Labour & Anti-Semitism.

[Bernie Gunther]

Thanks for that stuff Pickmans.

I'd say that it's pretty clear that Brenner's account has a lot more respect for evidence than some (but not all) of his critics are giving him credit for.

edited to add: what some of the critical response seems to do is focus on the use people like Ken are making of his stuff and argue with simplistic positions based on that.

 

[Pickman's model]

p. 275

p. 39

 

[bi0boy]

The Left’s problem with Anti-Semitism

 

[Idris2002]

Martin Luther? Jewish Friendly? What fuckery is this?

 

[Knotted]

Soft Zionists (two state solution types) are pushing very hard on this. They want to see opposition to their favoured solution to be placed beyond the pale. I don't think they realise that a lot of people support two states for pragmatic reasons rather than moralistic reasons. I predict overreach.

 

[DotCommunist]

so because nobody was biting Diamonds 'the Left are all antisemites' lines he went there with the 'holocaust-deniers' line? ugh.

 

[Pickman's model]

The Left’s problem with Anti-Semitism

i was going to put this as a response:

Frankly Israel should be destroyed. It's been a foul state from its inception, provoking the Six Day War through water grabs earlier in the 1960s, Sabra, Shatila, and so on and so forth to the various assaults on Gaza and the illegal settlements in the West Bank. Its likely future trajectory is most likely more of the same with the same appalling treatment being meted out to the Palestinians.

Yes, Israel should be destroyed. But this doesn't mean 'Jews into the sea'. It means that either a single new polity encompassing the current territory of Israel and the Occupied Territories for all residents of Palestine should be founded; or the foundation of two states, as per resolution 242.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Err, yes. My post above was the bleakest kind of joke. If it was just Hitler all by himself, 'going mental', cos he didn't get into art college, it might not have quite made the headlines the way it did in the end. So yeah, he needed a certain amount of backup, like say a few centuries of anti-jew suspicion and loathing amongst the wider population, something like that.

The problem with that thesis is that German anti-Semitism - as recorded in the 50-60 years previous to the Third Reich - has nowhere near the vigour and rapacity of that propagated by the Nazi regime. Most scholars from Bracher-onward deal with the change from personal and individual anti-Semitism, and its change into an institutionalised anti-Semitism under Nazi and right influence.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Impressive, VP: You appear to construe the whole final solution thing as basically a rational economic decision, nothing personal like, nothing inherently connected with actual jew-hatred being an issue at the time. In a way, Hitler wasn't really an antisemite as such?

Yes, because that's what I've said, isn't it, du scheissekopf?

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes, because that's what I've said, isn't it, du scheissekopf?

careful now, she'll say you're goysplaining

 

[ViolentPanda]

I realise this isn't quite what you're referring to, and maybe this is going off at a tangent, but it's surely not simply about whether Hitler personally was an anti-semite and/or "mental", or when he personally stepped over some line from one thing to another.

If Hitler's undoubted personal anti-semitism hadn't had a wider resonance with a far greater number of people, then the scapegoating of Jews which led eventually to the Final Solution wouldn't have been successful. Whether or not it was a rational economic decision (and I don't think VP is suggesting it can be reduced to that alone), there's a sense in which it was a rational political tactic from the point of view of those who used it.

Thing is, if you read political commentary from the foundation of Germany through to Hitler-time, anti-Semitism is not an ever-present phenomenon, but something that got dusted down in economic downturns, when the Kaiser and his ministers needed someone to blame. It's also worth noting that at the same time, most Slavs (excepting sometimes the southern Slavs, whom both the Second Reich and the Austro-Hungarian empire attempted to cultivate/neutralise over that period) where treated with much the same degree of opprobrium.
With regard to the economics of the genocide of the Jews, the "rational" element was always "we can expropriate these Jews, these people who have accumulated much in Europe, we can strip them unto their very deaths, or we can expropriate the Slavs, mostly still peasants with very little in the way of money with which we can fund our war machine". Of course it wasn't the only motivation for liquidation, but it served the purposes of a state that had very little in the way of hard currency reserves, to expropriate bank accounts, land, personal possessions etc, and what served even better was to ensure the non-likelihood of someone filing a claim post-war, especially when many engaged in the decision-making process were personally enriching themselves through the same channels as the state.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Good. He's filthy opportunist.

You're still sore that he didn't buy you a pint, aren't you?

 

[Pickman's model]

Thing is, if you read political commentary from the foundation of Germany through to Hitler-time, anti-Semitism is not an ever-present phenomenon, but something that got dusted down in economic downturns, when the Kaiser and his ministers needed someone to blame. It's also worth noting that at the same time, most Slavs (excepting sometimes the southern Slavs, whom both the Second Reich and the Austro-Hungarian empire attempted to cultivate/neutralise over that period) where treated with much the same degree of opprobrium.
With regard to the economics of the genocide of the Jews, the "rational" element was always "we can expropriate these Jews, these people who have accumulated much in Europe, we can strip them unto their very deaths, or we can expropriate the Slavs, mostly still peasants with very little in the way of money with which we can fund our war machine". Of course it wasn't the only motivation for liquidation, but it served the purposes of a state that had very little in the way of hard currency reserves, to expropriate bank accounts, land, personal possessions etc, and what served even better was to ensure the non-likelihood of someone filing a claim post-war, especially when many engaged in the decision-making process were personally enriching themselves through the same channels as the state.

further to this, the attention which Karl Lueger - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia has received may be due to the relative absence of anti-semitic feeling elsewhere.

 

[ViolentPanda]

We are veering amazingly close to Holocaust denial now

Fuck me, but you're an idiot.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Listen - I have a close friend who spent two years converting from a Christian background to Judaism .In fact many Jews to this day would not regard him as a "yid" despite the fact that he was circumcised without any anaesthetic at the age of 31.

I went to his wedding - it was amazingly lavish.

And it was everything that antisemites hate.

And if my Muslim gf, who was not available, had attended you would have found it very confusing.

That's nice for you, dear.

 

[two sheds]

Fuck me, but you're an idiot.

It comes from mixing with all his anti-semitic mates at uni.

 

[DrRingDing]

You're still sore that he didn't buy you a pint, aren't you?

I have some standards you know.

 

[Pickman's model]

Fuck me, but you're an idiot.

it is astounding that 16 years after joining his posting is worse than when he was a teenager.

 

[ViolentPanda]

This is ridiculous - now I'm making up friends in order to defend Judaism?

Have a word with yourselves.

I'll have FOUR words with myself.

"Diamond is a twat".

 

[ViolentPanda]

You lot are off the scale

Whereas you appear to be on the illegals.

 

[CNT36]

it is astounding that 16 years after joining his posting is worse than when he was a teenager.

Must be all that time spent studying law.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So where to now? All the whowaswhat and whosaidwhat doesn't alter the fact that the Israelis are now there and the Palestinians are where they are. My use of these terms is just a shorthand, it has no special significance. The support that each faction within these two camps has is also a reality.

You can rake over the ashes of history all you like and I'm not saying you shouldn't but I'm not seeing any way forward. For example, some kind of cantonic secular state in the region isn't going to happen.

Could you stop your discussions for a moment and indulge me with a few solutions that might even partly work? You're all obviously clued up on the background and I'd genuinely be interested.

There is NO simple, unitary solution, unless you're prepared to have UN peacekeepers actually fighting a war with the state of Israel.
All those much-vaunted "peace processes", all they did was facilitate land-grabs and murder.

Expulsion of either side won't work, and a two-state solution that doesn't return the '67 borders and enable the right of return and full Palestinian autonomy won't, either.

 

[ViolentPanda]

A single, secular, state of Palestine, with a full right of return for all those driven out, and their families. Bog standard stuff.

It's the obvious solution, which is why it'll never be allowed to happen.

 

[Pickman's model]

There is NO simple, unitary solution, unless you're prepared to have UN peacekeepers actually fighting a war with the state of Israel.
All those much-vaunted "peace processes", all they did was facilitate land-grabs and murder.

Expulsion of either side won't work, and a two-state solution that doesn't return the '67 borders and enable the right of return and full Palestinian autonomy won't, either.

how abouts an expulsion of both sides?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Someone on Cedar Lounge made the point that "Zionism" was a very heterogeneous movement with a lot of internal ideological diversity, and differing, competing, and even contradictory elements within it.

Some of us have been making that point on here for over a decade.

 

[treelover]

i have just been reported to FB and blocked, I disagreed with the fanatics on JC4PM on this issue and as I don't use my real name, they reported me as a troll, this is the sort of people the left partly comprises of now.

 

[ViolentPanda]

how abouts an expulsion of both sides?

I'd reiterate my previous point that a majority of Jewish Israeli citizens have dual passports, so have somewhere to go, whereas the Palestinians don't - and we know that Israel's Arab neighbours don't want even more rebellious, secularised Palestinians in their countries than they already have.
As ever, as a people the Palestinians are trapped between a bigger rock, and a harder place, than their Israeli counterparts.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'd reiterate my previous point that a majority of Jewish Israeli citizens have dual passports, so have somewhere to go, whereas the Palestinians don't - and we know that Israel's Arab neighbours don't want even more rebellious, secularised Palestinians in their countries than they already have.
As ever, as a people the Palestinians are trapped between a bigger rock, and a harder place, than their Israeli counterparts.

yeh. well. my proposal is, as i've mentioned before, that the people who could make the desert bloom could have a pop at working the same sort of magic in birobidzhan. while the palestinians could be driven from the west bank and gaza strip into what is currently the zionist entity.

 

[Idris2002]

Some of us have been making that point on here for over a decade.

First with the late results.

 

[treelover]

A single, secular, state of Palestine, with a full right of return for all those driven out, and their families. Bog standard stuff.

bog standard for whom?, and what would the non secular Hamas have to say about that?