Clash of isms
There are two common threads running through a lot of these links. One is the specific form of derangement that affects part of the Western left, with its cultic reverence for semi-exotic authoritarian thugs (Che Guevara, Hugo Chavez, the Tunisian Islamists, the Iranian theocracy) who pose as "anti-imperialist", as well as its equally cultic reverence for Western intellectual stars like Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek whose opaque writings provide, for their initiates, a warrant for the most infantile of politics.
The second is the rising authoritarianism of the right, viciously racist towards Muslims, Roma, migrants and others. This authoritarian right is exemplified by the English Defence League in the UK, Pamela Geller in the US, Avigdor Lieberman and the settler movement in Israel. We can see its fruit in the rising tide of violence against Muslims (but also "Muslim-looking" non-Muslim Asians) and other minorities in the UK and Europe, as well as intensifying the war between Jews and Muslims in Israel/Palestine. (For this reason, it gives some comfort to read of the Israeli police arresting Rabbi Yaacov Yosef for inciting violence against Arabs.)
Islam and Islamism: An interview with an Egyptian Salafist in New Humanist. The British left's tolerance of extremism will do for us, argues Rob Marchant. Andrew Coates reports on Islamists attacking democrats in Tunisia (note, this is Ennahdha, the party led by Rashid Al-Ghannushi and often claimed to be "moderate" and democratic, not least by the Guardian, which has given a regular platform to his daughters). Andrew has other posts on the depressing rise of violent Islamism in Tunisia, including several on the travails of secularist heroine Nadia el Fani. Comrade Coates also points to the bizarre publication by "Socialist Unity" of some appalling Iran regime apologetics via Conflicts Forum. And Paul Stott bucks the Reagan revisionism - Ronnie did after all give us the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Note, a lot of these links relate one way or another to Palestinian Islamist leader Raed Salah. Adam Holland notes Mondoweiss sinking to a new low in Salah's defence.
Leftism: Principia Dialectica report from "Marxism" [sic] 2011.
Latin American radical chic: Reuben on Hari on Che. Radosh on Chomsky on Chavez.
Israel/Palestine: Eric Lee on not everyone in the labour movement being down with Hamas. Liam Hoare on Israel in a multipolar world, and on Yisrael Beiteinu as Israel's soviet party. Hitch on the Gaza flotilla activists. ("The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians.")
The EDL and its friends: Loads of EDL news from Malatesta. Also Searchlight on the EDL/English Nationalist Alliance's supergrass Roger Firth. The Hucknall Dispatch on the EDL's Christopher Payne and his disgusting anti-Muslim racism. SPLC reports on Pamela Geller and her stumbling attempts to reconquer Europe from the Islamic hordes, including a tiff with the English Defence League, who turn out to be too right wing even for her. (Meanwhile, Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford call for a new left-wing patriotism as the response to the EDL.)
Roma rights: Ben Judah has a powerful article on the invisible Roma of Romania. Closer to home: Defend Dale Farm.
Women's rights: Sarah has a weekly round-up.
Slavoj Zizek:* I saw Alan Johnson of Democratiya/Dissent perform a superb critique of Zizek at a conference this year (paper here, html version here), which I strongly recommend. It builds on an earlier series of posts at Dissent on authoritarian Marxism: 1, 2, 3. And on a still earlier critique in Dissent which I've not read. On the other hand, I liked the second half of this 1999 text by Zizek, in which he criticises the misplaced Titoism of the anti-NATO Western left. I think the essay is worth re-reading now in light of what is going on in Libya.
Bob's beats
More ska, "Islam" by Prince Buster.
*Part of the Zizek paragraph is reposted from a comment.
The second is the rising authoritarianism of the right, viciously racist towards Muslims, Roma, migrants and others. This authoritarian right is exemplified by the English Defence League in the UK, Pamela Geller in the US, Avigdor Lieberman and the settler movement in Israel. We can see its fruit in the rising tide of violence against Muslims (but also "Muslim-looking" non-Muslim Asians) and other minorities in the UK and Europe, as well as intensifying the war between Jews and Muslims in Israel/Palestine. (For this reason, it gives some comfort to read of the Israeli police arresting Rabbi Yaacov Yosef for inciting violence against Arabs.)
Islam and Islamism: An interview with an Egyptian Salafist in New Humanist. The British left's tolerance of extremism will do for us, argues Rob Marchant. Andrew Coates reports on Islamists attacking democrats in Tunisia (note, this is Ennahdha, the party led by Rashid Al-Ghannushi and often claimed to be "moderate" and democratic, not least by the Guardian, which has given a regular platform to his daughters). Andrew has other posts on the depressing rise of violent Islamism in Tunisia, including several on the travails of secularist heroine Nadia el Fani. Comrade Coates also points to the bizarre publication by "Socialist Unity" of some appalling Iran regime apologetics via Conflicts Forum. And Paul Stott bucks the Reagan revisionism - Ronnie did after all give us the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Note, a lot of these links relate one way or another to Palestinian Islamist leader Raed Salah. Adam Holland notes Mondoweiss sinking to a new low in Salah's defence.
Leftism: Principia Dialectica report from "Marxism" [sic] 2011.
Latin American radical chic: Reuben on Hari on Che. Radosh on Chomsky on Chavez.
Israel/Palestine: Eric Lee on not everyone in the labour movement being down with Hamas. Liam Hoare on Israel in a multipolar world, and on Yisrael Beiteinu as Israel's soviet party. Hitch on the Gaza flotilla activists. ("The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians.")
The EDL and its friends: Loads of EDL news from Malatesta. Also Searchlight on the EDL/English Nationalist Alliance's supergrass Roger Firth. The Hucknall Dispatch on the EDL's Christopher Payne and his disgusting anti-Muslim racism. SPLC reports on Pamela Geller and her stumbling attempts to reconquer Europe from the Islamic hordes, including a tiff with the English Defence League, who turn out to be too right wing even for her. (Meanwhile, Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford call for a new left-wing patriotism as the response to the EDL.)
Roma rights: Ben Judah has a powerful article on the invisible Roma of Romania. Closer to home: Defend Dale Farm.
Women's rights: Sarah has a weekly round-up.
Slavoj Zizek:* I saw Alan Johnson of Democratiya/Dissent perform a superb critique of Zizek at a conference this year (paper here, html version here), which I strongly recommend. It builds on an earlier series of posts at Dissent on authoritarian Marxism: 1, 2, 3. And on a still earlier critique in Dissent which I've not read. On the other hand, I liked the second half of this 1999 text by Zizek, in which he criticises the misplaced Titoism of the anti-NATO Western left. I think the essay is worth re-reading now in light of what is going on in Libya.
Bob's beats
More ska, "Islam" by Prince Buster.
*Part of the Zizek paragraph is reposted from a comment.
Comments
Aren't you using the term "racist" in the way levizeroes uses it, that is to say, in the way the term "witch" was used in seventeenth century Salem?
(*Don't actually recall her using this term, but she describes Israel as an apartheid state.)
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/10/05/121298.html
I don't doubt that they represent *some* of the views in the so-called 'muslim community' but can't help but think that either they're in love with voices that speak with such certainty (as Sontag once wrote) or, equally worrying,they think there's something to be gained by giving a platform to people with such narrow views.
On Geller, I see her as the most clear-cut of these examples. I think that perceiving Muslims "as being against American values and against Israel" massively understates her position. Her hatred of Islam has a visceral quality which goes beyond any serious criticism of its actual values. The fact that she excuses the killings of Bosnian Muslims (many of whom were Muslim in the most nominal of ways) amplifies this for me. Her vision of Islam is utterly paranoid. The notion of America being Islamized, whatever that means, is utterly absurd. (E.g. "The State Department, essentially being run by Islamic supremacists".) Her bizarre obsession with Barack Obama's parental and racial origins is another symptom of this kind of paranoia.
I don't think it is racist as such to be against Islam and see all Muslims as fundamentally the same (as in her claim that ALL Muslim chaplains are jihadists). But I think it is racist, for example, to assume that assume that someone Middle Eastern who is acting suspiciously on a plan must be some kind of "terrorist". And I think her calls for Muslim sites like the Dome of Rock to be destroyed is extremely dangerous, or hosting a video that calls for “wiping Pakistan off the map.”
[Cont...]
Talking of influence, I see that Pamela Geller is reported as getting a million hits a day at Atlas Shrugs.
Will:
"and Slavoj Zizek whose opaque writings provide, for their initiates, a warrant for the most infantile of politics."
examples. And no bullshit please.
You are just a right wing troll these days bOb.
Contentious Centrist:
I'd like to remind the blog owner that a few months ago, this poster used this blog's comments to launch a personal attack on me and my children. Having found out my name (I speculate that he did it through a common acquaintance on linked-in), he then managed to get into my bank accounts and find out which schools my children go to and how much I pay for their education. I myself tried to find this information by mere googling and drew blank. So I have to wonder what Will had to do in order to ferret that information.
That makes Will something closer to a terrorist-in-the-making than a poster whose questions are worth the trouble of responding to. But perhaps Bob, you are so enraged by Geller's "racism" that you cannot quite see that. Which more or less makes my point about why an inflational use of the term "racist", drains it of its meaning and renders the real phenomenon of racism quite pale and and harmless.
According to wikipedia,
"Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, a group of individuals, or an organization. It may include false accusations, monitoring, making threats, identity theft, damage to data or equipment, the solicitation of minors for sex, or gathering information in order to harass. "
Not sure what that has got to do with Geller.
I have little respect for Geller because I think she is a vulgar writer, loudmouth and shallow. I read her blog maybe three times all in all, and each time I could easily find the holes in her arguments. I don't like being put in a position when I'm seen to defend her. She attacks Jewish Americans for voting democratic even though republicans appear to be stauncher supporters of Israel. In this she is not unlike the rabid leftists who accuse American Jews of not being loyal enough to Obama. (Many of those on TNR). I resent this attitude, because I think Jews ought to be able to feel free to vote any way they like, without having to account for their choice to anyone but themselves. Still, I have no reason to believe she is racist. Or malevolent.
CC, are you for fuckin REAL?????
I don't think I'm in a position to argue, but I don't think it is connected to the fact that earlier my attention had been on a further distant horizon, Geller, and persuading people that she should be seen as a paranoid racist. I have not dedicated much space on this blog to her or her like over the years, or for that matter to the likes of Lieberman and the settlers. Geller seems to me so wacky as to be not worth engaging with, but she is actually quite influential, and therefore worth paying attention to. As for Lieberman, I tend not to comment all that often on what is going on in I/P, but rather on how that is refracted in debates which are closer to home for me, on the British scene and especially the British left, and to a lesser extent the European and North American scenes. But I remain convinced that there is a deeply worrying global trend towards ethnocentric and xenophobic authoritarian politics, bringing its paranoid fantasy of a violent clash of civilisations into being.
(I don't want to suggest, by the way, with my "clash of" title, that I see these different forms of intolerance and extremism as equal or equivalent (as in the original Huntingdon thesis or the silly Tariq Ali clash of fundamentalisms thesis). The title was meant to be slightly sarcy, which was perhaps silly.)
I also don't think it matters that much whether Geller is bona fide or malevolent, and I am not trying to convince anyone about that. It is not her motivations or the depth of her racism I am interested in. It is the politics of it that I think is important, and the way it helps people to see the world through a dangerous, paranoid prism. (When I say paranoid, I don't mean any kind of psychoanalytic diagnosis, but an epistemology, a way of seeing the world. Maybe there's a better word for it, but I can't think of it.)
This prism, which I think is closely related to the prism which Lieberman and Yaacov Yosef see the world through, leads directly to forms of violence such as the arson attacks and harassment of Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank, leaving pig's heads in mosques in Britain, attacking Sikh men in the streets of Britain because they look Muslim, and so on.
Again, to be clear, there are plenty of other worldviews and forms of politics out there which are just as, or much more, deadly. The worldview of the Islamists and of the Hindutva movement, for example, have certain family resemblances to the worldview of the Gellers, but in the case of the Islamists at least is much more deadly on a global scale.
This would actually apply to the entire spectrum of self-declared zionist parties in the Knesset. Even Uri Avnery would be considered racist if he argued for maintaining a commanding WASP majority in the UK as he does for maintaining commanding Jewish majority in Israel.
BTW, I'm shocked that someone (Will?) went to such extraordinary lengths to harrass Noga. I'm sorry to hear about that Noga.
"If a British politician took a similar attitude towards British citizens who are not ethnically white British that he [Lieberman] takes towards Israeli citizens who are not Jews, then they'd be widely denounced as racist."
What reason would there be for any of your politicians to call for redrawing of borders or demand a loyalty oath from any of your queen's subjects? Britain is by no means comparable to Israel. I am reminded of George Orwell when he expressed his growing disgust with his Left wing contemporaries: "huge tribe of right left people", "One-eyed pacifists", typical of populations who are used to living on an island protected by a strong navy.
Israel's position is at the very opposite of that glorious and secure isolation. Is there another country in the world, as threatened as Israel is?
The wonder is that Israelis by and large still resist (so far) these measures (as non-violent as they are), imagining and longing, I think, that they live in a country like England, or France, and not where they actually do, with the realities that are (see levi's comments for starters).
I read this last night in Bertrand Russell's "Mortals and others":
"The moral of this story is that believers in every kind of ‘ism’ ought to hang together, however opposite their nostrums may be. They differ from ordinary people by the fact that they have a nostrum. One man’s nostrum is only endurable to the ordinay person when it is counterbalanced by another man’s nostrum. If the believers in any one ‘ism’ could convert the believers in all other ‘isms’ to their way of thinking the general run of mankind would find them so boring that they would exterminate them. This applies to the believers in optimism no less than it applies to the believers in pessimism. The pessimism of our age is generally explained as being due to the bad state of the world, but I believe it is quite as much due to the boredom, which we all endured in youth through the optimism of the Victorians."
Well, thank you, levi. I know nothing about Will, whether he is a Brit or Canadian or where he lives. He, on the other hand, seems to know where I live, who my kids are, where they go to school. It is not a comfortable feeling to live with the knowledge that a person who hates you for being Jewish and Israeli and who has exhibited some disturbing signs of instability, has that kind of information about you.
The Jewish school my son attended was firebombed a few years ago by two young Palestinian-Canadians.
So there is a broader context to my jitters.
Anything unusual happening, like mysterious, untraceable, phone calls during the night, I wonder about it.
http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2010/09/hitchens-on-flotilla-found-on-ever.html
I cannot find his comment in Bob's archives, but what he said went roughly like this: The Cuntentious cunt complains that she has no money to buy Hitchens' book but she does have money to send her children to a Jewish private school.
Isn't it fortunate for Will that I mentioned the firebombing yesterday? He can now claim that he knew about my whereabouts and where my kids go to school at least 10 months before I actually posted about it here.
Here is another puzzle for you: Why would Will even talk about my kids in a viciously hostile comment he makes about me? Why mention kids at all? Is there a way you can attempt to cleanse that sheretz? Isn't it the mafia way, to talk about one's kids when they wish to frighten and intimidate the parent? Are you even remotely familiar with the concept of decency?
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2010/09/political-influences-no1-john-pilger.html?showComment=1283818394825#c4685281105384704804
"Will said...
The Cunttetris has a couple of posts about Hitchens on her blog. She's been reading the new Hitchens book in bits and pieces at the big box bookstore in her suburb cos money is apparently too tight to buy it. Funny that she spends many thousands of dollars per year putting her children through private education yet cannot buy (or steal) a book.
Tosspot. Scum. etc.
07 September, 2010 01:13 "
It would appear that I owe Will an apology. He did not mention that the school was Jewish. So his poison does not flow from antisemitism but rather from some class-related ideology. In other words, he was only speaking from his pain about social injustice in this world. A man's got to do what a man's got to do, and if it involves terrorizing a mother by mentioning her kids in a vicious, character-assassinating comment, so be it. All in the service of love for humanity. It is as Robespierre would say: “Par pitié, par amour pour l’humanité, soyez inhumains!"
I'm not going to chew the fat with a racist.
l*terz y'all
Skippy the Red Kangaroo
Israel is far more threatening than threatened and anyway its "demographic" obsession has nothing to do with security unless by "threatened" Noga meant the "demographic threat". If she meant the latter then the point still stands. The platforms of the most left-wing of zionist parties of Israel would be described as racist or even fascist if they were replicated by parties in Europe or just the UK.
I presume schmuckaroo here is interpreting "racist" as levi does. It sort of illuminates the point I was trying to make earlier. Schumackaroo thinks that if he defines me as "racist" then anything he or his friend Will may have done or said is off the hook. The gaze will turn on my "racism' and off his cyber-terrorist tactics of engagement. I am the one now supposed to defend my "racism" against the moral purity and howls of injustice born by those two (or is it one?).
And I have very little doubt that such arguments find some readers very responsive to their evil logic.
_________
BTW, Bob, you should not have deleted those two comments. Will and his supporters deserve to be seen for what they are, through their own words.
This is the kind of logic that animated the Nazis, and the Spanish Inquisition before them. That a minority of 6 million Jews living on their own tiny sliver of land threatens 400 million Arabs who dominate the entire Middle East, supported by their 1.2 Billion Muslim brethren.
How sad for levi that such are the facts! It would have been so much easier for him in this world had the situation been reversed.
As for his "threats" against you - he's always threatening the 99% of the population who offend him, along with their children and pets. As far as I know about his personal life, he is from Newcastle and lives in Edinburgh.
Whites are a small minority in South Africa and Blacks an overwhelming majority. But the Blacks didn't threaten the whites, they simply threatened and ultimately overcame apartheid.
"Gordimer said that it was incorrect and wrong to paint Israel and South Africa with the same brush. "White people can not lay claim to a single inch of Africa," she said. The Jews, on the other hand, have a historical claim on the land of Israel. "In this, they are not at all comparable and Israel is not an apartheid state."
The idea that people have claims to land based on their ethnic or ethno-religious heritage is also known as the blood and soil idea and certainly isn't good for Jews living all around the world in places that, according to Noga logic, Jews have no claim to.
I don't think bloodline should be the determinant of whether or not people are eligible for basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in this or that place.
If a UK politician argued that Jews should be displaced, dispossessed or otherwise disadvantaged because only WASPs have a claim on the UK, most people would agree that that is racist and possibly fascist. In fact it is only zionists who seem to be able to get away with that kind of talk these days.
The burning question is how he found that information (my name, where I live, where my kids go to school). The next burning question is why.
He could explain, here, how and why, and put the matter to rest. That is, if he has a fraction of the guts he purports to project by the use of his boundlessly vulgar language.
"Will said...
The Cunttetris has a couple of posts about Hitchens on her blog. She's been reading the new Hitchens book in bits and pieces at the big box bookstore in her suburb cos money is apparently too tight to buy it. Funny that she spends many thousands of dollars per year putting her children through private education yet cannot buy (or steal) a book.
Tosspot. Scum. etc.
07 September, 2010 01:13 "
"Funny that she spends many thousands of dollars per year putting her children through private education "
Let Will explain how he got by this information. If he manufactured it, let him say so, right here and now.
The source Will is channeling in the comment I quote says nothing about school being firebombed. I mentioned it two days ago, not ten months ago. Had Will read me saying it somewhere else, before September 2010? If so, where?
Let him produce the source of information that led him to the name of the school. Let him explain how he came by those "many thousands of dollars per year"?
I also have serious problems with some of CC's views, but I don't think this thread is where I'm going to argue them.
Where did he get that information?
Having said that, I haven't noticed this Will appearing on many threads involving Noga and yet I still don't see anyone expressing "serious problems with some of CC's views" which I often find to be openly racist.
"The platforms of the most left-wing of zionist parties of Israel would be described as racist or even fascist if they were replicated by parties in Europe or just the UK."
In other words, all Israelis, except for the three or four who are actively against the Jewish state (like Gilad Atzmon, Ilan Pappe), are racists. Arab-Israelis are not racists because, well, they are Arabs -- they can't be.
Anyway, just to reiterate the points you haven't dealt with.
It is a fact that if a political party in the UK had a platform that insisted on a certain ratio of WASP's to non-WASPs in UK society they would be regarded as racist and possibly fascist.
It is a fact that the position of Whites under South Africa's apartheid laws was one of privilege and it is a fact that Jews under Israel's zionist laws are privileged.
It is a fact that the idea that people should be apportioned pieces of territory in accordance with ethno-religious heritage is also known as the blood and soil idea. It is a widely held opinion that this is a racist idea and that racism is unacceptable.
I feel that too much slack is given to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism.
And all that bollox about 'racist as in...' you are trying on. No, it's racist as in racist - you, Lieberman, Geller, whoeverthefuckelse the shoe fits.
Skippy the Red Kangaroo
In fact, it ought to be clear that someone like you, who feels such hatred for Israel and Israelis, has very little to contribute in a discussion about achieving peace in the ME. Peace is not your suit.
____________
You are correct, Kellie, that Bob and I disagree about almost everything. I never minded it before this thread (or until very recently). But I do mind it, now.
The ideological insistence according to which Israelis are criminalized for insisting on their right to live in peace in their own tiny plot of land is unbearable. The comparison with Britain is so grotesque and frankly, irrational, that it can't be properly rebutted. Not to be too melodramatic, but it is the nature of grotesqueries that they leave you gasping for air, and sick at heart.
I'd like to thank Bob for allowing me to leave comments on his blog. I don't think I will continue to do so in the future.
You flap your gums incessantly on the internet and then complain when someone throws some of your blather back at you.
Skippy the Red Kangaroo
Kellie - Bob has indeed gone into a lot of detail to indicate his disapproval of Geller and Lieberman. I am guessing that any defences of people who used the word Jews where Geller and Lieberman use the words Muslims and Arabs respectively would receive much shorter shrift from Bob than Noga does. And Noga's own racism on previous threads gets no attention at all.
Anyway, just to clarify this cyber stalking thing. Is this the extent of what Will is supposed to have said, that Noga sends or sent her children to a school in Canada costing thousands a year or term and from that Noga has deduced that he must have raided her bank account for the info? There is a lot that Will says in terms of tone and terminology that I find unacceptable but as I said before, given the directness of Noga's allegation and Bob's expression of shame, it all looked like an accepted fact to me and I'm sure it would do to others who are not so familiar with Will's past comments.
Anyway, regardless of the racism of Geller and Lieberman, the fact remains that the programme of all zionist parties regarding the "demographic balance" in Israel would be described as racist if politicians in the UK advocated the same regardless any differences between Israel and the UK.
On 07 September, 2010 01:13, you left a comment on this blog, stating:
"Funny that she spends many thousands of dollars per year putting her children through private education yet cannot buy (or steal) a book."
This comment tells the rational reader that you know:
1. that I have kids
2. that I send them to school
3. that I send them to a private school
4. that I pay thousands of dollars to send them to school.
Where did you get the information about these facts?
Your continuing to deny the obvious
makes you out to be not only an idiot but a liar as well. Since you fail to answer this very simple question, I continue to suspect that you found this information through a shared linked-in connection. I canceled my linked-in account because of that, schmuck, on the very day you placed this comment. You invaded my privacy and published an information you were not authorized to do, that I suspect you got through a connection that trusted you to behave as we expect our linked-in connections to behave: responsibly and honourably.
If you did not get the information that way, all you need to do is tell us where did you read, BEFORE SEPTEMBER 7, 2010, that I send my kids to a private school?
Are you capable of answering this simple question truthfully? What are you afraid of?
You can console yourself with this thought, levi, but from where I'm standing there is very little distinction between the two. You are making the same argument Ahmadinejad is. Only a person wishing the Jews of Israel the worst ill can recommend that Israel be abolished and Jews become, again, a minority within an Arab-Muslim majority. Tell that to the 3 million Oriental Jews in Israel. The pleasures of the farhud, and such, are still fresh on their minds.
I regret that I have not had time over the last few days to be here to keep an eye on the comment thread, and am reluctant to slow down debate and create work for myself by requiring comments to be pre-moderated.
I have regarded Will with great affection over the years. When I was moving from blogging to an audience of some dozen random people to engaging with a larger blogosphere, he was very supportive to me. I found the Drink-Soaked Trots to be a collection of some of the most interesting and engaging bloggers around, and was really glad to see the range of opinions it represented (many of which were close to mine) given a platform. Over the years, I have become more disturbed by, as Kellie puts it, his toxicity, but I have almost certainly been too indulgent for too long. Although disappointed by it, I don’t mind being called a right-wing troll by him, but his comments about CC and now Skippy’s feel like harassment. (My shame was not connected to the cyber-stalking issue but to allowing the language in which Will attacked CC to stand, and simply answering (or attempting to) his Zizek question as if it were a normal conversation.) I was going to delete Skippy’s comments about CC’s malignancy and thickness, which completely violates what I see as acceptable here, because it seems more helpful to preserve it as instance of this harassment. On the other hand, the idea of CC’s allegations constituting some kind of libel that I ought to delete seems bizarre to me: there are facts about what Will said and speculation about how he got the information. That’s not libel.
--
CC, I’m not sure what you mean about the “ideological insistence according to which Israelis are criminalized for insisting on their right to live in peace in their own tiny plot of land” being unbearable. Do you mean that I should stop tolerating Levi’s ideological insistence on this? Or are you saying that this is my ideological insistence? If the latter, I don’t see how you can say that I am “ciminalizing” Israelis, on the basis that I called some racist and took comfort in the Israeli state’s legal actions against some of them. Unlike some liberal anti-racists, I don't see “racism” as a crime. I do see arson and intimidation against Palestinians by settlers as criminal, and am glad when the Israeli state prosecutes.
If you mean that my condemnation of Lieberman and of the extremists of the settler movement is aimed at all Israelis and their right to live in peace, I also disagree. Unlike Levi, I do not see these extremists as the logical expression of Zionism as such. I see what Lieberman and the militant settlers are doing is detrimental to Israelis living in peace in their own tiny plot of land. Lieberman is in a (fragile and heterogeneous) governing coalition, but I don’t see him as representing any kind of mainstream or typical Israeli view. I hope you are not saying he does.
There's a really easy way to make sure that happens, either on this blog or elsewhere.
Make clear what the blog is about and stick to that. And, specifically, ban all discussion of Israel/Palestine, outside the very narrow remit that you outline. Don't post about it. Delete any comments that allude to it, no matter how obliquely.
Apart from anything else, do you not honestly think there's enough places for those who want to discuss Israel/Palestine (from all perspectives) on teh interwebs? I'm just not sure what you think will be brought up here that isn't already argued about (ad fucking nauseum) elsewhere.
Anybody outside of the actual area, who comments mostly or even exclusively about Israel/Palestine is a frothing obsessive anyway. Ok, that might not be completely universal. But it's certainly the way to bet.
from cunTEntrist"s own blerGGh
http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2008/02/few-posts-encountered-on-internet-that.html
'More reasons to smile...
(PG: almost X rated, because of the appearance of the word "pussy".
What is "'pussy" and why it is offensive, see here)
Re the Hitch essay on antisemitism linked to — something he mentions here:
“Rezzori’s character insinuates with the greatest of subtlety that there is something feminine about the Jew, and that this is what sets him apart from the manly and robust and patriotic characters who like to roar cheery songs rather than listen to the tinkling piano, and whose chief joy is the hunt;”
got me to thinking about the well known antisemite George Galloway and his contempt for Tibetans and Buddhism — which he describes as ‘obscurantist’. Why is Buddhism any more obscurantist than any other religion, particularly his own choice of shit? It may stem from his lack of interest in Tibetan pussy… and an arrogant feeling that Buddhism, like Judaism is ‘effeminate’ or ‘feminine’, not strong and masculine like Catholicism/Xtianity and Islam where they know how to keep the bitches in check real fucking good. Just a thought… . Consider also, Galloway’s need to assure us of his virility and masculinity — repeated reminders that he has had multiple sexual partners — and his apparent disregard for ‘uppity’ women and his opposition to women’s rights to biological autonomy.
The litigious antisemitic scumbag."
oh. seems like you did take notice you utter cranKpoTT.
Where did you get the information about my children's school, BEFORE 07 September, 2010 01:13?
Is this so hard to answer?
Did you make it up?
Was it an imposter making comments in your name?
Did you find it on my blog? If so, where?
Did you find it in any of the comments I leave on different blogs and Message Boards?
Did I even mention the fact on the Drunk Trots and forgot about it?
You have a chance to set the record straight. I'm sure your friends will forgive you. Give them a chance to forgive you.
WHERE DID YOU GET THE INFORMATION?
I may have formulated the thought too harshly but the gist of it is, yes, I think you do have some share in the “ciminalizing” of Israelis, when you make analogies between Israel and Britain, and when you keep repeating that you are for the one-state-solution. This is not different in substance from what levi is saying, only in the style and the level of vehemence.
You need to re-think this analogy at least, in what way is British history comparable to that of Zionism, that you have the gall to pretend that that they are both alike in some immoral way. This is the unbearable part of it, that someone as talented and knowledgeable as you would make analogies more worthy of levi's intellect.
If you cannot see the odiousness, the falseness, in such an analogy, I lose all hope.
This beef between Will and CC will not be resolved on this blog. Even when Will acted as a cunt, I still enjoyed his perspective (when it wasn’t so saturated in bile and nonsense that it was comprehendible). I also enjoy readying CC’s blog. I don’t have anything more to say about this, but I understand CC’s anger about her children’s school being discussed, and I think she has every right to be angry about it.
I hope you don’t end this blog Bob. If you do, I hope you pick up on those aforementioned topics at a new one.
One does what one must do to keep the kiddywinks away from aboriginal students, the three blacks in BC, and the children of refugees (who are sworn to kill the jews). And not to forget the francophones (who,
needless to say, also hate tha Jews).
PS. funny isn't it that whenever anyone self-describes as a 'centrist' they are undoubtedly extreme right-wing fuckking cunTS of the highest order. Eveytime - it is guaranteed.
"...And it's really Atzmon, "I can say this because I'm Jewish, I can say even more...", but like you said very difficult for goyim to associate themselves with; the first time I saw it I was really puzzled, but then I thought, well, I'd love anti-Dutch Dutchmen, so maybe I should hold "anti-Semitic" Jews to the same standards."
:/
I read your posts with much interest and admiration. If you stopped with the Israel stuff and how it affects Jews, I personally would be more diverted from housing, liberalisation and the other coalition ills, not less, because I'd have to go sifting through the cesspits of the web myself. I'd be right wing before the year was out.
There is no "beef" between me and Will. He is as much of interest for me as last year's snows.
He has no way of answering how he got a private information about my family or why, so he continues to try to distract by acting like a buffoon. He can lie or he can generate noise. Since he cannot lie without being instantly found out, he opts for the time-honoured option of making noise. Even the semi-catatonic mind can see that there is no signal in that noise. Reminds me of this pathetic guy in TS Eliot's image:
"Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium."
Go on shaking that dead geranium, Will.
I think one of the problems Bob has is that this blog is one of many broadly right wing blogs that likes to use the language of the left. This gets Bob into all sorts of scrapes from both sides. For example when he accuses Avigdor Lieberman of the kind of advocacy that would have a UK politician accused by most people of racism, Noga is appalled by this but I see all zionist parties in Israel as being racist enough to be called racist in the UK, if what they advocate for Israel, a legally enforced ethno-religious demographic balance, were to be advocated in the UK.
It is also often Bob or one of his friends who refers to something Israel related in the threads even when the post isn't about Israel.
If Bob dropped Israel from his posts altogether and forbade comments on the same, not only would the posts be much shorter but the threads would be far shorter too.
There is a further problem with the Israel advocacy and that is that there is a very powerful case against Israel and so for Israel advocacy to work on a blog, you need a lot of pro-Israel trolls to simply wear down or intimidate the critics (as with Harry's Place) or you need to routinely delete counter comment (as with Engage).
The best place to be, for a genuinely engaged and honest thinker. You couldn't pay Bob a greater compliment. You wouldn't know that, though, would you, levi? Bob is authentic and decent. You misunderstand this and try to distort the underlying meaning and importance of his constant search. You are trying to shame him into rejecting open inquiry and thoughtful conversation in return for the respect of such as yourself.
Consider it for a second. Would anybody with any interest in understanding and truth would ever agree to such a swap?
The very fact that you patronize this blog as often as you do, and try to humiliate your host and badger his guests with your final vocabulary and rigid dogmas, points to your envy and the awareness of your inadequacy.
That said, having failed to make your case against Bob regarding the racism of Pam Geller and Avigdor Lieberman or against me with regard to the racism that is the essence of zionism as per all of Israel's self-declared zionist parties, you accuse me of distortion, badgering and rigidity.
It's funny how Bob and a few of his friends accuse me of distortion but rarely say what it is I am supposed to have distorted and yet when I accuse others of dishonesty, it's a meme of mine.
As for badgering, you may well feel badgered if you can't make a case for your position but really you're only being argued against. Remember in this same thread you accused someone of being a "cyber-terrorist" on the flimsiest of evidence. You even had me going for a while back there. Now Bob says your very specific allegations can't be libelous because they were mere speculation. My point here is, not only do you tend to project your own wrong-doing onto others, you also tend to exaggerate, wildly.
Re rigidity. I tend to be consistent unless I am persuaded to change my mind about something. Consistency is not rigidity or if it is it's no bad thing of itself.
Anyway, my point to Waterloo Sunset was that what Bob calls Izzy/Pal is usually introduced by Bob in the post or by Bob or one of his friends in the thread and therefore, to remove "Izzy/Pal" would take away so much of the blog it would amount to a different blog altogether.
Also, this rightism dressed as leftism creates problems in that rightists expect a consistent rightist line whereas leftists will tend to point up either the inconsistencies in the position or expose the extent to which the openly rightist and the rightist with leftist noises are actually very similar. Bob gets far more tetchy with the latter.
I mean, this is the calibre of the poster. Ha ha Jew Flu, it sounds funny and I get to be all spikey....and an arse as well, about a Jewish woman, tortured and killed by proto-Nazis. There some solidarity for you.
But when you deal with Nationalists, this is what you get. Both Levi and other anti-Zionist scum and the Israeli nationalists are so focussed on this tiny unimportant and toxic little conflict. One could understand if this was a everyday existential crisis, of the rocket sirens going off, of checkpoints and shelling. You might be able to comprehend the one-eyed "them bad, we good" discourse if you were speaking to a settler or a Pal.
But no, this pervesity of focus is viral, it is democratic, eany old arse can have it. So feckers can act out their fanon fantasies and "be as one" with the wretched in some exotic apologia for their birth. And surely gentile "philosemites" are of much the same distorted psychological root. I mean, consider Chas Newkey Burden as a whole, a fanboy of Jews (like a faith and culture 30 plus centuries old is a Dawson Creek rip off) and a professional prose sycophant to celebrities. Am I amiss to suggest he treats a national group of over ten million people (and in line with the cliche, twenty million opinions) like Simon fucking Cowell.
Even actual Jewish Israeli Nationalists engage in the constant berating of insufficiently Nationalist Jews in terrible hateful rhetoric. To them, the libel, that there is a second shoah just around the corner, and all Jews who don't heed them are just latter day Hellenised Debauches is useful and edifying. It is the equivalent of that eternal trick of prompting dvision from others and manufacturing a shared sense of mission and cosmos. All nationalism are the same, the commonalities are depressingly hopeful. I am not expert, but there seems to be a evolution ongoing with Israeli nationalisms, changes not merely the result of the post Olso environment. And a large part of that is the renunciation of secular humanism from religious and ethno-cratic viewpoints. Again depressingly common, from Mazzini to Papini, from Constant to Maurras, from Jefferson to Palmer.
So when CC defends Gellar, it is because they both have essentially the same viewpoint to share. That from their relatively comfortable positions, they have drama, great historical ruptions, pure good, pure evil. The fact Gellar is a racist, (her actual straight piece on Obama's parental relationship with Macolm X or her covering for Spencer's "accidental" facebook like of a campaign to forcefully re-hellenised the whole of Anatolia or the cover for Euro-fascism - "first the near enemy, then the far enemy" or the genocide denial - I take it there are "no reason to believe" David Irving is a racist) doesn't make Gellar beyond bounds, it makes the term racist out of bounds. Oh, the contortions of the poor nationalist.
Will is right on one thing. Centrist, like the term "beyond left and right" or "independent" or "libertarian" (now days) is almost always camouflage for a poisonous sly demand for cultural conformity and to punish deviancy
I don't know who Chas Newkey Burden is but I do know when I read something like this it sounds to me suspiciously close to the classical accusation of "Jew-lover".
Something along these lines:
(Sighted elsewhere on the Internet)
"Which do you enjoy more, modern liberals calling you a nazi, or modern nazis calling you a jew-lover?"
But the zionist conquest of Palestine doesn't seem to be unimportant to Bob because I think a clear plurality, maybe a majority, of his links on the home page are to Israel advocacy of one kind or another. Also, it isn't unimportant to the world's greatest power, the USA, which gives more aid, military support and diplomatic cover to Israel than to any other state. Further, the USA and France both have laws to protect Israel from boycott actions and the UK is still trying to work out ways to change the law to allow Israeli war crimes suspects to visit the UK with impunity.
Again, unless I missed something, Israel doesn't seem to be so unimportant to you.
Anyway, I don't know if he is ignoring me but I was trying to say to Waterloo Sunset that if Bob dropped what he calls Izzy/Pal from the blog altogether both the posts and the threads would be much shorter and the blog would amount to, as Bob himself has suggested, a completely different project.
I think Noga may have missed what you were actually saying with regard to Chas Newkey Burden. Your error is to conflate zionists with Jews but then you do the same thing with zionists and Israeli nationalists. The former is a worse thing because it often amounts to antisemitism. The latter is just ignorance.
A woman in Montreal has concocted a paranoid fantasy in which she and her children are being hunted down by a Jew-hating terrorist called 'Will'.
It all stems from a throwaway insult Will fired off at her some time ago on (might not even have been Broccoli Bob's stupid shite) about her reading Hitchens' book a chapter at a time in a bookshop because she's too cheap to buy the damned thing. 'You spend thousands of dollars sending your kid(s) to private school and you wont lay down $20 for book - or steal it.'
From this statement she has; 1)'determined' that he knows what street they live on, 2) what school the kids go to, 3) he has been tampering with her bank account, 4) that he has paid private investigators to get info on her, 5) and, by inserting the word 'Jewish' between his words 'private' and 'school' has also 'determined' that he's Adolf Eichmann and that indeed that this all constitutes a vicious attack on her kids who are in real danger from him etc etc etc. She really does need locking up in a rubber fuckking room.
Oh, and she thinks the word 'pussy' is *X* rated and that Avigdor Lieberman is kind to dogs.
Nevermind the way that a supposedly anti-racist blog (you know, of the "decent left" sort where it is completely acceptable to talk about "Arab monkeys" as long as you don't swear about it) is allowing extreme-right rhetoric to be normalised. Pam Gellar actually advocates for the murder of Muslims, ie as in her defence of Karadzic, that's okay because she's not really racist because she has a good reason for hating Muslims.
When people are quite okay, thanks very much, with the ongoing occupation, oppression, dispossession, imprisonment and collective punishment of millions of people - sorry 'arab monkeys' - but they are upset by the 'obscenity' of words like 'pussy' something is seriously out of fuckking whack.
http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-rules-of-war-victor-davis-hanson.html
quite obviously a class A racist scumbag. Always has been always will be.
___________
Please note that Will does not explain how he came by that information that he used as a "throwaway insult".
How does he know I have school age kids? I could be in my seventies and my kids long ago out of school.
How does he know what kind of school I send my kids to?
How does he know it costs "thousands of dollars a year" to send my kids to that private school?
When you want to insult someone and you know nothing about them, you don't just "throw away" an insult which, very serendipitously, happens to hit upon a truth.
I asked Will to provide the source for that information. He keeps trying to divert by imputing to me genocidal politics. As in, why would you worry about anything illegitimate Will may or may not have done, to obtain information about this woman who Will tells you supports genocide?
From which I, CC, conclude that if anything untoward were to happen to me or to my kids as a result of what can be compared to Will's reckless drunk driving, he, Will, can always defend himself by claiming that the bitch and her kids deserved it, and that in fact, he has done a noble thing.
There is an old Persian saying, Will, "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging".
You need to hunker down for a while, come to terms with your own promiscuous behaviour which borders on a pathology. Or else you can put an end to this by just explaining to us how you came by this information. You see, I need to know in order to immunize myself against nutcases like you. I need to know where exactly you managed the penetrate the fog of anonymity that the Internet offers, and got these hard facts about my real, private, not internet, life.
Is that so hard to understand? I ask again, what are you afraid of?
That is a little bit strange.
Am I correct that you are also "Noga"?
If so what does Noga conclude?
http://www.ldb.org/adorno.htm
Nor have you explained how you came to learn about which school I send my kids to, or how much I pay for them.
As I said before, you are a terrorist-in-the-making. I consider this:
"PS. if anything untoward did happen to you I would gladly take the plaudits forr it whether i was guilty or not. You are quite clearly scum of the earth and mental with it."
a direct threat.
i hope Bob dosent stop blogging because of this noncence.
If someone feels threatend by your actions Will stop doing it.
Of far greater interest is how Bob is going to square the circle of appeasing people who can't make a case for their right wing politics whilst keeping the oppo contained or banished. The options appear to be to either change or scrap the blog completely.
Deleting abusive or threatening comments needn't be agonised over so I doubt if it is Will's offensiveness that is really causing Bob to have a think. Remember Moddy has left and asked Bob to remove links to his blog after first threatening to leave because Bob wouldn't ban me. Noga too said she was leaving in this thread and she still might. Flesh has expressed irritation at critics spoiling the chirpy atmosphere of rightists chatting among themselves. All of which puts Bob in a bit of a bind.
disgusting little man.
On Chas Newkey Burden, I only occasionally look at his blog, so can't comment, but I don't think what SR said about him as a "fanboy" is the same as antisemitic allegations about "Jew-lovers". I prefer philosemites to antisemites, but I don't really like philosemites either. Loving all Jews is only slightly less racist than hating all Jews, even if the effects are more benign
The greatest Philosimites in history turned out to be the worst kind of antisemites.
A Jewish author who lives in Montreal but grew up in Chicago (David Homel) once wrote how his father had warned him to watch out for the philosemite even more carefully than the antisemite. I think we see many examples of this advice being very sound, for the greatest antisemites from the left today keep lamenting how Jews have drifted away from their beautiful religion and ethics by supporting Israel. Those are the philosemites who know exactly what and how Judaism is, and consider themselves to be speaking out of love for the true Jew, who is nothing like the Israel-loving Jew who is the bad Jew.
To pre-empt any complaints let me state right away that I regard the philosemite on the right as no less opportunistic and cynical in his/her avowals of love for Jews (Glenn Beck comes to mind).
BTW, since Bob has deleted Will's comments which clearly explained that it was easy to find info about Noga, where she lives and what kind of school her children attend/ed without resorting to cyber-terrorism can we just note that Will has shown that he didn't say anything that couldn't be found via google? It's only fair.
________________
Example:
"Righteous Jews have a powerful attachment to core liberal values. They believe that individual rights matter greatly and that they are universal, which means they apply equally to Jews and Palestinians. They could never support an apartheid Israel. They also understand that the Palestinians paid an enormous price to make it possible to create Israel in 1948. Moreover, they recognize the pain and suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Finally, most righteous Jews believe that the Palestinians deserve a viable state of their own, just as the Jews deserve their own state. In essence, they believe that self-determination applies to Palestinians as well as Jews, and that the two-state solution is the best way to achieve that end. Some righteous Jews, however, favor a democratic bi-national state over the two-state solution.
To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch."
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/ContentDetails/i/10418
What draws critics into these discussions? If you consider us to be explicit racists, why are you hanging out here?
Will's comments that I deleted didn't show what you say. I deleted them very hastily at the weekend when I was away from my computer, as they seemed to me to contain what might be personal information on someone who has clearly stated a preference for some privacy. I thought that they went and sat in the spam box so I could review them later, but I used the wrong kind of delete and can't work out how to retrieve them (Wordpress is so much better than Blogger on this sort of thing) but I'd prefer to err on the side of caution. I think I will just delete all comments on that topic from now on, because the other alternative is pre-moderated comments.
I think Levi says "Sorry to interrupt a cosy chat between Bob and an explicit racist", he's not calling Bob an explicit racist, though he might believe that you show a lack of concern or a complicity with the racism Noga explicitly expresses. Or Jogo.
I don't have the energy to begin to pick apart the hypocrisy and merciless meanness of such an absence of any real sense of historical justice.
Here is the opening section of my first comment (ie, what I initially said) in the thread you link to:
"Righteous Jews" is every bit as patronising a label as "righteous gentiles" but Mearsheimer mentioned a third category of Jews (what kind of Churchillian would he be if he didn't?) - who he called the "great ambivalent middle"; like most societies really."
In the same thread you tried to take issue with the fact that I had not said that Mearsheimer's use of the expression "righteous Jews" was "offensive" and I said "I don't see why "offensive" is worth saying given that "patronising" is offensive."
This is what is meant by trolling your own blog. You've made an allegation and supplied a link as if to prove your allegation and it does no such thing. Au contraire.
Re the "explicit racist". Skidders is right, it's Noga. You are simply increasingly tolerant of it. C/f your defence of the new Benny Morris. I think it's another example of the bind you find yourself in. You want to be a sensible centrist but you have to make all sorts of compromises with the dodgiest of characters.
Re what you deleted from Will, he pointed out that you could find all that he is supposed to have gleaned from her bank statements from her Normblog profile and other things she had placed in the public domain prior to his mention of those things.
CC - it's pretty pointless engaging with you too much but anyone who advocates a specific ethno-religious demographic balance in a country would count as a racist as far as I (and many many others) are concerned. I do not advocate for an Arab majority country or against one. I think it is racist to advocate for or against such a thing. I've also told you before that I do not think all supporters of the two state solution are racists.
I think SR's position on nationalism is more productive, and arguably all nationalisms are ultimately racist in some sense; that obviously includes Palestinian nationalism too.
I like the phrase "trolling your own blog". Perhaps I should ban myself.
Finally, Will's googling threw up a likely candidate for a flesh counterpart to the virtual Noga of CC, but I'm not sure if it gave an indication of where the school stuff came from, but as I said I am not going to entertain any more comments on that please move on.
There are views expressed by Bob and links apparently made with approval that should be challenged. Unfortunately, in the threads, Bob is more than happy to make false allegations against his critics and allow his "comrades" to do the same. This is what makes threads unduly long.
A case in point is the recent false allegation by Bob that I said that the expression "righteous Jews" is "perfectly acceptable" when I actually said that it is "patronising" and that "patronising" amounts to "offensive". Bob asks if he should ban himself but he has already suggested ending the blog and Waterloo Sunset's suggestion comes close to making the same recommendation. Alternatively he could quit the bogus allegations (complete with links that disprove the same) or acknowledge that he got it wrong.
Another case is for Bob to report that people have emailed him accusing me of racism or of facilitating racism. SocialRepublican may think I am scum for whatever reason but he does point up Noga's racism without actually accusing me of that. So who are my accusers and what evidence supports what they are saying?
All of this points up the bind that Bob is in. He wants to appease a whole bunch of rightists whilst using the language of the left. It doesn't work. He can cry "racist" without evidence or definition and he can cry "liar liar pants on fire" but all he does is make the hole deeper.
Something Bob could do is blog on a kind of neoconservative basis whereby he simply says what he says and links it openly to interests rather than professed principles. I think this is the problem. He knows principles are nice but he prefers interests. Very few openly blog on the basis of their own perceived self-interest. It could actually be a gap in the market.
On the e-mails, the reason people e-mail me instead of having the debates here is because you have made the comment threads here toxic and unpleasant and no-one wants to hang out with you, let alone get into endless circular arguments with you. So I'm hardly going to relay their details for you to pick over. My point is I am sick and tired of the constant allegations and counter-allegations.
As for "allowing" my "comrades" to make false allegations, I think you will find that the voice that completely dominates my last several threads, i.e. the voice I have most "allowed" to make allegations, true or false, is actually yours.
And by the way, talking of false representations, I think you have pretty drastically mis-represented WS.
By the way, I don't
Also, Waterloo Sunset said, "ban all discussion of Israel/Palestine, outside the very narrow remit that you outline." That would amount to a very different project to this blog.
I don't divine a person's interests, I just rephrased my earlier contention that what you say is prejudice based rather than reality based but what I meant was that your sheer lack of consistency points to what you say being based on your perceived interests, that's all.
Anyway, it would have been nice if Waterloo Sunset and SocialRepublican could have expanded on their comments but it doesn't look like it's going to happen.
On the righteous thing, I think we went over it all pretty thoroughly in the link that I provided and am not going to go over it yet again.
There is an enormous difference between suggesting that blogging on iz/should be severely delimited in order to reduce discussions like these, which nobody but you enjoys, and ending a blog altogether, so I don't really want lectures from you on who is trolling my threads or misrepresenting people
I have reached the limit of my tolerance for this. End of conversation.
Oh ffs. Ok, Levi. To make this clear in case it happens again. I will frequently disappear from comments threads, often for days. The reason for that is not that I'm "running away from debate" or anything like that. It's because, apparently unlike a lot of people in the blogosphere, I actually have an active social life. And I don't always have the time or motivation to be involved in comment debates.
In terms of expanding on my comments, not sure what you need clarification on?
My view is that the concentration on a single struggle overseas is a good example of how the conservative left prefers to pontificate from afar as opposed to getting their hands dirty by engaging with class issues at home. And that its politics as intellectual masturbation as opposed to as a guide to trying to make a meaningful change in the world. And that it shows why the left hasn't had any organic links to the class since the 1930's. But I'm sure none of those views comes as a surprise to you.
On the blog, I think you're suffering from confirmation bias. Simply put, most posts and links are not to do with Israel, it's just they're the ones you notice. So suggesting it would change the project isn't actually true, it would just focus it. As I said, there's hundreds of places out there where people can argue about Israel/Palestine. And those who focus on it are almost invariably frothing loons. Whichever side of the debate they come from.
@ Bob
I think SR's position on nationalism is more productive, and arguably all nationalisms are ultimately racist in some sense;
While that is an element to SR's post, I think you're massively oversimplifying his argument. His comment is a lot more complex than that and I pretty much agree with it in full. And I will note that nobody has really tried to engage properly with any of the arguments within.
And you have email.
They are both self dynamic ideas and still attached to the original source. Thus proxy Zionism (i.e. nowadays is now linked far more into the Ulra Nationalism of Revisionism, having moved on from the Socialist Nationalism of the initial founders of Israel and a humanist tradition. So too, anti-Zionism is now completely in bed with the theocratic modernism of Hamas, having rejected the secular modernising nationalism of the PLO's salad days. Both these dapartures coincide with historic defeats for these earlier conceptions, no doubt. But at the same time, Revisionism and Palestinian Islamism of the MB school are essentially articualtions of postures. They are excuses for stasis.
During the Fenian period of Irish Republicans, the "Irish" politicians and wider communities in the States were explicit in their attachment to the romantic and structurally steady mode and mythos of insurrentionalist tactics, much to the chargrin of actaul Republicans on the ground.
Why would you want a good thing that doesn't really cost you anything to end. For the most ardent of proxy Zionists and anti-Zionists, an end to this tiny little conflict would leave them lost, with no navigation to frightening and sudden events. Better defeat delayed than victory attained.
CC
"I do know when I read something like this it sounds to me suspiciously close to the classical accusation of "Jew-lover"."
Well, we know you are dumb and one eyed. In fact your whole online persona is a uncontainable flood of the same ol' ideological points, articulated like a dull GSCE student trying to reword the textbook for their coursework. Along with a dash of that right wing "truth-telling bluntness" i.e getting to be a bit bigotted for shits and giggles, there's also the complete lack of weight given to the serious accusations you fling around. It's childish.
Take Levi for instance. I described him as scum because he has a large and easily assessable history of his evasive and passive agressive bullshit. From this evidence, you can conclude that it's a game to him, a easy pop-up book morality tale, with no "grey zone" nor consequences.
You coyly accuse me of propagating anti-Semitic tropes because you suspect it is so. Well, given the tripe you sell fit to put out under your online identity, I suggest your suspecting skills are up to much. Go fuck yourself
Levi is the void and someone said something once about engaging with those
Vultur non capit muscam...
You have said that people campaigning against zionism have abandoned class politics. I responded by saying that many of us had no class politics in the first place. My point was that the anti-zionist position (in the west anyway) is simply a liberal position but there are far-reaching class reasons why the ruling class is being and has been so illiberal in its support for zionism. You have said that the zionist left's support for segregation and ethnic cleansing (ie maintaining an ethno-religious demographic balance) amounts to "bog standard liberalism". That is clearly not the case. The question is why do so many "bog standard liberals" support so illiberal a situation in Palestine but not in their own countries?
The same goes for Socialrepublican describing the issue as unimportant. But protecting Israel from serious criticism is clearly very important to many people, including Bob and those he describes as his comrades. Just now Rupert Murdoch appears to be involved in a struggle to hold News International together. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports how zionist leaders in the US, Australia and the UK are worried that if News International goes down zionism will have lost a trusty ally. Is Murdoch stupid? Is zionism just a game for him?
And zionism isn't simply Israeli nationalism. There is no reason why an Israeli nationalism couldn't be inclusive of the Israeli Arabs. Whilst they have rights, they do not have equal rights and few if any zionists advocate complete equality between Jews and non-Jews. If zionism can be described as nationalism at all then it is Jewish nationalism and given the transnational (you might say non-national) nature of Jewish communities it is colonialism of the eliminationist variety. To call it nationalism puts it on a par with other nationalisms and raises the old chestnut of singling Israel out unduly. You also ignore the adverse impact that many Jews around the world perceive zionism having on their own identity and existence.
Anyway, for the class aspects of zionism, anti-zionism and the boycott, Gabriel Ash wrote a very good article titled "Why boycott Israel? Because it's good for you".
I won't provide the original link because Dissident Voice, where it first appeared, has developed quite a love affair with Gilad Atzmon since the article appeared. But you could google it. It's well worth a read.
Yes, I know it was a lot more complex. I was not reducing to "all nationalisms are ultimately racist in some sense", but saying "and all nationalisms are ultimately racist in some sense", i.e. I was only commenting on the word "racist" and how it should be used. I think that SR's analysis is a very productive one, and I will hopefully engage with it more fully when I have more time - and probably not on this thread!
And I'll check my mail - realise I've not checked it for days, even weeks. And also learn more Latin.
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Biggest laugh on this thread: Levi And I too don't have a whole lot of time to spare.
"we know you are dumb and one eyed. In fact your whole online persona is a uncontainable flood of the same ol' ideological points, articulated like a dull GSCE student trying to reword the textbook for their coursework. Along with a dash of that right wing "truth-telling bluntness" i.e getting to be a bit bigotted for shits and giggles, there's also the complete lack of weight given to the serious accusations you fling around. It's childish. "
Bob:
"I think that SR's analysis is a very productive one, and I will hopefully engage with it more fully ..."
You might want to try to pinpoint where exactly SR's productive rage is coming from. It's no use telling him I am not really dumb, just a visitor in an island whose language seems only vaguely recognizable, and whose mores and ideas about what makes humanity humanity and justice justice and truth truth and decency decency decency are as bizarre to me as if I were an anthropologist who had just happened upon an isolated tribe in the thicket of the Amazonas with no contact with other fellow-humans since 1378. In fact I'm sure I would have been far more likely to understand that tribe than I do any of you, when all is said and done.
There seems to be such self-indulgent, reckless hatred and barely contained malevolence emanating from some guests on your blog, Bob, that it almost takes my breath away. I read these people and all of a sudden the irrationality and excesses of certain historical events make much better sense.
First, I find SR's analysis of nationalism and of anti-Zionism and of their relationship productive and intelligent, but I don't find his "dumb and one eyed" acceptable. Nor do I find the recent and recentish accusations of borderline antisemitism made against him, WS or James Bloodworth at all productive, and in fact think they are completely wide of the mark. Once we start making these kinds of accusations, then we start to lose the ability to make credible distinctions and judgements on these important issues.
I don't read the comments at Harry's Place, because I don't like to spend time with discussions like the one in the 117 comments above this one. I have one or two posts I might publish in the next couple of days, if I can find time, including one that sums up my position on some of these issues a bit more clearly, and then I will probably close down for the summer and think about where I'm going after the summer.