BURLEY AND LORBER’S PROJECT IS BOTH HONOURABLE AND NECESSARY, BUT WHY DO THEY LET MARXIST ANTISEMITISM OFF THE HOOK? ~ Jay Arachnid ~ Poor timing or perfect timing? Re-centring American Jewish voices crying out against the weaponisation of Jewish trauma by extremist right-wing/quasi-fascist Israeli politicians while at the same time deflecting and minimising the homicidal oppression of Palestinians (and now Lebanese)? I ordered this book prior to the audacious October 7 Hamas attacks; the authors had to scramble to incorporate something about it in their introduction and toward the end of the text. Sadly, their attempt to acknowledge the shock in the Jewish diaspora (as well as inside Israel) falls a bit flat after the ensuing – and typically – hideously disproportionate response by the Israeli military in Gaza and paramilitary settlers in the occupied West Bank, facilitated by the easy flow of weapons from the USA. And now (as of this writing) in Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria (and perhaps Iran by the time this is published). Given the public outrage against Israeli massacres of non-combatants, the targeted assassinations of journalists, and the bombing of schools and hospitals, it feels uncomfortably self-centred to read a book about mostly non-deadly Jew-hatred. To their great credit, Burley and Lorber have provided a concise but still excellent history of antisemitism in the first 138 pages (chapters one through six). Also excellent are the ways they briefly interrogate others’ analyses of Jew-hatred as inadequate, obsolete, or in the case of chapter two (Neither Eternal, Nor Inevitable: New Perspectives on ‘The Oldest Hatred’), politically biased. Yet in chapter five (The Socialism of Fools: Antisemitism and Anti-Capitalism), they succumb to their own. Despite being known as anarchists for years, they have a soft analytical spot for some broad Left, even while taking various leftists to task for harbouring, maintaining, and sometimes promoting a vulgar populist-driven antisemitism. On pages 100-101, they write: > > “Unlike the Right, the early European Left tended less to look backward at > > restoring a nostalgic past, and more to look forward, to the building of a > > more equal society. But they, too, often propagated antisemitism in > > misguided attempts to ‘punch up’ at the root of capitalism, and the ‘Jewish > > question’ was a fiercely common debate among Leftists. In the mid-nineteenth > > century, influential anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin railed against ‘the > > whole Jewish world, which constitutes a single exploitative sect, a sort of > > bloodsucker people, a collective parasite, voracious… every popular > > revolution is accompanied by a massacre of Jews: a natural consequence’. > > Anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon went further, insisting that ‘the Jew is > > the enemy of the human race. One must send this race back to Asia or > > exterminate it’”. The very name of the Lorber and Burley’s chapter cries out for an explanation of Marx and Marxist Jew-hatred. Yet despite correctly raking the old-guard anarchists over the coals — insinuating that anarchists (alone? especially?) are the ones to watch out for — the authors pointedly and inexplicably ignore (or is it censor?) the contributions of Marx and his many followers to this unfortunate discourse; they briefly mention Red Army pogroms in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War as well as the idiocies of the German Communist Party in the 1930s, who made the accusation that “Nazis help Jewish capital” (p 106). Also mentioned in passing are Stalinist anti-Jewish purges in the former Soviet Union “and satellite states like Czechoslovakia”, (p 107), accusing Jews of being Zionist agents (despite the Soviet Union being among the first governments to recognise the new state of Israel in 1948); here, “Zionists” was clearly a codeword for Jews, aka “rootless cosmopolitans”, generally accused of dual loyalty, and therefore politically unreliable. They rightly accuse contemporary leftists of minimising and/or ignoring antisemitism because “Jews are white and therefore oppressors” (and other similar nonsense), but never bother to question where these prejudices might come from. Since Burley and Lorber are (anarcho-)leftist organiser-activists, it’s taken for granted that there should be – indeed, must be if there isn’t already – a mass movement for social justice based on anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism, and that this renewed mass movement (the incipient stages of which are allegedly seen in the Palestinian solidarity movement[s]) needs to take antisemitism seriously if it to succeed. They write, “It is through… building community and organizing a mass movement, that we can build safety through solidarity, and win a just world” (p 325). This is perhaps their primary reason for avoiding taking Marxism to task for being just as mired in anti-Jewish caricature-based prejudice as Bakunin and Proudhon; the risk of alienating people with a history of Marxist-dominated mass movements is just too great. But if radical social justice activists are allowed to challenge pro-Palestinians for their support of Hamas and Hezbollah (“despite those groups’ reactionary beliefs”, p 214 –I would call this kind of truncated and facile anti-imperialism the other socialism of fools), shouldn’t they equally be able to challenge a truncated anti-capitalism that includes the Jew-hatred in which Marx was mired, and which too many of his followers continue to perpetuate? Or is there no historical throughline within the socialism of fools? The topic of antisemitism requires a multilayered and nuanced analysis in order to defy the too-easy conflation of Jews and Israelis – or making diaspora Jews responsible for and representative of Israeli policies (not coincidentally the shared wet dream of zionists and antisemites). And in the wake of the latest round of seemingly endless and increasingly horrifying Israeli atrocities, the potential targeting of non-Israeli Jews for retaliatory violence is sadly real. Burley and Lorber’s project to counter the mundane racism of collective guilt/responsibility is both honourable and necessary, and they have provided anarchists and other radicals a critical entry-point into the discourse.     Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, by Shane Burley and Ben Lorber. Melville House Publishing, 2024. 375 pages. The post Book Review: Safety Through Solidarity appeared first on Freedom News.

I WAS TRAPPED IN LENINISM AND READ SWATHES OF LENIN’S RHETORIC – NOW I KNOW THE ANARCHISTS WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG ~ Killian Flynn ~ Amongst the shadow puppets of English radicalism, lie inert various guises of Leninism: self-perpetuating central committees run tiny irrelevant organisations and use them as a vector to punt their books to young people more familiar with Super Mario than Mikhail Bakunin. This type of Leninist party has mundane job “building cadre”, selling a newspaper in the streets and helping sell the trite utterances of a nonentity, usually a history or philosophy professor of low ability, trapped young radicals. Protecting Russia and building pro-Russia parties was the strategy. Young bright people who want major change get tied up in such organisations and are lost, disillusioned and join the rat race. I was trapped in Leninism and have read swathes of Lenin’s rhetoric. I understand how modern Leninists cherry pick rational statements from a torrent of crap. Leninist groups may have a growth phase but the structure produces regular splits leading to a myriad of small Leninist groups all with their central committees of wise men (and a few women). The best-case scenario is when a Leninist group acts as an old boys club. A meeting is followed by a few pints. Worst case scenario: Police recruit central committee members as informers. It has been argued that Lenin delivered. The people wanted revolution. Lenin and his Bolshevik mates won it with and for them. Gold star for Lenin. But let’s take a closer look. Lenin in power wrote Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. I bought and read it recently. It is pure excrement. The book of a chancer and opportunist who seizes power in a power vacuum and then insists that Russia is a model for the world. Arrant nonsense. Lenin is the big Daddy and the communists and radicals in the West are children. Lenin is truth and decisive. The Western radicals, according to big Vlad, don’t know the ABC of Marxism. Here’s the A: the Communist Manifesto penned by Marx states “communists SHALL NOT form a party separate from the workers” Here’s B: A lack of understanding of the power of the British monarchy and empire stymied Lenin’s world view. Marx had to avoid criticism of the Surrey toffs so that he could get on with writing Capital. The Czar was an amateur compared to the English royals who survive to this day with vast estates and willing vassals. Here is C (or K): Peter Kropotkin. Despite the book title Lenin makes no critique of anarchism and anti-statism. Kropotkin rightly realised a revolution in urban areas had to link with the peasants to avoid famine. People centred revolution! However, in the USSR, Lenin copied the Prussian state structure of pyramidal power which outwardly appears democratic but in reality, a few at the top dominate. In the early days old Vlad probably couldn’t believe the extent of his power. But once he had, his iron will was determined to keep power for himself. It’s also essential to mention that feminism and women’s freedom were not central to the Bolsheviks who were thoroughly workerist. Alexandra Kollontai, the only woman on the first Central Committee to convene after the revolution, repeatedly advocated female liberation but was told “wait till after the revolution”. Women made important gains but their freedoms were ephemeral and Stalin quickly returned to czarist style appeals for Russian women to make babies for the greater good of Russia. Moreover, Lenin and Stalin were prudes. The old maxims of the orthodox church carried over to the USSR. Lenin would have disapproved of the youth rebellion of the 1960s involving free love and fun. Lenin would have said “It’s a distraction from your duty to work for the party!” In France Lutte Ouvriere made party members not have children so as to dedicate their time to party building. The revolutions of Russia and China have proved Karl Marx wrong. The state in these countries never withered away, but only became totalitarian. The state became an end in itself. History would have been better off if Bolshevik Russia had fallen like Bolshevik Bavaria and Hungary (perhaps after the execution of the Czar and family might have been best). Lenin was ultimately wrong and the anarchists were right. Time for a new chapter. The post The Death of Leninism appeared first on Freedom News.