Anti-Germanism
I posted something about Anti-Germanism here a while back. Here are some more links on Anti-Germanism. I’ve taken them from the Wikipedia entry on movement, but it was me who put some of them there.- Meet the Anti-Germans
- The Good Men of Leipzig
- Communism, anti-German criticism and Israel
- Who Are The Anti-Germans? (Bahamas)
- Who are the anti-germans? (sinistra!)
- Anti-Germans, Communism, Rupture (discussion list)
![[Image source]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hamm02.jpg){kind=link}
Comments
That isn't a cariacture, but their 'position' as I've been informed on many occasions (which if you follow it through is actually extremely anti-semitic, as they're therefore claiming all capitalists are Jewish and vice-versa).
But from them, I think you do seem to be caricaturing them - their analysis seems more complex than that.
The key point, I think, is that real anti-capitalists should be looking at capitalism in its totality, not simply in terms of one of its forms (finance capital) or one of its national centres (America). "Anti-capitalism" that concentrates only on these is either simply anti-Americanism or ends up defending European or German/British/whatever industrial capital. And there is long history to the lopsided critique of finance capital, and that history is interwoven with the history of the anti-semitisms of the left and the right. (As I don't need to tell you, the Nazis painted themselves as "anti-capitalists" too.)
http://karlmarxstrasse.blogsport.de/2007/05/27/film-and-reality/
I think a lot of it is seriously, dangerously mental, born out of a combination of West German academic Marxism as taught at universities, perfectly correct disgust with the crimes of fascism, sympathy with Stalinism as it formally existed in the GDR (after the collapse of the East German regime they turned the slogan "Nie wieder Auschwitz" into "Nie wieder Deustchland" against unification), and a total acceptance of 'collective responsiblity' as taught in German schools.
Of course, they carry out no political activity as I, and I suspect you, would understand it - (again, I've been told on a fair few occasions), 'trade unions are just German, white, male organisations' - which is partly true, and also, they're pretty crap.
On the nazis being "anti capitalists" - here the NPD are much more anti-capitalist than any sector of the "antideutschen", but then again, that's not very difficult.
that should read "as it formerly existed"
I also think I don't fully understand the dynamic that Re-Unification played in the formation of the Anti-deutschen, which I know is part of their origin. Nostalgia for the GDR is certainly a deeply reactionary politics which I wouldn't want to have any part of.
You said "though certainly no wronger than parading wearing Palestinian scarves..."
Do you really mean to say that the actions of the US government (represented by the US flag) are "no wronger" than the actions of any of the various Palestinian factions that draw symbolism from the kafiyah? This seems hard to fathom.
I have major problems with the ways in which Palestinian solidarity is tangled up with apologies for terrorism and anti-semitism, but this sort of equivalence seems pretty unmoored from reality.
Solidarity,
Mike
In other words, the flags are not equivalent because both are better and both are worse than the other. In some contexts, choosing one flag, one camp, over the other, seems instinctively the right thing to do. But we shouldn't.
To choose one over the other (the two-way fight, the two camps) is wrong. To reject both (the three-way fight, the third camp) is probably the only morally healthy response.
-bob
(p.s. I hope parenthood is going well with you.)
Mike, hope you are having loads of fun with the new baby as well.