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by jakell » Mon Feb 09, 2015 10:25 am
American Dream » Mon Feb 09, 2015 1:00 pm wrote:The Far Right has a proven potential to be opportunistic, deceptive, adaptable
...(long C&P deleted)...
by American Dream » Mon Feb 09, 2015 10:48 am
by jakell » Mon Feb 09, 2015 11:58 am
American Dream » Mon Feb 09, 2015 2:48 pm wrote:I see a lot of fairly ignorant/bigoted followers- and a smaller number of the more cunning leader types- amongst the various tendencies of the Far Right...
by American Dream » Tue Feb 10, 2015 10:48 am
The Parisian Anarchist Federation Have Released A Statement On Anti-Semitism
10/02/2015
By Geoffrey Cohen
Last month, shortly after the death of four Jews shopping at a Kosher Market in Paris, Jewdas published a translated statement by the Union Juive Francaise Pour La Paix – the French Jewish Union for Peace. We’re keen to learn more about how the French left is thinking about anti-semitism, so today we’re publishing another statement, this time by Regard Noir – Federation Anarchiste – a Parisian division of the Anarchist Federation
Thanks goes to our Paris correspondent James Kleinfeld (@jameskleinfeld) for providing the translation.
The struggle against antisemitism is not a relic of the past.
Antisemitism is a violent oppression, just like all other oppressions. It has always been so, but today it is essential for us not to compromise with this particular racism, and to set the record straight.
No, antisemitism is not only to be found exclusively in a small section of the far right. You can also find it in the far left and throughout the political spectrum. This is true today, but it is nothing new; no movement is totally spared. We can, after all, just as well find other forms of oppression in every movement, there is no reason that this shouldn’t be the case for this oppression in particular.
No, antisemitism is not ‘out of fashion’, or something brought back into fashion by the French State — or by the State of Israel while we’re on the subject — so as to denigrate the Palestinian struggle. If it is true that this oppression is instrumentalised by those in power, the same goes for the Palestinian struggle, which we do not so readily abandon. Those on the Left who say such things do so, for the most part, out of pure essentialist demagogy, out of fear for alienating those who feel concerned by the situation in Palestine.
This amounts to saying: “Let’s not criticise Arabs and Blacks who make anti-semitic statements within the Palestinian struggle, so that we can move beyond our movement full of White people and gain support in the lower and working class neighbourhoods.” This amounts at once to fantasy, contempt and paternalism. It has been a long time since the most ‘sketchy’ people were ejected from demonstrations, and now we can no longer get enough people on the left to clean up our own house; is this a cause or an effect?
We consider that not ejecting antisemitic elements from the struggles in support of Palestine does no favour to this struggle and that to not fight antisemitism specifically amounts to accepting entryism of reactionary or fascist groups. By the same token, tolerating antisemites in pro-Palestinian organisations, above all those on the Left, is unacceptable; our behaviour must be irreproachable on this subject and a clear line must be drawn. The problem must be posed clearly, without using the easy and pathetic excuse of fascist, police or government provocation to justify it. If these organisations do not undertake this work, we will have to draw the line in the sand ourselves.
No, the struggle against antisemitism is no less important than the struggle against racism towards Muslims. The near total silence on the far Left and amongst most anarchists on the antisemitic nature of the murders in the Kosher supermarket, the killings by Mohammed Merah, by Youssouf Fofana’s gang and the slaughter in the Jewish museum in Belgian, is deafening. What’s more, the killers are presented as “mad” or “psychopaths” without anybody really considering the political and antisemitic nature of their acts. The victims are systematically “forgotten” in the record of the victims of racism. Even when this forgetfulness is apparently involuntary, of which we cannot be certain, this is still a sign of the lack of interest amongst the far Left, anarchists and antifascists on this subject.
No, to struggle against antisemitism does not mean to support the State of Israel. We struggle against all States without exception, in this respect the State of Israel is as much an enemy as the French state. As anarchists we support as much the struggle against racist and colonial politics. To claim that the objective of the denunciation of leftwing antisemitism is to legitimise the State of Israel amounts to affirming the existence of a “Zionist” conspiracy within the libertarian movement. The conspiratorial discourse lies not far behind, and many accusations and attacks go in this direction: Frenchstyle ‘AntiDeutsch’[1], Zionists, colonialists, imperialists etc. These attacks will not stop us from putting our foot in our mouths, with all due respect to those who hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
No, jews and Jews [2] do not all support Israel. Just as Muslims do not have to justify themselves for the attacks of a couple of takfiris [3], jews and Jews do not have to be excused for the crimes of Israel and do not also have to justify their support for the Palestinian struggle more than other militants. This attitude of rejection and suspicion, along with all the other points of this article, is making our movements very unwelcoming, and that’s the least that we can say for the people coming from this community. Moreover the refusal to take interest in the struggle against antisemitism and notably in what this struggle requires in terms of self defence, is pushing a part of Jewish youth into the ranks of communitarian far right organisation, which promises to fight back, albeit obviously against the wrong enemy.
Antisemitism and Islamophobia are not “the same thing”, they do not occupy the same place or function in French society, but, far from being in a relationship of confrontation, they are mutually structured and reinforced in reactionary discourse and serve to justify one another to the detriment of our class and of those who struggle. Not hierarchising oppressions implies analysing this reality without sticking our heads in the sand, so as to better fight them with one, united front.
The “Regard noir” group of the Anarchist Federation
Notes
[1] German movement coming from the autonomous and antifascist far Left which, following a critique of anti-Zionism, has evolved towards pro-Israel and pro-American positions.
[2] There is a distinction to be drawn between a Jewish identity as religious identity and Jewish ‘cultural’ identity. In our article, we draw this distinction so as to nuance the delusional belief in a “organic community”, as so many antisemites often describe it. We should also add those assimilated into the Jewish community, whether they recognise themselves as having these “origins” or not.
[3] A particularly rigorous sect of Islam which considers the majority of Muslims as apostates, and which aims to isolate the Muslim community from others, notably by acts of violence which will isolate believers or assimilated Muslims so that these populations will “come back into the fold.
by seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 10, 2015 11:18 am
7 Fascist Regimes Enthusiastically Supported by America
The U.S. treated Cuba as an enemy while backing deeply oppressive Latin American regimes.
By Alex Henderson / AlterNet February 4, 2015
President Barack Obama inspired a great deal of debate when, in December, he asserted that it was time for the United States to begin to normalize relations with Cuba and start loosening the embargo that has been in effect since the early 1960s. And many hard-right Republicans and neocons, from Texas’ Ted Cruz and Florida’s Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate to House Speaker John Boehner, have been vehemently critical of Obama’s stand. Boehner has insisted that “relations with the Castro regime should not be revisited, let alone normalized, until the Cuban people enjoy freedom,” and Cruz has maintained that because Fidel and Raul Castro are “brutal dictators,” the embargo must remain. But given the United States’ long history of supporting one fascist dictatorship after another in Latin America, the embargo of Cuba has been the height of hypocrisy on the U.S.’ part. While it’s true that Amnesty International has often been critical of the Castro regime over the years, many of the other Latin American dictatorships that Amnesty International has criticized have been U.S. allies—and Cuba has hardly had the market cornered on human rights abuses in Latin America.
Below are seven of the worst fascist regimes in Latin America that the U.S. enthusiastically supported.
1. Chile: Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s Military Junta, 1973-1990
In 1970, socialist Salvador Allende was democratically elected president of Chile as the leader of the Unidad Popular (a coalition of leftist parties). Allende had been in office for three years when far-right forces in the Chilean military staged an armed insurrection with the help and encouragement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Richard Nixon Administration (Allende, who evidently committed suicide by shooting himself, was found dead in the presidential palace in Santiago on September 11, 1973). A U.S.-backed military dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet (a fascist greatly influenced by Spain’s Gen. Francisco Franco and Italy’s Benito “Il Duce” Mussolini) came to power, and thousands of Allende supporters were killed and tortured during Pinochet’s reign of terror. Not until 1990, after 17 years of fascist rule, was democracy restored in Chile.
2. Guatemala’s Military Dictatorships
For decades, the U.S. supported harsh military dictatorships in Guatemala, and its reasons for doing so can be summed up in three words: United Fruit Company. The UFC, a huge American corporation, made considerable profits from fruit plantations in various Latin American countries, including Guatemala—and when Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz (who won by a landslide in Guatemala’s 1951 election) pushed a program of agrarian reform, the UFC lost some of the uncultivated land it had in that country. Árbenz was popular among indigenous Mayans but very unpopular with the UFC, which lobbied the U.S. government to remove him from power. The UFC got its way: in a coup orchestrated by the U.S. State Department and the CIA, Árbenz’ democratically elected government was overthrown in 1954 and replaced by the repressive military dictatorship of Col. Carlos Castillo Armas. And the U.S.-backed military regimes that followed Armas’ assassination in 1957 proved to be even worse. Tens of thousands of Guatemalans were slaughtered by fascist military forces and far-right death squads in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
The CIA/State Department-orchestrated overthrow of Árbenz in 1954 might have been great for UFC profits, but it led to considerable bloodshed in Guatemala.
3. Nicaragua: The Somoza Dynasty, 1930s-1979
The fascist regimes of Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain became the blueprint for a long list of fascist dictators in Latin America, from Juan María Bordaberry in Uruguay to Tuburcio Andino in Honduras to Fulgencio Batista (another U.S. ally) in Cuba. And the Mussolini/Franco model of governing was also a major influence on the Somoza dynasty, which ruled Nicaragua with an iron fist for decades and did so with the blessing of the U.S. government. Torture was the norm under the Somozas.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, revolutionary Augusto Sandino led a rebellion against U.S. military occupation of Nicaragua; Sandino’s assassination by Nicaraguan National Guard forces under Gen. Anastasio Somoza, Sr. in 1934 was followed by the long-lastingrule of the Somoza family—which, in 1979, was overthrown by the Sandino-influenced Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) or Sandinista National Liberation Front . The Somozas were close allies of the U.S., and although so-called “free elections” were held in Nicaragua during the Somoza years, the reality is that the Somozas operated a U.S.-backed military dictatorship with little in the way of checks and balances.
After coming to power in 1979, the FSLN went from being an armed insurgent movement to being an actual political party and have since competed with other parties in Nicaraguan elections. The Sandinistas were detested by the Ronald Reagan Administration and the CIA, who aggressively supported the Contras (a rightist coalition that included remnants of the Somoza regime) in their efforts to overthrow the new government. Reagan often denounced Sandinista President Daniel Ortega as heavy-handed and dictatorial, which was truly ironic in light of the cozy relationship the U.S. had with the Somozas for many years.
4. El Salvador’s Military Dictatorship: 1979-1992
Like its neighbor Guatemala, El Salvador has a very painful history—and one of the most painful parts is the civil war that lasted from 1979-1992. During those 13 years, a U.S.-supported military junta wasn’t shy about using death squads and torture in its efforts against the leftist guerillas of el Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional or FMLN. The same American politicians who insisted on maintaining a boycott of Cuba had no problem with supporting the Salvadoran junta, which did not except U.S. citizens from its brutality: on December 2, 1980, three American nuns (Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke and Ita Ford) and American lay missionary Jean Donovan were kidnapped and killed by one of the death squads while doing charitable work in El Salvador. Donovan had, in March 1980, attended the funeral of Archbishop Óscar Romero, a Catholic priest who was assassinated after being critical of the junta—and to the death squad’s members, that alone made all of the women enemies. But despite the killings of Romero, Donovan, Clarke, Kazel, Ford and countless others, U.S. support for the junta continued under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Sr. And by the time a ceasefire was declared in 1992 (when the FMLN became a legal political party), thousands of Salvadorans had been killed and/or tortured.
5. Argentina: The Dirty War, 1976-1983
The military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976-1983 was infamous for its human rights abuses: an estimated 30,000 people were killed. And one U.S. politician who was on very friendly terms with the junta, according to declassified U.S. State Department documents, was Henry Kissinger (secretary of state during the administrations of Nixon and Gerald Ford). Meeting with Argentina’s foreign minister, Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti, in 1976, Kissinger assured him that he could count on U.S. support. Kissinger obviously knew what type of brutality the junta was capable of, but he didn’t care: like so many other U.S. politicians during the Cold Way, he had no problem with butchers in Latin America as long as they were staunchly anti-communist.
6. Bolivia: The Hugo Banzer Dictatorship, 1971-1977
When the policies of Bolivia’s socialist president, Juan José Torres, angered the Nixon Administration in the early 1970s, the U.S. helped to overthrow him and install the fascist military dictatorship of Gen. Hugo Banzer. The Banzer regime lasted until 1977, and during Banzer’s rule, torture and false imprisonment were common. Torres fled Bolivia after the coup and settled in Argentina, where he became one of the early casualties of the Dirty War: in June 1976, Torres was kidnapped and killed by one of the Argentinean junta’s death squads.
Torres’ killing was part of Operation Condor, an unholy alliance of fascist forces and military juntas whose stated goal was to eradicate any type of Marxism in South America. Pinochet, Guzzetti, Banzer, Bordaberry and Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner were all participants in the program, which the CIA enthusiastically promoted.
7. Paraguay: The AlfredoStroessner Regime, 1954-1989
Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, who was in power from 1954-1989, was a strident anti-communist—and that was enough for the U.S., which pumped millions of dollars into his regime in the 1950s and 1960s and had a close relationship with the Paraguayan military for many years. Torture, kidnappings and other human rights abuses were common under the Stroessner regime, which authorized Pastor Milciades Coronel (who oversaw Stroessner’s secret police) to commit numerous atrocities. In 1975, Stroessner even listened on the phone while Miguel Soler, head of the Paraguayan Communist Party, was being dismembered with a chainsaw by Coronel’s policía secreta.
by American Dream » Tue Feb 10, 2015 12:31 pm
Do Muslims Belong in the West? An Interview with Talal Asad
Feb 03 2015
by Hasan Azad
In this discussion, Talal Asad identifies the problematic ways in which the presence of Muslim communities in Western contexts has been characterized in response to outbreaks of violence such as the recent events in Paris. Asad argues that many of the critiques to which Muslims are subjected, namely their dependence on transcendent forces, also inhabit the intellectual assumptions of secular and atheist commentators. He further expresses the need to examine Islam as a "tradition" in order to avoid precisely the types of sweeping generalizations and focus instead on the complexities and particularities of the various ways in which Islam is lived. The inability to historicize Islam as a tradition has played into the calls for a "reform" of the religion and resulted in the inability to confront the underlying causes of the recent eruptions of violence. This interview was conducted in New York on 17 January 2015. It was later transcribed for publication.
Hasan Azad (HA): Do Muslims belong in the West? This is a question that has been asked for many years, but perhaps with no more force than today. You wrote in your essay “Muslims as a ‘Religious Minority’ in Europe” (2003), over a decade ago, that “Muslims as Muslims cannot be represented in Europe.” Is there something almost inevitable in the way “the clash of civilizations” is being set up by certain sectors in the West?
Talal Asad (TA): No, I do not think there is such a thing as a “clash of civilizations.” When I said that Muslims as Muslims cannot be represented in the West, I was being ironic, and also referring to the fact that ninety percent of the time when people talk about “the problem of Muslims” in the West, it is to complain about the fact that Muslims have not “integrated.” There is very little serious discussion about what it means to be “European,” what it means to be French, or British, or whatever, and what exactly “secularism” in Europe means for religion in general and Islam in particular. The problem is always seen as, either: We must try harder to integrate them, or: It is their fault they do not integrate, and it is because they are attached to an illiberal religion, and so to values that conflict profoundly with our secular, egalitarian society.
In other words, the problem is seen as a matter of why “they” do not fit in to what is thought of as “our” society, rather than: What or who are “we,” as Europe or as France or Britain, and what must we do to change aspects of ourselves in order to make it possible for Muslims (who will also need to change) to be represented in Europe as Muslims? The problem is always seen as one of assimilating Muslims into Europe (whose structure and identity are fixed) if we are well intentioned towards them, and if you are not well intentioned, then making it quite clear that they do not belong with us–that they ought to “go back to where they came from.” Europe in the sixteenth century was not what it is like today–indeed, it was not even “Europe” but “Christendom.” Even after the forces of secularization things did not remain the same–politically, economically, or culturally. This is one of my voices, by the way. I am now speaking as someone who has lived most of his life in the West.
Incidentally, I think the term “West” does have some uses: It is not always to be dismissed as nonsensical (“there’s no such thing as the West”), but nor is it to be used in the slaphappy way many people use it when they say “the West has done this, the West has done that.” But I think the term has legitimate uses. Think of it this way: if there are governments, if there are generals and politicians and bankers and even ordinary people like us, who talk about “the West”–on the European and North American continent–then there is a West. Because that is what our own activities presuppose. And in presupposing it, they partly create it, for good or for ill.
I say this because I am now talking to some extent to the West, to people in the West, whom one considers to be one’s cultural peers, one’s fellow citizens–regardless of whether they are hostile or friendly. That is part of it. I think it is important for me, certainly, to remember that one cannot or should not talk just as a “Muslim in Europe,” but also as somebody who is making a claim in the West on the West, in European countries and in the United States (as Tariq Ramadan has written). And in those situations I can talk about “we” even without any sense of incongruity.
"In the course of the rapid globalization of labor and capital it is no longer possible to sustain any legitimacy for that separation between the capital and the colonial, between the West and the Rest, for the capital has always been in the colonial, the colonial in the capital, and the very notion of ‘the West’ was a coded category privileging the beneficiaries of the capital from the massive multitudes it denigrated, enslaved, and abused"
— Hamid Dabashi, Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting The Empire p. 33-34
by coffin_dodger » Tue Feb 10, 2015 1:26 pm
Searcher08 wrote:Apparently not.
by American Dream » Tue Feb 10, 2015 1:34 pm
by Searcher08 » Tue Feb 10, 2015 2:14 pm
by coffin_dodger » Tue Feb 10, 2015 2:20 pm
American Dream wrote:It doesn't take much thought at all to see that I am not- as in particular with the last piece from jewdas- endorsing anything even close to the mainstream perspective. Irregardless, the Far Right offers a horrible alternative.
by American Dream » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:16 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:18 pm
by jakell » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:23 pm
seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 10, 2015 8:18 pm wrote:that is absolutely untrue and I can not figure for the life of me how/why you would come to such a ridicules conclusion
by slimmouse » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:31 pm
by American Dream » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:36 pm
Post-Third Position Fascism
Posted on February 4, 2013 by postthirdpositionfascism
Welcome to Post-Third Position Fascism. The purpose of this blog is to provide resources regarding recent permutations of Third Position and New Right fascist movements, especially in the U.S. – as well as groups that are influenced by these trends or work in alliance with them. These include, but are not limited to, groups like National-Anarchists, Attack the System, New Resistance, and others. We’ll also look at the attempts to appropriate radical left symbols and slogans by European groups like Casa Pound and the Autonomous Nationalists.
Third Position fascism is a lesser-known type of fascism that is anti-capitalist, believes in racial separatism rather than racial supremacy (and therefore can unite white and POC separatist groups in what we call reciprocal ethno-separatism), and is often interested in ecology and animal rights. The origins of the Third Position are in Otto Strasser’s wing of the original Nazi party; Strasser condemned Hitler for being “too moderate.” The term itself arose in the 1970s around the Italian “Nazi-Maoists.” These ideas became influential on British groups like the National Front; Russian groups like the National Bolshevik Party; and later on U.S. groups like the Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance (WAR), the American Front, the White Order of Thule, and the National Alliance.
More recently longtime fascist activists, many of whom were involved in groups like the European Liberation Front, and the associated LCRN, have continued to develop and change their ideology. (As right-wing monitor Chip Berlet points out, these are not just followers of similar ideas, but participants in a close-knit, international network of postwar fascists.) These include far right activists like Britain’s Troy Southgate, America’s James Porrazzo, and Russia’s Alexander Dugin. They have developed in different directions, sometimes embracing a Eurasian superstate in opposition to liberal international capitalism, while at other times endorsing a micronational ethnic separatism and even fusing with racist, antisemitic elements of the Ron Paul-wing of libertarianism. All of them deny being “fascist” – while continuing to promote the same ideas they have held for decades.
We’ll keep track of all of them, and expose their attempts at “entryism” in the left; their promotion of holocaust denial and other conspiracy theories; and their attempts to justify and endorse White Nationalists’ supposed “right” to Jim Crow white racial separatism.
We stand in opposition to white supremacy and white separatism; anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish views and conspiracy theories; patriarchy and homophobia – and to capitalism and all authoritarian forms of statist and religious rule.
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