the robber barons that exploit in the garment industry and the bandit merchants and greedy slum lords that operate in our communities.” In describing a tenants’ action in Atlantic City against a landlord, an article in the June 13, 1970, Black Panther praises the tenants for “gathering together to form a United Front against Zionist Pig Sobel….” The article concludes with the exhortation: “ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE — DEATH TO THE ZIONIST PIGS.” And as if to prove that the reference to Sobel was not fortuitous, the paper a week later carried a story on “Substandard Housing in America” which referred to buildings “owned by a Zionist by the name of Rosenbaum.”
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from Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Socialism of Fools,” New York Times, January 3, 1971, page 6.
Alison Weir on Clay Douglas’s ‘The Free American Hour,’ Aug, 25, 2010
Published June 8, 2017 Antisemitism , Zionism/Israel/Palestine Leave a CommentTags: AlisonWeir, antisemitism, ClayDouglas, conspiracy theories, IfAmericansKnew
Recently the website IfAmericansKnewAlisonWeir went down, which documented some of cryptoantisemite Alison Weir’s more outrageous statements. We’ve pulled it out of archive.org to make it more available. The first post was a transcript of one of her appearances on the Clay Douglas show, and the second showed that one the first things she did upon becoming Council for the National Interest president was to send out propaganda based on classic antisemitic tropes.
SOURCE: https://web.archive.org/web/20160308024336/http://ifamericansknewalisonweir.com
Transcript: Alison Weir on The Free American Hour, August 25, 2010
originally posted March 25th, 2011
Below is a complete transcript of Alison Weir’s August 25, 2010 appearance on the Free American Hour internet radio show, hosted by far-Right and anti-Semitic activist Clay Douglas (freeamerican dot com). The full audio of this broadcast is available here. Alison Weir has also appeared on the Free American Hour on April 23, 2010 and February 9, 2011.
Continue reading ‘Alison Weir on Clay Douglas’s ‘The Free American Hour,’ Aug, 25, 2010′
Irving Howe: Bundist Vladimir Medem on Bolshevik dictatorship
Published January 28, 2017 Uncategorized Leave a CommentMore serious were the warnings of Vladimir Medem, the Bundist leader recently come to the United States, who argued at the [Jewish Socialist] Federation’s 1921 convention that “the dictatorship of the proletariat” must necessarily degenerate into a dictatorship of the ruling party over the proletariat. Only through democracy, Medem insisted, could socialism be fulfilled.*
* In a long-forgotten article published in a 1918 issue of the Warsaw Bundist paper, Lebns-Fragen, Medem wrote: “The guns of the conscripted Bolshevik soldiers are directed not only at the bourgeoisie. They are turned against the socialist working class. The day is not far when revolutionary tribunals of the more ‘kosher’ Bolsheviks will be set up to shoot the more ‘suspect’ of their own comrades… And if today Lenin years to shoot Abramovitch [a Menshevik leader], may he not wish to shoot Trotsky tomorrow?
“A socialist government that turns to the methods of terror signs its own death warrant.”
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The debate over Bolshevism brought the Forward to a major crisis. It was not possible to keep these differences locked into the inner circles: polemical articles spilled across the pages of the paper. Opposition to [Forward founder and Bolshevik supporter Abraham] Cahan was led by Vladimir Medem, a leader of the Bund who had recently arrived from Poland and was acknowledged in all segments of the Jewish world as a figure of moral and intellectual authority. Medem launched a principled attack on the enthusiasm so many Jewish socialists were displaying for the Bolshevik dictatorship, and he was especially sharp in the polemical assaults he directed at Cahan. Neither before or since has Cahan been treated so roughly, even unceremoniously, in his own pages. Though other anti-Bolsheviks were briefly kept out of the Forward pages, Medem carried too much prestige to be treated that way. A dying man, he wrote scathingly about the Bolsheviks, attacking Lenin as a kalter gazlen (a cold-blooded thug). The worst apologists for the Bolshevik dictatorship, he wrote, are not those who deny it violating socialist or democratic ethics, but those who say, “Yes, they are doing it and it’s right.” Arguing against Cahan’s quasi-Leninist notion of a “transitional dictatorship,” Medem stated what would become the classical socialist critique of Bolshevism:
This is the same revolutionary conceit which looks upon a cluster of “conscious ones” as the heroes who represent…the wise, the adept, the leaders. … The mass is nothing but inert material to be molded. If it balks at going along peacefully, then it must be dragged along forcibly. If the truth has no effect on it, then lies must be employed.
If a reversion to the Spanish Inquisition is necessary for the realization of socialism, then we can do without such a socialism.
# # #
Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the Eastern European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), pages 328–29, 541
Update December 31, 2017: I recently found a scan the Medem article which Howe refers to at the Marxist Internet Archive: see Vladimir Medem, “On Terror.”
Edward Bellamy Disses Anarchists in “Looking Backward”
Published January 17, 2017 Anarchism Leave a CommentEdward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward 2000–1887 is often praised as the best-selling agit-prop socialist novel of the late 19th century. In fact, it’s a wooden didactic piece which praises a purely technocractic future, disses the radical left, and is complete with the main character having a super-creepy marriage. In this passage, Bellamy clearly tries to promote the idea that the radical left of his day was a “false flag” operation:
“By the way,” said I [main character Julian West], as the doctor read aloud to us some of these items, “what part did the followers of the red flag take in the establishment of the new order of things? They were making considerable noise the last thing that I knew.”
“They had nothing to do with it except to hinder it, of course,” replied Dr. Leete. “They did that very effectually while they lasted, for their talk so disgusted people as to deprive the best considered projects for social reform of a hearing. The subsidizing of those fellows was one of the shrewdest moves of the opponents of reform.”
“Subsidizing them!” I exclaimed in astonishment.
“Certainly,” replied Dr. Leete. “No historical authority nowadays doubts that they were paid by the great monopolies to wave the red flag and talk about burning, sacking, and blowing people up, in order, by alarming the timid, to head off any real reforms. What astonishes me most is that you should have fallen into the trap so unsuspectingly.”
“What are your grounds for believing that the red flag party was subsidized?” I inquired.
“Why simply because they must have seen that their course made a thousand enemies of their professed cause to one friend. Not to suppose that they were hired for the work is to credit them with an inconceivable folly.* In the United States, of all countries, no party could intelligently expect to carry its point without first winning over to its ideas a majority of the nation, as the national party eventually did.”
* I fully admit the difficulty of accounting for the course of the anarchists on any other theory than that they were subsidized by the capitalists, but at the same time, there is no doubt that the theory is wholly erroneous. It certainly was not held at the time by any one, though it may seem so obvious in the retrospect.
###
source: www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bellamy-ed/works/backward/ch24.htm
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000–1887, originally published 1888.
U.S. Green Party’s Ajamu Baraka Linked to Holocaust Denier
Published August 10, 2016 Antisemitism 2 CommentsThe U.S. Green Party is well-known to be a home for antisemites and conspiracy theorists. In fact, this seems to be such an accepted fact in the party that it has nominated Amaju Baraka for vice president, even tho he has a very public history of working with Holocaust Denier Kevin Barrett. This includes being in an anthology Barrett edited, and appearing on his radio show.
- Baraka appears in Barrett’s “false flag” anthology Another French False Flag? Bloody Tracks from Paris to San Bernadino. The book includes well-known antisemitic contributors like Gilad Atzmon, neofascist Alain Soral, David Dees, and Ken O’Keefe.
- It was not a fluke that Baraka was in the anthology; he appeared on Barrett’s Truth Jihad radio show at least twice: see here and here.
- For Barrett’s views on Holocaust Denial, see here and here.
- A Green Party national co-coordinator replied by smearing those who pointed this out as an attempt to “run interference for apartheid in Israel” — despite the fact that the discussion was in reference to Holocaust Denial, and had no references to Israel.
- Jill Stein, or whoever is running her twitter account, has refused to reply to tweets, but has “liked” a tweet saying it’s acceptable that Baraka is working with a Holocaust Denier.
There is no justification for anyone on the Left working with Holocaust Deniers. This is not a new issue for the Greens either; the Canadian party just expelled a member for Holocaust Denial.
The Green Party needs to publicly denounce Holocaust Denial, break links with deniers, and institute mandatory education about antisemitism for all national and state-level staff.
UPDATE: According to Gawker, Baraka claims he knew nothing about Barrett’s views — despite the fact that they were public before his radio shows appearances. He claims he is the victim of a vast media conspiracy, saying,
“This witch-hunt against Ajamu Baraka is utterly bizarre, and the people participating it—from the media barons who ordered it to the lowly reporters who carry out those orders—are pathetic cowards who disgrace the name of journalism.”
It seems that everyone is to blame except Ajamu Baraka.
Barrett’s anthology, which includes a contribution from Ajamu Baraka, alongside a host of well-known neofascists and antisemites.
