Down with Antisemitic Unz.com

Buttface: What’s wrong with the Unz site? I’ve been there a few times, and it didn’t look too bad.

Full of completely insane antisemites and full on Nazis, the real kind, that love Hitler and his government, all tolerated and even encouraged by the very Jewish Mr. Unz. This man is very foolish.

Jews won’t get anywhere sucking up to Nazis for whatever crazy reason they have. When push comes to shove, a Nazi’s a Nazi, and they’re pretty much out to get all the Jews. They will hardly save a one of them. Jews are evil in a racial sense to Nazis. It’s not something you can talk or convert your way out of.

There are antisemites and there are antisemites. A lot of people don’t like Jews as a group. They don’t make themselves easy to like – I get it. Claudius said he’s never met one person in his life who liked Jews, but they all made exceptions for individual Jews. They dislike the group, but they take each individual Jew as a unique person, and a lot of them are really cool in my opinion as long as you keep away from certain subjects. Of course, my longest relationship was with a Jewish woman who agreed with most everything I said about Jews. And I was actually going to convert to Judaism to please her too.

I don’t mind “watercooler antisemitism” – complaints that Jews are greedy, obnoxious, loud, rude, aggressive, somewhat unpleasant, slightly sociopathic and thuggish – a lot of them are, especially the men. But many also are not.

And any rate, there’s nothing wrong with not being wild about certain types of people. I’m not wild about Turks, the Latin American upper class, Gulf Arabs, Indian Hindus, and especially Gypsies. Not wild about Nigerians either. But I’ll probably be nice to them if I meet them, and I don’t advocate harming them in any way. Jews are in the same class, though they’re better than those other groups. I don’t want to harm them either.

Just because you’re not ecstatic about some race of people doesn’t mean you want to hurt them!

Obsessive, conspiratorial antisemitism or hardcore antisemitism is nasty stuff. It has and still does lead to active harm for Jewish people. To put it mildly, it’s not good the Jews at all. I don’t blame Jews for being very suspicious of and even harboring strong dislike for these people.

And it tends to go over towards Nazism at some point or another. It’s an odd hardcore antisemite who isn’t a Nazi in some way or another. Antisemitism is a different form of racism because it can and does turn homicidal. Despite the screams of antiracists, most racism against Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc. isn’t of the homicidal variety.

I’ve also noticed that hardcore antisemites, at some point or another, start advocating for mass murder of Jews. I’d say the mildest want to kill ~200,000 of them. I always thought this was a Jewish lie – antisemites want to kill them all. Sadly, I found out the Jews weren’t lying about this. I don’t know why it is, but this form of racism generally leads to advocacy of mass murder.

Anti-Zionist antisemitism, granted a variety of antisemitism though not all anti-Zionists are particularly antisemitic, doesn’t typically lead to exterminationist language. If all the Jews in Israel packed up and went to other countries or the moon tomorrow, this type of antisemite wouldn’t really care. It’s not like they would go hunt them down in their new homes! They just want them out of Palestine. Once they leave, most of these people don’t care where they go.

Islamist antisemitism can be exterminationist in its extreme forms like Al Qaeda or ISIS. I believe ISIS is committing to killing all the Jews on Earth. On the other hand, unlike racial antisemites, even ISIS will let you convert your way out of harm.

Interview with an Anarchist in Haifa about the Palestinian Resistance against Israeli Occupation

From an interesting anarchist site here.

During the last couple of months, the situation in Palestine has escalated into a generalized uprising against Zionism, colonialism and apartheid. All of Israel’s and the local far-right’s attempts to crush the spirit of the Palestinian people have resulted in a unified mass resistance, for the first time in decades. The following text is a ground level report from an occupied land, discussing the course of the insurrection, as well as the counter-insurgency tactics, and Hamas’ role in the events.

For starters, could we have some info about you? As it would help us to better understand from what position you are talking.

I’m an anarchist based in Haifa, Occupied Palestine, so-called Israel. I live in an historical Palestinian city that faced a massive attack and terrorist aggression by Zionist militias in 1948 aimed at expelling the local indigenous population and colonizing the land. Since then, the Palestinians that remain live under an ethnic supremacist and apartheid system, and the refugees abroad are still aspiring to return. I come from a settler Jewish family, arriving on this land during the ’80s, and once I got the facts straight, I knew which position I should take.

Once again, bad news spread around the world from the Palestinian and Israeli territories. In a few words, what happened there?

We had a rough few months here. Not sure exactly where to start, but it’s good to concentrate on Jerusalem/Al-Quds that, as in many other uprisings, was the trigger. During April, settlers and cops provoked people in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of town, especially in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and the Al-Aqsa compound.

In order to get the background you need, know that from the Zionist occupation of 1948 to 1967, East Jerusalem was under the control of Jordan. Some of the neighborhoods were populated by Palestinian refugees escaping the Zionist invasion and Nakba of 1948. Sheikh Jarrah is one of them.

After the occupation of 1967, the Zionist state celebrated the “reunification” of Jerusalem each year, now a national holiday. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers arrived at the neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, much like the rest of the occupied West Bank, with clear plans of colonization and Judaization of the area.

In Sheikh Jarrah, an old Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, settler organizations engaged in legal battles against local residents in the Israeli apartheid court system in efforts to evict local Palestinians and replace them with Jewish settlers, claiming the property used to be owned by Jews. A few families had already been evicted during 2008, 2009, and 2017, and now, a new court ruling puts an additional eight families under a threat of eviction, which is roughly 500 people. Jewish settlements exist in other neighborhoods in East Jerusalem as well, such as Silwan and Abu Tor.

In the Al-Aqsa compound, one of the holiest places to Islam, Israel placed barriers in Bab Al-‘Amud, one of the entrances to the mosque, in the beginning on the month of Ramadan in an effort to limit the number of worshipers and restrict movement. This act provoked outrage and days of rioting ensued in Bab Al-‘Amud and the main streets in East Jerusalem. The barriers were eventually removed.

Meanwhile, tensions in the city had escalated. Some Palestinian youth posted TikTok videos of them attacking Jews around the city, and Jewish far-right gangs mobilized to attack people suspected of being Arabs in the city center. Lehava, a far-right organization, led a racist ‘Death to Arabs’ march from the city center to Bab Al-‘Amud during the riots and were blocked by police on their way.

On May 10, during “Jerusalem Day”, the national holiday celebrating the occupation of the eastern part of the city in 1967, the annual ‘flag parade’ took place in the city, and right-wing participants were expected to enter the Muslim quarter in the old city and shout racist slurs under police protection as they do every year.

Israeli police invaded the Al-Aqsa mosque, and in the intense riots, dozens of cops and hundreds of protestors were injured. Around 5 pm, Hamas announced that Israel has 1 hour to evict all of its police forces from Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Aqsa compound. As this deadline passed, Hamas launched rockets into Israel, reaching Jerusalem. Israel in response announced a military operation in Gaza, and began to bombard the Gaza Strip with airstrikes in a massacre and destruction that lasted 12 days, until a ceasefire was reached on May 21.

Meanwhile, a generalized uprising took place amongst the Palestinians, including ’48 Palestinians living in the territories occupied in 1948 (i.e., so-called “Israel”), ’67 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, and refugee communities abroad. A united insurrection, with days of riots in Palestinian, Israeli, and mixed cities and villages, refugee camps in nearby countries, and Israeli embassies and consulates everywhere. A general strike was also announced on May 18 involving all of the Palestinians for the first time in decades.

What are the important facts or basics we need to know about the history of this conflict? Should we call it a conflict, actually?

It is a conflict as much as an attack by a nuclear superpower with one of the most advanced armies in the world backed by the strongest state on earth against a poor occupied civilian population without an army could be characterized as a “conflict”. This is an aggression, the ‘two sides’ are the oppressor and the oppressed, the colonizer and the colonized.

The asymmetrical nature of the situation is so inherent, it’s completely ridiculous in my opinion that people struggle with ‘complexities’ while entire neighborhoods are being erased in Gaza by Israeli military airstrikes, killing 250 people in less than two weeks while Gazans have primitive rockets, most of them falling in open fields or being neutralized by Iron Dome- Israel’s defense system. The 12 people killed on the Israeli side came from mostly from the lower classes of society – mainly migrant workers and even Palestinians, as was the case in the village of Dahamash, near Ramle.

To really understand the true nature of this ‘conflict’ one must understand the inherently racist and colonialist nature of Zionism. As the Zionist occupation armies invaded this land in 1948, it was rich with culture. In what’s known as the Nakba, literally ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic, entire villages were erased, massacres were committed, and hundreds of thousands of refugees driven away off their land. In the conquest for the Jewish homeland, a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing was committed. The indigenous population abroad in refugee camps in nearby countries and all over the world are still aspiring to return.

Those that managed to stay were subjected to realities of colonialism, racism, and discrimination. Laws such as the Absentee Property Act ruled that land and property of refugees fleeing Zionist aggression is now state property. The newly arrived Jewish immigrants were housed in those empty neighborhoods and towns. Military rule was imposed on the Palestinians who remained in Israel from 1948 to 1966 that imposed land restrictions, caused their expulsion from villages, and subjected them to curfews, detentions, and various other discriminatory actions, all with one aim: to increase the Jewish presence and cleanse the land of Palestinians as much as possible.

After the occupation of 1967, unlike the one of 1948, Israel decided not to annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip to its official territory but to keep it in an unclear ‘temporary status’. Even though the Israeli military control basically every facet of the Palestinians’ life there, they are not Israeli citizens, are under military law, and have no rights. The Jewish settlers living in settlements nearby are full Israeli citizens and are under civilian law. Israeli settlements divide the West Bank into small cantons, and the separation wall since 2003 is another tool of land theft. The wall does not go through the 1967 “Green Line” border, but goes inside villages, in many cases annexing land in favor of nearby Jewish settlements.

Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been under siege as a tool of collective punishment for Hamas’ rule over the area. Despite Israel’s claim of withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it still controls its borders, water, and airspace. Gaza, one of the densest populated areas in the world with a population of over 2 million, has already been bombed numerous times in military operations (massacres) in recent years, leading to thousands of casualties and a deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe.

Israel is the leading front of settler-colonialism currently in the world, one of the ugliest examples of nation building as a way of solving the problems of minorities within the boundaries of the state. There won’t be an end in sight without decolonization, return of the refugees, and a truly shared and equal existence without Zionism and apartheid. The time to start building the basis for such a future is now.

How do the Palestinian people live and/or survive? Is this apartheid taking the scale of an ethnic cleansing or a genocide? What is HAMAS’ role?

Hundreds of people are facing eviction in East Jerusalem. Gaza is in ruins, is still under a siege, and is the largest open prison in the world. Total devastation and human tragedy. 250 were killed during the latest Israeli aggression. Clean water is scarce. Health facilities were damaged, including the only lab in Gaza for testing Covid-19 cases. The pandemic is on the rise. Electricity hours are limited. Tens of thousands are displaced with no home to come back to. Unemployment and poverty are exploding.

Inside so-called Israel, Palestinians are facing an intense state terror campaign, aimed at repressing any dissent and punishing those willing to resist. About 2,000 were arrested so far in the protests this month, with more arrests expected. In the West Bank, settlements and a racist separation wall continues to divide the land into small cantons, annex lands from Palestinian villages, and make life unbearable. The refugees are still unable to return.

Palestine has been experiencing an ongoing, uninterrupted ethnic cleansing campaign since 1948. The Nakba never ended. One settler in the Eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan made it very clear: “We won’t stop until East Jerusalem becomes like West Jerusalem. Jewish. The Palestinians have no place in this vision.”

But despite all of the hardship, people are still resisting. The Palestinians stood fast during the last uprising, proved their unity, and fought the Zionist state bravely, despite all the attempts to divide them and crush their spirit. The revolt proved to be courageous and uncontrollable. None of the youth fighting the police in Palestinian and mixed cities by erecting barricades and defending against fascist invasion were obedient to any party or political faction. The new generation of fighters on the street are immune to the pacification efforts from the regular collaborator’s forces, in the form of political parties, NGOs, and respectable community and religious ‘leaders’.

Hamas’ role in the story is exactly what the “Palestinian leadership” did during every wave of popular uprising: take over the situation and kill the  appeal of mass insurrection. Just like the P.L.O. (Palestine Liberation Organization) during the first Intifada, once the militarist militias took over, the ‘professional revolutionaries’, the people became passive spectators of their own ‘liberation’. During the insurrection, the focus turned quickly to rockets launched in Gaza flying over Israeli cities, and the riots and protests largely died out. One can’t help but feel that Hamas interrupted the birth of a popular mass movement in the inner cities of the occupation that wasssssssssssssssssssssssssssss capable of creating real damage.

What about the Israelis? How do they react in this condition? Is there any far-right movement in society? Had Netanyahu the support of the people?

During the last uprising, there was a big far-right anti-Palestinian mobilization with fascist lynch mobs attacking Palestinians. In a now-infamous incident in Bat Yam, racist lynch mobs that tried to reach Jaffa rioted, smashed windows of businesses owned by Arabs, and attacked an Arab driver, all caught on live television. The police were not present. In Haifa, they stormed Palestinian neighborhoods, attacked passengers, damaged cars, threw stones at houses, and shouted racist slurs.

In Lydda, extremist settlers from the West Bank came to the city armed with guns despite the police announcing curfew in the city in the early days of the uprising and shot people, threw stones, set stores on fire, and attacked mosques and cemeteries. In a few cases the police stood by and did nothing. There is even documentation of them throwing stones at Palestinians from police lines. Those pogroms are well documented, but there are significantly more Palestinians arrested than far-right Jewish fascists.

To get into Israeli fascism and the local far-right movement would be quite a lengthy endeavor, let me just say the working class here is generally very right-wing and that Zionism has created a monster I’m not sure it can control. They are allowed to freely attack Palestinians to suppress generalized uprisings but have to disappear and go underground once exposed.

They are the direct consequence of Zionism, and it’s important for me to state that people use the far-right extremists as a way to avoid dealing with mainstream Zionism. It’s easy for liberal Israelis to get disgusted by right-wing assholes shouting death to Arabs in Jerusalem and then support IDF soldiers attacking Gaza during airstrikes, actually putting ‘death to Arabs’ into practice. In a state founded on ethnic cleansing backed by an inherently racist and colonialist ideology, one should not be surprised at the existence of racist pogromists and lynch mobs.

Netanyahu is quite a polarizing figure, but I’ll say he has the support of a huge chunk of Israeli society. But not everyone of course. During last summer, Jerusalem held some very big anti-Netanyahu demonstrations.

The “Anti-Bibi (Netanyahu’s nickname in Israel) Movement” got its momentum after corruption allegations were made public and a police investigation around these allegations is ongoing. Israel is currently in an electoral crisis after 4 elections in the last 2 years, and despite Bibi winning the largest number of votes in all of them, he was time and again unable to form a government due to Israel’s electoral system, and new elections were announced.

In the last elections held in March, Netanyahu once again got the largest number of votes, but again was unable to form a government, and the mandate went to his opponents – the rightwing Naftali Bennet and the centrist Yair Lapid, who would apparently share the government for two years each.

So for now, if things don’t change, it seems as though the anti-Bibi movement reached its goal. But things are not expected to go smoothly. Protests for and against the new government are polarizing the country, and things can go anywhere from here. There are even talks in the media about the possibility of political assassination, as the pro-Bibi camp is very unhappy about the course of events.

What about the persecuted and imprisoned people in so-called Israel? Who are they and what have they tried to do? Are there any movements against the state and the capital?

There was actually quite a long tradition of Israeli Jewish working class communities that calling for an end of the occupation. The Israeli Black Panthers, a group of young Mizrahi Jewish immigrants active in Jerusalem during the 70’s, were critical of Zionism and combined calls for an end to  military rule of Palestinians in their demands for economic and social justice. Here in Haifa, there was also a famous Mizrahi revolt in the 50’s in the Wadi Salib neighborhood – by the way, an historical Palestinian neighborhood whose population got evicted during the Nakba.

After a police officer shot and injured a person in a local café, the residents rioted for days, demanding an end to police brutality and discrimination against Mizrahi Jews by the Ashkenazi elite. An end to military rule over the Arabs was one of the demands. There was a time in which solidarity with the Palestinians was part of the radical Mizrahi working class conscience. But this tradition is long gone. The “Mizrahi discourse” today has deteriorated into liberal “identity politics” nonsense, with demands like ‘representation’ of politicians in Parliament, more Mizrahi police officers, and putting the faces of famous Mizrahi people on currency bills.

It’s hard to explain how right wing the Israeli working class is. But people are still revolting.

During the last few years, there were some incidents of police officers shooting and killing Ethiopian Jewish youth. People went out to the streets and rioted all over the country, in many cases connecting it with the Black Lives Matter movement in the so-called US. There weren’t any clear solidarity messages with the Palestinians, but a pretty significant movement against army conscription grew out of the Ethiopian-Jewish protests, under the banner “Our blood is good only for wars”. That’s a big deal in a militaristic state like Israel in which the army is above all.

Also, connections are being made, and it’s hard to predict where social processes will take us. During the anti-Netanyahu protests last summer in Jerusalem, proletariat youth met each other on the street, with Ethiopians, Palestinians, Mizrahi, feminists, environmentalists etc. protesting side by side for the same interests. Despite how liberal the overall demonstrations were, on its far edges, communities that don’t usually get to see each other face to face and are ignorant of their shared interests finally got the chance to do so.

People are now making the connections between the deaths of Ethiopian Jewish youth like Salomon Teka and Yehuda Biagda with the deaths of Palestinians like Iyad Al-Halak and Munis Anabtawi, all of whom were murdered by police. It took a long time for this to happen. But of course I don’t want to paint the picture in more romantic colors than it actually is. It’s too early to discuss any movement that is willing to give up the state and capital amongst Israelis, and I doubt it will happen any time soon. The Palestinian resistance will remain the only truly revolutionary movement in the region.

The conversation about antisemitism and anti-Zionism is starting every time this crisis is arising. Do you accept these terms and if so, what is your opinion on them? Is there anything problematic in the use of these terms? Is the state of Israel using them in its blame-game and, on the other hand, is there such hate from any part of the Palestinians?

Just talked about it with some German comrades lately! I’m going to be completely honest with y’all here: I’m sick and tired of antisemitism being brought up every time the issue of Palestine is being raised. I doubt the honesty and integrity of anyone who, while entire neighborhoods are being erased with airstrikes and people are being evicted from their homes to be replaced by settlers, all he has to say is “Yes, but the Jews”.

We need to really focus right now. People are dying. Ethnic cleansing and colonization campaigns are ongoing. State repression and terror is at an all-time high. Gaza is a Hell on earth and the situation is unbearable. This is a human catastrophe. We don’t have the time to deal with false accusations. Don’t take the bait.

I’m not going to get into how anti-Zionism is different from antisemitism. It’s so old and well known that it’s boring and cliché at this point. Most people already know these things, and many of those who don’t won’t listen anyway. The Left goes around in circles about this because it’s apparently easier to deal with false ‘complexities’ and theoretical debates than to notice what’s happening in front of your eyes. Jewish people have been opposing Zionism since the very beginning, way before the state of Israel existed.

The nation-state form is a project of reinventing the mechanism needed to ‘purify’ and simplify the land of any diversity and complexity until nothing is left but a monolithic state identity. Just notice the language they use – “Israel has the right to defend itself.” States don’t have rights. They only have “rights” insofar as they protect their citizens, and we all know states don’t do that.

I honestly think that Israel is one of the worst things that has happened to Jewish people. It’s an extension of their historical ethnic cleansing from Europe, and a step backwards in many respects. By looking at Netanyahu’s relationship with figures like Trump and Bolsonaro, and the Israeli Right’s warm relationship with its European and American counterparts, you can clearly see that Zionism and antisemitism not only do not oppose each other, they go very well together. They complement each other.

Anyway, as for antisemitism in the solidarity movement, it exists and of course needs to be dealt with. Jewish and Palestinian comrades are aware of it and have been fighting it for decades. The BDS movement for example is strictly against any kind of racism including antisemitism and has been enforcing this policy against any bigots abusing their platform.

People need to gatekeep the solidarity movement against any kind of fascist bullshit like I saw comrades in Germany confronting Turkish fascists infiltrating a pro-Palestinian demonstration. That’s good and needs to happen more. It’s different from simply labeling the whole movement antisemitic. Fascists will take a hold in any platform they feel they can use to propagate their hate, and they infiltrate social movements constantly. It’s our job as antifascists to deny that to them.

As far as the Middle East goes, could we have a “political map” on the converging and conflicting state forces? Some Palestinians, for example, were requesting on social media the help of Pakistan. On the other hand, the state of Israel has the support of the U.S.A. What is your perspective on the world’s response concerning the never-ending violence and massacre in the area?

Geopolitics of course play a big part in inflaming the so-called “conflict”. After the so-called US became a superpower in the 1940’s, and Britain drew its forces out of the Middle East, there was a strong need for a new ‘regional cop’, a Western ally to keep local interests in check. Arab nationalism was a strong force at that time, and a pro-Western power was the logical “security” needed to keep “stability”, meaning American influence and control, over the resources of the region.

Israel impressed the US during the Nakba, with the American military describing it as “the strongest military force in the region after Turkey.” This perception received further confirmation in 1967 after Israel destroyed Nasser’s Egypt and eliminated Arab nationalism as a dominant power in the region.

Even further confirmation came in 1970 when Israel protected Jordan from a Syrian invasion, probably in order to protect oil fields. This tendency grew over the years. Today, Israel receives billions of dollars in military aid from the US annually, more aid than the US gives the entire African continent. To keep a strong Israel is a significant US strategic goal, which is another reason why the US repeatedly vetoes and blocks UN decisions concerning the Palestinians.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, are completely alone and constantly betrayed by their so-called ‘allies’. The Arab countries have long ago abandoned ‘Arab nationalism’ in favor of a neocolonial order of puppet dictators and Western influence. The “Arab Spring” might have given hope for a second, but generally speaking, new dictators replaced the old ones. The latest ‘peace agreement’ between Israel and the UAE shows the lengths neoliberal monarchies in the Middle East will go in normalizing Israel’s presence as long as business and free trade are protected and promoted.

Other state powers are completely opportunistic: The Soviets gave their support during the Cold War whenever it suited their interests. The Palestinians can’t even count on their own “leadership”, as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are themselves corrupted dictators and opportunistic bureaucracies acting against their own people. The only real ally left is the people on the ground with the international solidarity movement willing to raise its voice and act against modern forms of apartheid, colonialism, and state terror.

Is there any message you want to send to the anarchists and antifascists around the world? How can we all show our solidarity to the Palestinians or the peace and freedom fighters in so-called Israel?

The Palestinians need help and support. They need action and solidarity. Comrades loving freedom from all over the world need to raise their voice for them. Target Israeli interests in your region. Join your local BDS chapter and call for a boycott. Organize direct action. Do anything you can to get the message across. Internationalist revolutionary solidarity is our strongest weapon against state terror and repression. “Comrades” who are silent – your silence is deafening.

Anything about the future?

Fuck “co-existence.” We need co-resistance. We need a joint insurrection of Israelis and Palestinians on the ground and refugees and their supporters abroad against colonialist Zionism and the apartheid regime. We need to create the basis of a new culture, of people capable of creating an autonomy in which people could meet each other on the streets and reinvent living together. We need to share this land as equals, to smash the visible and invisible borders of fear and control, and imagine politics beyond state terror. We need all of this to not be a fantasy but a reality of struggle, courage, and forming brave connections. May we see the day.

You can check the report I wrote to Crime, Inc. concerning the last uprising, in which I dive to some of the topics I mentioned here in details.

Latest Update (End of June): As the last Flag March was interrupted by Hamas rockets, the settlers decided to hold another one. After the riots and the last escalation, there was a big controversy, but the new government held by the new prime minister Naftali Bennet eventually allowed the march to take place on June 15, with thousands of settlers and right-wing activists raiding Jerusalem yelling racist slurs against Arabs and Muslims, all under full police protection as usual.

Numerous shouts of “Death to Arabs,” calls for burning of villages and a second Nakba, and slurs against the Muslim prophet Muhammad were recorded during the march. Small groups of Palestinian resistance on the outskirts of the route of the march were brutally suppressed by riot police. Hamas once again threatened Israel, and in response to the march launched explosive balloons to towns and agricultural fields near the Gaza border, causing fires. Israel in response attacked Gaza once again, this time under the new government, which is obviously the same as the old.

From: https://radiofragmata.org/2021/07/03/fuck-co-existence-we-need-co-resistance-an-interview-with-an-anarchist-in-haifa-about-the-palestinian-resistance-against-the-israeli-occupation/

Alt Left: Temporary Ban from Facebook for This Completely Non-racist Paragraph

Israel: Just Pack Up and Go

Garren Seifert: Not dumb. Hateful, yes. I don’t care about Jews other than the ones infesting Palestine. Jews belong in the Diaspora, sorry. This whole Zionist project has been a terrible and tragic mess.

Hey Israelis! You can’t get along with even one country in that whole region! Hell. Just pack up and go, Israelis. Take off. Leave. Everyone hates you. No one likes you. You hate all your neighbors and wage war on all of them, and they all hate you. You are the problem.

Some Jew on Faceberg reported me for this. I got a three-day ban for hate speech. I guess “Israeli” is a race or ethnicity. Who knew?

Of course the Jews and a lot of their Gentile fellow travelers have been trying to say that anti-Zionism is a form of Jew hatred forever now. It often is but it doesn’t have to be. You can despise the Israeli state but leave the Diaspora Jews out of it.

What did the Diaspora Jews every do to you, Palestinians? Did they steal your land and water and leave you shelterless in your very own homeland? No? Did they hurt and kill you? No? They didn’t hurt you themselves. Other people did. So why not leave them out of it?

Now I don’t like Israel-firsters in the Diaspora too much either, but if you hate them, you have to hate the tens of millions of Gentiles propping up  the whole eroding Zionist castle in the sand by the sea. I hate too many humans as it is. No need to hate 60 million new ones.

I do hate this loudmouth Jew for getting me a ban, of course.

But there are an awful lot of Jews who are not Israel-firsters. If you never mention Israel you might think they were the coolest people in the whole world.

Zionism, Anti-Zionism and the Monster of Dual Loyalty

Forced to choose between loyalty to the homeland and loyalty to the tribe, Jews have traditionally chosen treason. This is the poison pill of anti-Zionism, for it throws the Jews back into the Diaspora where they may revert back to their normal treacherous role. On the other hand, Zionism has not solved the problem of Jewish disloyalty and dual loyalty. In fact, it has worsened it by orders of magnitude. Whereas before Zionism Jews may have been mildly treasonous, afterwards Jewish treason went through the roof as Jews captured nation after nation throughout the West and turned one White country after another into a colony of Israel. All things considered, I think Jews would be much less treasonous without a Jewish state. So yes, the dismantling of Zionism would throw the Jews back into the Diaspora and bring back the boogeyman of Jewish dual loyalty. But Zionism has morphed the dual loyalty monster into a titan. All in all, I feel that Jewish dual loyalty would radically diminish if the Jews no longer had a state that they could use to drag generations of White Gentiles into fighting and dying for them in the endless Wars for the Jews we see playing out across the land, in Iraq, then in Libya, next in Yemen and now in Syria and soon to be Iran. Lebanon? Been there, done that. 323 Marines died in that War for the Jews.

“Time to Rekindle the UN Spark,” by Eric Walberg

New article by my friend Eric Walberg.

Time to Rekindle UN Spark

Eric Walberg

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently held a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the squashing of UN resolution 3379, equating Zionism with racism. It was passed in 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions). The festive event this year was attended by US Secretary of State John Kerry and head of the Israeli Labour Party and Zionist Union Isaac Herzog, son of Chaim Herzog, president of Israel from 1983 to 1993, and star of the 1975 UN session.

The 1975 vote took place approximately one year after resolution 3237 granted the PLO “observer status”, following Yasser Arafat’s “olive branch” speech to the General Assembly in November 1974. It succeeded only because the Soviet Union and its allies were there to support the Arab and Islamic majority countries.

It was revoked in December 1991 by UN resolution 46/86. At the commemoration this year, Ban Ki-moon recalled Chaim Herzog’s words in 1975, “I appeal to the community of nations to always act to uphold the principles of the United Nations Charter to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.” Such nice platitudes coming from the Israeli ambassador—community, principles, tolerance, peace…

It is odd that this year’s festivities actually celebrate the passing of the resolution, rather than its demise, commemorating the chutzpah of Israeli UN representative Herzog, who stole the show, recounting how magnanimous Israel is with its Arab citizens, who apparently held the same rights as Jews, worked in border and police defense forces, were elected to parliament, studied at universities…

He pointed to Arabs coming from elsewhere for medical treatment, and to “the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country.” The UN ambassador finished his tirade by ripping up the resolution and defiantly stating he would have UN Avenues in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv renamed Zionism Avenues.

Herzog didn’t mention how traditionally Jews lived freely under Muslim rule and often served Muslim leaders as advisers, how Arab anger today is directly due to Israel’s murderous, illegal actions against the rightful citizens of what was once the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. He didn’t mention the millions of Palestinians denied their basic rights because Israel is apparently free of racism.

At least the 1975 gathering had some punch. There was no substance in the commemoration in 2015. Kerry waffled, despite a weeks-long wave of violence that has claimed the lives of at least 77 Palestinians along with 10 Israelis. No mention of that. He said that a two-state solution in the Middle East was “not an impossible dream” but would require courage. Yawn.

Kerry called the 1975 resolution “ominous” because it gave “a global license to hate” the state of Israel. But then “hate” covers just about any word of criticism of Israel. After all, election fever is rising in the US and the Israel lobby is alive and well.

Bush Senior’s Half Truths

It is more instructive to deconstruct the speech by US President HW Bush, who introduced the UN motion overturning resolution 3379 in 1991, which he said “mocks this pledge and the principles upon which the United Nations was founded. Zionism is not a policy; it is the idea that led to the creation of a home for the Jewish people, to the State of Israel. To equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history.”

He was half correct. Zionism is an idea, one that turned into a policy of racial exclusion and victimization of the Palestinian natives, whose land and property the new immigrants stole, even as they conducted a state policy of terror against the natives. Bush made no explanation of why Zionism is not a policy. But the Soviet voice was gone by 1991; only the US voice was heard defending the pious hope that Israel would one day make peace with the Palestinians based on the original 1947 UN Resolution 181 to partition the territory.

Bush’s claim that Zionism is not a policy of racism simply flies in the face of reality. But then the US itself was founded on an idea much like Zionism. The Puritans, Quakers and many other religious groups immigrated intending to establish an ideal Christian society modeled on the Bible, an idea which also was a policy of genocide of the American natives.

The 17th philosopher Francis Bacon penned a utopian novel New Atlantis based on his enthusiastic support for establishing the British colonies in North America, depicting the creation of a utopian land where “generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit” are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of the mythical Bensalem.

The idea of a “new Jerusalem” is the bedrock of the US idea. Even such a respected philosopher was able to disregard the racist policy of genocide against the American natives in the name of “generosity and enlightenment etc.” No one noticed that, from the start, that the idea of the US (Bensalem) was a racist idea, just as its policies were. Only in the 19th century did international opprobrium finally push the US to abolish its most glaring racist policy—slavery.

But by then, the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine was already being mooted by British politicians such as Lord Shaftsbury, and Israel was finally forced down the UN throat by FDR and Truman. For Shaftsbury et al, it was merely a logical development of western ‘civilization‘.

Bush lauded the crushing of the racism resolution in 1991 as “a real chance to fulfill the UN Charter’s ambition of working ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person’.” Yet he was unable to see that the emperor (himself) and his offspring were wearing no clothes, that it is Israel that is the scourge of war, the violator of human rights and human dignity.

Bush stated that the UN “cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel’s right to exist.” Again a half truth. No one intended to wipe Israel off the map, as long as it was a nation that followed international norms, in particular human rights of the peoples who live there or who will return there from refugee camps when a peaceful solution to the stand-off is agreed. But this is only possible if we address Bush’s other half truth that lies at the heart of Zionism, both as idea and policy.

Bush’s other mistake was to define the State of Israel as “a home for the Jewish people”. This makes Israel racist by definition, just as Hitler identified Germany as the home of the Aryan people, a similarly vague, racist definition of the state.

Bush’s Lesson: Don’t Cross Israel

There is a bitter irony in Bush’s kowtowing to Israel in 1991. In September he had asked Congress to delay Israel’s request for $10 billion in loan guarantees to help settle Soviet Jews, trying to force Israel to stop its illegal settlement construction and negotiate a real peace. He no doubt was recalling how Eisenhower had made Israel bend to the US game plan in 1956. Ford/ Kissinger/ Carter had too, though just barely in the 1970s, curbing somewhat Israel’s colonial ambitions. Both times, ironically, US leaders relied on the Soviet ‘threat’ to give them some backbone.

But ‘in victory, defeat’. The Soviet ‘threat’, providing the US some leverage with Israel, was no more, and in the meantime, the Israel lobby in Washington had become too powerful for a president to counter. The Zionists were in no mood to swallow their pride and obey a newly holier-than-thou imperial Washington.

Bush senior found he had no allies for his plan to bring Israel into line. He scurried to the UN to burnish his credentials, but to no avail. The Israel lobby mobilized, found their ideal candidate in Bill Clinton, and Bush suddenly was being attacked in the media. Incessant negative publicity as election day approached did the trick. He lost his re-election bid, going from a 9

It is time for a new resolution 3379, something with teeth that will wake Israel up and push it to admit its sins. There is no hope to find a sponsor in Washington. However, the support for Palestinians struggling for their rights continues to grow. The EU, BDS and others boycott settlement goods are having their effect. Israel‘s neighbors continue to resist. As US power wanes, there is hope that the UN will once again find some backbone.

Jews Lie, Part 1,530,961

Yes, Jews lie. They do it a lot. I don’t necessarily hate Jews. They have a good side and a down side. The down side is the lying, among other things. A lot of times, I think the good side outweighs the bad side, and a recent long-term girlfriend was Jewish. I do not think being a liar per se makes you a bad person. It has to be weighed against the good side of the person to see how it all balances out. Jews mostly lie about themselves. They are not capable of being objective about themselves, hence, anytime Jews are saying anything relating to themselves as a group, you need to be careful, because they lie constantly about this sort of thing. This is unfortunate as a lot of our sources about the Jewish people and especially their conflicts with others were written by Jews, hence they are very suspect. For instance, most work on “anti-Semitism” is written by Jews. A lot of this work is complete garbage. In fact there is a whole institute set up in Israel that does nothing more than study anti-Semitism. I think it is called the Steven Roth Institute. Almost nothing they write can be trusted. Anti-Semitism is a complex phenomenon and it would be better if disinterested parties wrote about it. The biggest Jewish liars of all are Jewish nationalists – Zionists. The problem with Jews is that almost all Jews are Jewish nationalists or Jewish ultranationalists. Nationalist lie. Ultranationalists lie. Not just Jewish nationalists and ultranationalists, but all of them. Jews have a great deal of power in US media. This is not necessarily a horrible problem except that having one ethnic group have so much power over one’s media is always troubling, whether they are Jewish-Americans, Swedish-Americans or whatever. It is not exactly democratic to have one ethnic control so much of a nation’s propaganda network. Jewish media power is not as important as most make it out to be. Jewish media barons are simply US imperialists who work in tandem with large corporations, the Pentagon and the State Department exactly as their Gentile colleagues do. If anything, Jewish media barons are a better class of the However, on the subject of Israel and US support for Israel, Jewish media power is a very bad thing for America and this is where the lying comes in. Jewish nationalists have been very active lately screaming and yelling about “growing anti-Semitism” in Europe and the West. There really isn’t any growing anti-Semitism in the West. There is growing sentiment against Jewish nationalism – Zionism and Israel – but beyond that, anti-Semitism is not very high. Jewish nationalists need to do this because they have an extreme hatred for White Christians and especially White European Christians. Lamentably, White European Christians do have a long tradition of anti-Semitism. The subject is extremely complex and the reasons for it go beyond the scope of this essay. This phenomenon culminated in the Holocaust, in which the Germans received a lot of assistance in the Jew-killing from European Christians, primarily in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, many European Christians saved Jews and many others effectively laid down their lives to save the Jews by fighting the Nazis. Tarring all European Christians with the Nazi brush is ridiculous, but Jews, especially Jewish nationalists, have been doing this ever since the 1940’s. Jewish nationalists need to do this since Zionism is predicated on the notion that Gentile (especially European Christian Gentile) anti-Semitism is perennial and eternal in that it will never go away. This can be seen in the preposterous Jewish nationalist saying that begins, “Every generation they rise up to kill us all…” The Zionists need to see the Gentile World as full of raving, genocidal anti-Semites, and they are always working on this propaganda meme. All nations in the Diaspora must be seen as savagely anti-Semitic and not safe for Jews. In order to be safe, all Jews must go to Israel (except don’t hitchhike and watch out for missiles landing on your head). Hence every anti-Semitic incident in the Diaspora receives breathtaking coverage in the Israeli media. Leading Israeli politicians then go on TV and urge the Jews of the nation where the incident occurred to high-tail it to Israel right this minute. In the Jewish nationalist media in both Israel and in the US (including huge media networks like CNN that have been effectively taken over by Jewish nationalists) a recent meme is that the Jews of Europe are no longer safe due to rising anti-Semitism in Europe. They single out Sweden, France and the UK for particular abuse. This is a clever lie since like most propaganda, it’s not completely false. In fact, there is rising anti-Semitism in Europe, including the three nations listed above. However, the problem is in how the story is told. Jewish nationalists tell the story as if Sweden, France and the UK have been raving Nazi countries full of White Christian Nazis ready to kill all the Jews at any moment. All of these reports also conflate the anti-Israel movement in Europe (often a project of the Left) with the rising anti-Semitism. In fact, the Left anti-Israel groups are committing few if any anti-Semitic acts. Beyond that, White Christians are committing few if any of the grotesque anti-Semitic attacks in Western Europe. Nevertheless, Jews are in danger in these nations, but it’s not from Nazi Whites. Who are they in danger from? Simple. Arabs. Arabs and other Muslims, such as Pakistanis and Iranians. There are indeed quite a few very ugly anti-Semitic attacks occurring in France. Jews are assaulted on the streets, synagogues are attacked and there was recently an anti-Semitic murder at a Jewish Museum. The US media cleverly lies about all of these attacks to make it look like evil, Nazi anti-Zionist leftwing French Whites are doing this vile things. But it’s not true. Almost 10 There are some anti-Semitic attacks in the UK, but not many. Almost all of these are being done by Pakistani Muslims. None or almost none are being done by White Britons. Sweden is becoming a dangerous place to be Jewish due to an increasing number of frightening anti-Semitic attacks. All or almost all of these assaults and threats are being committed by Arab and Iranian Muslims, particularly in Malmo, where many of them reside. White Swedes are committing few to no anti-Semitic attacks. In conflating European White Left anti-Zionism with White neo-Nazis and Muslim anti-Semites, Jewish nationalist liars create an effective yet devious propaganda piece. In suggesting that White European countries are “turning Nazi” by suggesting that Muslim anti-Semitic attacks are actually being by White Nazis, Jewish nationalists get to lie about ancient enemies (White Christians) and modern ones (Left anti-Zionists), resurrect the hoary image of the Holocaust as an eternal part of White Europe’s personality, and bash innocent White European nations as Nazi countries (such as “Nazi France”). The most troublesome part of the equation is the notion of anti-Semitism itself.

  1. Jews (especially Jewish nationalists) act terrible.
  2. Good people notice Jews acting horrible, get upset at their bad behavior and protest it.
  3. Good people protesting bad behavior are called evil. They become evil people – anti-Semites, Nazis, etc. – merely by being good people protesting bad behavior.

It seems there is no way out of the rigged anti-Semitism game that the Jewish nationalists have set up.

From Jew to Jew: Why We Should Oppose the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza

Repost from the old site. Here is a document I received from a progressive Jewish colleague who is associated with the group that published this document, A Jewish Voice For Peace. The group is located in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. In this struggle, we need all the allies we can get. A real 2-state solution, described below, would, for all its deficiencies, be light years better than the hardline Zionist horrorshow that has America in a death grip. The single-state solution preferred by so many anti-Zionists lacks international support at this time and thus is little more than a pipe dream, whatever moral weight it may throw. While Hamas was surely the democratic choice of the people, so was Hitler. So was George Bush. So was Ariel Sharon. So what? Many Hamas members are racist anti-Semitic bigots who have no interest in sharing Palestine with Jews. They have helped spread backwards Islamic fundamentalism in Palestine, which has encouraged abuse and terrorization of secular Muslims and especially of Palestinian Christians. The emigration of Palestinian Christians is to a large degree due to the increasing fundamentalism in Palestine. But see here for some recent commendable positive moves by Hamas towards Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem. This blog condemns fundamentalism in all forms and all religions everywhere on Earth, from Afghanistan to India to America to Palestine. While Hamas is not Al Qaeda at all, there is much to criticize there. Furthermore, the activists described above would attack the essay below for “being directed only at Jews” and for being “Jewish-centric”. Yet politics is the art of the possible, and with the region in flames and the conflagration threatening to spread to new lands, the sane people need all the friends we can get at this point. Those who know quite about the Middle East conflict will find this essay, which is somewhat dated, to be old hat and may wish to skip it. Those who know little about the Middle East (only 1 Along similar lines as this article, see Christopher Hedges, Get Carter, in the January 7, 2007 issue of The Nation. Although the 2-state solution may seem like a shameless sellout to the fringe anti-Zionists described above, in the US right now, sentiments like we see both this and Hedges article are regarded by the Israeli Lobby as ultraradical and are attacked with animal-like ferocity. Note: This publication is seriously dated, dating back possibly to 2002. Nevertheless, it is still quite relevant.

From Jew to Jew:

Why We Should Oppose the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Written by Jews for Fellow Jews

A Jewish Voice For Peace Publication

Download the PDF file here Introduction Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, A Jewish Voice For Peace is the oldest and largest of a growing number of Jewish groups that are convinced that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory must end. There are two compelling reasons for this. First, we wish to preserve the best part of our Jewish heritage -a deeply-ingrained sense of morality – and pass it on to the next generation, unsullied by the mistreatment of another people. We were brought up to believe that, as Jews, we are obligated to always take the moral high road and we can’t imagine letting this proud ethical tradition die now. Second, as we will show in this paper, we are convinced that the only way to ensure the security of the people of Israel is for their government to conclude a just peace with the Palestinians. Without some reasonable version of justice being done, there will never be peace, and so we oppose any Israeli government policy that denies the Palestinians their legitimate rights. What those are will be examined shortly. Is this position “anti-Jewish”? No, it is not (any more than criticizing U.S. government policies is anti-American.) Even as we love all of humanity, we have a special love for the Jewish people and for the warm and compassionate side of Jewish culture. We share with all Jews the trauma of the genocide of our people by the Nazis and our long history of periodic persecution. We understand the instinct to “circle the wagons” when our people face danger, and we long for the day when Jews in Israel, as everywhere, will be able to lead normal, secure, productive lives. The question is how will that happy day come about? By blindly supporting the Israeli government’s self-destructive path to war and more war? We don’t think so. We feel that these crucial issues need more discussion within the American Jewish community, not less. They certainly are debated at length in Israel itself, as evidenced by a recent Ma’ariv poll showing that 5 It’s time for us to join the debate as well, and help formulate a more reasonable solution to the conflict. Unfortunately, the ongoing violence in Palestine and Israel has led too many people, on both sides, to adopt blanket stereotypes of one another, turning them into something “less-than-human”. This process of dehumanization then allows people to justify the violence committed by their own side, starting the cycle all over again. This is a classic “lose-lose” situation that can continue on forever. Is there a way out of this mess? Yes, we think so, but only if we suspend our understandable reaction of automatically blaming the other side. Only then can we objectively assess the root causes of the conflict and the realistic choices there are for resolving it. So, in the interest of peace, and with an open heart and mind, please consider the following facts. 1. THE OCCUPATION The international community, through the United Nations and other forums, has made it clear that virtually the entire world considers the Israeli occupation of territories it captured in the 1967 war to be wrong and contrary to basic principles of international law. Every year since 1967 (up until the Oslo Process started), the UN General Assembly passed the same resolution (usually by lopsided votes like 150-2), stating that Israel is obligated to vacate the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, in exchange for security guaranteed by the international community, in accordance with UN Resolution 242. While the circumstances were much different, the legal basis of these resolutions is the same principle used to force Iraq out of Kuwait—i.e., a country cannot annex or indefinitely occupy territory gained by force of arms. The only reason that Israel is able to maintain its occupation of Palestinian land is that the US routinely vetoes every Security Council resolution that would insist that Israel live up to its obligations under international law. One of the original goals of Zionism was to create a Jewish state that would be just another normal country. If that is what Israel wants (and that is a reasonable goal), then it must be held to the same standards as any other country, including the prohibition against annexing territory captured by force of arms. 2. THE SETTLEMENTS Similarly, all Jewish settlements, every single one, in territories outside Israel’s 1967 boundaries, are a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed and is obligated to abide by, as well as UN Security Council Resolutions 446 and 465. As John Quigley, a professor of international law at Ohio State has written,

The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the country.

This prohibition is found in the Convention’s Article 49, which states:

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies

Here’s what former President Jimmy Carter wrote in the Washington Post at the beginning of the current intifada:

An underlying reason that years of US diplomacy have failed and violence in the Middle East persists is that some Israeli leaders continue to create facts by building settlements in occupied territory…it is unlikely that real progress can be made…as long as Israel insists on its settlement policy, illegal under international laws that are supported by the United States and all other nations.

In fact, on December 5, 2001, Switzerland convened a conference of 114 nations that have signed the Fourth Geneva Convention (a conference boycotted by the US and Israel). The assembled nations decided unanimously that the Convention did indeed apply to the occupied territories, that Israel was in gross violation of their obligations under that Convention, that Jewish-only settlements in those territories were illegal under the rules of the Convention, and that it was the responsibility of the other contracting parties to stop these violations of international law. To be in such flagrant violation of the norms of international behavior is bad for Israel’s standing in the world, bad for the Jewish people as a whole and, as we shall see, totally unnecessary. 3. ISRAEL’S SECURITY It is sometimes argued that the settlements are necessary for Israel’s security, to protect Israel from terrorism and the threat of violence. But the reality is that the settlements are a major cause of Israel’s current security problems, not the cure for them. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis pointed out the aggressive nature of the settlements as follows:

It is false to see the settlements as ordinary villages or towns where Israelis only want to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors. They are in fact imposed by force—superior Israeli military force—on Palestinian territory.

Many have been built precisely to assert Israeli power and ownership. They are not peaceful villages but militarized encampments. . .The settlement policy is not just a political but a moral danger to the character of the state. “But wouldn’t the Palestinians use their own state as a base for even more attacks against Israel?”, it might be asked. For one, the Palestinians have long agreed that their future state would be non-militarized, no foreign forces hostile to Israel would be allowed in, and international monitors could be stationed on Palestinian land in order to verify these conditions. As for individual acts of terrorism, there is an historical precedent that gives a realistic answer to this question. During the first years after the Oslo agreements were signed, Hamas tried to disrupt the peace process but, because of the prevailing optimism, their influence in Palestinian society diminished and their armed attacks fell off sharply. What that means for the future is that if the Palestinian people feel that even a rough version of justice has been done, they will not support the more extreme elements in their political spectrum. This is not just guesswork; it already happened with just the hope of justice being done. Another aspect of this is that if Israel had internationally recognized borders, then they could be defended much more easily than the current situation where every hill in Palestine is a potential bone of contention because of Jewish settlements encroaching on Palestinian land. If the settlements and their settlers and the military apparatus they require were gone, and the Palestinians were given enough aid by the international community to create a viable economy in their own state, they would naturally be overjoyed and a positive turn of events would be the inevitable result. 4. “BUT DON’T THEY JUST WANT TO DRIVE THE JEWS INTO THE SEA?” Officially since 1988, and unofficially for years before that, the Palestinian position has been that they recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace and security within their 1967 borders. Period. At the same time, they expect to be allowed to establish a truly independent, viable, contiguous, non-militarized state in all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. This is what UN Resolution 242 says: “Land for Peace” – and the Palestinian Authority has stated repeatedly that UN Resolution 242 has to be the basis for any long-lasting solution to the conflict. It is true that some Palestinians advocate that all of historic Palestine should be under Arab control, but there is no support for this position, either in the international community, nor among most Palestinians. Statements to that effect are just hyperbole and do not represent the official Palestinian position. Similarly, statements by some Palestinians inciting people to violence against Israelis can easily be matched by statements from Orthodox rabbis and fundamentalist settlers calling for death to the Arabs. There are meshuganahs aplenty on both sides. But since the Palestinians’ official position is clear, why shouldn’t Israel take the Palestinians up on this offer and withdraw from the occupied territories? Israel is far stronger militarily than all the Arab armies combined and would face no credible military threat from a Palestinian state. And the threat of individual terrorist acts would, of necessity, be much less once the Palestinians felt that they had received a modicum of justice. What would Israel lose by this obvious solution of just ending the occupation, which they could do tomorrow if they wanted to (or if the US insisted that they do)? The only thing it would “lose” is the dream of some of its citizens for a “Greater Israel”, where Israel’s boundaries are expanded to its biblical borders. The problem with that dream is that it totally ignores the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and the will of virtually the entire international community. As long as the right-wing settlers and their supporters in the Israeli government insist on pursuing this dream, there will be nothing but bloodshed forever. The Palestinian people have lived in Palestine for thousands of years and they are not going away. Israel must conclude a just peace with them or innocent blood will continue to be shed indefinitely. 5. NEGOTIATIONS LEADING UP TO THE CURRENT INTIFADA It has often been asked, “But didn’t Barak offer 9 Similarly, the offer Barak made at Camp David II would have left the main settlement blocks and their Jewish-only bypass roads in place. Along with the extensive areas Israel planned on retaining indefinitely for its military use, this would have dissected Palestinian territory into separate bantustans (“native reservations”), isolated from each other, each surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory and having no common borders with each other or other Arab nations. The territories would have had no control over their own air space; their main water aquifers (underneath the settlement blocs) would have been taken by Israel; and the Israeli military would have able to surround and blockade each enclave at will. See this map courtesy of the Foundation for Middle East Peace for a bird’s eye view of the problems of Barak’s plan. Jerusalem would have been similarly dissected so that each Palestinian island would be surrounded by an Israeli sea. This wouldn’t be an acceptable “end of the conflict” if you were Palestinian, would it? (Israel actually presented no maps at Camp David itself, but this was their offer of two months previous, and only marginal additional territory was theoretically offered at Camp David.) The other important question here is 9 The international community has never recognized Israeli sovereignty over “Greater Jerusalem” and has repeatedly declared that Israel should withdraw from this and all territories it conquered by force of arms in 1967. Barak’s offer also excluded large swaths of the Jordan Valley which the Israeli military would control indefinitely. Thus the Foundation for Middle East Peace estimates that the actual percentage of occupied land offered to the Palestinians was more like 8 After the Camp David talks ended without an agreement, did Arafat refuse to negotiate? In a word, no. At the end of Camp David, it was Barak who said that his offers there would not be the basis for further discussions, that they were now “null and void”, and that Camp David was an “all or nothing” summit. The Palestinians were willing to continue serious negotiations, and did at Taba, even after the current intifada had started. According to Ron Pundak, an Israeli diplomat who was a key architect of the Oslo Accords:

The negotiations in Taba, which took place moments before Barak’s government lost the elections, proved that a permanent status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians was within reach. (It) led to dramatic progress on all issues on the agenda.

But meanwhile, Sharon had gone to the Temple Mount with 1000 Israeli soldiers in tow, followed the next day by a demonstration of Palestinians (who had no firearms), which was met with totally unnecessary lethal force by the Israeli police, resulting in at least four Palestinians being shot and killed. This demonstration, which could have been contained by nonlethal means if the Israeli government had wanted to, was the beginning of the current cycle of violence. 6. LOOKING AT CAUSE AND EFFECT “What about Palestinian crimes? Why don’t you lay equal blame on them?” Certainly, Palestinians have committed grave crimes, and in any process of reconciliation, both sides will have much to answer for. But as Jews, we are responsible to look at Israel objectively, and not just when Israelis are victims of violence. In order to understand why there is the level of violence we see today, it is necessary to understand how we got to this point. a) Before the 1967 war. Before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, there was little organized Palestinian resistance. The majority of the tension was between Israel and the neighboring states. For the most part, violence between Israel and the Palestinians was limited to isolated Palestinian “infiltrations”, as Israel generally referred to them. The Israeli population may certainly have believed that they were in mortal danger from the armies of their Arab neighbors. But by the mid-1960s, Israeli leaders had a good deal of confidence that they could defeat a combination of Arab forces similar to what they accomplished in 1948, and with greater ease. History, of course, proved them correct, which calls into question the myth that Israel was fighting a self-defensive war for its very existence in 1967. b) The 1967 war itself. The myth that the 1967 war was a purely defensive one is further weakened by statements of Israeli leaders themselves. For example, the New York Times published an article on May 11, 1997 quoting Moshe Dayan’s own diaries, in which he admits that the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights in 1967 did so less for security than for the farmland. Dayan wrote:

They didn’t even try to hide their greed for that land…The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.

Or again from Prof. John Quigley’s landmark book, Palestine And Israel:

Mordecai Bentov, a cabinet minister who attended the June 4 (1967) cabinet meeting and supported the decision to invade Egypt, said Israel’s ‘entire story’ about ‘the danger of extermination’ was ‘invented of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories’.

Even Menachem Begin said:

The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.

In short, the argument of self-defense does not stand up to a close examination of the historical record. c) Peace Proposals after the 1967 war. In 1969, Nixon’s Secretary of State, William Rogers, proposed a peace plan based on UN Resolution 242, which would have guaranteed Israel’s security within her pre-1967 borders. Israel rejected it out-of-hand. In 1971, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat offered Israel a similar proposal (which did not mention Palestinian rights at all). This was also rejected by Israel. In 1976, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the PLO supported a resolution in the UN Security Council affirming Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, as in UN Resolution 242, but with a Palestinian state created alongside Israel. Israel opposed it and the US vetoed it. Arafat personally reaffirmed his support of a two-state solution in statements made to Senator Adlai Stevenson in 1976, and Rep. Paul Findley and New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis in 1978. The Saudis made similar proposals in 1979 and 1981, which were reiterated in their 2002 peace proposal, adopted by the entire Arab League. Yet Israel rejected all these peace proposals, and more, even though Israel’s security was guaranteed in each one of them. Why? The historical record is clear that Israel’s desire for additional land has been the single most important factor behind its expansionist policies. As David Ben-Gurion said in 1938:

I favor partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine.

In sum, the 1967 war was not a purely defensive war on Israel’s part, as Begin told us. The Israeli army met very little Palestinian resistance during the early years of the occupation. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, most Palestinian violence came from groups outside of the Occupied Territories. It is the Israeli desire to retain control over the West Bank, its expanding settlements and land appropriations that have sown the seeds of the situation we have today. d) The Israeli occupation as the root cause of the violence. The main hallmark of the Israeli occupation has been the forcible expropriation of over half of the West Bank and Gaza for Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only by-pass roads and Israeli closed military areas. These expropriations are possible only because of overwhelming Israeli military might and are, in and of themselves, acts of violence—just as armed robbery is an act of violence, even if no one is hurt. Can we really expect that no violent reaction to it would have occurred? Israel’s former Attorney General, Michael Ben-Yair stated point-blank in Ha’aretz (3/3/02):

We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. . . In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.

e) How did the current level of violence come about? Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians are well documented in our own media. And, while major Israeli incursions have gotten a good deal of attention, day-to-day excesses of the Israeli military have not been so widely reported. To get an accurate picture of the chain of events, let’s look at the reports issued by human rights groups near the beginning of the current intifada. Human Rights Watch, for example, stated:

Israeli security forces have committed by far the most serious and systematic violations. We documented excessive and indiscriminate use of lethal force, arbitrary killings, and collective punishment, including willful destruction of property and severe restrictions on movement that far exceed any possible military necessity.

B’Tselem is Israel’s leading human rights group and their detailed analyses of the current intifada can be found at their website. They concluded early on:

In spite of claims to the contrary, Israel has not adopted a policy of restraint in its response to events in the Occupied Territories…Israel uses excessive and disproportionate force in dispersing demonstrations of unarmed Palestinians…Collective punishment, in the form of Israel’s severe restrictions on Palestinians’ movement in the Occupied Territories, makes life unbearable for hundreds of thousands with no justification.

Collective punishment is illegal under international law. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights reported the following:

There is considerable evidence of indiscriminate firing at civilians in the proximity of demonstrations and elsewhere (by Israeli troops)…The live ammunition employed includes high-velocity bullets which splinter on impact and cause the maximum harm.

Equally disturbing is the evidence that many of the deaths and injuries inflicted were the result of head wounds and wounds to the upper body, which suggests an intention to cause serious bodily injury rather than restrain demonstrations…The measures of closure, curfew or destruction of property constitute violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and human rights obligations binding upon Israel. Amnesty International has also made numerous statements on the current intifada, including the following:

Amnesty International reiterated its long-standing calls to Israel to end its policy of liquidations and other arbitrary killings and urged the international community to send international observers…In these state assassinations the Israeli authorities offer no proof of guilt, no right to defense. Extrajudicial executions are absolutely prohibited by international law.

This attitude of the disposability of Palestinian life has now filtered down to the ordinary soldier. An IDF reservist interviewed on prime-time First Channel Israeli TV (12/14/01) stated:

Nowadays, there is much less of a dilemma. We more or less got a clearance from both the military and the political echelons. Nowadays, we shoot them in the head and no questions asked.

Is this what we want our Jewish legacy to be? The overwhelming consensus of these reports means that Israeli demands for the Palestinians to “stop the violence” turn reality on its head. The Palestinians have suffered almost four times the fatalities that Israel has in the current fighting, as well as tens of thousands of serious injuries. Furthermore, answering stone throwing with M-16 military weapons designed for battlefield use, or responding to ineffective Molotov cocktails with very effective armored tanks and attack helicopters is simply not morally justifiable. It is also important to keep in mind that many of Israel’s current actions have been going on, in various degrees, for the last 35 years – systematic torture of Palestinians in Israeli jails, the forcible and illegal appropriation of over half the West Bank and Gaza by Israel for Jewish-only uses, daily humiliations and abuse at Israeli military checkpoints all over Palestinian land—these have combined to bring Palestinian anger to a boiling point. In sum, we have seen that Israeli actions have served to seriously escalate the violence, and that Israel’s stubborn refusal to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even to the extent of just stopping its settlement activity, has been a major obstacle to any progress towards peace. To be sure, Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians have also been major obstacles towards such progress. Occupation and repression can never justify terrorism against civilians, but neither do terrorist acts by a few negate the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. The best way to address these crimes is to end the occupation which inspires the Palestinians to commit them. Recent history has demonstrated clearly that support for such crimes, and the number of Palestinians willing to commit them, drops precipitously when the Palestinians have had hope for independence, and risen sharply in response to the intensifying occupation and expansion of settlements. We must also bear in mind that we are not morally responsible for Palestinian crimes, although we must work to prevent them. But we are morally responsible for Israeli actions taken in our name and with our tax dollars. 7. THE JEWISH PEACE MOVEMENT One’s opinion on the Israel/Palestine conflict need not be a black or white question; you can support the Israeli people but still criticize their government’s illegal and ultimately self-destructive policies. We believe that the Jewish peace movement, both in Israel and around the world, has a far better plan to ensure Israel’s security. That plan is to create real peace as a consequence of real justice being done, not a “peace” of victor and vanquished. We recommend that you go to Gush Shalom, Btselem, and Batshalom and read for yourself what thinking Israelis demand of their own government. Thousands of Israelis, including hundreds of Israel’s top university professors, are convinced their government is committing unpardonable acts and have taken public stands against them. For example, over 400 reserve combat officers and soldiers in the IDF have publicly stated their moral opposition to Sharon’s increasingly brutal use of force during the current intifada. These “refuseniks” have the sympathy of a growing portion of the Israeli public, now up to 2

We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country… hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight in this War of the Settlements.

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense. The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose—and we shall take no part in them. Even Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet (Israel’s equivalent to the FBI), recently stated in Le Monde:

I favor unconditional withdrawal from the Territories, preferably in the context of an agreement, but not necessarily. What needs to be done, urgently, is to withdraw from the Territories, a true withdrawal which gives the Palestinians territorial continuity.

So if disagreement with the Israeli government is kosher in Israel, shouldn’t it also be a topic of discussion among American Jews? For just one example, a recent survey of American Jewish attitudes showed that 3 Our community does not, and should not, have just one opinion on these questions. What is needed is more discussion, not less, on these crucial matters. The intifada is not primarily the result of the religious fanaticism, the blind anti-Semitism or the “inherent violent tendencies” of the Arabs. Rather, in our view, it is the inevitable result of the most basic human emotions – their need to be free and to live with dignity in the land of their ancestors. A Palestinian child who is awakened at dawn by Israeli soldiers demolishing his home and uprooting the family’s olive grove does not need anyone to tell him to hate. The Israeli Occupation has seriously eroded the Jewish people’s proud moral heritage, developed over the centuries; and, in any case, we are convinced it will never work, even in the most pragmatic terms. The Palestinians will always resist being under military occupation, and have the right, under international law, to do so. As a result, there will never be real security for Israel until there is a reasonable version of justice for the Palestinians. How could it be otherwise? 8. ISRAEL’S SECURITY – Continued “But doesn’t Israel have to do something to stop the suicide bombers?” A reasonable question, and here is a most reasonable answer from Gush Shalom’s founder, Uri Avnery:

When tanks run amok in the center of a town, crushing cars and destroying walls, tearing up roads, shooting indiscriminately in all directions, causing panic to a whole population —it induces helpless rage.

When soldiers crush through a wall into the living room of a family, causing shock to children and adults, ransacking their belongings, destroying the fruits of a life of hard work, and then break the wall to the next apartment to wreck havoc there—it induces helpless rage. When officers order to shoot at ambulances, killing doctors and paramedics engaged in saving the lives of the wounded, bleeding to death—it induces helpless rage. And then it appears that the rage is not helpless after all. The suicide bombers go forward to avenge… Anyone who believes that Arafat can push a button and stop this is living in a dream world…At best, the pressure cooker can cool off slowly, if the majority of the people are persuaded that their honor has been restored and their liberation guaranteed. Then public support for the ‘terrorists’ will diminish, they will be isolated and wither away. That was what happened in the past. 9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION A major cause of misunderstanding between the Jewish peace movement and other American Jews is that we rely on different sources of information. If what you know about Israel and Palestine comes from the US corporate press, TV news and/or the mainstream US Jewish press, then your perception of events will be determined by their worldview. As Jewish media critic Norman Solomon wrote in 2001:

Searching the Nexis database of U.S. media coverage during the first 100 days of this year, I found several dozen stories using the phrase ‘Israeli retaliation’ or ‘Israel retaliated.’

During the same period, how many stories used the phrase ‘Palestinian retaliation’ or ‘Palestinians retaliated’? One. Both sides of the conflict, of course, describe their violence as retaliatory. But only one side routinely benefits from having its violent moves depicted that way by major American media. If, however, you supplement your information by reading the Israeli press, progressive magazines like Tikkun or The Nation, internet sites like Common Dreams and radio stations of the Pacifica network, then a very different picture of what is going on emerges. In particular, we suggest that you sign up for our free email news service, the Jewish Peace News , which gives you the latest news and most cogent analyses of Middle East events, much of it from the Israeli press. You can subscribe by sending an e-mail to: jewishpeacenews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. 10. SHARON’S CURRENT POLICIES Ariel Sharon has always opposed real negotiations with the Palestinians, preferring instead to try to defeat them militarily. He has vehemently opposed all Palestinian/Israel agreements and has repeatedly stated that he has no intention of returning a single settlement to Palestinian rule. Even the editors of the Washington Post (2/22/02) wrote:

During lulls in the conflict, Mr. Sharon frequently has been the first to renew the fight; during three weeks in December (2001) and early January (2002) when the Palestinians responded to a call from Mr. Arafat and stopped almost all attacks, Israeli forces killed a dozen Palestinians.

The obvious conclusion to draw is that Sharon does not want peace or real negotiations, just a vanquishing of his sworn enemies. Indeed, if Sharon really wanted Arafat to arrest Palestinian militants, then why has he systematically destroyed the Palestinian Authority’s ability to do so? According to the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom:

The Palestinian police and security services have hardly any premises or prisons left in which to put terrorists, even if the decision was taken to arrest them; the bombardments were all too thorough.

Most crucially, in the spring of 2002, Israel commenced its most severe armed attacks yet in the West Bank, involving the following “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions— some of them rising to the level of war crimes, according to Human Rights Watch and other monitoring groups.

  • Israeli snipers on the tops of buildings, shooting anything that moves.
  • Ambulances shot at, medical personnel unable to evacuate the wounded, who have then died needlessly from their wounds.
  • Civilian neighborhoods bombed by U.S.-supplied helicopter gunships, F-16 fighter jets and Israeli tanks, causing widespread devastation and, inevitably, many civilian casualties.
  • Palestinian homes crushed by military bulldozers—sometimes, as in Jenin, with the occupants still inside.
  • Wanton destruction of the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society—water pipes and pumping stations, electrical power poles and plants, medical facilities, schools, hospitals, mosques and churches, public buildings, etc., in addition to massive looting and gratuitous vandalization of homes, businesses and governmental offices.
  • The use of “human shields” for Israeli military actions.
  • Journalists shot at who try to document the above gross violations of international law.

And Israel is now constructing a “buffer zone” that will de facto annex about 1 In other words, eight big open-air prisons, which Palestinians cannot get out of, except at the whim of the Israeli authorities. Again, this kind of collective punishment is specifically outlawed by the Fourth Geneva Convention. A joint statement by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists (4/07/02) stated:

We strongly deplore actions by the state of Israel that harm persons protected by international humanitarian law. . . Such actions violate international standards and transcend any justification of military necessity.

Even in practical terms, these Israeli actions are counterproductive. As Gush Shalom writes:

The retaliatory and punitive raids by the army do manage to intercept some potential suicide bombers—but the very same raids and incursions, by demonstrating the brutality of the Occupation, also increase on the Palestinian side, the motivation for retribution, and help the recruitment of new suicide bombers.

Only an end to the Occupation by political means, allowing a fair expression of the basic Palestinian aspirations, can dry up the suicide bombing phenomenon at its source, and provide new hope to the desperate young Palestinians from whose ranks the bombers are recruited. The recent upsurge in anti-Semitism worldwide is clearly connected with escalated Israeli aggression. As Israel has succeeded in convincing many people that it represents World Jewry, many supporters of Palestinians have directed their anger at Israeli actions against Jewish institutions in their own countries. Right-wing white supremacist forces have also seized this opportunity to give their anti-Semitic venom legitimacy. Thus all Jews have a stake in seeing the sorts of human rights violations we have just described stopped. CONCLUSION Any country has the right and the responsibility to protect its citizens, and Israel is no exception. But its policies for the last 35 years, and especially during the current intifada, have been based on the old adage, “The best defense is a good offense”. While that’s OK in football, in Israel that has translated into systematic torture or ill-treatment of literally hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, according to B’Tselem and other reputable groups. It means wanton cruelty being inflicted every day at military checkpoints, wanton destruction of Palestinian homes, and illegal strangling of Palestinian economic life, leading to extreme deprivation. And there is no other phrase than “war crimes” to accurately describe many of the actions of the IDF during the attacks against the Palestinian civilian population in the spring of 2002. In short, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is simply wrong—brutal, illegal and unnecessary. We do agree that both sides have done poorly in advancing the cause of peace. As Jews, however, it is incumbent upon us to put our own house in order, above all else. As Americans, our responsibility is doubled. Our government has, through unprecedented financial and political support, allowed Israel to maintain its occupation and commit human rights violations with complete impunity. Thus, we are both responsible for the escalation and in a unique position to do something about it. In the long-run, the only hope for a normal, peaceful life for the people of Israel is for their government to end their occupation of Palestinian land, allow the creation of a viable Palestinian state, and live and let live. The only other alternative is the current situation of endless bloodshed, which our silence, among other things, makes possible. HOW TO DO YOUR PART FOR PEACE If you have found this paper enlightening, please join A Jewish Voice For Peace and help us in our work. We have been organizing and educating people about the real causes of the unrest in Israel and Palestine since 1996. Among our many useful projects, we make available to people, free of charge, an e-news service that delivers daily to its readers the best articles on the current conflict, largely from the Israeli press. To sign up for the Jewish Peace News, simply send an e-mail to jewishpeacenewssubscribe@yahoogroups.com. A Jewish Voice For Peace has made great strides in the past year. In order for us to continue to grow and expand our services and our reach, we need your help. Your donations will make it possible for us to hire new staff members, increase our educational services and vastly expand our media reach. All contributions are tax-deductible. To get in touch with us, write us at P.O. Box 13286, Berkeley, CA.

Aztlan and Zionism: Dueling Idiocies

Repost from the old site. In this post, we will take a look at two nationalisms, Zionism, the movement to (re)create the ancient Jewish homeland in Palestine, and Aztlan, the Mexican and Chicano movement that says that part of the Western US is actually part of Mexico, and more importantly, was the homeland of the Aztec people. As with most forms of ultra-nationalism, both movements are exercises in lying and nonsense. And both are similar in other ways, too. Both propose that, because the area in question (Western US, Palestine) was the ancient homeland of the people some 2,000-5,000 years ago, that they have a right to move en mass into the region and even to annex it or possibly make their state there (the Aztlan movement is divided on whether Aztlan should be annexed to Mexico or whether it should be its own state). Both are based on some highly questionable claims of ownership. There is serious question whether or not Aztlan (an area covering part of the Western US – map here) is actually the ancient homeland of the Aztecs, as this article claims, supposedly with authoritative sources. Let us examine the article, by Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez, a writing team that somehow got UPI to syndicate their ultra-radical Chicano nationalist nonsense for many years. The authors found a map in the National Archives in Washington from 1847 with a notation near the Four Corners Area in the US referring to The Ancient Homeland of the Aztecs. This scribbling on a map somewhere by God knows who purportedly “proves incontrovertibly” that all Mexicans and all Central Americans have a right to move to the USA tomorrow, because the US Four Corners is their “ancient homeland”. The authors also note a tradition of the US Pueblo, Hopi, and Lakota (!?) Indian tribes that Nahuatl speakers were their former relatives. There are major problems with this. How would these tribes describe these “Nahuatl” speaking people, since back then, there is no way that they called their language or themselves by that name? Since they called themselves and their language something else, how did these tribes know that they were “Nahuatl”-speakers? And why the Lakota? They are located far from this fake homeland, way up in South Dakota. Further, as one who worked with an Indian tribe on a government grant doing linguistic and anthropological field work, I assure you that Indian legends and oral history need to be taken with a gigantic grain of salt, to say the least! The authors quote Cecelio Orozco, an education professor at my alma mater, California State University Fresno as saying this lines up with his research also putting the Aztec homeland in southern Utah. Professor Orozco has published two books of apparent pseudoarcheology on this subject. Here is how Orozco discovered this homeland (try not to laugh when reading this):

Orozco said he came upon the site through a process called “archeo-astronomy.” He saw a photograph of four rivers in Utah in 1980, and based on previous research, recognized a mathematical formula in the photo that led him to believe that this was the place of origin of the Mexicas’ ancestors. Subsequent trips and research has confirmed his thesis… 

After reading this fascinating article on archaeoastronomy, I still do not see how that science relates to a photograph of four rivers in Utah. Does anyone have any idea how a photograph of four rivers anywhere on Earth contains some hidden mathematical formula? He also found a painting on a wall in Utah from 500 BC that he says he claims corresponds to the the codec containing the Aztec calendar. Those of us familiar with the field realize that finds all over the world look like other finds, or resemble other peoples, or bear this or that passing resemblance to whatever. None of that usually proves anything; much more work needs to be done. According to the article, because Aztecs have a homeland in Utah dating back 2500 BC, Mexicans and Central Americans are no longer foreigners or aliens or even immigrants in the US, but they are simply in their homeland. By that lunatic thinking, all White Americans get emigrate back to Europe and live there, since that was our homeland at some point in the past. The Europeans have no right to stop us, and we can even call it Euroamland or whatever and carve out our own damn country out of several European countries, make English the official language and even sideline the several non-English European tongues spoken there. Then we can demand to be united with the US across the sea or just up and make our own country, dissolving several European countries in the process. It is this sort of nonsense that makes me wonder just how smart your average Mexican Reconquista type really is. On reflection, they are obviously bright people, it is just that ultranationalism, or even often just nationalism, damages people’s brains and makes them incapable of rational thought. It does this across the board to any ethnic group – there is no reason to single out Mexicans or Chicanos. Let us examine some of the other insane suppositions of the Aztlan crowd. We have already delved into this a bit on this on an earlier post. First of all, the Aztecs (Mexicas) had only taken over the Mexico City area about 200 years previous to the Spanish Conquest. The empire reached its peak only about 40 years before Cortes landed. Further, the Mexicas only lived in the area around Mexico City! That’s it. All of the rest of Mexico was not Mexica territory and the tribes (even those colonized by Mexicas) who lived there cannot be said to be Mexicas! As an analogy, let us consider the Roman Empire. Its headquarters were in Rome. The rest of the empire were just colonies, conquered areas paying tribute to Rome. Can we say that everyone in the Roman Empire was a “Roman” or an “Italian”? By the same logic, do those residing in Rome today have a right to claim all of the former Roman Empire as their land? This is what would happen if we applied “Aztlan”-logic to that situation. Do you see how stupid this Aztlan nonsense-lie is? The Aztecs did conquer quite a bit of land in the center of Mexico (map here), killing lots of folks and enslaving others. As noted below, the homeland of the Nahua, according to prominent Mexican archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma was probably somewhere around Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Michoacán* . From this area, 2,000 years ago, various waves of Nahua speakers radiated out through Mexico and even Central America. This is why we have 28 living Aztec (or Nahuatl) languages today. By the way, Wikipedia is wrong that these languages are almost dead. Most are quite vigorously used, and there are 1.5 million speakers of all Nahuatl languages. 27 of these 28 tribes are not, and were not, Mexicas, anymore than everyone speaking a Romance language today is a “Roman”. Follow? A somewhat more rational take on the Aztlan lie can be found on the Reconquista site here. Apparently real anthropologists put the Aztec homeland somewhere around Nayarit on the west coast of Mexico. That’s a lot more reasonable, but it’s probably not true either. This comes from Mexican anthropologist Alfredo Chavero’s theory in 1887. Moctezuma’s locale is probably better. The piece also argues that since Nahuatl is an Uto-Aztecan language and many Uto-Aztecans either lived in or traveled through “Aztlan”, that there is something to the Aztlan notion in that sense. Fair enough. In fact, the homeland of the Uto-Aztecans in my opinion is in southern Arizona or northern Mexico. But all Native Americans traveled through Siberia on their way to the Americas. Does everyone with Indian blood in the Americas get to go back to Russia and take over the place because their ancestors strolled through it sometime in the past 20,000 years? Looking at the linguistic contacts of pre-Nahuatl would be a good way of trying to find an Aztec homeland. We can see that they had contacts with languages spoken around Veracruz, on the east coast of Mexico. As you can see, the situation is complicated. The authors in the first article make an even more ludicrous point. First, as usual, they conflate the “Aztecs” a single tribe called the Mexica, amongst Mexico’s over 200 tribes, that only lived around Mexico City, with all Mexicans. According to idiot Chicano nationalists, all Mexicans with Indian blood are Mexica or part Mexica! That’s nuts. As noted, there were tribes all over the land, and the Mexica were only one of 200 or so. It’s as if one said that every Italian comes from Rome. Next, they say that all of the tribes related to the Mexicas were “Mexicas” because they spoke Nahuatl languages. They certainly were not! It’s nonsense. Are all speakers of Indo-European languages the one and same group because they all came out the Indo-European homeland in Southern Ukraine 8,000 years ago? Even worse, these fools claim that all Central Americans were Aztecs and get to go invade the USA because it’s home sweet home. Ridiculous. There is only one tribe, the Pipil in El Salvador, that still speaks a Nahuatl language, and there are only 20 speakers left. There were a few other Nahuatl languages in Honduras, Panama and Guatemala, but these are long since extinct. They were not “Aztecs” anymore than English-speakers in the US are “Germans”. However, the Pipil did come from the area around Mexico City around 1000 years ago; they were related to Olmecs, but also to the Nahuatl. In general, they were an Olmec grouping. Anyway, at that time, there were no such thing as Mexicas or Aztecs – that group came later. Another group of Pipil had come to Central America 5000 years ago and came under the influence of the Maya. This is around the time when Proto-Uto-Aztecan itself was born in the southwest US. Both of these groups, by 1000 AD, became the Pipil, who came under even more Maya influence. The Pipil are almost extinct culturally and linguistically today, an end result of the Matanza, when 10,000-30,000 Indians were slaughtered in only a few weeks in El Salvador in 1932, while US warships patrolled off the coast in case the victims of the genocide tried to fight back. After that, most Salvadoran Indians took off their Indian clothes and quit speaking Indian languages, especially since Pipil was outlawed. They also intermarried heavily with non-Indians, so that to this day, only The leader of the rebellion that set off the Matanza was Farabundo Marti, head of the Salvadoran Communist Party. The rebels that fought in the Civil War later on took their name, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, from him. The cult surrounding Zionism is much the same as the Aztlan nonsense. True, Jews ruled the area long ago, but only for a brief time, similar to the Aztecs. Further, similar conflations are made about the Judean Empire and the Aztlan Empire, Judean language and religion and actual Jews and Jewish religion and the relevance of ancient Judean religion to the Jewish religion today. Also similar is the outrageous notion that some group has a right to go back to its ancient homeland of 2000-5000 years ago, settle there at will, and even make a state there. Some of the radical Atzlanistas, similar to Zionists, also suggest throwing out the natives (in the case of the Aztlanistas the Whites, who came starting 400 years ago) since they are “invaders squatting on the true homeland”. In this same nonsensical way, Zionists project their own invasion of Palestine and squatting on Palestinian land off onto the victim. The Arabs, who came 1450 years ago, are the “invaders”, who have been squatting on “Jewish land” since then. Never mind that the Jews left 2000 years ago. They owned Palestine in their hearts in the intervening 1900 years, and Zionism claims that that trumps a property deed! Zionism’s proponents are Jews, the smartest folks on Earth, who ought to know better. But ultra-nationalism can easily make a fool of the finest man. See Joachim Martillo’s site, Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel, for more. In particular, his superb Issues and Questions In the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism (90 pp.!), is a piece which deserves much wider reading. Martillo has some tendency towards fanaticism (but this also drives him to produce), can be an ideologue, and is sometimes guilty of trying to make facts fit theory as opposed to otherwise. However, these (especially making the facts fit theory) are chronic problems with most all social scientists, as Kevin MacDonald has observed. At the least, the brilliant Martillo should be more widely read, if only to subject his interesting theories to the critical light of peer review to separate wheat from chaff. And the 90 page link above is just sublime, in particular in the way that it takes apart the primordial nonsense of Zionism in the same way we attacked the similar primordialism of the Atzlanistas in this post. *Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great Temple of the Aztecs: Treasures of Tenochtitlan, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988) 38.

The Position of the Left on Western Culture, Whites, Judeo-Christianity and Islam

A little debate here. The first quote is me defending secularism, the second one is Abiezer Coppe defending the Western Left against my charges. I reiterate after the blockquote with evidence from around the world.

It is sickening the way that the Left is sucking up to Islam. Stop it right now! It’s all because Muslims are fighting European Judeo-Christian “colonizer-imperialist” types in Israel and now in Iraq, Afghanistan and even in Europe. To the Left, European Judeo-Christian civilization is evil, and hence so are all Whites. Jews are considered White. We are all racist colonizer/imperialist slavers.

The dark Muslim noble savages are fighting evil White Euros, and the Left cheers.

The Left hates:

1. Euro Whites 2. Euro Christians 3. Euro Jews 4. The West

The dark Third Worldist oppressed darkies are fighting a holy war against all four, the West can’t get enough of it. I’m not sure if the Zionists ever mention this, but I think they are right. The Left even dislikes the Jews because now they are the ultimate expression of the White Judeo-Christian Western Euro colonizer.

No Robert, stop spreading lies about the Left. The Left aren’t that racial. You’re just spouting.

A sane Left will support Christian values as highly progressive. See Slavoj Zizek on Christianity.

Support for Islamism. The Maoists and Trots do it, and that’s about it. It’s third Worldist Idiotism…if you convert to Islam YOU CANNOT LEAVE. The penalty for leaving the Islamic religion in Pakistan is six months in prison, according to a commentator on Radio 4. Is this true?

Of course it is true. That’s if they don’t kill you.

I am talking about the Western Left.

The real existing Left, the one that matters, is not anti-West or anti-Christian.

The Latin American Left is pro-West and pro-Christian. Many of them are Christians. Even the leadership of Sendero Luminoso were Christians, including Abimael Guzman, who is still a Catholic! The Filipino Left is pro-West and pro-Christian.

This is the Liberation Theology Left, and I love it. Jesus was a Commie! In those countries, priests pray alongside the rebels and in some cases even serve in rebel armies. The Sandinistas had priests in their cabinet. Hugo Chavez is very much a Liberation Theologian; this is the best way to describe him. There is a lot of good theory coming out of Cuba nowadays since believers can join the party. They are calling themselves Christian Marxists. Even Fidel says Christianity is compatible with socialism and Communism.

The Indian and Nepalese Maoists don’t mind the West or Christianity. If there is a beef with anything, it’s Hinduism.

The real existing Left in all Muslim states is not too wild about Islam! The Left in the rest of the world cares nothing at all about Western culture or Christianity.

This anti-West, anti-European, anti-Judeo-Christian, anti-White shit is mostly just rebellion on the part of Western Leftists against their own eeeeeeevil religions and cultures.

Maoists in general are not too wild about Islam. The Iranian and Afghan Maoists are some of the most Islam-hostile groups in the Islamic world. They’ve basically had it up to here with Islam.

The Filipino Left has made alliance with Muslim separatists on a strategic basis and gets along with them well. The Indian Maoists support separatists in Kashmir.

Trots are always pro-Islam anymore, but they are irrelevant outside the West, which means they are irrelevant in the Real World.

Transcript of My Latest Interview July 7, 2010

Interview July 7, 2010 with Reason Radio Network. The comments at the end of the post are hostile, but the site’s audience and hosts tend to be some mixture of paleoconservatives, White nationalists and anti-Semites. That’s not exactly where I am coming from, but I will interview with anyone, and most of the Left won’t touch me with a 10-foot pole.

I’ve been looking over your blog, and we talked about these labels as in Left versus Right, and I know you were describing yourself as a liberal, but you’ve been getting people describing you as a Third Positionist. The 3rd Positionist movement is a nationalist movement, but it’s not necessarily ethnonationalism – it could just be putting your country first. But they reject both Communism and capitalism, but they could sometimes incorporate some Marxist ideas. What is your take on being described as a 3rd Positionist?

I don’t know, I’m totally confused about 3rd Positionism – I don’t really know what it is, I don’t know what they want. They’re Euros, but the 3rd Positionists of the past were fascists and Nazis. But clearly they are pretty sui generis, and they are hard to pigeonhole and understand.

It’s a difficult movement to define. They don’t have a figure like the Marxists have Karl Marx and the capitalists have Adam Smith. I know that the 3rd Positionists have been smeared by being described as fascists.

It isn’t necessarily fascism, but it is true that when the fascists came to power, they said that they were nationalists, and that they were against the Communists and the capitalists. But you could be a 3rd Positionist and you could be a civil libertarian or you could be very authoritarian. Even among 3rd Positionists, there are a lot of different nuances within the ideology.

3rd Positionism is about as hard to pin down as fascism. Fascism is hard to pin down too. The fascists said that they were against both capitalism and Communism, but they just said that to get people to go along with them. It’s always been a rightwing movement. It’s never been anti-capitalist. The Nazis had the Night of the Long Knives, and they killed all of the socialist and anti-capitalist Nazis. There was a Nazi guy who was a big 3rd Positionist hero, but I can’t remember his name (Note: Gregor Strasser).

Is it Godfrey Feder?

No.

He was their economist.

No, see, when Hitler first started out in 1921, they drafted this Set Of Principles, and they called themselves National Socialists, and they had a pretty socialist, anti-capitalist economic project. And they got a lot of support. There were people on the Left who were even going Nazi, and there people who were going back and forth between the Nazis and the Communists in the 1920’s during all of that turbulence.

And in the early 1930’s, the Nazis were getting funded by major German industrialists. They were getting funded by the corporations. This is what almost nobody knows. The German corporations were behind the Nazis all the way. That’s where they got their money.

But there were bankers funding Bolshevism too. Like Jacob Schiff helped finance the Bolshevik Revolution. So there definitely were industrialists financing both sides. But I think they just want to make a profit. War is one of the most profitable things.

Why would a banker finance Communism? The international bankers generally did not finance Communism. That’s simply not true. There’s no money in it for them! Communism is the biggest money loser in the whole world for capitalists.

But the government still needs to borrow money whether it’s Communist or capitalist. The other thing is that when the Czar was in power, he was more of an economic nationalist and he did not want to do business with these bankers, so the bankers did have some incentives for financing Bolshevism.

Those Jews like Schiff, they did not make any money at all off of Russia going Communist. It was a gigantic money loser. The whole thing with Schiff was all about Jewish ethnic politics.

Yes, because the Czar was anti-Jewish, so it was more an ethnic thing than an economic thing.

Believe me, that’s all it was – revenge on the Russians. And a lot of the Communists were Jews. It was just let’s get rid of these anti-Semites and put some pro-Jews in power. Schiff was not acting in his class interests by doing that. This whole idea of bankers funding Communism, well, hey, I’m kind of a Commie myself. I mean, I wish they would give us some money!

There weren’t any Gentile capitalists who financed Communism.

Why would they? There are a few rich people who are Communists, but that’s rare. If you study Marxism, then you understand class, and so many things that people do are based on their class interests. People have class interests. Why would a rich capitalist finance Communism? Why would I buy someone the guillotine that’s going to chop my head off? It’s totally operating against your class interests. There’s no point to it unless you’ve got some kind of ulterior motive.

They have an ulterior motive unless they are already in power. But there’s socialism in different forms. There is socialism that is directed against the rich and also it’s possible that the elites are using a form of socialism to keep down the middle class. That’s not true Marxism, but it’s selected socialism to target a different class.

I don’t agree with that sort of rightwing populism. That’s just crazy. The elites hate socialism period. But there are some elites who go against their class interests and ally with the poor because, well, maybe they grew up poor or maybe they’re just nice people. But they are basically supporting a project that is going to cut their income.

And why would they do that? I mean a few of them will, just because they’re good people or they are self-sacrificing. But in general, the rich pursue their class interests, which is to retain their wealth or increase it. And they certainly do not support projects that are going to decrease their wealth.

You don’t think that rich liberals have ulterior motives?

Rich liberals are just nice people. They’re just nice people who feel guilty, and they’re willing to give up their money and share it with others, and that’s all there is to it. They’re self-sacrificing people. They have no ulterior motives or any of that. The notion that they do is rightwing populism. It’s crazy.

But 3rd Positionism ties in with populism. You’ve heard of that label producerism is the idea, not so much Right or Left, that the middle class is being exploited on both ends by both big government and by big business, especially the banking elite.

Well…The middle class typically is exploited by the rich under capitalism. Studies have proven that under neoliberalism, which is radical capitalism, the bottom 8

A lot of the middle class people align with the rich, the capitalists and the corporations too, but they are not really acting in their class interests when they do that. The middle class does not understand their class interests. They want to be rich. They typically align with the rich. But it often doesn’t make much sense for them to do that.

But you said that the Left doesn’t really represent the middle class either mainly because the Left is for Open Borders. You wrote a recent article where you said both the Democrats and the Republicans, the Left and the Right, is one big Corporate Party.

In the US, that’s true because the Democratic Party isn’t really a Left party anymore. It’s sort of a rightwing party instead, and it’s all just corporate politics. They just represent the corporations, the rich and the upper middle class. The Democrats are sort of for the middle class to a greater extent than the Republicans are, but I don’t think either party is for the poor or low income people anymore. Supporting them is considered to be a total loser.

The Democrats used to be for the poor, the low income and the workers, but supposedly, that’s why they were losing elections, and that’s why they went to the DNC model. The corporate Democrats decided that this is the way to win elections – be pro-corporate, get the corporate money, beat the Republicans at their game. That’s the DNC – the Democratic National Committee, and that’s where they’re all coming out of now. Even Obama, he’s a DNC guy.

I noticed that you commented on the new American 3rd Position Party. We were discussing on our show about the pros and cons of explicit racial activism, but you mentioned on your site that the A3P is probably one of the most pro-worker and anti-corporate parties in the US.

I think that what’s interesting about that is it’s showing you that these labels about the Left and the Right don’t make a lot of sense because a lot of people might hear about the A3P and they might think of it as a rightwing party, but you were saying that you looked over their platform, and you agree with a lot of what they have to say.

Well…it’s just a sad statement on the state of affairs of the Western Left. It exemplifies the total failure of the Western Left to support the workers, especially White workers, or just workers period, the low income, the working class, the poor. Especially the Whites.

They are opposed to all of these people, and the Western Left pushes anti-White politics. They are pro-non-White. They’re pro-Hispanic, they’re pro-Black, and they’re anti-White. And when they are pushing mass immigration, that’s just a spear into the heart of the White worker…the low income, the poor and the working class Whites, who are my people…those are my people. It’s just a sad comment when these rightwingers, who are almost fascists…when the fascists are the only people who are standing up for workers anymore.

Hold on now, when you make a statement referring to them as fascists. Now you’re entitled to your opinion, but if you look at the platform, they say they’re for Constitutionalism. What specifically about the platform is fascist?

Well…I think they said something about encouraging non-White immigrants to go back to their countries. “We’ll even give them money to go home.” But there’s nothing much in there that’s specifically fascist. It’s a very moderated program. Yet they are calling themselves 3rd Positionists, and 3rd Positionist is fascist…And the A3P is explicitly pro-White in the US.

The leaders of the party are White Nationalists. Kevin MacDonald is a White Nationalist who is sympathetic to fascism and Nazism. The leader of the party (Note: William D. Johnson) is an explicit White Nationalist who called for throwing all non-Whites out of the country 20-30 years ago (Note: Book penned in 1985 under the pseudonym of James O. Pace). That’s where these people are coming from.

Those are their leaders – they are coming out of the White Supremacist movement, the White Nationalist movement, which is a pro-fascist movement in the United States. And that’s how they totally failed, because, in being pro-fascist, they have blown off the entire White racist, White supremacist – especially Southern White Supremacist – segment in the United States.

Most White racists and White Supremacists in the US of the old White Supremacist types – they hate fascism, they hate Nazism. They fought in WW2. The Southerners fought in WW2. They were slaughtered in WW2 by the Nazis.

Southerners are pro-British. Their roots are in the UK. Hitler attacked the UK. The pro-White movement in the US – the White nationalists, the White supremacists – they’re pro-Nazi, they’re pro-fascist! That is the biggest loser project! I know White people. Most White people want nothing to do with fascism or Nazism. Why does pro-White politics have to be fascist and Nazi? That’s no good. These people are losers. That’s the biggest failure in White politics right there.

The Left likes to link the Southern nationalist types with Nazism but most people don’t know this but along with Jews…White Southerners and Jews were the most gung-ho groups about fighting WW2.

My mother was present in that era and I asked her, “Well, those Southerners were racists. Wasn’t Hitler’s seen as a pro-White regime?” and she said, “Oh no! I lived during that era and everybody hated the Nazis.” There were more pro-Nazis in Pennsylvania than there were in the entire South! The only Americans who were pro-Nazi were ethnic Germans, and then after Pearl Harbor, they basically just disappeared or went underground or shut up. The Nazis had zero support in the South.

The Southern White Supremacists liked democracy. My Mom said that Americans hated the fascists because they were a dictatorship…and they were persecuting Jews. And Southerners didn’t really care anything about Jews back then. Who cares about Jews?

And the Nazis were not seen as pro-White at all. I mean every White person was pro-White back then. Why would you line up with Nazis? And the people that the Nazis were fighting were pro-White. France was pro-White. The UK was pro-White. Denmark, everyone in Europe was pro-White back in those days.

So being pro-White was the norm, but what happened was the Establishment took it up, and they tried to link being pro-White with being with Hitler. But it’s a psychological thing, because if your enemy is telling you that if you’re pro-White, you’re like Hitler, psychologically, you’re going to think, “Well, maybe Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy, and maybe I should be pro-Hitler.” Would you say that that’s the roots of it?

Well…I’m not sure, I don’t know why the pro-White movement has gotten into Nazis and fascists and all that, because I think that’s the biggest mistake they ever made. For instance, there are probably still a lot of White racists down in the South, but I don’t imagine that most of those people like Nazis or fascists.

I think it’s one faction of the White Nationalist movement that might be Nazi. But it’s a problem that it might be guilt by association because in the White Nationalist community, they are going to network together, and if one person is their friend…if they have a political associate who might say something pro-Hitler, it’s going to rub off. So you’re saying that that’s one of the biggest barriers, because groups like the ADL along with the media – they’re going to try to link anything that’s remotely pro-White with Nazism and fascism.

Well…that’s simply not true. The old White Supremacists in the South, the neo-Confederates, and there are still many, many, many Southerners who believe in this stuff, and there are even White racists all over the country who subscribe to that, and they don’t want anything to do with Nazism, and they don’t even like fascism either. So the White movement is simply insane. Why have they taken up Nazism and fascism? I don’t know.

But for 20 years after WW2, White Supremacism and White racism was going gung-ho all through 40’s, the 50’s and into the early 60’s the Civil Rights Movement. They weren’t waving Nazi flags or supporting fascism. They were pro-democracy, pro-American, pro-European, and they hated Nazis and fascists.

If you look at the A3P, they are pro-democracy and pro-Constitution, so I don’t want to smear that party because I agree with what they are doing, but you do make a legitimate point that through guilt by association…maybe someone is affiliated with someone who may have those views, but the party itself, the platform and agenda put out by the party, is a Constitutionalist party that’s for democracy and individual rights.

Yes, the A3P could hardly be called a fascist party. There’s not a whole lot of fascism around anymore. Even the European Right, the Hard Right in Europe, they’re not all that classically fascist anymore – the BNP, the British National Party – is not all that fascist, they’re democrats last time I checked. They support civil liberties. The old fascism of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s – it isn’t really coming back.

You see, fascism mutates. Pinning down fascism is like pinning down a blob of mercury. Fascism is like a chameleon. It changes colors, it changes shapes, it can be anything. It will take on the forms of other things. Who’s that guy who wrote Babbitt? Sinclair Lewis?

He said that fascism, if it comes to the US, will be wrapped in a cross and an American flag.

Exactly. Fascism takes on whatever forms it needs to take on to get in. It’s this very weird movement that’s very, very difficult to study, to define. They’ve been studying it since the 1920’s, and there’s some really good literature coming out in recent years – a lot of it can be found on a blog called Orcinus. There are some excellent pieces there that talk about something called “pseudo-fascism.”

Some of the top research right now on fascism is coming out of Political Science departments. They are trying to exactly figure out…what it is! Because…nobody…really knows…what fascism is! And the fascists are experts are concealing their motives, at lying, at not calling themselves fascists, at calling themselves anti-fascists.

You talked about Sinclair Lewis, well, Huey Long, who was a popular political figure in the US in the 1930’s, he said that fascism will return to the US, but perhaps under the title of anti-fascism.

That’s what they do. I’ve seen fascists on the Net, and they called their enemies fascists! It’s really weird and confusing. If you hang around Usenet sites that have a lot of fascists, after a while, your mind starts spinning around, and you start wondering if you are a fascist yourself. And they try to convert you to their movement.

They are like these shape-shifting forms that change into these other things and say all this contradictory stuff, and they’re just all over the place. They’re sneaky, and they’re tricksters, and mainly they confuse you. They confuse people, and that’s how they get people to support their project because often people don’t really know what they are supporting. They’re not up front about their aims – that’s another aspect of fascism. It’s basically a popular movement against the Left.

And populism can be a good thing, but fascism, it is an ultra-authoritarian movement. So I don’t think that being a racist automatically makes you a fascist. Even if you are a White Supremacist, one aspect of fascism that is essential to it is a reliance on a totalitarian form of government.

Well…certainly that is true, and all of those old-style racists in the US, and especially in the South, they’re anti-fascists! They hate fascism, they hate Nazism, and this crazy pro-White movement has blown all these people off by cheering on fascists and Nazis. What’s the matter with them? I don’t get it. For some reason, Hitler is held up as a hero of the White race. No he wasn’t! Hitler probably killed more White people than anyone in the 20th Century. What kind of hero is that?

Hitler did kill millions of White people, possibly even more than Stalin. I don’t get it. I think it’s just psychological where the enemies of people who are pro-White, they keep labeling pro-Whites as Nazis, and then they end up taking that label. Because when someone keeps calling you something, psychologically, you take up that label.

Well…that might be part of it. You call a man a thief enough, and eventually he might start stealing. “Well, if you’re going to call me a thief anyway, I might as well just start stealing.” And with the White Supremacists, since the 60’s, there’s been a total war on White racism coming out of the anti-racist movement. And that’s one thing the anti-racists have done really well – we pathologized racism, in particular, White racism, because, well…White racism is nasty, it has a bad history, and most White people don’t want to be racists anymore!

I think most Whites are racist in minor ways, but hardcore White racism has been so pathologized that most Whites will not take extreme, explicit racist stances anymore. So the only people out there taking explicitly pro-White stances are people who are so crazy that they don’t even care.

So it further stigmatized it so there’s no room for a healthy or more moderate pro-White movement.

There are no moderate pro-White movements!

Well, Pat Buchanan, he seems to have the best model because he basically is pro-White. He writes in his book, Death to the West that he does have a strong preference for White culture, and he laments the demographic change. But he’s able to appeal to a lot of people that White Nationalists can’t, and he has a following among conservatives where even people who are not White can admire him.

Well…Buchanan is basically…White politics. White politics isn’t really White Nationalism. The Tea Parties are White politics. The Republican Party, increasingly, is White politics. But you know Buchanan is sort of pro-Nazi himself. That’s a real problem with him.

Well, he’s not really pro-Nazi. Instead, he takes the position that the conservatives around the time of WW2, they were not explicitly pro-Nazi, but instead, they took the position that the Communists were a lot worse than the Nazis, or that defeating the Nazis wasn’t really worth it because Eastern Europe fell to Communism and Western Europe fell to multiculturalism. So that’s sort of where Pat Buchanan is coming from.

Break

The conservative movement around WW2 was under a lot of pressure, and the conservatives later changed their position – some conservatives nowadays will say that the Nazis and Communists were equally evil – there are even some who go out of their way to say that the Nazis were worse. I saw Denis Prager speak several years ago, and he said that he thought that the Nazis were even worse than the Communists, and that’s usually the position that the Left took.

Isn’t he a Jew though?

Yes, he is, so that’s a logical position but part of it is this Jewish influence for the neoconservative movement that has had a huge impact on the conservative movement in the US.

Well…I’m coming out of the WW2 Left, and those are my heroes, my comrades. The fascists and the Nazis are my enemies. They killed my comrades. If they ever come back in power, they will kill me, and I have no sympathy at all for those guys. And it’s not even a question of overall who was worse. See, I don’t think Stalin killed 20, 40, 60 or 110 million. I think Stalin killed 2.5 million. I don’t agree with those figures. Those are Nazi lies as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t believe that that famine was a deliberate famine, you know, the Holodomor, that fake famine that the Ukrainians go on about? Do you know what that famine is? The Ukrainian famine, the Holodomor?

Yes, I know what you are talking about, but it’s important to note that there is definitely a double standard when it comes to Communist atrocities, there can be an open discussion. But if you debate the Nazi atrocities, if you’re in Germany, you can actually go to jail for that.

Well…you can still debate the Nazi atrocities. And the legitimate figures for how many Jews were killed ranges all the way down to 4.2 million. So you can say that there were no 6 million killed, there were only 4 million, and that doesn’t make you a Holocaust Denier. And there are people who say it was over 6 million.

Anyway, historians pretty much agree about the basics. The debate’s over about the Holocaust. They did kill anywhere from 4 million to over 6 million Jews. That’s just the bottom line. There’s no further discussion about it. And the Holocaust Revisionists and the Holocaust Deniers have an ulterior motive, which is to bring back Nazism and to do the Holocaust all over again, and this time do it right.

So you’re saying that people who try to downplay the Nazi atrocities, their goal is to bring back the Nazis.

That’s correct, exactly.

For European nationalism, the accusation of Nazism is used as a weapon to suppress that nationalism, to make it pathological. But the other argument with regard to Zionism, if you look at Norman Finkelstein. His parents were actually Holocaust survivors. He wrote that book, The Holocaust Industry. And Israel has long stood by that, and they’ve used as a shield to be immune from any criticism.

Well, yes, there’s a good argument about the Holocaust as a religion. And Finkelstein does a good job on that. Finkelstein is not a Denier or anything like that that he is accused of. That’s not true. The Dean of Holocaust Studies is a guy named Martin Gilbert. I think he’s dead by now, but he puts the figure at 5.1 million. I don’t think it was 6 million myself. I think it was 5.7 million. Just because you say there were no 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust doesn’t mean you’re a Denier. There is still a lot of debate on the issue. There’s no real debate on the basics.

But you think there are similarities…You were saying that Israel has been going in a fascist direction.

Right. Well, on the Left, we’ve always called Zionism fascism. We think it’s fascism for Jews. It’s been a fascist movement from Day One, from the very start. We on the Left don’t like any ethnonationalism.

The reason that the Left doesn’t like Zionism is because they see it as kind of a hyper ethnonationalist movement. But I think there is also an anti-Zionist Right. They see Zionism more as a form of internationalism.

Zionism? As a form of internationalism? See, that’s crazy though. That’s nuts. That’s just anti-Semitic whackery.

But they are occupying another people’s land.

It’s a colonial project. It’s a settler-colonial project. It’s an imperialist project. It’s an ethnonationalist project. It’s a fascist project. There’s nothing progressive or Left about it. Where’s the internationalism? Internationalists don’t persecute minorities in that fascist way like the Israelis do. That’s not what an internationalist does.

Well the thing is that the Israel Lobby is by far the most powerful lobby in the US.

It’s one of them. There’s actually another one that’s more powerful. I think that the Oil Lobby or the Military Lobby is bigger.

The Military-Industrial Complex.

They are the most powerful ethnic lobby, for sure. Our elections are all about Jewish money. And the whole pro-Israel thing is all about Jewish money. The Jews have the US Congress by the short hairs, and they control the US Congress and government on the Israel issue to a pretty significant extent.

I think that that is why the anti-Zionist Right says that Zionism is internationalist. Because they manage to simultaneously support things like multiculturalism and immigration and also Zionism. I think it’s this extreme double standard.

Well…They’re supporting fascism for Jews over there in their homeland. Fascism for Jews is good for Jews over in Israel, but on the other hand, there isn’t any fascism for Jews over here in the US. Fascism in the US, or anywhere else in the world, is bad for the Jews, always, and so is ethnonationalism, because it’s always going to turn on the Jews. So in the Diaspora, the Jews always promote multiculturalism and whatnot as a way of diluting their enemies and making the Diaspora societies more friendly to the Jews. It’s all about what’s good for the Jews.

That’s where you get that word “internationalist” that Henry Ford wrote about.

Henry Ford was a great man! I like Henry Ford. I think he’s unjustly maligned. The International Jew is a good book, and I like it. But he’s wrong about some things. See, the main thing is that back then, Jews were internationalists because they didn’t have roots to the land. They were internationalists in the sense that their only allegiance was to their international Jewish community.

They weren’t real true internationalists. It’s more that they weren’t nationalists. They were basically traitors! The Jews have always been traitors, and they still are to some extent nowadays because their primary loyalty is to their international Jewish community and not necessarily to their own homeland. And they will screw their own homeland if it’s good for the Jews. When it comes down to either supporting the homeland or supporting the Jews, they will support the Jews! And that’s the big problem with the Jews. That’s why the nationalists hate them.

Yes, it’s definitely the cause of anti-Semitism. You’re saying that you’re against anti-Semitism.

Right.

But you support rational criticism of the Jews.

Right.

But how do we deal with this? Because there is a flaw in anti-Semitism since the Jewish leadership relies on anti-Semitism to get their followers more radicalized and ethnocentric. But at the same time, I don’t want to give the Jews a free pass either. How do you propose that we deal with these issues?

Well…when you get into anti-Semitism, you are basically falling into the Jews’ trap because the Jews want you to be an anti-Semite! That’s the way I see it. Now, personally, I don’t think the Jews are very important!

The only people who think Jews are important are:

1. Jews. 2. Anti-Semites.

I don’t think that Jews deserve all this attention that we are giving them. They’re just this little pissant tribe, and I don’t think they are deserving of all this interest and obsession. When you go anti-Semite, you’re giving the Jews what they want. You’re telling the Jews that they are important, when they are not! And…anti-Semites created Israel!

You’re strengthening Zionism. Because the whole idea of anti-Zionism is that we anti-Zionists want the Jews to be able to live peacefully in the Diaspora. We don’t want them all running to Israel because of Diaspora anti-Semitism. If you’re an anti-Semite, you’re chasing them over to Israel!

It’s interesting because Helen Thomas was saying that Israel should be dismantled and they should all move here but if Israel was dismantled…I know some on the anti-Zionist Right who support returning that land to the Palestinians. But what would happen is that they would all move to Europe and the US. So I can sort of see what you are getting at.

Do the anti-Semites really want that? I know anti-Semites who support Israel. Their attitude is, “We sure as Hell don’t want the Jews in our country!”

I’m not sure if the BNP is anti-Semitic or not, but they support Israel.

The BNP has anti-Semitic roots, but they recently did a turnaround and now they are pro-Jewish, they are Judeophilic, they are pro-Israel, they are Zionists. And it’s all because they are anti-Islam. It’s all because they don’t like Muslims. The BNP doesn’t care that much about Jews. Jews are not that big of an issue in the UK anyway. The Jews in the UK are very well assimilated, and they don’t have a lot of power there.

The big problem in the UK is not the Jews, it’s the Muslims. They’re setting off bombs!

Well, with Europe and the US, we have to look at them differently because they do have very different issues. If you look at Europe, the Muslim issue is huge there. In the US, the Muslim community here is pretty small. With the Muslims, they try to stir up fears about Islam to get support for wars in the Middle East.

The Muslim community here is as big as the one in Britain! The ones in the UK are just not assimilated very well. They are Pakistanis from the former British possessions, and they are just not doing well. It’s more a question of assimilation rather than numbers. We are fortunate in the US to have such a well-behaved Muslim community…so far!

But you think there could be an issue here in the future.

Yes, definitely, definitely. I mean I would not want to allow millions more Muslims to flood into this country willy-nilly. No, not at all. And I think we need to be very careful about the Muslims that we let in here. We need to make them take things like loyalty tests. I don’t know, I don’t know. Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries are not that great of a thing. They tend to get really agitated and radicalized. They tend to make demands for Sharia law.

They’re…they’re like the Jews! They’re not loyal! They have dual loyalty. Their primary loyalty is to the Ummah and barely, if at all, to the nation. They will actually set bombs against their own nation because the nation is fighting the Ummah. The Ummah is the Muslim community of the whole world. U-m-m-a-h.

You do think that they have an imperialist agenda too. We are being kind of imperialistic towards them in the Middle East, but they do want to spread their religion through demographics and move throughout the world and have as many kids as possible.

Islam is extremely imperialist! That’s a definite fact! One thing you can say about the Jews is they are not imperialist. They don’t want converts. They don’t want to take over. If you want to convert to Judaism, you go to a rabbi, and tell him you want to convert to Judaism, the first thing he’s going to ask you is, “Why? Why do you want to convert to Judaism? Why do you want to do that? What do you want to do that for?”

Do you think that is for racial purity reasons?

No…Jews just don’t convert. Religions either proselytize or they don’t. Jews used to proselytize and take a lot of converts, but they haven’t been doing it lately for some reason. Jews just don’t convert people. It’s not their thing. There are other religions like that too, especially in the Middle East. That philosophy has its roots in purity stuff, but it’s generally not a very good idea for your religion to not accept converts. It’s a way to make your religion go extinct – don’t accept converts.

I haven’t really studied Islam. I haven’t looked at the texts, so I don’t want to make claims about a religion if I haven’t studied it. But if you study the history of Islam, it’s definitely a pretty imperialist religion. With Europe, the Muslim leaders definitely have a goal to take over Europe.

Sure! And so do the ones in the US! If you read the statements of CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, it’s run by Islamists, and they say the same thing as the ones in Europe do – that their goal is a Muslim America. And that’s what’s scary about these people. I don’t think we should be letting a lot of them in. As long as they are only

What is the level of growth in that community in the US?

Not that much in the US. They have a few converts here and there. Actually, a much greater problem in the West in terms of Islam is that a lot of Muslims leave Islam. In the UK, 1

Has that happened in Europe at all?

In the UK, about 1

Do you think it’s a motivation for terrorism to come from a sexually repressed culture, and they see the West as being sexually immoral. You’ve heard that argument. How much of a role do you think that plays?

Hmm…I’m not sure. They kill women for violating Islam, but they also kill men. In Muslim-majority countries, they will kill guys for leaving Islam. The thing about Islam is that, from the very start, Islam has not accepted people leaving their religion. They do not accept apostates! They kill them! They’ve always done this, from Day One.

I was talking to my Mom about that, and she just acted like, “Well, that’s just the way they are. Muslims don’t like that. They’ll kill you if you leave.” She didn’t say it like they’re evil, but more that this is just the way that they are. They’ve been this way for about 1,300 years. It’s the nature of their religion. But that’s their imperialist nature right there! Because they accept lots of converts, but they won’t let anybody leave! It’s like a house that’s an Open House. Anybody in the neighborhood can come in, but once you’re in there, they lock the doors, and you can never get out.

It would be like a country that took in all these immigrants, but will not let anyone leave the country.

Yes! Especially with the goal of, “We’re going to be the biggest country in the world and take over all the other countries.” And they have emissaries all over all the other countries in the world trying to make their Muslims dual citizens. It’s true that Islam has a world conquest agenda, and Al Qaeda and folks like that are absolutely explicit in their goals of taking over the world. I’ve read Al Qaeda’s statements. And I’ve been interviewed by the FBI too about Al Qaeda. Because I did some research on them.

Yes?

Yes I know something about Al Qaeda. It was funny, I called the FBI back one time, and I asked for the Bin Laden Division, because they’ve got this Bin Laden Task Force. And it was Friday night and they said, “Oh, they’re gone for the weekend!” I thought that was lame. I think the Bin Laden Task Force should be working 24-7. This FBI guy called me back and they did an interview with me. I didn’t really like it too much because they always treat you like you’re a suspected terrorist.

Yes, they think you’re a suspected terrorist if you’re going to them with information.

Yes, I don’t like to be interviewed by cops either. They always treat you like you’re a suspected criminal. That’s just their nature.

I don’t think that’s intentional, but it’s just what they are used to doing as part of their job.

Well, he wanted to find out if I was a Muslim! He was like, “Are you a Muslim?” I was like, “No way!” And he was breathing easier. I told him I was a Leftist, a Left-winger, and he was like, “Oh well, we’re not worried about you.” The FBI is worried about American Muslims, especially converts. White guys like me convert. And quite a few of those guys go super-radical. Because converts are often crazy.

They’re more radical than the people who are born into it because they joined just for that purpose, to embrace that belief system.

In many religions, even the converted Jews…the Jewish converts often go really nuts.

I’ve met Christians who converted to Judaism. They started out as Christian Zionists and that was their motivation for joining Judaism.

The Jews say that the Jewish converts are simply nuts in many cases. They’re like these fanatical Jews. And it’s interesting too, because the Jewish converts often take on a lot of these supposed “Jewish genetic tendencies.” They become extremely ethnocentric, they become paranoid of the Gentiles. These are not genetic tendencies! The ethnocentrism, the paranoia of the Gentiles, the tribalism.

Some people think that those traits are genetic.

Yes! I don’t agree with that.

But who’s been saying that it’s genetic? I think it’s cultural. Who’s been saying that?

Well, the Nazi thing was that there was something wrong with their genes.

Well, I see what you are saying. I know that way of thinking.

Kevin MacDonald has suggested that too, and boy is he wrong.

He has brought it up. I read his blog a lot, and I think that MacDonald’s main view is that it’s a culture, a political ideology. Do you think that he has mentioned the genetic aspect?

I think he mentions something about that. If you read his Trilogy of books, he suggested that Jewish character traits might be genetic. I think that’s crazy. Supposedly the Jews are really aggressive verbally and in business, and they can be rude.

Well, I think that’s cultural too, because the Jews are verbally and in business, extremely aggressive. But physically, Jews are not aggressive at all. Jewish guys have a reputation for being wimps. Jews commit almost no physical violence or violent crime. Jews are bad at sports. So…what did they inherit? Some sort of gene that made him extremely verbally aggressive but at the same time extremely non-aggressive as far as physical aggression goes? That doesn’t make any kind of sense.

Well, Jewish behavior is definitely cultural, since it also depends on where they grew up. If they grew up in New York or if they grew up in a small town in the Midwest is going to make a huge difference. I was reading about this story. There was this rabbi, he went to Peru and he got these Peruvian Indians and he took them to Israel and they turned into these fanatics after about 5 years.

Yes, they probably started acting more Jewish than Jews in New York that are 500 years Kosher. That shows you that one can take on those psychological tendencies of the Jews. It’s simply a cultural thing. I could be like that. I could be like that if I converted to Judaism. I could get really paranoid of the Gentiles and really hyperethnocentric, I could get really acquisitive, really verbally aggressive…

You grow up in a culture like that…and those people from around the Mediterranean, they tend to be that way anyway. They tend to be verbally aggressive, really emotionally expressive…They’re really into business too. Jews act a lot like Arabs, that’s the thing. They get in your face, but they’re really warm too, they embrace you, and when they’re talking to you, they’re like two inches away.

Israeli Scumbags

Just doin’ what comes naturally!

Fuck you, Israelis. And fuck all you idiots who support this shit. That includes the USraeli government and US Democratic Israeli Party and the US Republican Israeli Party. Fuck both of you Jewish-owned political parties and fuck the Jewish-owned US government. And fuck most US Jews, since the majority of US Jews support this crap. Fuck you, Jews.* I got some news for you arrogant weenies. This country’s called America, not Jewmerica. Got it, punks?

Honestly, it’s beyond me how any progressive person could support this sort of shit. It’s blatantly fascist behavior. Or at least rightwing behavior, since the Right generally supports colonialism and oppression of minorities. Only the Left has taken a principled, no-compromise stance against imperialism, colonialism and the oppression of minorities. We’ve even taken the most progressive stance on Earth in favor of oppressed minorities – in many cases, we grant them the right to self-determination.

The Israelis are arguing their usual crap in this case, that the Palestinians were in a “closed military zone” and had been ordered  to leave, but refused, so they got their asses bulldozed. Every time an Israeli official opens up his mouth, he’s probably lying. So listening to them is trying because you have to research every damn thing they say to figure out if it’s a lie or not.

Truth is that the “settlements” are only one part of the story. Israel owns and has jurisdiction over fully 6

In that “closed military zone” there are many thousands of Palestinians living there on their land, just as they have always lived on their land. But Israel conquered and illegally annexed and settled the conquered land in 1967, and that’s why it’s a “closed military zone.” So,  Palestinian homes in 6

Same goes for many Bedouin villages inside Israel. After Israel conquered much of Palestine in 1949, 9

Even inside the

These projects are uncontroversial across the political spectrum, with even the Zionist “Left,” such as the Labor Party (a party with socialist roots) completely in favor of this racist crap. Even in the cities, Arabs are not allowed to build new buildings. They can’t even add on to their existing homes, so most Arabs simply build or expand illegally since this is the only way to build. These structures and add-ons are routinely torn down by Israel in what are once again uncontroversial activities, supported even by Labor.

This goes to show you that there is not a whole lot of moral space between the Israeli Right and the Israeli Left. Much of the Israeli political spectrum is devoted to frankly fascist parties of both the right and left. Only Meretz deserves some praise, though I’m not up on their project, and lately they’ve been losing elections. I’ve long been a fan of Hadash, the Israeli Communist Party, though.

*There are definitely some American Jews who most emphatically do not support this crap. For our dear humanist Jewish brothers and sisters, we throw a great big shout out.

Business As Usual

In the shitty little country, the Jews’ little hate state.

This is in East Jerusalem, mind you. Not the West Bank. East Jerusalem is not even considered to be part of the West Bank. It’s part of Israel, you know, the only democracy in the Middle East and all that shit. This is the way Israeli Jews treat humans inside their very own beacon of democracy, the City on a Hill. You know, the place where the “civilized Western Judeo-Christian (White) values” of the Jews is most starkly contrasted with the sheer animal viciousness of the Arab primitives. Or so the Jews would have it. Yeah right.

What I don’t get is how Israel gets the support of all these US liberals. I mean, the place is the living embodiment of a contradiction to so many values that we libs hold dear to our hearts.

The whole Israeli project reminds one of the Jim Crow South.

Can you imagine this in the US?

White cop calling an ambulance: “There is someone injured…” White ambulance dispatcher: “White person or a nigger?” White cop: “It’s a nig.” White dispatcher, sneering: “Call the SPCA. We don’t pick up injured animals.” White cop: Laughs. Black boy continues lying bleeding in the street while cackling Whites with evil smirking grins prance around and throw stones at Black people. “Nigger go home!” They yell gleefully as the Blacks, faces clouded in shame, scuttle away.

Now, just replace White with Jew and nigger and Black with Arab and you’ve got the Israeli project in a nutshell.

And the same liberal Whites who recoil in horror at the Jim Crow South squirm their reluctant praise for Israel, all because it’s Jews being the shits, and not White Gentiles. And you know, the Jews got killed in the Ho-lo-caust and all that. So they get to be shits for decades, or centuries, or until we forget the Shoah.

I was talking to a nice White liberal the other day. I told her that the Palestinians believe in Replacement Theology, because it implies that there’s no religious justification for Israel in Christianity. She sighed and said, “They’re all nuts.” I said, “Well, they got their land stolen. They don’t agree with that. What are they supposed to do, pack up and go to some other Arab country?” She gave a disgusted sigh and said, “They might as well.”

This wouldn’t be ok if anyone else but Jews was doing it. This particular White liberal is Judeophilic like so many millions of US White Gentiles, and this leads her to excuse in Jews what she would condemn in anyone else.

I can’t see any liberal supporting Israel.

I can see rightwingers supporting them. They eat oppression, imperialism, colonialism, land theft and discrimination for breakfast every morning. Those are practically conservative values.

If you object to that, then they are surely fascist and racist values. The behavior of those Israelis in that piece above is typical of many fascist states. It’s also typical of racist societies around the world. If we are anti-fascist and anti-racist liberals, what in God’s name are we doing supporting Israel?

Anyone?

Peter Tobin, “India and Nepal – Big Brother Little Brother Part 2″

This is the 2nd part of Peter Tobin’s excellent essay, India and Nepal – Big Brother Little Brother. He is a fine writer and I am honored to present his work on my site.

This post is very long, running to 115 pages on the Web. Nevertheless, it is not a difficult read, as I have read it several times already. Still, it would be best to print it out and read it at your leisure.

This article deals with the recent history of India and Nepal in a manner in which most of us are not familiar.

He also ties in Indian nationalism with Irish nationalism and compares and contrasts the two movements. Tobin’s analysis is interesting for a Marxist, as he negates the notion that the IRA is taking a progressive stance in calling for the unification of all of Ireland.

Instead, he sees it as opposed to the progressive axiom of self-determination. A proper Marxist POV, says, Tobin, would be for Irish nationalists to allow the right of self-determination to the counties of Northern Ireland. He compares this reluctance on the part of Irish nationalists to Indian nationalists’ refusal to grant the right of self-determination to Muslims on the subcontinent, a fascist project that led the violent partition of India, endless war in Kashmir and a very hostile reality between India and Pakistan.

Hence, Irish national unification nationalism, like Indian national unification nationalism, is a fascist project as is the case with most national unification or nation-building projects, not a progressive or Left one.

There are many other interesting tidbits here. Tobin notes that the Hindutva movement actually has its roots in normative Indian nationalism and the Congress Party itself and such heroes as Gandhi and Nehru can be seen as Hindutvas themselves. That India has always dominated Nepal in a brutal and callous way shows that India itself, like Israel, must now be recognized as an imperialist power in its own right.

I made quite a few edits in the text, but for style, punctuation, grammar and spelling only.

1947 INDIA SPRINGS FROM THE HEAD OF MARS

Over the past generation India has shed its non-aligned status and has formally placed itself in the Anglo-Saxon camp. For a number of reasons, some of which I will outline below, it has become a fully active member of the ‘War on Terror’.

To a large extent this has laid bare that which was previously obscured by the radical rhetoric and sometimes practice of the Congress leaders of the pre and post independence movement: that is the phenomenon of a Hindu Great Power chauvinism which lays claim to the entire subcontinent including the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas and what is now Pakistan.

It was initially conceived in the first decades of the twentieth century by the nationalist ideologue Savarkar who introduced the concept of Hindutva (Hinduness) to describe all movements and parties under the umbrella of Indian nationalism.

It is there in Nehru’s Discovery of India written from 1942 onwards while interned by the British. Published in 1946, it formed the Hindu response to those who would challenge the territorial assertions of Indian nationalists. The extreme form of Hindutva can presently be seen in the murderous cretinism of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, Indian People’s Party) founded in 1980 and now the second largest party in the Lok Sabha.

It is salutary to note that Modi, the leading BJP minister in the Gujarat regional government, personally organized the massacre of over 2,000 Muslims in that state in 2002. The BJP is also pro-American and committed to the neo-liberal project.

There is therefore no substantial ideological or political difference between the BJP and the CI Establishment in this claim to the entire subcontinent. What they have, they hold; where they don’t have control, they have consistently followed expansionist policies of economic and military penetration to achieve that end.

Following independence, initial animus was directed against what were held to be the pretensions of Jinnah’s Muslim League in claiming national rights based upon majority Muslim populations in the North West and East of India. Jinnah rightly claimed that in a few years he had turned:

Muslims from a crowd into a nation.

The emergence of Muslim nationalism provoked the Indian Congress politicians and ideologues into the corrupt, anti-democratic inveigling of a large chunk of Kashmir into the nascent Indian state completely disregarding the wishes of the vast majority of the population there for integration with their coreligionists in an equally nascent Pakistani state.

It reflects, like Irish nationalists in their continued refusal to accept self-determination for the Loyalist population in the six counties, their rejection of a ‘two nation’ theory applying on the subcontinent.

That and the seizure of Hyderabad began India’s first, but by no means last, war of aggression in 1948.

As the largest power on subcontinent, India has always acted with impunity in defending and extending its border and influence. Besides the wars with Pakistan which culminated in the dismantling of that state in 1972 with the detachment of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), it had the arrogance to launch a war against China in the Askhai Chin in 1962.

Its military caste, inflated with hubris inherited from its former imperial master, expected a walkover. The military ignoramus, Mountbatten, who had been parachuted into the high command of SEAC (South East Asia Command) in 1943 over the head of the more competent General Slim, through his royal connections, claimed that India had:

A magnificent army, a capable air force, and a good navy brought up by the British. Look at the terrain and tell me how the Chinese can invade. (sic) I would hate to plan that campaign.

The only correct statement in the above was that the Indian Army was a British creation; its officer class was comprised of Koi Hais (Anglo-Indian Blimps) who, emboldened by all their wars and particularly the walk-over in annexing Portuguese Goa in 1961, were gung ho for war against China. L’appetite vient en mangeant.

In the final event, their army was outmaneuvered, outfought and outclassed by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and the Indian government was forced to withdraw its troops and territorial claims which, significantly, were based on the British unilaterally imposed McMahon line. (Vide: India’s China War, Neville Maxwell, 1969.)

These territorial assertions were partly based on the fact that the Askai Chin is part of Kashmir, the whole of which Indian nationalists lay claim to, as detailed earlier, but significantly also on the basis that the new line was a secret provision of the 1914 Simla Agreement between the then Dalai Lama and Britain and followed upon the British invasion of Tibet a decade earlier. British historians euphemistically refer to this event as the ‘Younghusband Expedition’.

It was inspired by the adventurist Viceroy, Curzon, seeking to exploit the growing weakness of Manchu China by encouraging Tibetan separatism and to forestall the Russians from gaining influence in that region, reflecting the anti-Russian ‘forward’ school of Raj expansionism that had been evident in Afghanistan and North India throughout the 19th century.

The Chinese had never accepted this invasion or the agreement that resulted from it and which changed British policy, a policy which up to 1904 had recognised that Tibet was under the suzerainty of the Court of the Middle Kingdom. The emerging Kuomintang, from its progressive beginnings under Sun Yat Sen to the later years of the Bonapartist reaction of Chiang Kai Shek, upheld the ‘One China’ policy.

After China ‘stood up’ with the 1949 Liberation, there was even less likelihood of it accepting the spurious legacy of Curzon’s geopolitical cartography. It was not, therefore, as the deluded Mountbatten stated, an ‘invasion’ but a consistent policy of refusing to acknowledge imperialist borders aimed at fragmenting China. The Chinese Communists fought a defensive war against India in order to re-assert the acknowledged historical unity of their country.

Delhi’s aim of enforcing what had begun as a British land grab emphasizes how completely Nehru’s Congress government adopted the reactionary politics and territorial parameters of their former colonial masters. In this sense the war of aggression against the People’s Republic was not an aberration but was entirely consistent with India’s general expansionist policies on the subcontinent and particularly consistent with its attitude towards China.

A long standing animus towards the Communist country was previously seen in the comfort and aid given to the Tibetan Yellow Hat clique and their post 1914 attempts to secede Tibet from China.

Despite all the rhetoric of Third World solidarity that came out of Bandung in 1954 and the Panch Sheel (five points) agreement, where the two countries had agreed not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs, India allowed these separatists, fronted by the youth Gyatso, the Dalai Lama (a CIA creature then as now), a haven after the failure of their American-backed armed uprising in 1959 which the Indian government allowed to be organised from Kalimpong (Nehru himself admitted that the place was ‘a nest of spies’).

After the defeat of this Tibetan ‘Bay of Pigs’, they were allowed to resettle in Dharmsala, which was said to be the biggest CIA base in the world outside of Langley at that time. India essentially allowed the US to pursue its proxy war against China from its territory.

Its anti-colonial soul was further betrayed to a new, but equally expansionist, superpower, when Congress accepted its British inheritance from the instance of independence. For example, it took over with alacrity the policy of keeping Hindu rulers in majority Muslim areas; the British had pioneered this stratagem after the success of the first Sikh wars in 1846 in Jammu and Kashmir based on the principle of divide and rule.

Independent India inherited directly these petty princelings and through them disenfranchised the Muslim populations in those states.

Only lip service was paid to Gandhi’s pacifism. For years before his assassination, he had already been marginalized by the radical group around Menon and Nehru who were the real powers in formulating policy and strategy. Like the Dalai Lama, he has since become a saint to sections of a gullible, dim, historically ignorant Western petit-bourgeoisie.

Nehru put this more aggressive and hardheaded projection of the national interest very clearly in the Lok Sabha in 1959 in relation to the border dispute with China:

But where national prestige and dignity is involved, it is not the two miles of territory, it is the nation’s dignity and self-respect that becomes involved. And therefore this happens.

Yet he continued to delude himself, invoking Gandhi, that “basically we are a gentle people” who “emotionally disliked war,” that had been forced on them by the “warlike Chinese.”

The controversial but perceptive Bengali writer Chauduri, (Inter alia he argued that the Indians were originally Europeans who had been corrupted and denatured by an exotic, tropical environment.) in an acclaimed series of essays, saw through the hypocritical rhetoric, and penetratingly observed a few years after the war:

Hindu militarism is a genuine and powerful force, influencing Indian foreign policy…the conflict with China was inspired almost wholly by Hindu jingoism with the Hindu possessiveness as a second underlying factor. (The Continent of Circe, Niraud C. Chauduri, 1965. p. 107. Circe was a sorceress and weaver of spells from Greek legend.)

This bellicose militarism swept the country, reactivating the concept of the Dharma Yuddha (righteous war) but in a degraded and incompetent form. It demonstrated what a powerful force militarism had become since independence.

However the defeat in the Indian-Chinese War not only strengthened the position of the ‘capitalist roaders’ within Congress but led to one of the biggest defeats of the Party in the history of elections anywhere, when it was swept away in Jaipur in 1962 by a the victory in a ballot by the Swatantra party which championed the free market and was backed by business and many of the former princes.

It proved to be Nehru’s ‘last hurrah’ and effectively ended his political dominance. It was also the end of the experiment with socialism, and India began the sad trajectory that has culminated in its present junior partnership in transnational capitalism.

What this jingoist war did reveal was that the imagined form of an herbivorous Orientalized humanism could not conceal the real substance of a carnivorous and hegemonic bourgeois nationalism. The Gandhian hiatus was a thin varnish which tried to cover an historic Hindu martial spirit, that had as its ideological lodestone the aggressive ardor and warlike tales of the Mahabharata.

1950 INDIAN INTERVENTION IN NEPAL

This newly emergent Indian imperial policy can be clearly seen in the response to the crisis in Nepal in 1950 which saw an alliance of Nepal Congress and King Tribhuvan against the hundred and fifty year rule of the Ranas.

The Ranas were a feudal dynasty that controlled Nepal for that historical period. Unlike their earlier homologues, the Russian Boyars, they did not face a Ivan the Terrible until Tribhuvan, and they exercised a firm grip with a succession of Kings being more or less figureheads. After they seized power with the help of the British in 1846, they remained firmly allied to the East Indian Company and post 1857 Raj in defending British interests in Nepal.

It was the Ranas who facilitated the recruitment of Gurkha mercenaries into the British Indian army, for which they received a payment per head.

During the 1930’s and 40’s, Nepal was swept up in the growing and powerful campaign for independence in India, and there were attempts to set up a Nepalese Congress Party which drew support from primarily the Hindu populations in the Kathmandu Valley and the other major urban centers and from the Terai, which borders India.

The Ranas’ response was brutal suppression – activists were hung or imprisoned, and many driven into exile; principally to India, where they received asylum and support from the Congress Party and the government it subsequently formed in 1948. Nepali Congress was therefore launched in India in 1950 under the auspices of the Congress government.

It is of some significance that at its first conference, NC repudiated non-violence as a tactic in the struggle against the Ranas and began agitating for an armed invasion from India to coincide with an internal uprising in the towns and cities.

Though they were dependent on support from India, such was the situation in Nepal that they were prepared to take a position on the application of Gandhian passivity and its obvious uselessness to the Nepalese situation. The ‘saintly’ pacifist Mohindas consistently held firm to the principle of non-violence and had little sympathy for those who advocated armed struggle.

Thus he refused to intervene to save Baghat Singh, a revolutionary Communist who advocated and engaged in armed struggle, from execution in 1931. By his silence, Gandhi colluded in his execution. Gandhi also retained a dislike for the martial pretensions of Subhas Chandra Bose. For all his vaunted humanism, he was a social reactionary who resolutely defended the caste system.

This militant stand reflected the radicalism of the new born NC. Many of its early leaders, such as GP Koirala and his brother, BP Koirala had cut their teeth in the brutal struggles to establish trade unions in the jute mills of Biratnagar, Nepal’s largest industrial concentration close by the Indian border. GP became the first Prime Minister after the 1990 Andolan and remains an influential NC leader at the present time.

NC’s militancy was in stark contrast to the Congress Party of India which had undergone a process of embourgeoisiement and a growing attachment to Hindu chauvinism. This was reflected in its subcontinental strategy as regards to Nepal and similar neighboring states, as they were all considered as being within India’s sphere of influence.

The unruly Nepalese infant party was to find its interests subordinated to this world view, and this was clearly shown in the events between 1950/2. Nehru initially encouraged and assisted in preparing NC for an armed incursion into Nepal. The current Ranas, the Shamshers, were regarded by Indian nationalists as having been British clients and, as noted earlier, had proved ruthless in persecuting the embryonic nationalist movement. Nehru stated in the Lok Sabha in 1950:

In the inner context of Nepal it is desirable to pay attention to the forces that are moving in the world – the democratic forces, the forces of freedom and to put oneself in line with them, because not to do so is not only wrong according to modern ideas but unwise according to what is happening in the world today.

By late 1950, preparations for an incursion by the Mukti Sena (Liberation Army), as the armed wing of NC styled itself, were well advanced. Though its rank and file were mainly Nepalese, stiffened by a core of recently demobbed Gurkhas, it was largely officered by ex-Indian National Army Boseites.

That this was facilitated by an Indian Congress government demonstrated the schizophrenic attitude to Bose and his forty thousand strong Indian National Army (INA) recruited from Japanese prisoners of war. When they launched an invasion of India in alliance with their Japanese allies in 1944, their cry was ‘Chalo Delhi‘ (on to Delhi), the cry of the 1857 rebels. This consciously emphasized the continuity of the ‘long revolution’.

By declaring for armed struggle against the British, Bose repudiated the Satyagraha strategy (literal translation: ‘to maintain the truth’.) This was the name given to the program of civil resistance. Gandhi used this definition because he wanted to distinguish it from Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience. That Bose allied himself with Japanese expansionism was a logical step; “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

It was the same conclusion that Irish nationalists, such as Pearse, Connolly and Casement, reached prior to 1916, in respect to Germany, and indeed a policy the rump of the IRA continued during the 1939-45 war. In respect to the struggle for Irish independence, this line of march succeeded in the years immediately following the 1916 Easter Rising and reasserted the physical force tradition over the parliamentary wing of Irish nationalism.

The charismatic Bose, however, while remaining on the margins of nationalist agitation and not able to shake the grip of the Gandhian Congress Party over the movement, nevertheless engendered, at least, posthumous respect for his patriotism and commitment. Such was his popularity with Indians in the closing years of the war that Gandhi and Nehru, albeit from different positions, were forced to oppose the British proposal to try ex-members of the INA. (Bose died in a plane crash in 1945 and so was beyond British lynch law.)

He became a hero, revered because he had frightened the British not just with the INA as a direct military threat but with the prospect that its very existence provided a mutinous pole of attraction to its own Indian Army. This reflected the nervousness evinced by the British that followed the first great War for Independence in 1857 with respect to internal security and, for example, was the reason the Raj refused to send Indian Army regiments to the Mesopotamia campaign in 1915 during the First War.

Eventually his martial spirit proved more attractive to Indians than the pacifist pieties of Mohindas. Satyagraha was replaced by Duragraha (to hold by force). The former, in the eyes of militant nationalists, demanded too much Dhairya (forbearance) in the face of the enemy. It was not surprising that Gandhi’s assassin, Godse, was a leading Hindutva militarist fanatic.

The incursion into Nepal from India succeeded in linking up with internal opposition forces, and within a month, the Ranas were destabilized. But India at this stage was concerned with stability on its border, and complete victory was snatched away from NC with India forcing a three way agreement between the Ranas, the King and NC.

The NP leader, GP Koirala’s, aim of a constitutional monarchy was dropped, and the issue of a promised constituent assembly was kicked into the long grass, Tribhuvan, his successor, Mahendra and the Indian government all reneged on it. Monarchical absolutism asserted itself, and within a few years the prisons were filled with Congress activists along with many Communists whose movement had grown since the founding of the CPN in 1949, a response to the failure of NC and its lack of radicalism.

The Party’s launch coincided with the first translation of the Communist Manifesto into Nepalese by its first leader, Pushpa Lal (also a veteran of the Biratnagar trade union struggle). The work had an immediate resonance among the radical intelligentsia, especially the sections on pre-capitalist social formations that were immediately relevant to the Nepalese situation.

In addition, there were the Manifesto’s political demands, many of which had already been achieved in developed bourgeois democracies, e.g. progressive taxation, free education and elections, which were revolutionary demands in the context of a authoritarian, feudal state.

In 1960, Tribhuvan’s successor, Mahendra, consummated this process by declaring an end to political parties and parliamentary government and instituting the Panchayaat system, a feudal talking shop convened under the King. This lasted until the first great Andolan in 1990 which relegalized the parties and reintroduced a Parliament complemented by, what was intended to be, a constitutional monarchy.

Thus for forty years, successive Indian governments did little to assist Nepalese democrats in their struggle against monarchical absolutism.

Nehru’s government had in fact used the crisis of 1950 to extract yet another unequal treaty, the first of which had been initiated by the British in 1816 with the imposition of the Sugauli Treaty, which made Nepal a captive market for industrial goods produced in India, followed by the later Nepali-India Trade Agreement of 1923 which created a ‘common market’ between the two countries.

The 1950 Peace and Friendship Treaty extended that grip and gave the Indians monopoly control over Nepal’s commercial, industrial and finance sectors. This was reviewed every ten years, and the events from 1990 onwards have seen no change in India’s economic domination; it is presently estimated that 8

They also took over from the British the process of exploiting Nepal’s huge water resources initiated by the 1920 Sherada Dam Agreement and cemented by the further exploitation of the 1954 Kosi Agreement and 1959 Gandaki Agreement.

The Indian ruling class took further advantage of the 1990 upheaval to have all the Nepalese rivers declared a ‘common resource’ for Nepal and India in a ‘Joint Communique’ between the two governments. They added a qualitative twist in 1996 with the Integrated Mahakali Development Agreement which assumed control of the entire Mahakali River for India’s power and irrigation needs.

As Bhatterai, (now number two in the leadership of UCPN(M) after Prachanda) noted:

The Mahakali Treaty, however, has adopted a more devastating form of neocolonial exploitation and oppression by talking equality in theory but in practice ensuring monopoly in the use of water and electricity to the Indian expansionists and imposing trillions of rupees of foreign debt upon Nepal. (B. R. Bhatterai, The Political Economy of the People’s War, 1998, published in The People’s War in Nepal – Left Perspectives, editors A. Karki & D Seddon, p.128)

All of these agreements have progressively dispossessed Nepal of its greatest natural resource. They have particularly affected the Terai, the southern plains contiguous to India and Nepal’s ‘grain basket,’ in order to benefit Indian industrial and agricultural interests.

From the outset India has used its geographical, political and economic position over Nepal to ensure that its hegemonic interests predominated.

When it suited, they allowed Mahendra and his successor, Birendra, to expand and consolidate power, but when the latter attempted to take an independent position specifically by ‘playing the China card’ by buying and importing arms from the People’s Republic in the late 1980’s, they responded with a refusal to renew a trade and transit treaty in 1989 and effectively launched a economic blockade on Nepal.

This, on a country that by this time could not produce enough to feed its population, was devastating, and it caused tremendous deprivation in Nepal.

This crucially weakened Birendra’s Panchaayat and provided the nexus for the 1990 Andolan. (This was as important as the People’s War from 1996 to 2006 proved in creating the conditions for the second Andolan.) The thinking in Delhi with respect to the uprising was that Nepal was now so dependent on India they could manage and control any resulting democratic change as they had always done.

Not only was the major Nepalese party, NC, completely in their pocket by this time, but there was a growing Hindu comprador capitalist class which which would automatically respond to their influence without being urged to.

In the nineties and the first years of the new century they were content to allow the fledgling democracy under NC and its principal ally, the CPN(UML) to attempt to turn Birendra into a constitutional monarch. This changed when the PW grew in influence, and there emerged a strong connection with the Indian Maoists.

The crucial event which propelled them, yet again, to back monarchical despotism was the beginning therefore of the PW in 1996. There was a hitch with the murder of Birendra and his family, allegedly by the Crown Prince, Dipendra, in 2001. He somehow managed to shoot himself in the back of the head with an assault rifle and took two days to die. Thereafter he was referred a the ‘King in a coma’.

It has since emerged that the attack was carried out by an American trained special forces unit organised through RAW (cf. the CIA murder of Ngo Dinh Diem, the Vietnamese President, in 1963; of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1960; of Panama’s Torrijos in 1968; and the numerous bungled but hilarious attempts to assassinate Castro.)

It led to the accession of Gyanendra, who after 9/11 gave the US a pledge to reinvigorate the war against the Maoists, which Birendra had shirked, provoking American fury and his subsequent assassination. Gyanendra in return received armaments and dollars from the US. The fact that he could act autonomously in giving this assurance emphasized the crucial flaw in the 1990 settlement which had left the RNA subject to unilateral, monarchical control.

After a visit by Powell in February 2002 where this understanding was cemented between the Americans and Gyanendra, the Indian government found itself in a bidding war with Uncle Sam and their faithful British ally.

It was keen to see its previous influence restored with the belief that the Anglo-Saxons would undermine their former neocolonial control ceded to American interests and particularly their desire to encircle and monitor the growing power of China. The inclusion of the secular Maobaadi as ‘terrorists’ can be seen in this light.

The Indian government had been to the fore in supplying the regime with arms and logistical support. The supply of armaments was, however, suspended after Gyanendra’s dismissal of his government and the restoration of monarchical absolutism. Indian policy from 2002 onwards represented a break from the ‘two pillar’ strategy which supported both the parliamentary forces and that of the King. At the heel of the hunt, they did not care “what color the cat was as long as it caught the mouse.”

The reasons successive Indian governments had failed to make a objective evaluation of the Maoist movement related to the threat they represented to stability in the region and particularly their threat to abrogate such Indo-Nepalese agreements as the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950, the 1996 Mahakali Treaty along with all similar unequal treaties.

Also of significance to them was the Maobaadi’s networking with India’s own Maoists, which had finally led to the establishment of the Coordinating Committee of Maoist Groups in South Asia in 2001, creating a formal structure to expand revolutionary armed struggle in that region. It only confirmed Indian paranoia.

India had, from 1996 onwards, identified with the monarchy and the parliamentary forces, and along with the US, UK and Belgium poured in armaments to equip the growing Royal Nepalese Army, which by 2006 was approximately 70,000 strong. India provided 25,000 Insas combat rifles, the US 20,000 M16 carbines, South Africa and Belgium 2,000 machine-guns.

Britain further provided two Islander STOL (Short Take-off Or Landing) reconnaissance aircraft, which were adapted and fitted with 50mm heavy machine guns and 200mm mortar bomb racks which, along with two Russian M17 large helicopters, were used to massacre villagers in Maoist held territory as they gathered for political meetings.

The RNA was up against the PLA of 30,000 that had grown from half a dozen Maoist urban refugees which had gone “into the jungle” in 1996 armed with a couple of rusty Lee Enfields but which had built offensive and defensive capacity by expropriating arms and munitions from the police and the RNA.

The Indian government during this period abandoned its previous pragmatic policies which sought a stable Nepal. Their backing of Gyanendra and the reactionary parliamentary forces only exacerbated the crisis. The CPN(Maoist)s’ call for the ending of all the unequal treaties was not unique; it was shared by many in Nepal. The shrinking strata of national capitalists supported this policy as they resented the expansion of Indian domination of the Nepalese economy with the attendant rise of a comprador class.

On the question of solidarity among the Maoist parties on the subcontinent, the Indian government wrongly saw them as a monolithic and undifferentiated entity, which precluded them from showing any flexibility. Instead they resolutely refused to talk to the Nepalese Maobaadi. This was despite the fact the influence of CPN(Maoist) was on the rise (by the time of Jana Andolan in 2006 they controlled nearly 8

If the Indians wanted a stability on their northern border, there was a necessity to engage with the Maoists at either a formal or informal level.

There is some evidence that CPN(M) recognised the strategic threat that India presented and were concerned that at some stage they would send in their army to forestall or overthrow any regime with pretensions to independence. They were also worried that the fall-out from 9/11 had placed them on the US list of ‘terrorists’ and were prepared to try and reduce their growing list of foreign enemies by exploiting contradictions among them and by attempting to detach India from the Anglo-Saxons.

To this end, the anti-Indian rhetoric of the Party was toned down in the few years after 2001 as they tried to establish some form of dialogue with the Indian government. They were comprehensively rebuffed.

India chose to stay aligned with the US, which regarded the Nepalese Maoists as a bloody and inflexible party; the US Embassy even raised the specter of a Khmer Rouge style takeover in Nepal. They accepted therefore Gyanendra’s argument that they should be included in the War Against Terror the US launched in 2001. What was significant in their inclusion was that the Maoists were secular and thus did not qualify for the nomenclature of Jihadist.

The Americans, with the acquiescence of the Indian government, therefore extended the original criteria to define a terrorist entity as where “…two or more people combine to threaten existing property rights.” This was a active policy which included US military ‘advisers’ training and equipping the RNA and flooding Nepal with CIA operatives.

Like the global phenomena of AIDS, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Avian flu, the Americans were everywhere in Nepal and so became hated by the Nepalese. I witnessed this first hand on both my visits to Nepal. They were so unpopular that many visiting American students used to stitch a Maple Leaf decal on their backpacks in a pathetic attempt to pass as Canadians.

Despite Indian worries regarding potential threats to subcontinental hegemony from outside powers, they looked on as the Americans and Gyanendra sabotaged the peace talks in January 2003 between the Maoists and the then Prime Minister Deuba. They even expressed anger at being marginalized by not being consulted beforehand by either of the two parties engaging in the talks exploring the possibility of peace.

The Maoists were acting in good faith, as they had long indicated a desire to ‘leave the jungle’ and enter the multi-party system.

Apart from suspending arms shipments, which by that time were surplus to the RNA’s requirement, they never seriously challenged Gyanendra’s suppression of all political parties in 2002 until 2005 when, alarmed at the growing success of the Maoists and the impact any victory would have in India, they relinquished the ‘Two Pillar’ policy in favour of the parliamentary parties.

Sotto voce they were equally perturbed at the growing US presence and influence in Nepal which threatened their traditional hegemony. At this juncture they ceased calling the Maoists ‘terrorists’ and facilitated peace talks between the seven parliamentary parties and the Maoists in India. It was obvious to them by now that Gyanendra was a busted flush.

How had a secular republic born in a bitter struggle against imperialism, within only sixty years, reached a fundamentally reactionary and chauvinist polity? This is I want to address in the next section – that and to contrast India’s weaknesses and strengths in the successful struggle against the Raj and the failure after 1947.

IRISH AND INDIAN NATIONALISM – A COMPARISON

The duplicities, antidemocratic maneuvering and aggression shown towards the Muslim League and Pakistan were underpinned by hostility to Muslim claims to self-determination wherever on the subcontinent they formed a majority.

Muslims were not granted any rights to a national identity, as they were seen as Indians under the skin (there is little racial difference) who needed to have their ‘false national consciousness’ stripped away to reveal their ‘true’ Indian identity.

It is very similar the ideological position that Irish nationalists use to deny Protestants in the six counties of Ireland a right to a national identity. Irish and Indian nationalists saw their respective Protestant and Muslim communities as settlements through conquest.

This concept of a national essence is bourgeois metaphysics; it falls into the category of historical idealism. From a materialist position, a nation is first and foremost an historically constituted stable community of people who share a common culture, language and mode of production from which arises a national consciousness. It is where an ideology becomes a material weight.

The other striking similarity between Hindu Indian and Irish nationalist assertions is the claim to hegemony over a defined geographical territory. In the case of the former, it is to the whole subcontinent, including the retaining arc of the Himalayas, and in the latter to all the island of Ireland.

In the case of the former, it arose from a determination to hold on to the territorial parameters established by the British and fortified by the ancestral Hindu belief that the ‘Land of Snows’ was in mystical counterbalance to the Gangetic Plains and Mount Olympus of the Indian gods.

For Irish nationalists, it was the myth that there had been an ‘historic Irish Nation’ prior to the arrival of the British. But the defeat of the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 by the armies of Leinster and Dublin effectively ended any maturation of the embryonic nation. Thereafter until the Anglo-Normans arrived in 1170, the island was a patchwork of petty tribal families engaged in semi-permanent warfare. It was these divisions which facilitated Strongbow’s incursion.

The failure of the Irish tribes to establish a recognized central kingship was noted four hundred years later by a Tudor agent, who reported to Henry VIII:

There be more than sixty countries inhabited by the King’s Irish enemies, where reigneth more than sixty chief captains, whereof some calleth themselves kings, some kings peers, and every one of the said captains makes war and peace for himself, and holds by sword and hath imperial jurisdiction, and obeys no other person.

That much is to the debit, and it exposes the ideological and political limitations of bourgeois nationalism, but it has to be set against the fact that whatever the negative features, the Irish and Indian struggles for independence were genuine anti-imperialist movements against their British imperial masters.

Each was an heroic and ultimately successful trailblazer for many subsequent anti-colonial struggles.

The tactics that eventually achieved the final expulsions of their respective British occupiers differed: the Irish, after the late 19th century parliamentary Home Rule campaign which collapsed in ignominy after 1916, successfully pursued a strategy of guerrilla war with the mass support of the agrarian Catholic population, while the Indian movement under Gandhi’s leadership pursued a policy of mass agitation and civil disobedience purportedly based on Ashima (non-violence).

Nevertheless, each of these national liberation struggles were bitter and bloody in strikingly similar ways. In the case of the former, for all the subsequent pacifist gloss emerging from the secular beatification of ‘Gandhiji’ about the campaign to drive out the British, we know that for every Robert Emmet, James Connolly or Kevin Barry there was a Mangal Pandey, Lala Lajpat Rai or Bhagat Singh.

The ‘Quit India’ movement organised at the height of the British empire’s life and death struggle with the Japanese Empire was no tea party. The notion that Congress achieved independence through nonviolence was a myth, fostered by the Congress Party and particularly Nehru to bolster his credentials as a principled international statesman working working for world peace and nuclear disarmament – India became a nuclear power post-Nehru.

There was genuine political and ideological support from Irish nationalists with the Indian struggle, a genuine sympathy with fellow anti-colonialists based upon the assessment that what the British first practiced in Ireland – famine, war, dispossession, exploitation, ethnic cleansing and genocide – they then visited on the rest of the World.

de Valera underlined that solidarity when he took George Washington’s words:

Patriots of Ireland , your cause is mine.

and in 1920 said that

the cause of Ireland is the cause of India, Egypt and Persia.

Fittingly he was an honored guest at the Indian independence ceremony in 1948.*

Stalin, the CPSU’s principal spokesman on the national question, noted the link between the two struggles:

Not only has bourgeois society proved incapable of solving the national problem, but its attempts to “solve it has inflated it and turned the national problem into a colonial problem and has created against itself a new front stretching from Ireland to Hindustan. (Marxism and the National Question, Tenth Congress CPSU, J.V. Stalin,1921, pp. 106/7)

In the postwar years, the two new states followed a similar domestic and foreign policy, and in this lay the seeds of their present vicissitudes. Early attempts by the Irish to develop an agrarian based economy free from dependence on British capitalism proved abortive. The endeavors of the newly elected Fianna Fial government of 1932 to pursue policies to protect and stimulate Irish agriculture and industry behind import taxes led to a tariff war with Britain.

This reflected the need of all newly independent countries, whether nationalist or Communist, to pragmatically follow the advice of the great German empirical economist, Frederick List. In opposition to the theology of Smith and his ‘hidden hand,’ he observed that newly emerging nations needed to protect their home markets and their fledgling home industries with tariffs against the predations of the existing dominant world economic powers of finance capital.

He further argued that the ‘visible hand’ of the state is necessary to stimulate and oversee the process. His prognostications led to establishment of the Zollverein, which drew the many German states and principalities into a customs union that laid the economic basis for Germany’s political unification in 1871.

Thus India and Ireland came to the conclusion that if they continued to allow unfettered access to their home market by more powerful and technologically advanced free trading imperialists, then so long would they be economically dependent, as they could not hope to compete on a level playing field.

In its own way, India initially followed List’s principles, with a socialist twist. Encouraged by the Congress leadership around Menon and Nehru, it launched a programme of nationalization and attempted to lay the basis of a planned economy with a series of five year plans.

Although they achieved a growth in GDP of

As Lenin pointed out clearly and as was later developed by Mao, there needed to be both a cultural revolution and a radical transformation of extant property relations following the political seizure of power which involved the masses in a complete revolutionary challenge to the existing order.

The newly empowered Indian Congress government failed to grasp this post-imperial axiom, and thus the caste and the feudal land systems were left untouched.

In the intense political and ideological rivalry that existed between the two newly liberated countries of Communist China and Congress India, it was, however, the former who succeeded economically and lifted their people out of absolute poverty and immiseration with a commitment to the ‘cradle to grave,’ ‘iron rice bowl’ policy and by comprehensively taking the socialist road.

It was the Chinese Communists who saw that in Stalin words that:

…the national and colonial questions are inseparable from the question of emancipation from the power of capital… (Ibid, The National Question Presented, J.V. Stalin, p. 114)

It can be argued that in the final analysis, China has integrated itself into world capitalism, but its socialist, autarkic period up to the late 1970’s enabled it to do so on its own state capitalist terms.

Compare China, even in its Maoist period, to the squalor and degradation that the majority of Indians, both in town and country, continue to live in, and only a fool or a reactionary would not conclude that India has failed by any measurable criteria.

India, under the growth and influence of a bourgeois comprador class, has integrated itself into the economic neoliberalism of the Anglo-Saxon world.

Chaudari predicted with remarkable foresight this eventuality earlier when he wrote:

Working within the emerging polity of the larger Europe, the Anglo-Saxon can be expected to lay claim to a special association with India on historical grounds. In plain words I expect either the United States singly or a combination of the United States and the British Commonwealth to re-establish and rejuvenate the foreign domination of India. (Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, N.C. Chauduri, 1951.)

Later, in 1962, he observed:

In the fulfillment of their destiny the American People will become the greatest imperial Power the world has seen, and they will repeat their history by having the blood of the Dark Indian on their head as they have that of the Red. (The Continent of Circe, N.C. Chauduri, 1965, p. 85)

THE STRUGGLE FOR INDIA & NEPAL

This revolution has now reached India and here the minerals which it stands in need of are found for the most part in the territories of the aboriginals. Very powerful forces stand behind the movement: the policies, interests, money and technical skills of nearly all Western nations: and, above all, the all-consuming Hindu avarice.

All this in combination is breaking down the isolation of the aboriginal, threatening not only his security but existence. There is a Hindu push towards the wilds, which never existed before, and very large vested interests are being created for the Hindus in the homelands of the primitives. The white ants are on the march. (Ibid, N.C Chauduri, 1965, p. 76)

Given the failure of autarkism, India has increasingly adopted neoliberal economic policies, making India safe for international capital and expanding the wealth of the Hindu ruling class. This process was cemented during the 2006 meeting with Bush by the commitment of the Indian government where India agreed to ‘liberalize’ their economy by opening it to multinational companies looking for cheap labor and expanding the extraction of India’s natural resources.

Although as can be seen in the prescient quote above, notwithstanding that it was written in terms that would now be termed as passé or non-PC, the seeds were planted a generation ago. In doing so they have heightened the contradictions within Indian society and have led to campaigns of resistance springing up in opposition to a reactionary economic strategy enforced by state terror which is accurately defined as fascist by revolutionary Communists on the subcontinent.

In this respect the much heralded ‘economic miracle’ of the past few years is only confined to 1

For the rest of the population in both town and country, living conditions have worsened considerably over this period. The majority of unfortunate rural Indians still eke out a primitive existence in Stone Age conditions. Most of these peoples live in conditions of deprivation, without regular access to decent nutrition, health care, education, clean water, etc.

The manic need of transnational imperialism to seize India’s resources to feed wasteful overconsumption in the developed Western World, as was noted earlier, has led to land wars against the indigenous Adivasis in India’s poorer regions like Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar, West Bengal, Madya Pradesh and Jharkand.

To enforce these policies, gangs of rightwing vigilantes, goondas, licensed by the regional and central authorities, are conducting what at best can be described as ethnic cleansing and genocide against these tribal peoples. The process noted by Chauduri in the 1960s has considerably accelerated over the past decade.

The three major parliamentary parties, CI, BJP and the CPI(M) or Communist Party of India(Marxist), are committed to expanding this reactionary program further, which can be clearly seen in the states where one or the other of them is in power. In Chhattisgarh, for example, where the BJP hold sway, there is an attempt to fast-track this process and allow voracious extractive monopolies to plunder resources following the dispossession of the tribal ethnics at the hands of vicious paramilitary Salwa Judum (Freedom Marchers, sic).

The only serious opposition to this neoliberal capitalist strategy are principally the Maoist groups, in alliance with the affected Adivasis, who are engaging in armed struggle in many states, forming a red belt that runs down the spine of India.

They have an armed presence in over 180 of the 600 departments of the country, and they have been described by the Indian CoS as presenting the ‘greatest menace to India’s internal security.’

The Indian ruling class is agitated by the threat of Maoists exercising any sort of power and enacting a radical programme in Nepal, which they have hitherto dominated and where their ‘mini-me’ Nepalese counterpart has so slavishly followed their path into even deeper reaction.

It is true that during the struggle against the King, culminating in his defeat, India facilitated peace talks between the Maoists and NP and the UML, which led to the Maoists declaring a cease fire. The alliance that arose between the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists worked to overthrow the monarchy.

The Delhi government, for example, released Guarev, a UCPN(M) politburo member, and its principal spokesman on foreign policy, so that he could participate in these talks. But the depth of the ongoing hostility to the Maoists is reflected in the fact that he was interned along with thousands of indigenous Maoists and tribal resisters, without charge or trial for three years, under the draconian State Security laws inherited from the British. These are the same laws under which they martyred Baghat Singh.

The motives for this temporary change lie not in India reconfiguring its policy towards Nepal but because they expected that the Maoists would not prove up to the task of operating within a multi-party democracy and would fail any substantial electoral test.

They were not alone in this assessment; internal and external observers thought the Maoists would come a poor third in any such contest. To some extent this was not entirely a complete fantasy, as in the 1994 elections an earlier incarnation of the Maoists, the UPFN (United People’s Front Nepal) failed to win a single seat in a contest where the UML emerged as the winner with 88 seats, followed closely by NC with 83 seats.

What went against their 2008 expectations was the fact that the inspiration brought about by the PW dramatically increased the electoral appeal of the Maoists among a critical mass of the population. So it was that the Maoists confounded all the pundits gathered in Kathmandu by winning 4

The key to the present crisis is the refusal to accept that the CPN(M) had a mandate for change and this is what provoked the subsequent plotting against the Prachanda led government.

The Americans played a strong role in the orchestration of the anti-Maoist campaign. The US has steadfastly refused to remove the designation of ‘terrorist’ from them, unlike Delhi which had not used the description since 2002.

The US State Department reinforced this scheming with a recently commissioned survey on the 2008 election in order to undermine the credibility of the electoral success of the UCPN(M) by alleging that it was the product of brute force and intimidation. They specifically singled out the Young Communist League for vilification and cited their defensive campaign against Indian inspired and separatist agitations in the Madesh bordering India.

Although the Party honored its word given during the peace talks with the SPA and put the 30,000 strong PLA into UN supervised cantonments, it had in reserve almost 300,000 YCL cadre for the electoral battle which for a number of reasons proved crucial to electoral ascendancy. A prominent bourgeois journal claimed that:

The YCL is just another name for Maoist guerrillas not openly carrying guns. (An Armless Army, The Nepali Times, 20/27th April, 2007)

Their relative numerical strength in a population of just over 23 million is a reflection of the appeal of the Maoists to the youth of a country where nearly 6

This US policy parallels with their policy towards Hamas in Gaza which had, at the behest of the West, called a cease-fire in 2006 and similarly entered an electoral battle.

When it proved similarly successful, it was similarly rubbished, and the goals for lifting the isolation of Hamas were moved further away. Here too, the leadership of the US was determinate and expressed the message to those it still regards as ‘terrorists’ that “however you play the game – you will lose!”

‘WAVING THE RED FLAG’ – THE CPI(M) & CPN(UML)

I have covered so far the role that India has displayed in relation to Nepal. I have also tried to outline how the NCs’ development and present objectives either coincide with or are determined by this neocolonial power. I now wish to turn to the UML, ostensibly a ‘left’ party, and show how it came to campaign in this ‘orgy of reaction’ that saw the Maoists driven from power. Although it was precipitated by right wing Army officers, the final blow against Prachanda and the UCPN(M) was the UML’s withdrawal from the coalition government and subsequent open support of Katawal’s actions.

How did this happen?

That a Communist party should sabotage a left government committed to radical policies in alliance with internal and external reaction came, initially, as a shock to many.

Notwithstanding the fact that many of members I was privileged to meet were sincere, dedicated comrades and which made the critical analysis I eventually reached all the more difficult, though I was impelled to do so by a sense of Communist commitment.

What misplaced use of dialectics by the UML leadership led them to such a clearly reactionary pass?

Was it unique, or did it mirror the drift of the CPI(M) away from revolutionary Communism and a capitulation to a pro-capitalist position?

I will argue the latter; that each party reached similar political and theoretical positions and modified, or even abandoned, socialism under the dead weight of reaction on the subcontinent and beyond. Their mentors and paymasters are drawn from those sources.

I first got involved in Nepalese politics through GEFONT/UML.

In October 2005 I went to Nepal for two reasons; the first to trek up the Khumbu to Everest Base Camp, and secondly, as a Communist, I had become interested because the People’s War had been raging there since 1996 against the unpopular American, British and Indian backed feudal monarchy and the supine, corrupt parliament.

I did not have to go far to establish contact, as UML’s trade union wing GEFONT was organised at the hotel where I stayed on arrival (which was owned by the King’s sister) and I met their shop steward – who was also its Maître’d’. Through him I visited their head office in Kathmandu on the wonderfully named Putali Sadak (Butterfly Road) and there met Chairperson Neupane and other members of the executive, among whom were Bishnu Rimal and Binda Pandey, and their research and international officer, Budhi Acharya.

I found myself more at home than in the UK, where Communists have to work within a single Laborite trade union movement, the TUC. The Nepali trade unions are organized like their French counterparts, with the main political parties each having their own union centre. The Nepali Trades Union Congress (NTUC) was, for example the trade union face of NC. GEFONT, in this respect, has the same relationship with the UML as the CGT has with the PCF, although, unlike the CGT, GEFONT’s 300,000 members are also Party members.

I was particularly impressed that pride of place, in a very busy, comprehensive and dedicated research department, was given to a shelf with Progress Publishers‘ forty two volume editions of Lenin. I could not imagine a British trade union head office being so equipped. I had a similar frisson when I visited the UML office in Pokhara and saw, proudly displayed, on the wall of the Regional Secretary’s office, posters of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

The division between the two Communist parties is not parallel with the splits in the West: there is no anti-Stalinist crawling to petit-bourgeois liberalism or any reflection of the Sino-Soviet split in their mutual opposition. Trotskyism, as in any genuine revolutionary struggle in the developing world, has no purchase or relevance. Disagreements are fundamental and are not based on what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences.”

I was also struck by the wide range of activities GEFONT was engaged in; they were fighting battles against child labor, for literacy and numeracy programmes, campaigns to eliminate bonded labor (Kamaiyas), women’s rights, etc., battles which in the West we had long ago won. Alongside these endeavors, they were also occupied with the more recognizable free collective bargaining activities on behalf of diverse industrial and service groups that is part of our normal warp and weave.

In addition, health and safety is taken very seriously in a country where life is cheap, hard and short. For example: as a carpenter and ex-building worker for most of my working life, it was a shock to see masons and their laborers manhandling large blocks of dressed natural stone in flip-flops! The quality, however, of their tradesmen, including carpenters and joiners, was really outstanding, especially given the primitive conditions they work under.

The quality of GEFONT’S propaganda and research on this range of issues was excellent, detailed and exhaustive, equal if not superior to that of any UK union.

I was also informed that the following April, the population led by the SPA in the urban centre – principally in the Kathmandu Valley – together with the Maoists who were dominant in over 8

I went home, but with my appetite whetted, and I resolved to come back the following April. I continued learning the language, studying its history and writing, and wrote what in retrospect was a naïve article which the Labour & Trade Union Review was good enough to print. In this piece I drew on the spirit of unity that was evident across the political spectrum and was particularly pronounced between the two Communist parties previously and literally at war over the difference in their respective strategies of armed or electoral struggle.

I also attempted to get my union, UCATT (Union of Construction, Allied Trades & Technicians), to establish fraternal links, but as with any labor organisation it balked at association with ‘Communists.’

I finally counted at least seven serious Communist parties, CPN(M) and the UML being the biggest, as opposed to the UK where the various organisations laying claim to being Communists amount in relative terms to three men and a dog, as opposed to these Nepalese parties which could count on the support of 6

To this end, I went through dialectical contortions, arguing that the two principal parties, despite the profound differences between them over strategy, were each correct from the positions they occupied in a society where the unequal development between the urban and the rural was strongly pronounced.

Hence the UML flourished in the strong civil society of the towns and cities because they reflected the objective economic and political needs of the urban masses against the relatively advanced, though increasingly comprador, capitalist system which applied there. In any event, the Maoists proved surprisingly strong in the urban centers as the 2008 election showed. They even defeated the UML General Secretary of Nepal in the two Kathmandu seats where he stood!

The Maobaadi, advancing People’s War on the other hand, reflected those values of the rural masses in a struggle against a residual but still strong martial feudalism that had received a new lease of life from the backing of the Anglo-Saxon and Indian governments who advocated and promoted increased military repression against the ‘terrorist’ threat in the countryside.

That was then and this is now: with the alliance between the bourgeois parliamentary parties and CPN(Maoist) shattered and with the former backing the military against the political authority of the Prachanda government.

The UML support for the Katawal coup places them firmly in the camp of bourgeois reaction and counterrevolution. It provides a classic case that it is not what you call yourself but what you do that counts.

Neither is that position an aberration in respect of the UML but instead reflects a process that has been ongoing since the 1990 Andolan.

This was a turbulent period, with twelve changes of government in eleven years. The UML were enthusiastic participants in this parliamentary game and even provided a Prime Minister for nine months in 1994 with the UML General Secretary Adikhari replacing GP Koirala, the leader of an increasingly fractious NC.

This decade long charivari did much to discredit the parliamentary parties as more and more Nepalese became increasingly disenchanted with these displacement politics activated in lieu of necessary radical action. They had had high hopes that, following the success of the Andolan and the humbling of Birendra, Nepal would go through a transformation where the many problems that had gestated under the monarchy would be swept away with measures that, for the first time in Nepalese history, would favour the masses.

They expected programs to tackle poverty (Nepal is the 17th poorest country in the World), to deal with illiteracy, child labor and the caste system, to enact justice and equity for the Janjatis; of these, ending feudalism (especially on the question of land ownership) being the most prominent. It was also hoped this new democracy would expand and modernize Nepal’s lamentably underdeveloped infrastructure.

That these problems were not dealt with was not, however, solely due to the narcissistic political squabbling during these wasted years.

Another crucial factor limiting any room for a radical program was that from the launch of the ‘new democracy’ in 1990, GP Koirala’s NC government continued and expanded Birendra’s initiative in 1985, admitting the IMF and the World Bank as arbiters of Nepal’s economic and social destiny. These multilateral bodies are the economic arm of American imperialism and enforce neoliberal capitalist nostrums through the comprador class in whatever particular country they have either a foothold or full control.

The mechanism used is the euphemistically named the ‘Structural Adjustment Program,’ (I have retained the American spelling) which implements privatization and price-dictated market policies.

What semblance there was in Nepal of a mixed economy was dismantled; a process overseen by economic hit men dispatched there as IMF/WB enforcers. Thus subsidies on fertilizer, essential goods and services were abolished, and the few enterprises that were state controlled were privatized.

This meant that prices on such items as petroleum doubled overnight, causing tremendous hardship for the majority of the Nepalese people who were reliant on that commodity for domestic use and transportation. Privatization in its turn led to redundancies, closures, asset stripping and the slashing of wages and conditions for the employees kept on by their new masters.

This latter was carried out for purely ideological reasons even if the enterprise was a thriving, going concern. They were sold off at four or five times less than their extant value in the face of any commercial logic. It was similar to the legalized theft that was initiated during the corrupt, philistine Thatcherite period in the UK, although no scraps were thrown to the Nepalese masses as a bribe as happened there. All the plunder went either to Nepalese compradors or Indian capitalists.

The SAP also terminated the licensing system which had assisted those enterprises which were export-led and left them at the mercy of more powerful and developed external economic interests which have successfully penetrated the Nepalese market.

Also drastically affected were state expenditures in health and education. Even the minimum welfare provisions that did exist were reduced, and tariffs that protected Nepalese industries, particularly small scale manufactures, were ended.

These policies were enacted during the high water mark of triumphalist free market capitalism, and they were no different to those forced upon the countries of the former Soviet Bloc or indeed anywhere else the tentacles of this global octopus envelops. A similar breed of carpetbaggers to those that swept over Eastern Europe after 1989 poured into Nepal, with Indian capitalists to the fore.

In Nepal, as elsewhere, these destructive ‘Year Zero’ economics caused tremendous hardships for the respective peoples who fell under their aegis.

THE UML AND THE STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM

As has been noted, the NC government that took power in 1990 was an enthusiastic participant in the SAP, demonstrating the growing influence of a comprador bourgeois in its ranks. Politically and ideologically, it demonstrated that NC had become the Nepalese wing of CI.

How then did the newly formed UML respond to the SAP and its harsh effects on the mass of population? How did it respond to the phenomenon of globalized capital out of which the SAP stratagem emerged?

How did it address the fact that the dominance of international capital intensified the socioeconomic disparities between the developed and the developing world?

The answers to those questions reveal the crucial dilemma that lies at the heart of its political theory and practice and show how it occupies the same terrain already inhabited by its Indian homologue, the CPI(M). It also demonstrates the gulf between it and the CPN(M).

In regard to the first question, they did not fail to note the deleterious impact on the living and working standards of the Nepalese masses.

A prominent UML commentator summed up the results:

…the State after 1990 haphazardly followed neoliberal economic policy which did not actually suit Nepal’s constitutional vision and socio-economic reality. This produced a systematic race to the bottom dynamics, poverty, inequality, social alienation and political protest.

Analyzing the mistake of policy makers, a social scientist says – “The post 1991 governments, however, deviated from the welfare state and sought to create a subsidiary state where poorer people subsidized the rich and the powerful. It was actually the outcome of heavily increased pressure of Globalization in our national scenario.” (Challenging Globalization, World of Work, B. Rimal, 2005 p.214)

Given this recognition, what policies did the UML advance to oppose the negative effects of IMF/World Bank diktats on Nepal?

In this respect, I will concentrate on one major policy advanced in response to the demand of the IMF under the SAP for privatization of sixteen publicly owned enterprises, as it is indicative of the UML’s general politico/economic strategy. I will quote below from GEFONT policy statements, given that its policies are interchangeable with those of the UML.

In the first place, it acknowledges the role of transnational capital’s liberalization of the Nepalese economy but gives some role to the pressure from the indigenous capitalist class:

The business class, basically the big house bosses has high influence on the state power now. This kind of influence, although it was limited before 1990, highly expanded after the restoration of multiparty democracy. With a high volt emphasis on privatization after 1991, lobbying of big houses has increased manifold. (Study & Research, 2004, Section 14)

The principle driving this demand is that:

Instead of taking a long and arduous route for a new company, eases the prospective investors into a ready-made business enterprise. (Ibid, Section 4)

It also complains that:

With the blind and haphazard privatization of public enterprises, both production and employment have been adversely affected. (World of Work, 2005, p. 215)

However, this did not mean that there was a root and branch opposition to this reactionary program and its clear deleterious effects on Nepal’s people; instead, it promoted a policy of attempting to minimize those effects and making the process more efficient. The slogan therefore was:

Selective liberalization – selective privatization. (Ibid, p.47)

In other words; rather than the ‘blind and haphazard’ approach, it wanted one targeted on enterprises that needed ‘restructuring’ so they could compete better in the world market. So, for example, loss making, unproductive and technologically backward jute mills were among those where privatization was supported. It was even suggested that the Hetaunda cotton mill be added to the list; despite the fact that it had an adequate capital structure and modern machinery, it was ‘operationally inefficient’.

There was a complaint against privatization where enterprises were profit making and also when new private owners did not deliver the promised benefits or even where they were closed down; as in the case of an agricultural tool factory. They also complained where blatant asset stripping was evident, as in the case of the Bansbari Leather and Shoe Factory.

Generally they were concerned that the program, whether it showed successes or failures, had no provisions for either retraining or redeployment for the increased unemployment it created.

The most significant privatization that was supported was that of Nepal’s existing water utilities. The reasons given were that it was severely undercapitalized and operating with antiquated technology. It also had meager coverage of the country with 7

My GEFONT/UML comrades were extremely defensive and noted that it only contributed 1

Later, in a spirit of ’emotion recollected in tranquility,’ it became clear that while it was an extant severely underdeveloped utility, it was perhaps Nepal’s greatest natural resource, with a truly massive developmental potential. Vide my earlier section on India’s long established recognition and exploitation of this resource through successive unequal treaties.

Furthermore, I noted that its commodification gave it an exchange value that overrode its use value as a basic necessity for all life, human or otherwise. It had instantly become a source of profit that devalued its crucial importance for day to day existence.

In the final analysis, however, the overarching criticism of privatization was that it was ideologically driven and not based on any economic rationality. The main reason that the entire program of liberalization was failing, GEFONT/UML argued, was because there was a failure to give an adequate role to the state.

It was argued that where SAP’s had been extremely successful, government intervention had played a dominant role, as in South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, where these programs had produced ‘high growth with equity’. (Ibid, p.47)

But these were singular exceptions in long established social and economic formations which were contrary to the anti-statist presupposition behind the neoliberal phenomenon which originated in the US and the UK during the Reagan/Thatcher years and was thereafter imposed on the rest of the world through the IMF, WB and WTO.

The state was, therefore, not a mechanism for solving social and economic problems; it was, as Reagan asserted, the problem. So the governments of developing countries were there to serve principally as facilitators of international finance capital.

This even applied within the imperial heartlands, as was noted by the Washington insider, Robert Reich, in his book, Supercapitalism :

Democracy and capitalism have been turned upside down.

In short, the political institutions of bourgeois society no longer regulate capitalism, but instead market forces regulate the political institutions. It is they who say what is and is not possible.

This naivete regarding prospects for the utilitarian state in the face of the dominance of monopoly capitalism ran through the UML like the print in a stick of rock. It informed their desire for tripartism, for industrial democracy, a mixed economy, Keynesian deficit spending and for an expanded welfare state when these have become anathema to the major world capitalist powers.

What they wanted was the type of social democratic settlement that had marked the postwar years in Europe until the 1970s, not realizing that this was a tactical contingency that Western capitalism had conceded to its labor movements and working classes not because it was some inevitable evolution of a humane economic consensus but simply to make the system more attractive to the peoples of the ‘Free World’ in the face of competition from a planned, ‘cradle to grave,’ full employed, socialist Eastern bloc.

America, while supporting this social democratic settlement among its European allies through, e.g., the Marshall Plan, was able to avoid these stratagems because its labor movement was comparatively weak, and its working class consciousness was underdeveloped and fragmented.

Therefore, despite the fact that the immiseration of the 1930’s was as pronounced in the US as it was in Europe, there was no equivalent pressure there to follow a similar course. This, plus the fact that the rapid expansion of its consumer culture began shortly after it switched to a fully employed wartime economy, as opposed to Western Europe where conspicuous consumption started fitfully and differentially, began a good fifteen or twenty years after the war.

What social change did come to the US as a implicit result of the existence of a USSR Soviet Bloc was in the granting of civil rights as demanded by a powerful national lobby, led by the NAACP, to the descendants of its black slaves. Similarly, the struggle against Apartheid only succeeded because of the direct support of the USSR.

With the gradual erosion of socialism following the de-Stalinization initiated by Khrushchev in 1956, free market capitalism began a process of reassertion. It was spurred on by the fact that the Keynesian solution to the problems of underconsumption and unemployment, which had distinguished capitalism before the postwar social democratic consensus, was coming to the end of its useful life as it had led to the rapid increase in the rate of inflation, creating social and economic instability.

Monetarism became one of the main free marketeers’ instruments for addressing this problem – a brutal policy of restricting the money supply would increase its value, not just by making it scarcer as a commodity in itself but by reducing government expenditures, specifically on welfare provisions. It also decreased overall consumption, although Thatcher’s regime added the additional measure of rolling back the hitherto strong British trade union movement that had flourished during the war and after.

It was, however, the suicide of the USSR in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Bloc that finally saw the end of this historically contingent postwar settlement. Capital now saw no need to keep its working classes mollified through the mechanisms of full employment and welfare statism. Social democracy proved to be a comparatively short hiatus in the history of capitalism and was replaced by the predatory neoliberal model which finds crude, brutal expression in contemporary world capitalism.

In the developing world, which had been drawn into the world market and where a growing proletariat is increasingly becoming the source of increased absolute value to expansionist transnational monopolies, the neoliberal model’s dominance could be maintained through either the neocolonial stratagems of creating and supporting comprador bourgeoisies in these super-exploited countries or by using the model’s superior military might either directly or indirectly by Western invasion or arming it’s comprador stooges to crush any progressive resistance to the hegemony of Western imperialism, or where necessary, an admixture of these modalities.

Iraq is an example of the former, Nepal of the latter.

The UML, like its sister party, the CPI(M), has not understood, therefore, that the social democratic dog has barked but the caravan of finance capital has moved on.

There is a similar naivete in the UML’s self-image on offering a middle way between the Scylla of capitalist imperialism and the Charbydis of Communist revolution. In this sense, its propaganda is replete with condemning the excesses of these oppositional forces, e.g.:

Today’s Nepal is in the quagmire of extreme Leftist and Rightist ideologies and, as such, (is) caught in the crossfire of violence and counter violence (of) these extremist ideologies. (Ibid , p.iii)

And again:

The “People’s War” launched by the CPN(Maoists), the Communist faction heavily marred with ultra Leftist thinking and terrorist activities, has been a serious concern of Nepali politics. The state is still under the control of reactionary and anti-worker forces. And the movement for the democratization of Nepali society still continues. (One Union, 2005, p.2)

The UML too thought that it could beat the Maoists electorally following the 2006 ceasefire and the subsequent April Andolan. In fact, it was humiliated and lost a third of its electoral support.

The UML has also promoted extreme military measures against the Maobaadi both before and after it became a member of Koirala’s NC government when it launched in the 1998 ‘Killer Sierra Two’ operation; a brutal army crackdown under the guidance of American and Israeli military advisers against the Maoists and their supporters over a more extended geographical area than Operation Romeo in 1996.

Throughout the period of the PW, it backed any repressive legislation against the Communist revolutionaries. Though still steeped in the idea of Communist opposition, the leadership was determined to play the role of a respectable parliamentary opposition, and the glaring contradiction gave it problems with its rank and file. It maintained this posture despite a drain of cadre who take their Leninism seriously which continues to this day. It has also led to a fierce debate withing the leadership.

The leadership’s re-branding has been described as an attempt to become a Eurocommunist style party and to move away from Leninist insurrectionist vanguardism. Gramsci, a great original Marxist thinker, became widely read among leading cadre. I was asked to send an English edition of Prison Notebooks to a Central Committee member, as it was difficult to obtain anywhere on the subcontinent. I was only too pleased to do so, and it made me realise how much we in the West take easy access to such theoretical works for granted.

The UML was attempting to give intellectual ballast within a Marxist spectrum as a means of justifying its embrace of reactionary politics. As was noted earlier, unequal development between the urban centers, particularly the Kathmandu Valley, and the countryside, particularly in the West where the Maoists flourished, was pronounced.

It meant that a strong civil society existed in the former, and therefore using a Gramscian conceptual framework was no mere fanciful affectation but could be accurately used as a tool of descriptive critical analysis.

The Maoists implicitly recognised how developed this urban civil society was. It was one of the reasons they modified Mao’s original PPW strategy in the context of Chinese conditions of “letting the countryside encircle the city,” realizing that any attempt to take urban areas by force would lead to a Pyrrhic victory at best and therefore a political defeat. The UML’s problem was the political line that was grafted onto this matrix that left it open to a charge of opportunism.

Whatever the new strategy, it steadily lost electoral support from the highpoint of 1994 when it emerged as the largest party with 3

The most crucial problem the UML faces is not its participation in parliamentary politics but its attempt to find a middle ground between two irreconcilable forces. In the developing world, the contradiction exists in its most antagonist form as the privileges of the Western World depend upon the increasing deprivation of the populations of the former.

War, famine, hunger, dispossession and superexploitation is the lot of the majority of the peoples in this Third World. The stark choice facing the twenty-first century is, to paraphrase Luxembourg, “Socialism or capitalist barbarism,” or as Arundhati Roy, the writer and activist, put it in relation to India, “either justice or civil war.”

There is no halfway house, and attempting to inhabit one will not only fail but implicitly gives support to a reactionary status quo.

It has also led increasingly to the UML, like the CPI(M), giving explicit support to, if not actually initiating, retrograde policies and stratagems. The Maoists have gone as far as claiming that the UML is in thrall to US and Indian interests, and that is borne out with its participation in the coup that provoked the resignation of Prachanda and the withdrawal of the then CPN(M) from government. It openly backed the CoS, Katawal, with one of its rewards being the installing of UML leader as Prime Minister.

What is also illustrative of the UML’s subservience to Indian interests is the failure to ever criticize the policies of successive Delhi governments. I have previously detailed, for example, how Indian administrations have used their economic and geographic dominance to force a series of unequal treaties on Nepal, following the example of their previous British masters. The Maoists have consistently called for their repeal, and this is a popular Nepalese demand.

Yet the UML is silent on the issue for the most part. In one instance referred to earlier, they were actually the government that facilitated and signed the 1996 Mahakali River Treaty (Mahakali River Integrated Development Treaty). This marked a new low, even by the standards of previous treaties, in giving India full control of the river in return for next to nothing. When it was ratified by the Parliament, it outraged many Nepalese who concluded all the parliamentary parties involved were Indian stooges, and rumors even circulated that the UML lead negotiators had taken money under the table.

Another measure which brought UML further opprobrium, especially from the Janjatis, was the decision to broadcast news in Sanskrit, which is spoken by no one in Nepal. This further fueled the resentment among those tribal groups already aggravated by the imposition of Nepali as the national language and the introduction of compulsory Sanskrit in schools which were controversial features of the 1990 Constitution.

Nepali, like Hindi, is a member of the Indo-Aryan group of languages which have their roots in Sanskrit (similar to the role that Latin played in Europe in relation to the evolution of the romance languages). Nepal is a multiethnic, multilingual society with over sixty ethnic groups, each with its own language, customs and religions.

For over two hundred years, these groups were excluded from political and economic power by dominant Brahmin castes who established Hindu dominance and sought to impose cultural and linguistic homogeneity upon all the peoples of Nepal.

In the Panchaayat era of Mahendra and Birendra, the slogan “One people – one language – one religion,” only intensified the resentment of the Janjatis against the phenomenon of Hindu domination. Unlike their Indian counterparts, the Adivasis, they form a sizable part of the population, and they supported the first Andolan by way of challenging Hindu hegemonic chauvinism. They felt betrayed however by the policies of the new democratic parliament which actually took steps to consolidate Hindu power.

This was especially true of the first NC government who dominated the shape of the new constitution and was controlled by the upper Hindu castes. What was surprising was the notionally progressive UML continued and even intensified the entrenchment of Hindu cultural and political control when they took over the reins of government from NC in 1994. The issue of the Sanskrit radio news emphasized this reactionary policy.

Consequently, many Janjatis flocked to the Maoist banner after the PW was launched in 1996 as the Maoists offered to reverse the domination of the minority Hindus in favour not only of the tribals but of the Dalits and the Terai Madeshi. The campaign against Sanskritism and the demand for cultural, political and economic freedom was an important part of the CPN(M) program.

It served to underline the fact that the UML, despite its residual Leftist rhetoric, was firmly set on a path of reaction first trodden by the CPI(M). How far this has taken the latter is shown by the recent events in West Bengal where a ‘Left Front’ government has been in power for over thirty years and now openly represents monopoly capitalist interests. It has gone, in the words of one local critic, “from Marxism to marketeering.”

This has been dramatically shown by its attempts to ethnically cleanse Adivasis from a 40 km square area around Nandigram, designated by the government as a Special Development Zone (SEZ), so that Salim, an Indonesian based multinational, can establish a huge chemical complex there.

Local resistance has been so fierce that the government dispatched 4,000 armed police, cadre and goondas to crush it. The violence and terror of this campaign led, in one notorious instance, to a massacre of 14 unarmed demonstrators. Consequently, leading CPI(M) cadre have been targeted and assassinated by Maoist guerrillas, acting as the armed wing of the CPI(Maoist).

It was mentioned earlier that this is prompted by the central government as part of the accommodation to a neoliberal strategy and is replicated in the individual states selected by whatever party is in power. The Left Front regime’s ruthless behaviour is in this sense no different from that of the BJP in Chhattisgarh, even to the extent of sending in CPI(M) cadre leading gangs of armed goondas against the Adivasi resisters.

That the UML is capable of such reactionary extremities is not in doubt; in its brief period of government, it proved that, far from establishing a progressive hiatus, it was indistinguishable from its NC predecessor, not only continuing its reactionary policies but formulating new ones of its own.

CONCLUSION

Like the NC, the UML has become a creature of Indian interests, and while each has developed by a different political route, they have arrived at the same destination. As they each largely draw support and membership from the Hindu segment of the population, they are culturally and linguistically homogeneous to India. Consequently they each find no great difficulty in pragmatically deferring to India’s economic and strategic power.

Like the Maoists, they recognize that, for example, Nepal is not self sufficient and is dependent on Indian imports to feed its population. Unlike the Maoists, however, this serves to bolster their pragmatism in the face of that power. Generally, again unlike the Maoists, they have no fear of Indian expansionism and would not even recognize the term. They rather see the growth of India’s influence as a natural reflection of its overall dominance in all the important spheres alluded to above, including its geographical position in relation to landlocked Nepal.

They are each willing agents, even if unconsciously, of the ‘Sikkimisation’ of Nepal. Sikkim voted in 1948 to stay out of India but gradually succumbed to Indian influence, a process stimulated by failure to produce an efficient government under its monarchy and which culminated in the 1975 occupation by the Indian Army and the subsequent referendum which a majority of the Sikkimese voted to ditch their King and become the 22nd state of the Indian republic.

They are each what could be termed ‘Indo-pendent’ parties, and thus, along with the reactionary pro-Indian officer class of the Nepalese Army, they found no difficulty in collaborating and scheming with primarily the Indian government but also with those of the US and UK in a campaign of sabotage against the Prachanda-led administration which culminated in the military coup recounted at the beginning of this article.

The weight of India’s actual and potential leverage on Nepal has also been implicitly recognised by the UCPN(M) and is one of the principal reasons behind its decision to move from the strategy of protracted People’s War and to the arena of multiparty democracy. It is, like freedom, a recognition of necessity; the realization that India could strangle any Nepalese revolutionary government at best or crush it by military intervention at worst.

It the understanding that there is no Socialist Bloc that can aid and support it, as was evident in the case of the Chinese Revolution, which could rely on the solidarity of the USSR to pursue its People’s War against a comprador Bonapartist Kuomintang clique and which led to victory in 1949.

Prachanda, in a recent meeting in London, said, in this respect:

The UCPN(M) cannot copy either the Bolshevik insurrectionist 1917 seizure of power in Russia or that of the CPC’s victory in China in 1949 but has to ‘develop’ its own strategy based on a concrete analysis of existing Nepalese conditions.

The looming and threatening power of Indian reaction is one of those conditions. The UCPN(M) has upset dogmatic Western Maoists by this adaptation to the existing reality and has developed a strategy to recognize the particularity of Nepal in the 21st century.

The acceptance of multi-party democracy by the UCPN(M) is such a ‘development’ and is not an opportunist stratagem to achieve power but is a long-standing principled policy to establish a ‘new democratic state’ in place of the present bureaucratic/comprador structure. It does not contemplate, therefore, establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat following a Protracted People’s War, Prachanda in a speech in 2002 articulated this position:

…we want to clarify once again we are committed to guarantee party freedom in the new state power to be constructed after the destruction of feudal autocracy. The state envisaged by us will not be a one-party dictatorship. The freedom to operate political parties according to one’s ideological convictions and contest elections will be guaranteed.

There only the activities of such elements upholding feudalism and inviting foreign domination will be curbed. We are committed to establish and develop a people’s democratic system of the twenty-first century. Such a democratic system won’t be a mechanical imitation of the traditional kind but will be guided by the people’s needs of the twenty-first century.

In this light the commitment to draw the previously oppressed and excluded classes and castes within Nepalese into this process is a part of extending and deepening this ‘new democracy.’

It also accepted that this stage of political transition will be dominated, in the words of Bhatterai in a 2008 interview, by a “capitalist revolution”who further gave the assurance that, “We will not nationalize large scale industry and we will respect free enterprise.” That this is not in contradiction with orthodox Marxist-Leninism, as he further said:

Marx, Engels and Lenin have already addressed this question. Between feudalism and socialism there is capitalism. But we have not yet had a capitalist stage in Nepal. It is therefore necessary to develop one.

The desire of the UCPN(M) was:

To go beyond Mao. We need to elaborate our own model. Marxism is not a religion, it is a science. We want to develop Marxism. (Le Monde, 11/04/2008, Author’s translation)

This capitalism will not be a comprador but a national one. It is a distinction that Mao himself made:

In the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the people’s republic will not expropriate private property other than imperialist and feudal private property, and so far from confiscating the national bourgeoisie’s industrial and commercial enterprises, it will encourage their development. We shall protect every national capitalist who does not support the imperialists or the Chinese traitors. In the stage of democratic revolution there are limits to the struggle between labour and capital.

The labour laws of the people’s republic will protect the interests of the workers but will not prevent the national bourgeoisie from making profits or developing their industrial and commercial enterprises, because such development is bad for imperialism and good for the Chinese people. (On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism , Mao Tse-Tung, 1935, pp. 168/9 Selected Works, Vol.1)

Following a recent Central Committee meeting which produced unity after a party sanctioned ‘two line struggle’ regarding this position, a member of the UCPN(M) politburo wrote:

And those who were in favour of restructuring the state explained that they too were engaged in a struggle, but it was a different type of struggle which may look Rightist and reformist in form but that in essence it was neither Rightist or reformist. This is because all these steps are being taken not to consolidate the old feudal and comprador/bureaucratic set-up but to achieve a new restructured state. (Thesis, Antithesis & Synthesis, Hsila Yami, Kantipur Times, August 2009)

This is a classic exposition of the “negation of the negation.” It demonstrates the subtlety and sophistication of the Nepalese party cleaving closely to Mao’s analytical methodology. It has been criticized by the Communist Party of India(Maoist) as Rightist deviation from the strategy of PPW which intends to culminate in the smashing of the existing state. They are rightly engaged in armed resistance the length and breadth of India against the forces of a social-fascist comprador state.

But they will find it even harder than in Nepal for the “countryside to encircle the city”, as civil society is even more entrenched in Indian urban centers than in Nepal.

It is certainly a qualitatively different application from the religio-dogmatic, karaoke forms that pass for Maoism among some Western anoraks.

Finally, there is no inevitability that the strategy of the UCPN(M) will be successful, any more than there is about the victory of the worldwide proletarian revolution, but it is certainly better equipped, intellectually and politically, to handle the twists and turns that are distinctly manifest and unique in Nepal as they are indeed in all revolutions.

*My grandfather,Gabriel Byrne, was typical in this respect; he was a volunteer with the 6th Battalion of the Irish Republican Army during the 1918-21 War of Independence. He took the Republican side in the civil war that followed and for a while was de Valera’s driver. He was interned for a time in the Curragh and remained a ‘Dev’ man until his death in 1969.

He came from the Dun Laoghaire working class and started life as a railwayman at the station there, from which many Volunteer operations were launched including a famous ambush on the Marine Parade, two hundred yards from Dun Laoghaire station, where several Black and Tans died in a bomb attack on their Crossley Tender. In peacetime, through hard work combined with a shrewd business sense he became a newsagent in Monkstown next door.

He never lost his republican radicalism or his antipathy to British imperialism. When I was twelve, he thrust E.M. Forster’s Passage to India into my hands and said: “If you want to know what the British were like in India – read this!”

**I was not surprised by the results, as during April 2006, I went on a solo trek around the villages off the Annapurna Trail, a region that was supposed to be one of the few rural areas left under the control of the God-King’s army. Equipped with some Nepalese language, I found ubiquitous evidence of Maoist activity and propaganda and that they had almost total support from the people thereabouts.

One of the few exceptions was an ex-Ghurka shopkeeper who by coincidence had been quartered at barracks in Aldershot where I had worked as a carpenter during the late sixties. The CPN(M) opposes the recruitment of Ghurka mercenaries into either the British or Indian armies.

If I gave the Maoist greeting, Lal Salam (Red Salute), to peoples in fields or villages, it was readily returned, and I made many friends. The commitment was genuine and heartfelt and shaped by years of oppression from a state which was only visible in a repressive military form. The PLA was stood down in that area as part of the CPA.

If you Google: “Peter Tobin – Bishnu Rimal,” you will find an interview I conducted with the latter (a UML Central Committee member) a few days after the victory of the Andolan which will confirm that I guessed right on the depth of Maoist support.

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bhattarai, B. Monarchy versus Democracy.

Chauduri, N.C. The Continent of Circe.

Hegel, G.W.F. The Philosophy of History.

Karki, A & Seddon, D. The People’s War in Nepal – Left Perspectives.

Mao Tse Tung. On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism, Selected Works, Vol. 1.

Marx, K. The Future Results of British Rule in India, Selected Works, Vol.1.

Maxwell, N. India’s China War.

Misra, A. War of Civilizations – The Long Revolution (India AD 1857).

Muni, S.D. Maoist Insurgency in Nepal.

Rimal, B. Challenging Globalization.

Stalin, J.V. Marxism and the National Question.

Thapa, D. A Kingdom Under Siege.

Yami, H. Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis.

PERIODICALS & JOURNALS

Himal – Southasian

Kantipur Times

Le Monde

Nepal Telegraph

Nepali Times

The Worker, Journal of the UCPN(M)

UML/GEFONT PUBLICATIONS

One Union

Study & Research

Trade Union Rights

World of Work

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Kumar Sarkhar for his explanation of the term Bhadralok, and also for drawing my attention that any description of Indian civil society that does not represent its multiethnic, multilingual and multifaceted political culture and therefore exaggerates Hindu hegemony will be unbalanced. While I do not therefore resign myself from the ‘Two Nations’ theory in respect of Ireland, I do need to study the Indian experience further – after all comparisons might be odious.

He has also provided me with details of the position of the CPI(M) with regard to partition and their discussions with Stalin and Zhdanov representing the CPSU. This has pointed to a gap in the article relating to early history and development of the Indian CP.

I would like to thank Tongogara Tewodros for drawing my attention to Hegel’s views on slavery.

I would also like to thank Sudeshna Sarkar for correcting a Tourette’s grammatical tic I had developed by correcting my spelling of Hindu names, and by pointing out that KP Bhatterai was the first PM following the 1990 Andolan, and not GP Koirala. Her article on a sacred Hindu relic was helpful because it detailed the section of the Mahabharata where the Pandavas brothers flee to the Himalayas racked with guilt at the enormity of their victory over the Kuaravas brothers following the mythic battle of Kurukshetra.

This episode both bears out and challenges the notion of a historical martial Hindu spirit (which is proposed by Chauduri and which this article tries to confirm with the history since Independence); it confirms it in the battle, which although one among many, is pivotal, it modifies it with the anguished withdrawal of the victors. This rejection of the world finds its echoes throughout Hindu literature and history where powerful figures step down, practice virtue and find spiritual solace.

It was not particularly confined to Hindu myth – we have the historical figure of Siddhartha Gautama who relinquished his princely status in order to ‘become one with himself and the universe’ and become Buddha in the process.

Finally, I would like to thank her generally for a vigorous exchange on issues raised in the article.

Peter Tobin September 2009

Peter Tobin, “India and Nepal – Big Brother Little Brother Part 1″

This is an excellent document that reviews the relationship between India and Nepal from a Marxist perspective. There are commenters on this blog who say that the market has proven superior to socialist economies. This was true in Europe, when one compared socialist economies in Eastern Europe with the social democracies (really another form of socialism) in Western Europe. The social democracies definitely achieved better sustained economic growth, though I understand that socialism worked pretty well in Tito’s Yugoslavia. At the moment, all of Europe is pretty well developed, so I don’t see how Europe benefits from state socialism. In the rest of the world, it’s another matter altogether. One can make a serious case that capitalism is failing in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Furthermore, it seems to be failing badly in Latin America. When you look at the horrible slums in this part of the world, when you count up all of those killed by hunger and disease every year, when you note all of those that lack even the most basic amenities of life, capitalism has disastrously failed in many places. At least socialism can build up an economy, get rid of slums, pave the roads, give everyone electricity, plumbing, clean water, schooling, health care, access to work, culture and transportation. I look at the slums of Rio, Lima, Manila or Delhi and say the Hell with it. Are you kidding? This is the best we can do? Capitalist apologists look at that mess and say, “We are working on it.” They’ve been “working on it” forever. When are the heartbreaking shantytowns ever going to go away? Probably never in my lifetime. Get rid of this system. At the least, socialism (or nowadays, some market socialism hybrid) can develop the country and meet people’s basic needs. At some point in the future, maybe it could morph into a Chinese-style system. This piece is excellent on so many levels I can’t even begin to write about it. I will just leave it to the commenters to take it apart. It takes a while to read it, so just print it out and read it at your leisure. Peter Tobin is a fine writer and thinker. He’s an Irishman and a lot of his thinking is watered with his Irish experience. Curiously, he’s opposed to the IRA and supports self-determination for the Six Counties.

INDIA & NEPAL – BIG BROTHER – LITTLE BROTHER

A CASE STUDY IN NEOCOLONIALISM

A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE

PETER TOBIN

When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production and subject to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain. (The Future Results of British Rule in India, 1853, Marx Engels, Sel.Wks. Volume 1, p.499)

INTRODUCTION

The alliance of the three principal parties, Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) and the now renamed Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) that together overthrew the world’s last Hindu monarchy and established a secular republic following the Jana Andolan (People’s Uprising) in 2006 has finally ended. In this article I want to examine the reasons for this turn of events and the role that India, in particular, the US and the UK have played in undermining the coalition government led by the UCPN(M) leader, Prachandra, which provoked his resignation and his party’s withdrawal from that government. The coup was organised by RAW (Research Analysis Wing) an arm of Indian intelligence in conjunction with the CIA and after four April days in Katmandu meeting NC leaders, with Yadev, the Nepalese president playing a Quisling role. In relation to the first I will set out the policies of successive Indian administrations towards Nepal and see how it reflects their long-standing assertion of hegemony over the entire sub-continent. To provide a comprehensive analysis I will analyze India’s history since independence in order to show that its approach is consistent with this narrative and the world view that emerged from it. In relation to Nepal I will detail the record of NC and demonstrate its subordination to the authority of Delhi. Also the part played by the CPN(UML) will be investigated to how it mirrors the politics and practices of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In passing I will touch upon the limitations of bourgeois nationalist struggles against imperialism which become exposed after they have successfully challenged and ejected their colonial masters and argue that they view the completion of that stage as an end in itself, precluding only residual territorial claims. While they have developed a national antithesis to the colonial thesis they have stopped short of delivering a real autonomous synthesis. In contrast I will advance the contention of revolutionary communists that they have only taken the first step on the road to genuine national liberation. Here I will cite the Indian and Irish experiences and contrast them with the Soviet and Chinese approach. That the latter followed a socialist direction which was ultimately more fruitful will be argued . In relation specifically to China that it was this socialist path that was the foundation of that country’s present economic ascendancy, albeit following the state capitalist course initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. I will also account for the use of the term social fascist by the Indian and Nepalese Maoists to describe the polity of the reactionary forces against the peoples of those countries. I will contend that it is manifestly not polemical abuse serving an emotive political function but an objective assessment which has arisen from historical experience in definite situations which in their contemporary recurrence support its continued applicability. In order to fully understand how a formal bourgeois democracy, which has an imperialist or neocolonialist presence away from its metropolitan centre, can be classified as being social fascist, I will outline its historical provenance and the principal elements that constitute the ideology and practices of fascism. To that end I will compare and contrast the explicit form exhibited by German national socialism, from 1918 to 1945 with that of the evolved and extant forms exhibited by the established European and American empires. In this respect I will detail the uniqueness of Germany’s historical development from its comparatively late appearance as a unified state in 1871 and why its subsequent history led to the national socialist Third Reich. I will maintain that, in practice, there is no essential difference between the former and the latter; whether you apply the criteria of racist ideology, exploitation or wars of aggression and conquest, the distinctions are purely quantitative, or indeed, as in the case of Nazi genocide, purely a matter of geographical location. In short; fascism arises from imperialism, albeit in a compressed historical form and that contemporary imperialism is leading increasingly to a fascist polity. That this theoretical understanding is already equipping the progressive forces engaged in anti-imperialist struggles to apply the correct political taxonomy, the better to identify the enemy accurately is a task that the Indian and Nepalese Maoists have addressed and answered. Finally I will conclude that the Nepalese Maoists are correct in affirming that the present task is to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution and dismantle the bureaucratic, feudal, comprador state. Only then can a socialist stage be realised. But that in all events Nepali progressives room for maneuver will be circumscribed until the victory of communist revolution in India. For the present the Indian ruling class, riding on it’s economic, military and geographical dominance in alliance with American expansionists, will ensure that an independent state, whether bourgeois or socialist, in Nepal will be either crippled or crushed.

GENESIS OF THE PRESENT CRISIS IN NEPAL

The forces of reaction in Nepal, among whom we must regrettably count the UML (especially the leadership faction around K.P. Oli) have consistently refused to accept the result of the 2008 election which saw the UCPN(M) emerge as the largest party with a 4 The maneuvering of, principally, the last two who since then have attempted to undermine the Prachanda led coalition government as it has sought to address the major problems in Nepali society. Since its budget of late 2008 this administration promoted the need for greater female emancipation, land distribution to the peasantry away from the residual feudal classes, for necessary infrastructural development, a minimum wage to reduce poverty in one of the world’s poorest countries, disputing the historical Hindu oppression of the Janjatis (ethnic peoples) by the Babus Malikharu (Gentlemen Masters), the Dalits (untouchables, oppressed, similarly known as Shudras) and the Terai Madeshi (the peoples of the southern plain bordering India). A key provision of the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement was the integration of the People’ Liberation Army into the Nepalese Army (formerly the Royal Nepalese Army) advanced by the UCPN(M) in order to professionalize the PLA and democratize the NA. It was an important part of the CPA between the Seven Parliamentary Parties and the UCPN(M) which ended its ten year Jana Yuddha Lambyaunu (Protracted People’s War) by agreeing to declare a ceasefire and enter the arena of multi-party democracy. Immediately following the Andolan the then NA Chief of Staff, Thapa, indicated that he was ‘comfortable’ with the proposed merger. Since then the NA officer caste guided by their new CoS, Katawal, have become increasingly reluctant to amalgamate the two forces fearing that the Maobaadi (Maoists) would spread the contagion of red revolution through the ranks of the NA. Katawal’s foot-dragging led to Prachanda, as the elective authority, giving a direct order to Katawal to initiate the process and to cease fresh recruitment to the NA, which was again contrary to the 2006 agreement. His refusal to carry out a lawful order was the occasion for the present crisis. It was significant that this mutinous behaviour was backed by President Yadav, an NC appointment, reflecting that party’s class interests and foreign influences. This cabal was joined by the UML. When they resigned from the coalition government Prachanda was left with no option but resignation. Delhi was quick to rubber stamp this coup and sent its minister of defence, Bandari, scuttling to Kathmandu to tell the new coalition government, now excluding the Maoists, and whose Prime Minister was the UML General Secretary, M. K. Nepal, two things: firstly: that Katawal’s tenure as CoS should be extended “under any circumstances” (Nepal Telegraph, 22/07/2009), and to cancel his scheduled retirement. Secondly: that India would resume arms shipment to the NA which had been suspended when Gyanendra prorogued the Parliament in 2002 and seized absolute power. This was the ostensible reason but it was influenced by Gyanendra’s post 9/11 success in courting the American government and getting it to put the Maoists on their list of ‘terrorists’ to be included in the ‘War On Terror’. Gyanendra gave the US a foothold in Nepal and so threatened Delhi’s previous sole hegemony over that country. Conversely the Indian government supported the corresponding invasion of Afghanistan because they were amenable to the anti-Muslim strategy behind the WOT; particularly as it promised to destabilize the old enemy, Pakistan. By prompting and backing the undemocratic tactics behind this plot India asserted it’s neo-colonial authority over Nepal. Many Nepalese recognize this but the UCPN(M) is the only major political party that is committed to resisting and overcoming Delhi’s malign influence. It correctly reasons that the Nepalese should be masters of their own destiny. The latest events have only served to confirm it’s analysis and strengthen its resolve. The immediate challenge brought about by the combination of external and external reaction has generated in party ranks a sanctioned ‘two line struggle’ (this is unique in the history of Communist parties who have often handled internal arguments with extreme antagonism). The difference is whether to continue the ‘Prachanda Path’ of continuing the building of a new democracy and the restructuring of the state within the integument of a multi-party, parliamentary system or to go “back to the jungle”, (This term is common parlance in Nepal), and to resume the PPW? After a month long meeting of the Central Committee during this August they have hammered out a unified position which is to continue the ‘Prachanda Path’ in conjunction with an increased campaign of popular agitation through demonstrations, Bandhs (strikes, shut-downs), the Gherao (sit-ins, occupations) and continuing land seizures from feudal control. The declared aim was stated by Prachanda as “the capture of state power” and the drafting of new constitution. It is no surprise that NC organised and supported Katawal’s putsch, despite the fact that it has trade union roots and maintains residual links with the Nepalese labour movement and was launched on a explicitly socialist programme. It is now, however, the party of primarily the Hindu, comprador bhadralok* class. It was further swollen after the 1990 Andolan with an influx of former Panchayaat activists, (a feudal talking shop introduced by King Mahendra in 1960 following his dissolution of parliament) who were seeking a new political home after the apparent collapse of the absolutist monarchy. Nepal is at the crossroads and critical months, if not years, lie ahead. *The classification Bhadralok is a Bengali word and originally referred to the feudal strata prior to the rise of a bourgeois class. Now it is used pejoratively by class-conscious Nepalese to include both. I heard it often during the 2006 Andolan coupled with the epithet corharu (thieves).

FASCISM & SOCIAL FASCISM – TWO FORMS OF BOURGEOIS POLITY

Fascism in not a form of state power “standing above the masses – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,” as Otto Bauer, for instance has asserted. It is not “the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state,” as the British socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpenproletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organisation of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations. (See The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism, Georgi Dimitrov, Main Report to the 7th World Congress of the Comintern, 02/08/1935). The phenomenon of social fascism arises wherever bourgeois order is threatened or it’s extension resisted. It originated in the Comintern’s ‘Third Period’ as a method of describing the attempts of succession of social democratic regimes to shore up the capitalist order initiated by Germany’s first socialist regime, under Ebert, which took power in the dying days of World War One when the country was in extremis; threatened by naval and army mutinies and the specter of red revolution driven by the Spartacists and led by Luxemburg and Liebknecht. The left’s attempt to seize power and install a soviet system, inspired by the success of the Russian Bolsheviks in October 1917, was defeated by Ebert and his Minister of Defense, Noske (“The bloodhound of the revolution”), who in collaboration with the German General Staff created the Freikorps as an armed counter-revolutionary riposte to the embryonic communists. Like the Black and Tans in Ireland, these right wing thugs were recruited from demobbed soldiers to initiate a reign of terror, torture and murder. They became the backbone of the fascist movement which finally took shape as the NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker’s Party), the Nazi Party. It was the Scheidemann government in 1919 that resisted the demand of substantial sections of the labour movement to nationalize key industries and, contrarily, responded by dismantling the dirigistic, wartime planning mechanisms and state controls that did exist and returning the economic sector back to the free market. The subsequent governments of the Weimar period built upon these counterrevolutionary foundations and so prepared the way for Hitler’s accession as Reichkanzler in 1933. The application of the term of social fascist to their political practice was the Comintern’s reaction to these circumstances. The line changed when the Nazi regime proved itself to be a more corrupt and virulent form of bourgeois power. The strategy of the ‘Popular Front,’ developed and advocated by Dimitrov, through the Comintern argued for the unity of all classes and social forces from the proletarian to the bourgeois in the face of this unique threat. The characterisation of the German bourgeois state during Weimar as social fascist was no longer applicable. The principal contradiction had changed in the new historical conjuncture. In this new situation the objective necessity was “To unite the many to defeat the few,” and this replaced the ‘class against class’ line. It is currently relevant because it explains and defines the political activities of contemporary imperialism. In reality there is no qualitative difference between what the Anglo-Saxon imperialists are doing to the Iraqis and the Afghans and what the German Nazis did to the Jews and the Slavs. The only distinction is formal as the bourgeois democracies retain the rhetoric of social democracy and the procedures of, what Lenin termed “parliamentary cretinism.” When he further advised against “making a fetish of democracy,” his object of derision was this bourgeois construct and its pretensions to egalitarianism and freedom. Contemporaneously it is used by the Indian Maoists to account for the genocidal attacks on the Adivasis (India’s Janjatis) and describe the policies of all the major parties exercising state and central power in India. These are aimed at clearing the land of the aboriginal tribal peoples to facilitate the extraction of natural resources by Indian and foreign multinationals. Hitlerite fascism was a distinct construct from the forms of bourgeois power that evolved in the democracies of Europe and the United States. It came out of the hothouse conditions of modern German history and it’s comparatively late unification occurred under the aegis of Prussian monarchical militarism which followed victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The Kaiserstaat came into being into being in January 1871 following the military defeat of France. The impact of the shattering defeat in World War One, which arose from the antagonism of the other European powers against the brash expansionism of the new German Empire, was the event that added specificity to the extreme right wing configuration of German nationalism which took final shape in the Gothic and virulent form of Nazism. Marx was particularly acute at recognizing the nascent elements of fascism in their individuation nearly a hundred years before the merged in the totality of Hitlerism:

These highfalutin’ and haughty hucksters of ideas (German post- Hegelian philosophers – PT.) who imagine themselves infinitely exalted above all national prejudices are thus in practice far more national than the beer-quaffing philistines who dream of a united Germany. (The German Ideology, Marx-Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 45)

The Third Reich was both a product and a catalyst of these particular elements in Germany’s cultural and political evolution. Marx is further prescient in identifying the incipient expansionism that lurked in the thinking of these new ideologues and their desire to impose Germanism on other peoples. For them it was a given that German kultur was the ultimate expression of Die Geistesgeschicte (Vide: The Philosophy of History, G.W.F. Hegel, 1805/6. The Spirit of History is the closest English translation of this term, in its German sense, however, Geist implies morale, motivation and intellect.) Hegel used the term to contrast it with the materialist concept of Naturgewissenschaft, (the natural sciences). It was his method of elucidating the intellectual and spiritual forces that defined the uniqueness of German culture. Hegel particularly identifies the Prussian State as the apotheosis of what he termed Der Weltgeist (World Spirit) in transcendent form. It represented Die letzt etappe im geschicte (the last stage in history)**. Hitler’s promise of a ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ derives from, and vaingloriously articulates, this proposition.*** As with so much of Marx’s thinking he was, in this instant, scrupulous in classifying the ideological tap-roots of German chauvinism. We have become all too aware of its rightist manifestations but xenophobia also infected the evolving labour movement. Kautsky, for example, perfectly expressed this metaphysical belief in German cultural ascendancy when he asserted that the Czechs would finally succumb because:

the force of unfettered intercourse alone, the force of modern culture brought by the German’s alone would, without any forcible Germanization have transformed into Germans the backward petit-bourgeois, peasants and proletarians who could expect nothing from their shabby nationality. (Kautsky’s preface to: Revolution and Counterrevolution, Engels 1896)

Kautsky was an active member of Ebert’s government where he served in the Foreign Ministry. This, no doubt, allowed him to demonstrate his kulturell uberlegenheit uber der menschlich auslander . ** Brecht has one of his characters say of Hegel:

…he had the stuff to be one of the greatest humorists among philosophers, like Socrates, who had a similar method. But he had the bad luck it seems to become a civil servant in Prussia and so he sold himself to the state. (Fluchtlingsgesprache, – Refugees Conversation, Brecht, 1961 p. 108)

***Significantly the latest of Hegel’s epigones have emerged among American neo-conservatives who flourished in the triumphalist years following the suicide of the Soviet Union in 1989. Fukuyama, it’s leading ideologue, gave them their Mein Kampf in The End of History, (a title appropriated from Hegel) published in 1992, asserting that the collapse of the Eastern Bloc signified the final victory of liberal capitalism and that no other progressive socioeconomic development was either possible or necessary. It was also a conscious riposte to Marx’s concept of “Das ende der prageschicte” (the end of prehistory, by which he means all history up to and including the capitalist epoch; prior to a proper civilized history which will begin with the establishment of socialism.) There is only a quantitative difference between German fascism and the empires of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland and America. The Nazis’ treatment of the Jews and the Slavs isn’t qualitatively dissimilar to what the latter did, and those who survive continue to do to countless other ‘inferior’ races away from their metropolitan centres. Genocide, dispossession, slavery, war and ruthless exploitation are routine to all empires, past and present, it is in their DNA. German Nazism was unique in that it committed its crimes in Europe and opposed to other empires who painted their criminal images from the palette of the world outside. Marx drew this conclusion:

The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from it’s home where it assumes respectable forms to the colonies where it goes naked. (The Future Results of British Rule in India, 1853, Marx-Engels Selected Works, Vol.1 p,498)

This was written four years before the 1857 Indian war of independence and it’s brutal, genocidal aftermath which recent Indian historians have estimated saw the physical annihilation of nearly ten million Indians, Dickens, the great avuncular, sentimental icon of British liberal culture somewhat blemished this persona by calling for the entire Indian race to be exterminated as punishment for rebellion and in expiation for their crimes. That his demented counsel was not followed was not from the want of trying. The Nazis avoided ‘profound hypocrisy’ and explicitly reveled in racist barbarism. German fascism was a specific form of imperialism whose development was accelerated and accentuated by frustrated national ambition. The current crimes of imperialism are dressed now in the garb of ‘liberal interventionism’ which posits defending and extending ‘human rights’ and the ‘gift’ of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ to those Kipling referred to as ‘lesser breeds without the law’. These are modish affectations which attempt to rationalize hegemonic oppression with the glib use of contemporary mores. ****Brecht in Die Dreigroschenoper, (The Threepenny Opera) accurately captures the casual racism and gratuitous butchery of colonial armies in Kanonensong (Canon Song) in duet sung by Macheath, the gangster, and Tiger Brown, the police chief as they fondly recall the good times when they served abroad together in the British Army.

Soldaten wohnen              Soldiers live
Auf den Kanonensong          Upon their canons
Vom Cap bis Cooch Behar      From the Cape to Couch Behar
Wenn es mal regnete          When a rainy day would come
Und es begegnete             And they met
Ihnen 'ne neue Rasse         A new race
'ne braune oder blasse       A brown one or a white one
Dann machen sie vielleicht   They'd probably make
daraus ihr Beefsteak Tartar. Raw mincemeat out of 'em.

They are a reconceptualization of what Kipling again referred to as: “The White Man’s Burden.”***** The conception of liberal imperialism has its roots in the ‘profound hypocrisy’ of the Georgian era when British authorities launched a campaign against the Hindu practice of widow burning (Sati, rendered by English 18th century phonetics as Suttee) was advanced as proof of Britain’s civilizing mission in India. This order of rationalization reached exalted heights during the Victorian period with the foreign policy of the sanctimonious Gladstone. The anti-Sati contingency initiated by the East Indian Company finds it’s echo in that one of the principal justifications for the invasion and continued occupation of Afghanistan is to emancipate females from a medievalist Taliban. But this a post hoc rationale designed to divert a credulous home front and mask the fundamental geopolitical aims of American imperialism. It has led to a drive to extend women’s rights and involves specially trained teams (no doubt recruited through the Guardian job vacancies column) visiting Pashtun villages to raise ‘gender awareness’. As part of the ‘profound hypocrisy’ represented by these torch-bearers for Western civilization it goes hand in hand with barely discriminate bomb and missile attacks on these same villages from Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft guided by CIA operatives working out of Langley, stateside. The claim is that resistance fighters are the principal targets but the ‘collateral damage’ estimate is that forty villagers are killed for every one militant. As with the Israeli Zionists, who pioneered this tactic against the Palestinians and who along with CIA advisers guided the RNA’s application against the Maoists it lays bare the racist tenet that the lives of those, other than white, are of little consequence. It demonstrates that the tactic of imposing a Western feminist ideology on Afghanistan is contingent to the pursuit of global ‘Ameranglian’ interests. Consequently there is no pressure applied to the equally medieval Saudi regime on the same principle that Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State observed of Batista the Cuban dictator before the 1959 revolution:

He may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.

*****Kipling, the high priest of imperial doggerel, wrote this poem to celebrate the emergent American Empire’s successful invasion of the Philippines in 1899. This was its first major foray over the ‘blue water’ and was also the occasion of their first substantial genocide away from the Americas, resulting in the systematic extermination of over half a million Filipinos during a protracted ‘pacification’ campaign. President McKinley saw it as a civilizing mission to help:

our little brown brothers” and claimed that the Philippines were, “a gift from the gods..there was nothing left for us to do but take them all and to educate the Filipinos…and by God’s grace do the best we could for them.

In truth it was a practical example of the newly minted Yankee credo of ‘Manifest Destiny.’ The current version is the neoconservative euphemism for global hegemony – ‘Full Spectrum Dominance.’ Therefore the racism, of the Nazi Reich, founded on the belief of the innate superiority of Anglo-Saxons uber alles, was not sui generis but reflected the ideology of those European powers who had begun serious colonial exploitation in the 16th. Century. The slave trade is the exemplar of this divinely ordered superiority but it was also accompanied by acts of genocide, subjugation, dispossession and exploitation against countless other native peoples wherever the European, and later, American colonial powers encroached.****** The system continues and imperialism remains a malignant force; those it doesn’t kill or maim, it exploits,pollutes and corrupts, whether it is the Indian compradors reign of terror against the adivasis, or Garcia’s regime in Peru attempting to ethnically cleanse ‘backward’ tribals so that their lands can be plundered in the name of ‘progress’. It presently manifests itself in the activities of the IDF Einsatzgruppen in the killing fields of the Gaza Ghetto and the West Bank and in the war of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan where indiscriminate terror and destruction are visited on their respective populations. The list is not exhaustive as the tentacles of imperialism have become more ubiquitous in a world shrunken by technology and the ever pervading global market, but what is constant are the racial assumptions that sustain the system. The notion that peoples can be deemed ‘uncivilized,’ ‘backward,’ ‘primitive,’ ‘barbarous’ & which excuses any treatment meted out to them is the functioning ideology and the beating heart of imperialism. Racism is axiomatic to imperialism; whatever the spin of its contemporary apologists. The eccentric British historian A.J.P. Taylor used to shock his peers who argued that Hitler’s ‘evil’ was historically unique and the the crimes of Nazi Germany were a singular irrational aberration which traduced the continuum of Western civilization, by claiming that Hitler was “just another German statesman,” and that he was only different, for example, from Bismarck in promoting a Grossdeutsch (Greater Germany) against the the Iron Chancellor’s desire for a Kleindeutsch (Smaller Germany). Their linking narrative was a belief in a strong, militarist, centralized state and carving out ‘a place in the sun’ in the wider world for a German empire. The imperialism of Das Dritte Reich, in the light of the above, was just another imperialism, with the proviso that its aggression and volatility for that particular historical period made it the principle imperialist enemy in a world where the basic contradiction was imperialism per se, and indeed remained so after its destruction. In that context the principle imperial enemy became the US which inherited the anti-communist crusade of the Nazis and even their anti-Semitism, although they more pragmatically shifted from hatred of the diaspora to the indigenous Semites who occupied a strategic area which was rich in oil. The irony is that they used the returning European Zionists as their proxy Sondarkommando operating out of their Fort Apache colony – the artificial state of Israel.

****** Negroes are enslaved by Europeans and sold to America. Bad as this may be, their lot in their own land is even worse…for it is the essential principle of slavery, that man who has not attained a consciousness consequently sinks down to a mere Thing. An object of no value. Among the Negroes moral sentiments are quite weak, or more strictly speaking, non-existent. (Philosophy of History, G.W.F. Hegel, P. 96)

Statement on the Jews and Antisemitism

Repost from the old site. This site, of course, has been accused many times of anti-Semitism by the usual suspects for the usual reasons. Nevertheless, some of my friends have recently noted that “I’m going easy on the Jews,” or worse, I’ve become pro-Jewish. Others have noted that I don’t talk about the Palestinians much on here anymore. Truth is, I’m bored with the Palestinians, I’m bored with Israel, and I’m bored with the Middle East. Plus, every time I mention that stuff, it spurs the antisemites in the comments section (who are allowed to post here, by the way) to make a ton of antisemitic posts, and after a while it brings in all these weird, combative, Zionist Jews who accuse me of antisemitism and try to start fights. There is supposedly a type of antisemitism called Anti-Zionist antisemitism. I guess I will gladly plead guilty to that. Other than that, to be honest, the Jews bore me. I’ve been reading up on Jews and Judaism and Israel for years now, and I’m all Jewed out. They bore me to tears, and it seems I’ve learned all I ever wanted to learn about them. There was a while there when I was on an antisemitic kick, but I started getting a lot of flack for it, and then I pulled back and started to examine it, and there was not much there. Antisemitism is one of many simplistic theories that tries to explain all, most or many of the problems of the world by pointing a single actor, force or mechanism. As such, I feel it is foolish, since all such ideologies are foolish. Including die-hard Marxists who boil everything down to economics. There is no one answer. There is no one problem. If only life were that simple. Life is so much more complex, and problems are as difficult to pin down as solutions are to fashion, that it makes sense that people would take the intellectually lazy way out. In terms of “Left antisemitism,” antisemitism really is the socialism of fools! I used to hate it when Leftists said that, but now I’m convinced. Jewish capitalists are just capitalists, and if anything, they tend to be more progressive-minded than the ordinary type. Further, antisemitism seems to lead inexorably to conservatism, racism, White Supremacism, fascism, social Darwinism, capitalism – feudalism – royalism, the worst kinds of nationalism and traditionalism, anti-Communism, anti-liberalism, anti-feminism, anti-integration, and really, an opposition to the whole modernizing project of the Left. Antisemitism is really an assault on modernity itself, as Jews are seen by antisemites as the “virus” that carries modernity in all of its scary self. And it’s true – they do! Going forwards is scary, and a lot of cowards would rather go backwards. So they blame the Jews for helping to drive us forwards. I don’t want to be a part of any regressive project. Yes, there are rightwing Jews. There are rightwingers of every race and tribe. Next? The Jews are the most progressive group in America, and possibly in the world. We on the Left owe a tremendous debt to them as they helped to birth and foster our project.

The "New Antisemitism"

Repost from the old site. I’ll proudly don this label, though I admit that some (or many) practitioners of this new form of “the oldest hatred” (sic) are taking it way too far into what I call “vulgar anti-Semitism”. As a basic philosophical position, this blog will take the logical Left position of embracing a reasonable form of “new antisemitism” while in general taking a principled Left line (at the very least following Paul de Man’s wartime essays and Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of his writing)* in opposing vulgar anti-Semitism as an example of backwardness, stupidity, lazy thinking, racism and in general, just reactionary bullshit. Confused? Good. Deal with it, anti-Semites and Jewish nationalists. *The link is to some deconstructionist stuff starring Derrida, Paul De Man and some others, and the subject is as abstruse as most of that stuff is. For this who don’t feel like wading through the post-structuralist mud, I will try to sum it up: During WW2, in 1942, Paul De Man wrote some anti-Semitic articles for the Vichy Nazi press in France. De Man later went on to become one of the big deconstructionist guys. So it came out that he had written this Vichy Nazi stuff, and it was a big scandal. Derrida “deconstructed” his work and noted that in his work, De Man had argued against “vulgar anti-Semitism”, which is more of an “I know it when I see it” thing than something well-defined. Nevertheless, his article would still be seen as anti-Semitic by any reasonable reader. So Derrida, in deconstructing De Man, wrote that since all anti-Semitism was vulgar necessarily, De Man, in condemning vulgar anti-Semitism and not mentioning any other kind, was actually condemning all anti-Semitism. This set off a spate of articles back and forth in deconstructionist circles.

References

Goldberg, David Theo. 1993. Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, pp. 229-230. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers Inc. Patai, Daphne, Corral, Wilfrido Howard. 2005. Theory’s Empire: An Anthology of Dissent. Spitzer, Alan B., Chapter 17, The Debate Over the Wartime Writings of Paul De Man. The Language of Setting the Record Straight. New York: Columbia University Press

Is There a New Anti-Semitism? A Conversation with Raul Hilberg

From an issue of Logos Magazine, Winter-Spring 2007, a conversation with Raul Hilberg, the Dean of Holocaust Studies. Most Jews are pretty nuts about the subject of the Holocaust, I suppose understandably so. They don’t make sense. Their behavior is more one of a crazy and irrational person than someone saying something sensible or meaningful. But if anyone has a right to be nuts about the subject, it’s Raul Hilberg. After all, he has been doing little us but immersing himself in Holocaust lore for 60 years, almost all of his life. His 1961 book, The Destruction of the European Jews, is considered to be one the best ever written on the subject, though I have not read it. I read a similar book by Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, and it was excellent, all 976 pages of it. An interview with Hilberg is always a joy to read. He has a calmness and reasonableness about him that is very attractive. Almost everything he says about the Holocaust makes sense. He points out that Jewish ownership over the word Holocaust is ridiculous. Super-Jews always freak out and scream anti-Semite if anyone else grabs their precious little word for any other reason than the approved one. Probably in rebellion to this idiocy, there are now Holocausts and mini-Holocausts all over the place. There’s a Holocaust in the animal testing labs. There’s one in Palestine. They’re everywhere. The word the Jews wanted to turn into a Judaic religious object, to be touched only by the Jews like the Talmud, is now a degraded and near-meaningless matter of the public domain. He also derides The New Anti-Semitism, for obvious reasons. Although a Zionist, he says some interesting things about Israel and praises Norman Finkelstein’s anti-Zionism. Strangely enough, he makes a case that the Nazis were not anti-Semites but something different altogether. He notes coldly that there are three solutions to the Jewish Problem: conversion, expulsion and extermination. That’s not something you say in polite company, but you just know it’s true. He also thinks that Holocaust Denial should not be criminalized and doesn’t worry too much about it. He has previously said that Deniers do scholars some favors by raising a lot of important questions about the Holocaust that scholars need to get cracking on. That the many Jewish expulsions of Europe began to occur not due to bad Jewish behavior as anti-Semites claim but began when all efforts at conversion of the Jews had failed seems to make sense. All in all, great read. If more Jews acted like Hilberg, people wouldn’t dislike them so much.

Time To Apologize For The Deicide?

In a comment on the We Killed Jesus and We are Proud Of It! post, a Colombian commenter says that I am wrong for suggesting that the Jews apologize for the Deicide:

Apologizing for Deicide? that’s outright moronic. Deicide charges were leveled against the Jews by the early Church fathers, who were conveniently oblivious to the fact that the very first Christians were Jews themselves. And were consistently used as an excuse to persecute the Jews in Europe for centuries. It sounds to me like a lame PC attempt to create a Jewish counterpart to white guilt.

Some of the usual arguments are laid out here. Jesus himself was Jew, and so were those who killed him, so the charge is absurd on its face. However, Talmudic Judaism, or modern-day Judaism, is clearly the spiritual descendant of the Pharisees. It was the Pharisees and Phariseeism that Jesus and his disciples were fleeing in terror from. Recall the NT sections where the Disciples say, “The Jews are after us!” as they run and hide all over the Galilee. Any honest Rabbi will tell you that they were hiding from the followers of the Pharisees. The same honest Rabbi will also tell you that Talmudic Judaism is the spiritual descendant of Phariseeism. In fact, a Conservative Rabbi admitted both of those things to me. Super-Jews make a big deal about Christianity being de facto anti-Semitic by the very nature of the New Testament. Making Christianity safe for the Abe Foxman crowd would mean excising the entire NT. That leaves Christians with the OT, at which time all of us Christians may as well just to convert to Judaism and get it over with. The fundamentalist Protestants are very Judeophilic, and we can see this in their fetishism of the decrepit and frankly Jewish Old Testament. In that sense, paradoxically, they are less Christian than an NT-only “Jesusist” like me. In a way, the Super Jews are right. Let’s not kid ourselves. Jesus, as Reform a Jew as ever lived, came, said, “I’m the Messiah, and the Law is abrogated.” The law is the Hebraic Laws and Rules that the Jews live under. In his revolutionary overturning of this archaic and reactionary code, Jesus offered a new code, one of Mercy. Mercy is clearly absent from much of the OT. The God of the OT is clearly not one of Mercy either; he’s a cruel and capricious fellow, but He’s the God of the Jews, so they can have him. The God of the NT is a different fellow altogether. He’s forgiving and kind, and the fire and brimstone, the genocides, the wars, the ethnic cleansing, the leveling of cities with fire and turning humans into Dresden-like fried pillars – that’s all under the dam, past and gone. The Jews were offered a choice – to follow the new Messiah or to be passed over. They didn’t follow him, so their religion was abrogated, and the torch was passed to the new religion, the Christianity. To us Christians, Judaism is old hat. At one time, sure, it was the law of the land all right, but we’ve since moved on. To us, Judaism is spiritual roadkill. Sure it’s part of our heritage, but so was Homo Erectus. We’ve moved along now. There is no Judeo-Christian religion anymore than there is a Judeo-Muslim religion or an Islamo-Christian religion. They’re just not the same thing. Pat Robertson and all are on theological thin ice shilling for the Jews of Israel. Why not shill for the Hindus or the Muslims? It’s makes about as much sense theologically. This leads us to Replacement Theology. I’m a follower of this. The Jews have been replaced by the Christians. Judaism has been replaced by Christianity. Further, the Jews no longer get Israel either. After the NT, the (Christian) Church is the New Israel. The Jews contract with that land was abrogated also. Sure, God gave the land to the Jews, but the NT abrogates that deed of title. Another argument against the Deicide charge is leveled by Jews. Even if we did it, they say, it was a good thing, as the Deicide was necessary for the unfolding of Christianity. Well of course. But that’s not why I say apologizing is a good idea. The Jewish religion, in particular the Orthodox, has traditionally taken the position that Jesus was a Jewish heretic who was tried in a Jewish court, convicted, and received appropriate punishment. The Talmud is full of hostile references to Jesus. It’s true that Jesus was a Jew, but it’s also true that Talmudic Judaism is the spiritual heir to the Pharisees. The Jews want it both ways. According to their religion, they state that Jewish was a Jewish heretic who was tried by the Jews and got what he deserved. Then, to the Gentiles, they deny this. Some Orthodox are honest and say, “Hey, we did kill him, and it was a good thing!” This happens quite a bit in Israel, by the way. The usual response of the other Jews is the typical, “Are you trying to start a pogrom?” screeching. I don’t really care. What’s done is done. But I think it is grossly unfair for the Jews to demand that other religions like the Catholics amend their anti-Jewish teachings while at the same time, the Jews refuse to amend their anti-Christian teachings. But then, it’s just typical Jewish hypocrisy du jour. Hypocrisy goes with Jews like lox goes with cream cheese. Jewish hypocrisy is related to Jewish hyperethnocentrism in that all nationalists are hypocrites. Think about it. Sure it’s dumb to hold folks responsible for something their ancestors did 2000 years ago, but if the Jews are still crowing about it (the Orthodox are) and if the Jewish religion still stubbornly states, “We did it and what about it?”, an apology certainly makes sense. As a philosemite, in a way I’m interested in what’s good for the Jews. One thing that’s bad for the Jews is anti-Semitism. My position is that Jews promoting anti-Semitism is bad for the Jews, so don’t do it, Jews. It is in this sense that I advocate an apology and some official amending of Judaism (Is that even possible?) as the Jews demanded of the Pope at Vatican II in 1965.

Open Letter to UCPN (Maoist) – Politbureau, Communist Party Of India (Maoist)

This is a fantastic document and should be read by all serious Leftists and revolutionaries. This is a very long letter from the PCI-M of India, which is leading a huge revolutionary war in that country, to the UCPN-M of Nepal, who have entered into the Nepalese government after a very successful revolution in the countryside. The PCI-M criticize the UCPN-M for many of its positions and policies from an orthodox Marxist and Maoist point of view. In a word, the Nepalese Maoists are accused of being sellouts and making too many rightwing compromises. I think I line up with the Nepalese Maoists on this question, but I also very much support the revolution that the Indian Maoists are leading in that country. This document runs to about 112 pages on the Net and 65 pages printed out, so it is very long, I am warning you. It needed a considerable edit to make it more readable and high-quality to a US English audience, so I spent a long time editing it. This document will probably not be interesting to most non-Leftists unless you are interested in Marxist theory.

Open Letter to UCPN (Maoist) – Politbureau, Communist Party Of India (Maoist)

May 20, 2009 (Became available June 28, 2009)

Dear Comrades! We have been keenly following the recent developments taking place in your country, Nepal. With the CPN(M) emerging as the single largest party in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in April 2008 and the formation of the new government consisting of a coalition of several parties, some of which are known for their anti-people, pro-feudal, pro-imperialist and pro-Indian expansionist past, an ideological-political debate has arisen in the entire revolutionary camp in India and the world regarding the path, strategy, and tactics pursued by your party, the CPN(M), in advancing the revolution in Nepal. There have also been reports in the media concerning the proposal of your party leadership to change the name of the party by removing the term “Maoist.” All these make it all the more urgent to conduct a deeper debate on the ideological-political line pursued by the CPN(M), particularly after it came to power through elections, after a decade-long People’s War and forming the government with some of the arch-reactionaries who had earned the wrath of the Nepalese masses. Several issues need to be debated by Maoist revolutionaries in the context of the CPN(M) pursuing a line and policies that are not consistent with the fundamental tenets of MLM and teachings of our great Marxist teachers’ issues, such as proletarian internationalism; the stages and sub-stages of revolutions in semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries; the understanding of the Leninist concept of state and revolution; the nature of parliamentary democracy the in semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America; the meaning of rigidity of strategy and flexibility in tactics; and such other related questions. There are also some specific issues raised by your party in the name of the creative application of MLM such as the concept of 21st century democracy or multi-party democracy, Prachanda Path, South Asian Soviet Federation, fusion theory and so on. It is true that Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action. Those Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries who followed it only in letter and discarded its spirit failed to understand the essence of Marxism and failed to understand what Comrade Lenin taught, that is, “concrete analysis of concrete conditions is the living soul of Marxism.” Such dogmatists failed to apply MLM to the concrete practice of revolution in their countries and hence failed to make any real advances in the revolutions in their respective countries. Dogmatism, no doubt, has been a bane of the Marxist-Leninist movements and hence the struggle against dogmatism should be an inseparable part of the ideological struggle of the Communist party. However, in the name of struggle against dogmatism, there have been serious deviations in the International Communist Movement (ICM), often going into an even greater, or at least equally dangerous, abyss of Right deviation and revisionism. In the name of creative application of Marxism, Communist parties have fallen into the trap of Right opportunism, bourgeois pluralist Euro-Communism, rabid anti-Stalinism, anarchist post-modernism and outright revisionism. Right danger or revisionism in the ICM has emerged as the greatest danger in the period following the usurpation of the leadership of the CPSU and state power in the Soviet Union after the demise of Comrade Stalin. Comrade Mao and other genuine revolutionaries had to wage a consistent ideological-political struggle against revisionism and reformism in the ICM and also within the CPC. However, despite the great struggle waged by Comrade Mao and other Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries all over the world against revisionism, it has been the revisionists who have temporarily won and dominated the ICM in the contemporary world. The ideological-political debate over the creative application of MLM to the concrete practice of the revolution in Nepal has to be conducted with a correct grasp of this international struggle ever since the time of Comrade Lenin. “Fight against dogmatism” has become a fashionable phrase among many Maoist revolutionaries. They talk of discarding “outdated” principles of Lenin and Mao and developing MLM in the “new conditions” that are said to have emerged in the world of the 21st century. Some of them describe their endeavour to “enrich and develop” MLM as a new path or thought, and though this is initially described as something confined to revolution in their concerned country, it inexorably assumes a “universal character” or “universal significance” in no time. And in this exercise individual leaders are glorified and even deified to the extent that they appear infallible. Such glorification does not help in collective functioning of party committees and the party as a whole and questions on line are hardly ever raised, as they stem from an infallible individual leader. In such a situation it is extremely difficult on the part of the CC not to speak to the cadres, to fight against a serious deviation in the ideological-political line or in the basic strategy and tactics even when it is quite clear that it goes against the interests of revolution. The “cult of the individual” promoted in the name of Path and Thought provides a certain degree of immunity to the deviation in line if it emanates from that individual leader. Our two parties, CPI(Maoist) and CPN(Maoist), have a considerably long period of fraternal relationship, a period going back to the late 1980s when the present leadership of your party was still a part of the revisionist party in Nepal pursuing a parliamentary line. We have been a keen and enthusiastic witness to the ideological struggle waged by your leadership against revisionism, its clean break with the revisionist line and its initiation of People’s War in February 1996. High-level delegations of our two CC’s have exchanged our respective experiences of struggle against revisionism, discussed the universal significance and contemporary relevance of Maoism, the historic GPCR of China, the glorious Naxalbari uprising and the experiences of People’s War in India. We were enthused when finally your party made a firm decision to initiate People’s War in Nepal, made great strides and achieved highly significant achievements with considerable speed within a span of a few years. Throughout this period – from the preparatory period for launching the People’s War through the initiation and development of People’s War – our party in India supported your party, condemned the intervention by the Indian expansionists and tried to build solidarity for the revolution in Nepal. And as part of this, both our CC’s took the initiative in 2001 to set up the CCOMPOSA to wage a united struggle against Indian expansionism and imperialist intervention in South Asia. Also, as part of our proletarian internationalist duty, we rendered assistance in all possible ways to the People’s War in Nepal. At the same time, while extending support to the revolution in Nepal, we also pointed out from time to time some of the mistakes we identified in the understanding and practice of the CPN(M), and also the possible deviations that might arise due to its wrong assessments and concepts. However, we never interfered with political-organisational matters concerning the internal affairs and inter-party struggles within your party. But whenever called upon, or, when we felt there is danger of a serious deviation ideologically and politically, we gave our suggestions as a fraternal revolutionary party during the several bilateral meetings between our respective high-level delegations or through letters to your CC. It was only when some of the ideological-political positions stated by your party publicly deviated from MLM, or when open comments were made by your Chairman Prachanda on various occasions regarding our party’s line and practice, or when open polemical debate was called for on international forums, that our party had gone into open ideological- political debates. These open debates since 2001 were conducted in a healthy and comradely manner guided by the principle of proletarian internationalism. But today there is a need to conduct a deeper debate and come to an overall assessment regarding the theory and practice pursued by your party, synthesise the experiences gained in the course of the People’s War in Nepal, and the lessons, both positive and negative, they provide to the Maoist revolutionaries in the contemporary world. We are sending this Open Letter to your party so as to initiate a polemical debate both within your party and the Maoist revolutionary camp worldwide. This step has become necessary because of the very serious developments that had taken place in the course of development of the revolution in Nepal that have a bearing on our understanding of imperialism and proletarian revolution as well as the strategy-tactics to be pursued by Maoist revolutionaries in the contemporary world; there is also serious deviation from the ideology of MLM. Hence they are no more the internal matters concerning your party alone. Moreover, such a debate is the urgent need of the hour in the backdrop of vicious propaganda by the revisionists as well as the reactionary ruling classes in India that the Indian Maoists should learn from the Nepali Maoists who were supposed to have realized at last “the futility of achieving their cherished goal of socialism and Communism through armed struggle.” Sermons are being preached by the revisionists who have always acted as the strongest advocates of Parliamentary democracy in India, opened up their social fascist fangs wherever they have been in power ever since the days of the Naxalbari revolt, acted as a safety valve to vent the fury of the masses into peaceful channels, and played the notorious role of diffusing militant movements and depoliticizing and demobilizing the masses, thereby serving the Indian ruling classes and the imperialists most faithfully – all in the name of peaceful path to people’s democracy and socialism. These revisionists have been writing articles claiming that at last the Nepali Maoists have come to the correct track and that it should serve as an eye-opener to the Indian Maoists who should, at least now, give up their “unrealizable dream of “capturing political power through the bullet” and, instead, try to achieve it through the ballot as their counterparts in Nepal are doing today. We earnestly hope that the CC and all the party members of CPN(M) will evince keen interest in this ideological- political debate and take the correct revolutionary positions based on our guiding theory of MLM and the lessons provided by the rich experiences of the world revolution. We also hope that Maoist revolutionaries worldwide will participate in this debate and enrich the experiences of the world proletariat in advancing the world proletarian revolution. In this context, we also regret to say that you have not cared to respond to our proposal to have a bilateral exchange of views with your CC after the April 2008 elections. Until December 2008 there was not even a reply from your CC to the letter we had sent on May 1st in this regard. Nor was there any response from your side to our proposal to hold the meeting of CCOMPOSA in order to continue the united struggle of the Maoist forces and anti-imperialist forces of South Asia against Indian expansionism and imperialism, particularly American imperialism. At last we received a letter from your International Department in December 2008 and a meeting of our two delegations materialized soon after. Basing on the discussions we held with your delegation and the material that was available to us regarding the current developments in your party and the stands you had taken on various issues our PB held detailed discussions and drew conclusions based on MLM, the experiences of world revolution, and the actual situation prevailing in Nepal and the contemporary world. First, we are glad that a serious inter-party struggle has broken out in your party on crucial issues related to advancing the revolution in Nepal. Such a struggle within the party has been the need of the hour for a long time, at least from the time your party leadership began to pursue a disastrous course of “hunting with the hound and running with the hare”, i.e., striking alliances with the reactionary feudal-comprador political parties with the sole aim of overthrowing the King and the monarchy while at the same time speaking of advancing the revolution in Nepal through a “final assault” or insurrection. Even prior to this, your party’s concept of multi-party democracy or 21st century democracy, the South Asian Soviet Federation, its non-proletarian stands on the question of assessment of Stalin, fusion theory, etc. were subjects of serious polemical debate. Our party has dealt with these issues through articles in our magazines and interviews by our spokespersons since 2002, and particularly since 2006. We also pointed out the non-Marxist positions that you took on the question of state and revolution, on the question of disarming and demobilizing of the PLA by confining it to the barracks under the supervision of the United Nations, and on the question of integration of the two armies, demobilization of the CYL, abandoning the Base Areas and the great revolutionary achievements of the decade-long People’s War, the policy of appeasement adopted towards Indian expansionism, and so on. However, there was no serious debate on these issues from your side. Hence it has been an encouraging sign to see the inter-party struggle within your party on some of these issues at last. After the dangerous journey that your party traversed in the past three years, we earnestly hope that your party rank and file will review the dangerous reformist positions and the disastrous consequences that these have given rise to, and also reconsider and rectify the non-revolutionary line pursued by your party leadership headed by Comrade Prachanda. Such a free and frank thoroughgoing review of the ideological-political line pursued by the party leadership and the serious deviations from the fundamental tenets of MLM that have taken place in the name of creative application of MLM will help in establishing the correct line that can advance the revolution to its final victory in Nepal. We are confident that the correct revolutionary line will be re-established through such a serious, thoroughgoing ideological-political struggle within your party. In this context we also wish to express our strong disagreement on the so-called unity between your party and the breakaway group of Mohan Bikram Singh’s Mashal. We think such a unity with a proven Rightist group will not help in furthering the cause of the revolution in Nepal but will take the party further down the path of revisionism and reformism. This unity based on the principle of “two combining into one” will further strengthen the hands of the reformists and Right opportunists within the CPN(M), or the UCPN/Maoism – Mao Thought as it is presently being called. Now we take up the serious issues and reformist deviations that have come to the fore in the course of the development of the Nepalese revolution. Interestingly, some of these deviations from MLM have been theorised by your party as an enrichment and development of MLM and summed up as Prachanda Path.

Assessment of the Character of State in Nepal and the Prospects For Completing the Revolution

First, what is the class character of the state that the CPN(M) has taken over through the process of parliamentary elections in alliance with other comprador- feudal parties? How does the CPN(M) intend to consummate the revolution that was stalled half-way? What is the understanding of the CPN(M) regarding the nature of power that has fallen into their hands through elections? Does it think it can utilize this power to bring about a basic revolutionary change in the social system in Nepal? How does the CPN(M) plan to bring about the radical restructuring of society and build a new democratic Nepal in alliance with the parties representing the reactionary exploitative classes that oppose tooth and nail any such radical changes? Does the CPN(M) believe that the old state machine – principally with the same old bureaucracy and a major chunk of the old standing army – can act as an instrument in the hands of the proletariat to bring about radical changes in the existing semi-feudal, semi-colonial social system? What will be the class character of the new army that will be formed by the proposed integration of the revolutionary PLA and the reactionary Nepalese Army? Can the CPN(M), as a major partner in the ruling coalition in Nepal, ensure a pro-people character to the newly integrated Army of Nepal? If the Maoists lose power due to withdrawal of support from the other major allies how will they ensure that the newly integrated army, with the major portion coming from the old reactionary army, will not be used by the reactionary forces to massacre the Maoists as we witnessed in Indonesia or Chile? We have been continuously raising these questions, particularly during the past three years, through bilateral meetings, letters to your CC, our statements, interviews and other writings. We warned you of your serious deviation from the Leninist concept of state and revolution and cited the experiences of revolution in several countries. In a statement issued in November 2006, our CC pointed out that even if the Maoists became part of the interim government or came to power through elections, they cannot alter the reactionary character of the old state or build a new Nepal on the old basis:

The agreement by the Maoists to become part of the interim government in Nepal cannot transform the reactionary character of the state machinery that serves the exploiting ruling classes and imperialists. The state can be the instrument in the hands of either the exploiting classes or the proletariat, but it cannot serve the interests of both these bitterly-contending classes. It is the fundamental tenet of Marxism that no basic change in the social system can be brought about without smashing the state machine. Reforms from above cannot bring any qualitative change in the exploitative social system, however democratic the new Constitution might seem to be, and even if the Maoists become an important component of the government. It is sheer illusion to think that a new Nepal can be built without smashing the existing state.

After your party emerged as the single largest party in the CA and was trying to form a government in alliance with other parties representing the old order, we warned once again in a statement issued on behalf of our CC on April 24, 2008 thus:

The one and only guarantee for carrying through the radical revolutionary programme is to raise the political class consciousness of the vast masses, mobilize them into class struggle, arm and train them to fight the exploiters and all reactionary forces and defend the gains they derived through the long period of class and mass struggle… One must keep in mind that the gains that can be achieved through a government that has come to power by means of elections are very much limited. The survival of such a regime depends on taking a conciliatory stand on several crucial matters. Hence to overestimate the prospects of radical restructuring of the society or economy by a Maoist government would be illusory and will dilute the possibility as well as the ability of the party to continue the class struggle.

Again in our letter sent to your CC on the 1st of May 2008, we pointed out:

It is a fundamental tenet of Marxism that no radical restructuring of the system is possible without smashing the existing state. It is impossible to make genuine changes in the system only through measures initiated ‘from above,’ i.e. through state decrees and laws. In fact, even drafting Nepal’s Constitution in favour of the poor and oppressed masses is itself going to be a very arduous and bitter struggle. Nothing could be more dangerous at the present juncture than to become complacent and underestimate the prospects of a reactionary backlash. One must keep in mind that the gains that can be achieved through a government that has come to power by means of elections are very much limited. To overestimate the prospects of radical restructuring of the society or economy by a Maoist-led government would be illusory and will dilute the possibility as well as the ability of the party to continue the class struggle.

Our party’s stand on the struggle against monarchy was made clear several times in the past. For instance, our party General Secretary said in his answers to questions sent by BBC in April 2007:

The real fight is not against Gyanendra and the monarchy which is but a symbol of the feudal-imperialist oppression and exploitation of the vast masses of Nepal. Without throwing out the feudal forces, the imperialists, Indian big business and the local compradors, the mere ouster of Gyanendra would not solve any of the problems of the Nepali masses. And this can be done only by firmly carrying on the People’s War to final victory. No Parliament can touch the seat of these reactionary forces who de facto rule the country.

Thus it should be clear that fighting feudalism is not synonymous with fighting monarchy. The monarchy is a part of the semi-feudal, semi-colonial system whose main aspect is in the semi-feudal land relations. In India, the rajas and maharaja were deprived of their power decades back, but that did not destroy the semi-feudal base in the countryside. A correct assessment regarding the state was in fact given by your party itself two years before going into alliance with the SPA. In an article entitled UML Government: A New Shield of Feudalism and Imperialism Under Crisis written by the then Chairman of CPN(M), Comrade Prachanda, this was lucidly explained thus:

Marxism, on the basis of an historical materialist scientific outlook that severely attacks mysterious and idealist explanations of  to state power, declared with undeniable material of experience of class struggle that it is nothing but a weapon of one class suppressing the other. A state power that simultaneously represents classes of two opposing interests has neither been possible in history nor in the future. Marxism hates and rejects prattles of reform and class collaboration as bourgeois hypocrisy. State power is either the dictatorship of the proletariat in different forms or that of the exploiting class. There can be no other stupidity than to imagine a power acting in between these two.

Citing Comrade Lenin, you wrote:

“The State is a special organization of force; it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class,”

Comrade Prachanda rightly asks:

Will now the state power stop becoming an organization of violence right after the UML has become a part of the government?

Quoting Comrade Lenin, he explained how no government can be pro-people as long as the two institutions of bureaucracy and standing army remain intact:

Two institutions are most characteristic of this state machine: the bureaucracy and the standing army.

Comrade Prachanda correctly pointed out:

It is evident that any government, which is compelled to function under the direction of the bureaucracy and standing army, the main two components of the state power, is impossible to become pro-people to the least.

Explaining the reactionary character of the UML government, Comrade Prachanda cites the famous proposition of Marxism:

To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament – such is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics. (Lenin, The State and Revolution )

That was six years ago, in 2003, when the People’s War was advancing in rapid strides. But how have these fundamental theoretical formulations changed after the CPN(M) emerged as the single largest party in the April 2008 elections? Now we ask you the same question that you placed when the UML came to power claiming that it represented the people’s interests:

Is there any such particularity in Nepal because of which the class character of the reactionary state power has changed?

Can one describe the act of forming the government in alliance with comprador-feudal parties and attempting to bring revolutionary social change through the basically old state machine as merely a tactic? With what logic can one say it is not a path of revolution similar to the “peaceful transition to socialism” put forth by Khrushchev? The pronouncements by the leaders of the CPN(M) on various occasions, particularly after their electoral victory in April 2008, remind us of the PKI’s revisionist theory of “a state with two aspects,” i.e., a “pro-people’ s aspect” and an “anti-people’ s aspect” proposed by its Chairman Aidit. According to Aidit:

The important problem in Indonesia now is not to smash the state power as in the case in many other states, but to strengthen and consolidate the pro-people’s aspect – and to eliminate the anti-people’ s aspect.

This peaceful transformation would take place by “revolutionary action from above and below,” i.e., by initiating revolutionary measures from above aimed at changing the composition of the various state organs on the one hand, and by “arousing, organizing and mobilizing” the masses to achieve these changes. Then there are several issues where the stand of your party has already led to the abandoning of the basic requisites for bringing about a revolutionary change in Nepal. The most important among these are the virtual decimation of the PLA by limiting it to the UN-supervised barracks for over two years, the return of the lands and property seized by the people in the course of the People’s War to the exploiters and oppressors, the demobilization of the Young Communist League, compromising with imperialism, Indian expansionism and other main enemies of revolution in Nepal, and so on. Comrade Prachanda announced:

…the paramilitary modus operandi of the party’s youth wing, the YCL, would be scrapped, and public and private buildings, factories and other properties captured by the party will be returned to the owners concerned.

He also announced that all the party units established as parallel state units [the various levels of the former revolutionary government established during the People’s War] will likewise be scrapped, and assured:

These agreements will be implemented as early as possible after setting a time frame.

The above measures can have one and only one meaning: abandoning people’s revolutionary power and all the gains accrued in the decade-long People’s War at the cost of over 13,000 lives of heroic martyrs, the best sons and daughters of Nepal.

On Coalition Government

The proposal to form an interim coalition government with the arch-reactionary parties that represent the class interests of the feudal-comprador ruling classes in Nepal and serve imperialism and Indian expansionism was defended by your party citing some historical experiences such as the proposal of a coalition government with the enemy of the Chinese people, Chiang Kai-Shek, made by the CPC under Comrade Mao in China during the anti-Japan War of Resistance. However, the understanding and practice of the CPN(M) under Comrade Prachanda is diametrically opposite to that pursued by the CPC under Comrade Mao at that time. What was the basic foundation for such a proposal made by Comrade Mao? Where did the strength of the Communist party lie due to which it could venture to go for such a UF and become several times stronger by the end of the anti-Japanese War and ultimately defeat the reactionary KMT? Only when we understand this most important and key aspect we can understand the serious deviation in the concept and practice of CPN(M) with regard to forming a coalition government with other comprador-feudal parties. The most important and key aspect to be noted from the experiences in China is: CPC had kept intact its PLA and Base Areas in spite of repeated pressure by the KMT to abandon these as a pre-condition for a UF. Precisely due to this, CPC was able to dictate terms to the KMT, survive and defeat the brutal military offensive by the KMT, and expand rapidly and achieve countrywide victory within four years after the War of Resistance. In the case of Nepal, the stand taken by CPN(M) under Comrade Prachanda has been qualitatively different from that of China. It is one of disarming the PLA and abandoning the Base Areas which had become a pre-condition for forging a united front with the comprador-feudal parties. The abandoning of the Base Areas and disarming the PLA are suicidal steps that have placed the party and the people at the mercy of the exploiting classes and the imperialists. Comrade Prachanda himself exposed the anti-people character of the coalition governments formed in alliance with the bourgeois, feudal parties such as the UML-led coalition government formed in Nepal after the mid-term elections in 1991. He draws a parallel with the bourgeois democratic government formed after the 1917 February revolution following the fall of Czarism in Russia with the participation of the Mensheviks. Citing Comrade Lenin, he wrote in the article UML Government: A New Shield of Feudalism and Imperialism Under Crisis: The capitalists, better organized and more experienced than anybody else in matters of class struggle and politics, learnt their lesson quicker than the others. Realizing that the government’s position was hopeless, they resorted to a method which for many decades, ever since 1848, has been practiced by the capitalists of other countries in order to fool, divide and weaken the workers. This method is known as a “coalition” government, i.e., a joint cabinet formed of members of the bourgeoisie and turncoats from socialism. (Lenin, From the Lesson of Revolution). It is also interesting to note that your party had castigated the reactionary government of UML coalition by invoking the historical experience in Russia, where, in fact, Comrade Lenin had castigated the bourgeois democratic government even after the fall of Czarist autocracy in the following words: He who says that the workers must support the new government in the interests of the struggle against tsarist reaction (and apparently this is being said by the Potresovs, Gvozdyovs. Chkhenkelis and also, all evasiveness notwithstanding, by Chkheidze) is a traitor to the workers, a traitor to the cause of the proletariat, to the cause of peace and freedom. For actually, precisely this new government is already bound hand and foot by imperialist capital, by the imperialist policy. (Lenin: Letters From Afar). What is wrong in applying the above-mentioned observation of Comrade Lenin which was made in the context of a victorious bourgeois democratic revolution and the fall of Czarist autocracy in Russia – a situation that is in essence similar to the one prevailing in Nepal after the defeat of the King? Our main point here is not whether a coalition government should or should not have been formed in Nepal by the CPN(M) with the other ruling class parties, but that it should not be at the cost of the demobilization of the PLA and abandonment of the Base Areas as done by the CPN(M). Let us examine this most important and key issue. On the Base Areas and disarming the PLA The central question of any revolution is the seizure of power by armed force. In semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries power is seized first in the backward areas of the countryside by establishing Base Areas, then encircling the urban areas, organizing uprisings in the cities and finally achieving countrywide victory. Hence the importance of Base Areas and the people’s army needs no mention. These two aspects are crucial for victory in any revolution and these are non-negotiable under whatever pretext. In China, even when Comrade Mao proposed a coalition government comprising all anti-Japanese forces including the chief enemy of the revolution, Chiang Kai-Shek’s KMT, he never gave a thought to the question of giving up Base Areas and the PLA. These were non-negotiable in the talks held with the KMT. And it was based on the strength of the Base Areas and the Red Army that the CPC could gain advantage in the anti-Japanese united front and make the revolution victorious within four years after the end of WWII. Our CC had been discussing this question with you in our high-level bilateral meetings right from the time you were working out plans for an interim government, elections to the CA and an end to monarchy. You had assured us that Base Areas would never be given up and PLA would not be disarmed. But eventually it turned out that you had done both and had even invited the imperialist agency – the United Nations – to supervise the disarming of the PLA. In November 2006 our CC issued a statement on the proposal of the CPN(M) to disarm the PLA and confine the fighters to the barracks. Entitled, A New Nepal can emerge only by smashing the reactionary state! Depositing arms of the PLA under UN supervision would lead to the disarming of the masses!!, the CPI(Maoist) statement warned:

The agreement to deposit the arms of the people’s army in designated cantonments is fraught with dangerous implications. This act could lead to the disarming of the oppressed masses of Nepal and to a reversal of the gains made by the people of Nepal in the decade-long People’s War at the cost of immense sacrifices. Entire experiences of the world revolution have demonstrated time and again that without the people’s army, it is impossible for the people to exercise their power. Nothing is more dreadful to imperialism and the reactionaries than armed masses, and hence they would gladly enter into any agreement to disarm them. In fact, disarming the masses has been the constant refrain of all the reactionary ruling classes ever since the emergence of class-divided society. Unarmed masses are easy prey for the reactionary classes and imperialists who even enact massacres as proved by history. The CC, CPI(Maoist), as one of the detachments of the world proletariat, warns the CPN(Maoist) and the people of Nepal of the grave danger inherent in the agreement to deposit the arms and calls upon them to reconsider their tactics in the light of bitter historical experiences: We also appeal to the CPN(Maoist) once again to rethink  their current tactics which are changing the very strategic direction of the revolution in Nepal and to withdraw from their agreement with the government of Nepal on depositing the arms of the PLA, as this would make the people defenceless in face of attacks by the reactionaries.

In his answer to questions sent by the media, mainly the BBC, in April 2007, our General Secretary, Comrade Ganapathy, pointed out:

The most dangerous part of the deal is the disarming of the PLA by depositing the arms and placing the fighters in cantonments. This will do no good except disarming the masses and throwing them at the mercy of the oppressors. Neither the imperialists nor big neighbours like India and China would allow any fundamental change in the socio-economic system in Nepal. They cannot remain passive spectators if their interests are undermined by the Maoists whether through a People’s War or through the parliament. Hence the Maoists can never achieve their aim of putting an end to feudal and imperialist exploitation by entering the parliament in the name of multi-party democracy. They will have to either get co-opted into the system or abandon the present policy of power-sharing with the ruing classes and continue  armed revolution to seize power. There is no Buddhist middle way. They cannot set the rules for a game the bourgeoisie has invented.

The move to deposit arms and confine the PLA fighters to UN-supervised cantonments, in practice, is tantamount to abandoning PPW and class struggle in the name of multi-party democracy and endangering the gains made during the decade-long People’s War. The first big deviation occurred when the CPN(M) decided to sail with the SPA by agreeing to abandon the Base Areas, demobilize its PLA, and participate in the elections in the name of fighting against the monarchy. This line is a total deviation from MLM and the concept of PPW. To justify this, CPN(M) cited the example of the CPC under Mao which entered into a united front with Chiang Kai-Shek’s KMT and gave a call for a coalition government. It is a fact that CPC gave the call for such a united front. However, it is also a fact that it never proposed giving up the Base Areas or disarming the PLA. And it was precisely this which had made CPC’s position stronger by the end of the anti-Japanese War. It was able to dictate terms to others mainly based on its independent strength in the Base Areas and its PLA. And when Chiang refused to act in the interests of China and continued his offensive against the Communists in collusion with the imperialists, the CPC was able to isolate KMT, expand the Base Areas and PLA rapidly, and achieve victory in the revolution in a short period after the end of anti-Japanese War of Resistance. As a result, the CPC gained enormously from its proposal to make a UF with the KMT. But in the case of the CPN(M), although it achieved a big electoral gain, it  suffered a big strategic loss as it disbanded the people’s governments at the local level, abandoned the Base Areas and disarmed the people’s army. One clause in the agreement to deposit arms by the PLA even sounds ridiculous. It says that while the PLA deposits its arms and confines itself to barracks, the Nepal Army too should deposit an equal number of arms! With this clause, while the PLA as a whole becomes disarmed, the reactionary army remains intact!! All that it has do is to deposit some arms. Why did the leadership of the CPN(M) agree to such a ridiculous, and more importantly, dangerous, condition? Is it so naïve that it is not aware of the consequences? We can only say this has been done deliberately as the central leadership of the party has chosen to stay away from People’s War and pursue the peaceful path of multi-party democracy to build a new Nepal. Comrade Prachanda unequivocally asserted this in his interviews, speeches and on various occasions. Now Prachanda’s path has placed the CPN(M) or what is now called, UCPN(M), the PLA and the revolutionary people’s power in the countryside in great peril and at the mercy of reactionary parties, Indian expansionists and imperialists. It is now powerless to defend itself or the interests of the vast masses in face of attacks by the reactionary classes and imperialists. It has no Base Areas to bank upon and no army to fight against the reactionary coups and plots. Moreover, after the formation of the Maoist-led government, the PLA is no longer under the CPN(M). The changed role and responsibility of the PLA was pointed out in clear terms in a speech delivered by Comrade Prachanda on the occasion of the 14th Anniversary of PW and 8th PLA Day at Hattikhor PLA Cantonment and published on February 26:

The most important question is that according to the spirit of interim constitution and the agreements held before between the political parties, the PLA will not be directly under the Unified CPN (Maoist). The PLA will be directly under the leadership of AISC. Theoretically the PLA is already under it. We will be connected for a long time contemplatively; that is another thing. However, the PLA will not be under the Unified CPN-Maoist anymore, morally and theoretically. In the situation of legal state power and a transition period, PLA will accept the leadership of the AISC and follow its directives. The PLA has been a part of the state legally since the day AISC was made.

Today, there is a peculiar situation in Nepal. The old Royal Nepal Army continues to be the bulwark of the present state structure in Nepal, while the PLA is a passive onlooker. What would the Maoists do if a coup were staged by the Army with the instigation of the reactionary comprador-feudal parties and the backing of Indian expansionists and US imperialists? Or if an Indonesia-type bloodbath of the Communists is organised by the reactionaries? How would the Maoists defend themselves when they have demobilised and disarmed the PLA? We raised the question in our bilateral meetings right from the time when such a proposal of the integration of the two armies was put forth by Comrade Prachanda. There has never been an answer to this crucial and fundamental question of revolution. By evading an answer and displaying eclecticism, your party has actually placed the future of the oppressed people of Nepal in grave danger.

On 21st Century Democracy

Your party claimed that its “decision on multi-party democracy is a strategically, theoretically developed position,” and that it is applicable even to conditions obtaining in India. You attributed universal significance to it and claimed that it is an attempt to further develop MLM. Hence there is a need for every proletarian party to take a clear-cut stand on this so-called “enrichment of MLM.” The conceptual problem of democracy in the leadership of CPN(M) began at least by 2003. The 2003 CC Plenum of your party passed a paper on the development of democracy in the 21st century. In that paper you proposed that there should be:

…peaceful competition between all political parties against feudalism and foreign imperialist forces.

You said:

Within a certain constitutional provision, multi-party competition should exist as long as it’s against feudalism and foreign imperialistic interference .

You said also during our bilateral meetings that the peaceful competition you were talking about was in the post-revolutionary period and not before. But later on you became evasive and vague on whether this multiparty competition was feasible before the seizure of power by the working class. Then with the conclusion of the 12-point agreement with the SPA, you made an about-turn and asserted that your party was ready to compete with the comprador-feudal parties! What democracy you aspire to develop through peaceful competition with such parties is beyond one’s comprehension. In an interview with The Hindu in 2006, Comrade Prachanda said:

And we are telling the parliamentary parties that we are ready to have peaceful competition with you all.

Here there is no bungling of words. The CPN(M) leader has directly assured the comprador bourgeois-feudal parliamentary parties that his party is ready to have peaceful competition with all of them. And by describing this decision on multiparty democracy as a strategically, theoretically developed position, Comrade Prachanda brought a dangerous thesis to the fore. This was the thesis of peaceful coexistence with the ruling class parties instead of overthrowing them through revolution; peaceful competition with all other parliamentary parties, including the ruling class parties that are stooges of imperialism or foreign reaction, in so-called parliamentary elections; abandoning the objective of building socialism for an indefinite period; and opening the doors wide for the feudal-comprador reactionaries to come to power by utilizing the backwardness of the masses and the massive backing from domestic and foreign reactionaries or the bourgeois and petty bourgeois forces to hijack the entire course of development of the society from a socialist direction to capitalism in the name of democracy and nationalism. Overall, Comrade Prachanda’s conclusions regarding multiparty democracy create illusions among the people regarding bourgeois democracy and their constitution. Comrade Mao pointed out:

Those who demand freedom and democracy in the abstract regard democracy as an end and not as a means. Democracy as such sometimes seems to be an end, but it is in fact only a means. Marxism teaches us that democracy is part of the superstructure and belongs to the realm of politics. That is to say, in the last analysis, it serves the economic base. The same is true of freedom. Both democracy and freedom are relative, not absolute, and they come into being and develop in specific historical conditions. (Ibid)

Genuine democracy is achieved through a consistent and uncompromising struggle against imperialism and feudalism – both in the sphere of the base and superstructure – and accomplishing the tasks of the New Democratic Revolution. Freedom, at the individual level, as Marx said, is the recognition of necessity; at the political level, it entails smashing the chains that bind us to the imperialist system. Your party says it has synthesised the experiences of 20th century revolutions by learning lessons from the positive and the negative experiences of the revolutions and counter-revolutions of the 20th Century. But what lessons has it taken, and Maoists should take, from the experiences of Communist participation in so-called parliamentary democracy in countries like Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador and others? Would your party have pursued the same path as above if it had correctly synthesized and taken lessons from 20th century revolutions? Is there anything wrong if one concludes from your concept of 21st century democracy and multiparty competition on the one hand, and the practice of abandoning People’s War on the other, that you are following the same path tread by the revisionist parties in the above-mentioned countries? In an article in our theoretical organ People’s War in 2006, we pointed out the futility of participating in elections and how it would ultimately help the reactionary ruling classes. We pointed out:

And even if a Maoist party comes to power through elections and merges its own armed forces with those of the old state, it can be overthrown through a military coup, its armed forces might be massacred by those of the reactionaries, its leaders and party cadres might be eliminated… And if it wants to be part of the parliamentary game, it has to abide by its rules and cannot carry out its anti-feudal, anti-imperialist policies freely. Even the independence of the judiciary has to be recognised as part of the game of parliament and can cause the obstruction of every reform that the Maoist party tries to initiate after coming to power through elections. Then there will be several independent institutions like the judiciary, the election commission, the human rights commission sponsored by the imperialists, the media, various artistic, cultural and even religious bodies, non-government organisations, and so on. If one declares one’s commitment to multiparty democracy, one cannot escape from upholding these so-called independent institutions. Many of these can work for counterrevolution in diverse subtle ways. One cannot forget the subtle manner in which the western agencies infiltrated and subverted the societies in East European countries and even the former Soviet Union.

In the document On 21st century Democracy released in June 2003, your party correctly explained  the role played by the proletarian party after assuming state power in the following terms:

Experience has proved that after assuming state power, when various leaders and cadres of the party are involved in running state affairs, then there is strong chance that the physical environment may swiftly reduce the party into a bureaucratic, careerist and luxurious class. With intensification of this danger the party will become more formal and alienated from the masses, in the same proportion. This process, when it reaches to certain level of its own development, it is bound to be transformed into counterrevolution. In order to prevent such danger as counterrevolution from happening, it is important to develop further organizational mechanisms and systems so that party is constantly under the vigilance, control and service of the proletariat and working masses according to the theory of two-line struggle and continuous revolution. For this it is very important that there should be a mechanism to guarantee overall people’s participation in two line struggle. One section comprising capable and established leaders and cadres should be constantly involved in mass work and another section should be involved in running the state machinery. After a certain interval there should be re-division of work, thereby strengthening the relationship between the whole party and the general masses.

The above-mentioned role assumes even greater significance in the present situation when your party is sharing power with the representatives of the old feudal-comprador class and has a servile relationship with imperialism. It becomes even more important for the established leaders of the party to work among the masses and build class struggle to solve the problems of the masses and defend them from the brutal offensive of the enemy classes. However, one is surprised to see most of the established leaders taking up the role of administering a state that remains an instrument of oppression of the masses and in no way represents the aspirations of the masses.

On the Path of Revolution in the Semi-colonial Semi-feudal Countries: Fusion Theory

This has been a much-debated issue ever since the victorious revolution in China. During the Great Debate between the CPSU and CPC in the early 1960s, the path of revolution in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America was firmly established by the CPC. The document adopted by the CC of the CPN(M) in 1995 correctly formulated the strategy of Protracted People’s War after analyzing the specificities of Nepal:

The synthesis of all the specificities clearly shows that it is impossible for the armed struggle in Nepal to make a quick leap into an insurrection and defeat the enemy. However, it is fully possible to finally crush the enemy through the systematic development of the armed struggle in Nepal. It can be clearly derived from this that the armed struggle in Nepal must necessarily adopt a Protracted People’s War strategy of surrounding the city from the countryside.

But in its second national conference held in 2001, after synthesizing the experiences of People’s War in Nepal, it brought forth the theory of the fusion of two different kinds of strategies that are applicable to countries with different characteristics. Just after the Second National Conference of the CPN(M), the press communiqué issued in the name of Comrade Prachanda stated in unequivocal terms:

The rapid development of science and technology, especially in the area of electronics, has brought about a completely new model in regard to forwarding revolution in each country and in the world in the form of a fusion of the strategies of Protracted People’s War and general armed insurrection based on the above analysis.

While making clear that now:

…no model based on past proletarian revolution can be applied as in the past due to changes in the world…

it has brought forth a concrete methodology of the fusion with general insurrection into the strategy of PPW in Nepal. Though the CPN(M) claimed in 2001 that this conclusion was drawn from a synthesis of the experiences of five years of People’s War in Nepal, there was no experience to prove this assertion. On the contrary, the successes achieved in the five years of People’s War had only vindicated the correctness of the strategy of PPW. The changes that have occurred in the world situation after the 1980’s do not provide any new basis to “fuse” the two qualitatively different strategies into a “new” amalgamated strategy for the simple reason that no changes of a qualitative nature have occurred in the socio-economic systems of countries like India and Nepal. In all of the backward countries like Nepal and India, the Maoist strategy of PPW never rejected the usage of the tactics of uprisings in the cities during the course of the revolution. This was also seen during the Chinese revolution. In fact, the importance of usage of these tactics has grown in the context of the changes that have occurred after WW II, particularly due to the tremendous growth of urban populations and the high concentration of the working class. The Maoist forces operating in these countries should certainly give added importance to this question and prepare for uprisings in cities as part of the Maoist strategy of PPW. However, this does not mean that the two strategies should be “fused” into one by labeling PPW as an “old” and “conventional” model. The 2005 CC Plenum:

Resolved that the very strategy of Protracted PW needs to be further developed to cater to the necessities of the 21st century. In particular, several decades on, it is seen that the Protracted PW’s launched in different countries have either faced obstacles or got liquidated after reaching the state of strategic offensive, as imperialism has attempted to refine its interventionist counterinsurgency war strategy as a “long war.” In this context, if the revolutionaries do mechanistically cling to the “protracted” aspect of the PW at any cost, it would in essence play into the hands of imperialism and reaction. Hence the latest proposition of “Prachanda Path” that the proletarian military also needs to be further developed is quite serious and of long-term significance. It may be noted that this proposition is firmly based on the concrete experiences of the successfully advancing PW now at the stage of strategic offensive and is aimed at further advancing and defending it. (The Worker #10: p. 58)

Thus the question of the path of revolution has once again come into the agenda for discussion after the CPN(M) proposed its “fusion” theory in 2001. The question  assumed significance for revolutionaries everywhere not only in the context of the People’s War in Nepal but also because the CPN(M) had tried to give its fusion theory a universal character. It theorized:

Today, the fusion of the strategies of armed insurrection and Protracted People’s War into one another has been essential. Without doing so, a genuine revolution seems impossible in any country. (The Great Leap Forward, p. 20).

It had also argued:

On the theoretical concept of revolutionary war, this new theory of the fusion of two strategies has universal significance. The theory developed by the fusion of Protracted People’s War and insurrection has special significance and it has become universal.”

In the paper submitted by the CPN(M) at the International Seminar on Imperialism and Proletarian Revolution in the 21st Century held on December 26, 2006, it repeated the 2003 thesis but with a very important change. It wrote:

…We came to a conclusion that sticking to a particular model, and the tactic based on it, would not address the new contradictions created by the aforesaid changes in the society and confining the path of revolution within the framework of a certain modality would hold down our hand to resolve them. Taking all these ideological and political factors into account, our party from the very beginning tried to take up mass mobilization in the cities and guerrilla warfare in the countryside, i.e. political and military offensives, simultaneously, while making the latter as principal. Everyone can notice ever since the initiation, which was in the form of a kind of rebellion, our party has been incorporating some of the insurrectionary tactics all through the course of Protracted People’s War. That is why the course of revolution we are traversing resembles neither fully what Mao did in China nor what Lenin did in Russia. We believe one of the reasons behind the development of People’s War in such a short span of time in our country was our success to keep ourselves away from the constraint of any model. In short, our position is no revolution can be repeated but only developed. Almost after five years of the initiation of People’s War in Nepal, summing up its experiences in the Second National Conference in 2001, our party developed a politico-military strategy stressing the need to have a fusion of some aspects of insurrectionary tactics with those of Protracted People’s War from the very beginning. Again, at the Kami Danda meeting in 2006, summing up the entire experiences of the ten years of People’s War, our party further developed and synthesized that only politico-military strategy with a balanced sequence of People’s War, a strong mass movement, negotiations and diplomatic maneuvering can lead the New Democratic Revolution in Nepal to victory. We think this synthesis of a revolutionary detachment of international proletarian army, the CPN (Maoist), could be useful to others as well.

Every country has its own specificities and the revolutionaries take these into account while drawing up their strategy and tactics. The world has seen two models of successful revolutions during the 20th century – the Russian model of armed insurrection and the Chinese model of Protracted People’s War. It is obvious that no revolution can be the exact replica of another. However, basic similarities in the objective conditions can make a particular model more relevant for a particular country. No revolutionary would claim that every country should inevitably follow this or that model in toto mechanically. There are bound to be variations in strategy and tactics in different countries depending on concrete conditions. But the general principle, of course, is common to all revolutions as explained so clearly by Comrade Mao:

The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and highest form of revolution. But while the principle remains the same (for all countries), its application by the party of the proletariat finds expression in various ways according to the varying conditions.

Your politico-military strategy is nothing new as you claim. No revolutionary party would think that it can achieve victory in revolution through military strategy alone. Political strategy and tactics are an important part of the overall strategy and tactics pursued by a Maoist party. Comrade Mao always gave importance to this aspect, and not just to the military aspect, in spite of the huge strength of the PLA. Isolating the main enemies, building the united front with all anti-imperialist and anti-feudal forces, organising the working class and other toiling masses in the urban areas and plain areas, were an indispensable part of the agenda of the CPC under Mao and several Maoist parties today. The documents of these parties prove this beyond any doubt. The problem, therefore, does not lie in not realizing the importance of the work in the urban areas or in the lack of political strategy but in the nature of the politico-military strategy that is being implemented and the order of priority of the rural and urban areas in semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries. If the chief task of smashing the state machinery, particularly the Army and other armed forces, is relegated to the background in the name of political strategy and tactics, if concessions are given to the enemy at the cost of the class interests of the proletariat and oppressed people for the sake of maintaining the united front somehow or other, then the actual problem comes to the fore. The CPN(M) had achieved rapid gains in the decade-long People’s War and claimed to have control over 80 per cent of the country’s territory by 2005. But even this fact does not alter or dilute the strategy of PPW and lend priority to a political strategy. The foremost task even after assuming control over 80 per cent of a nation’s territory would be to consolidate the mass base and organs of political power, increase the strength of the PLA and smash the centres of enemy power in the midst of your Base Areas. No doubt, the task is quite arduous and requires great determination and patience, since there will be an overwhelming expectation of immediate victory among party ranks and the people at large. Serious mistakes are likely to take place in the period of strategic offensive if the protracted nature of the People’s War is not understood properly. The fusion theory of the CPN(M) has undergone further changes in the five years since it was first proposed, and by 2006 it became the theory of peaceful competition with the reactionary parties and peaceful transition to people’s democracy and socialism. From a fusion of People’s War and insurrection, Prachanda’s eclectic theory assumed the form of negotiations and diplomatic maneuvering. One of the major reasons for this change was an incorrect assessment of the contemporary world situation and the conclusion that the neo-colonial form of imperialism is now taking the form of a globalised state. As mentioned in the seminar paper:

The fundamental character of imperialism hasn’t been changed in essence, but as said in our party document, imperialism in its course of development has been acquiring new forms and shapes. The initial colonial form of imperialism changed its form into neo-colonialism. Now the neo-colonial form is taking shape in the form of a globalised state. Naturally this change in the form of imperialism should be taken into account while developing the path of revolution.

The conclusion regarding a globalised state goes against dialectics, as it relegates inter-imperialist contradictions to the background and attempts to transform imperialism as a whole into a homogeneous mass. This formulation was put forth for the first time by your party towards the end of December 2006 after striking an alliance with the SPA. In fact, we can say that your 12-point agreement with the SPA, your decision to become part of the interim government sharing power with the comprador-feudal reactionary parties in Nepal, your participation in the elections to the Constituent Assembly and forming a government under your leadership once again with the reactionary forces, and theorizing on peaceful competition with these parties – all these arose from the above assessment of your party regarding imperialism and the conclusion that it has assumed the form of a globalised state. It is only natural that such an assessment, similar to the thesis of ultra-imperialism proposed by Karl Kautsky in 1912 and which was laid bare by Comrade Lenin, cannot but lead to the conclusion of a peaceful path and peaceful transition to people’s democracy and socialism. The fusion theory has ultimately led to the theory of peaceful transition! At the moment in Nepal, there is neither People’s War nor insurrection but instead peaceful competition with other parliamentary parties for achieving power through elections!! The leadership and the entire party ranks of CPN(M) should at least now realize the reformist and Right opportunist danger inherent in the incorrect eclectic formulation of Comrade Prachanda regarding the path of revolution in Nepal. To put forth such an eclectic fusion theory in an extremely backward semi-feudal semi-colonial country where almost 9 It makes a mockery of the Maoist concept of PPW and negates the basic teachings of Comrade Mao. Prachanda’s fusion theory is a serious deviation from MLM and has created only confusion and illusion among party ranks about a quick victory instead of preparing the entire party for a Protracted People’s War.

On the Stage of Revolution in Nepal

The CPN(M), in its basic documents, came out correctly with its assessment of the present stage of the revolution in Nepal as new democratic and declared the programme to be implemented in this stage of revolution. However, in an article by Comrade Baburam Bhattarai in March 2005, and in his 13-point letter in November 2004, the above understanding regarding the new democratic stage was changed in a drastic manner. It was declared that the Nepalese revolution was passing through a substage of the democratic republic:

As for as the sincere commitment of the revolutionary democratic forces, who aspire to reach socialism and Communism via a new democratic republic, towards a bourgeois democratic republic is concerned, the CPN (Maoist) has time and again clarified its principled position towards the historical necessity of passing through a sub-stage of democratic republic in the specificities of Nepal. (The Royal Regression and the Question of the Democratic Republic, March 15, 2005)

Our party pointed out in an article in our organ People’s War:

No Maoist would say it is wrong to fight for the demand of a republic and for the overthrow of the autocratic monarchy. And likewise, none would oppose the forging of a united front of all those who are opposed to the main enemy at any given moment. Needless to say, such a united front would be purely tactical in nature and cannot and should not under any circumstances determine the path and direction of the revolution itself. The problem with the theorization by the CPN(M) lies in making the fight against autocracy into a substage of NDR and, what is even worse, making the substage overwhelm (dominate and determine) the very direction and path of the revolution. The programme and strategy of NDR drawn up by the party prior to its launching of the armed struggle, the targets to be overthrown and even the concrete class analysis made earlier based on which the revolution had advanced so far, are now made subordinate to the needs of the so-called substage of Nepalese revolution. It is like the case of the tail itself wagging the dog. The substage of bourgeois democratic republic has become the all-determining factor. It has subsumed the class war, set aside the strategy of Protracted People’s War, brought multiparty democracy or political competition with the bourgeois-feudal parties as the most important strategy, nay, path, of the Nepalese revolution.

The fight against monarchy or the King has become the be-all-and-end- all – the ultimate goal – for the leadership of CPN(M). The concepts of NDR, socialism and Communism have become relegated to a secondary position and are subsumed by the concept of sub-stage of fight against the King. In fact, such an understanding was reflected in the statements and interviews given by Comrade Prachanda himself after the People’s War in Nepal confronted serious difficulties in the phase of strategic offensive and the final assault did not fetch the anticipated results. For instance, in his interview with the BBC in 2006, Comrade Prachanda spoke of a new Nepal without the need for smashing the old state:

We believe that the Nepali people will go for a republic and in a peaceful way the process of rebuilding Nepal will go forward. In five years’ time Nepal will move towards being a beautiful, peaceful and progressive nation. In five years’ time the millions of Nepalis will already be moving ahead with a mission to make a beautiful future, and Nepal will truly start becoming a heaven on earth.

He further asserted that a democratic republic elected in such a way will solve the problems of Nepalis!! See here:

We believe that with the election of a constituent assembly, a democratic republic will be formed in Nepal. And this will solve the problems of Nepalis and lead the country on a more progressive path.

In an interview to an Italian newspaper L’espresso in November 2006, Prachanda further elaborated his vision of a future Nepal as that of transforming it into a bourgeois republic like that of Switzerland:

In ten years we’ll change the whole scenario, rebuilding this country to prosperity. In 20 years we could be similar to Switzerland. This is my goal for Nepal.

And he intends to use foreign investment to achieve the above transformation of Nepal:

We will welcome foreign investors, using capital from abroad for the well being of Nepal.

The above lines do not go beyond bourgeois nationalist sentiment and lack a proletarian class outlook. How will Nepal start becoming a “heaven on earth” after becoming a bourgeois republic? How can the formation of a so-called democratic republic “solve the problems of Nepalis?” Why is Prachanda dreaming of making Nepal into a bourgeois Switzerland instead of a socialist paradise? Even after Comrade Prachanda declared this to be his goal for Nepal in the next 20 years, it is a pity that hardly a voice was raised in the party. In fact, such pronouncements by Prachanda and other leaders of your party have only increased after the elections to the CA. The entire direction and programme of your party is towards the establishment and consolidation of a bourgeois democratic republic instead of a people’s republic. Our People’s War article further pointed out:

Can Nepal free itself from the clutches of imperialism after becoming a (bourgeois) democratic republic in the present imperialist era? Does the CPN(M) really think that the “process of rebuilding Nepal will go forward in a peaceful way?” And is there a single instance in world history where such a peaceful process of rebuilding has taken place? Does not the history of world revolution show that bitter class struggle, bloody and violent at times, continues even after decades following the capture of power by the proletariat? Then how can Comrade Prachanda envision such a peaceful process for rebuilding Nepal? Do the parties belonging to the SPA really fight imperialism and feudalism in Nepal? Is there a guarantee that the CPN(M) will defeat the bourgeois-feudal parties, with which it wants to compete in the elections, and ensure that Nepal does not drift into the clutches of imperialism and Indian expansionism? How could one be so naive as to believe that once the elections to the Constituent Assembly are over and Nepal becomes a republic, not under the leadership of the working class party but may be under an alliance of a hodgepodge combination of Parties i.e., an alliance of ruling class and working class under CPN(M), the country will free itself from feudalism and imperialism and become a “beautiful, peaceful and progressive nation?”

The same understanding of the sub-stage was reflected in the declaration by the Maoist spokesperson Krishna Bahadur Mahara in November 2006 that the pact between the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists should continue until the end of feudalism in the country, or at least for ten years. Thus from the various interviews of Comrade Prachanda and other leaders of the CPN(M) we can clearly see a basic shift in the Maoist position from the immediate aim of accomplishing the New Democratic Revolution with the goal of fighting for socialism and Communism, to the establishment of a “multi-party democratic republic” through elections and bringing social transformation through peaceful means within the framework of the old state structure. This goes against the Marxist-Leninist theories of the state as well as the stages of revolution. The non-proletarian class stand of the CPN(M) and the confusion and deviation that had arisen concerning the people’s democratic republic arises from the above theory of the substage.

On the CPN(M)’s Understanding of Indian Expansionism

During Prachanda’s official visit to India, he used the occasion to hobnob with comprador-feudal parties like JD(U), Nationalist Congress, Samajwadi party, RJD, LJP etc., besides having informal meetings with Sonia Gandhi, Digvijay Singh, and some BJP leaders like LK Advani, Rajnath Singh and Murali Manohar Joshi. Perhaps his strategy was to cultivate good relations with the fascist BJP in case it wins in the next Parliamentary elections. His remarks during his India visit reflected, at best, his underassessment about the danger posed by Indian expansionism to Nepal and his illusions regarding the character of the Indian state. And, at worst, it shows his opportunism in making a complete turnabout with regard to his assessment of India after winning the elections. This attitude can be seen in his lauding the role of India in assisting in the “smooth and peaceful” transition in Nepal and also his praising India for its help in arranging the meeting between CPN(M) and SPA in Delhi and in forging a common front of the eight parties against the King. While talking to Rajnath Singh whose Hindu fascist party was responsible for the destruction of Babari Masjid and for inciting communal attacks against Muslims and Christians along with the genocide in Gujarat, Prachanda spoke of the common cultural heritage of the two countries and about Ayodhya. Hugging Manmohan Singh, he even requested that India should assist Nepal in drafting the new Constitution! This is a great insult to the people of both Nepal and India and amounts to surrendering the sovereignty of Nepal to Indian rulers. He knows our party’s stand regarding the drafting of the Indian Constitution and its anti-people, pro-imperialist class content. Yet, he chose to seek the help of the Indian rulers in drafting the Constitution of Nepal!! This is not just pragmatism but a clean and clear deviation from the M-L standpoint and even goes against the spirit of nationalism that he had been speaking of. Failure to arrive at a correct objective assessment and understanding of Indian expansionism and its role in South Asia will have far-reaching consequences on revolutions in the countries of the region. The CPN(M) had, by and large, a correct understanding regarding Indian expansionism until it went into an agreement with the major comprador-feudal parties constituting the SPA in 2006. There were, of course, some problems such as an over-assessment of the contradiction between India and US imperialism and the eagerness of CPN(M) to utilize this supposed contradiction. Our party delegation warned about the danger of falling into the trap set by the Indian expansionist ruling classes and cautioned you against hobnobbing with the leaders of the various reactionary ruling class parties in India, particularly the BJP and Congress, but you continued to maintain relations in the name of utilizing the contradictions in the interest of the revolution in Nepal. We warned you that the opposite would happen, and that eventually, it is not you but the Indian ruling classes who will utilize your soft approach to influence your ranks, including the leadership. The counterrevolutionary intelligence wing of India, RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), and the leaders of the various reactionary political parties in India have been very active in sowing illusions and ideological confusion among the rank and file of the CPN(M), but your party leadership continued to cultivate and maintain intimate relations with these reactionary forces. The extent of the influence of these forces and the damage caused to the revolution could be gauged by the fact that several times your leadership pleaded that strong words against Indian expansionism be dropped in the statements issued by our two Parties as well as in the statements issued by CCOMPOSA. However, in spite of these deviations, overall, until 2005, there had been a collective struggle by our two Parties and by other Maoist Parties in South Asia against Indian expansionism. The CCOMPOSA too was formed explicitly with the aim of fighting against Indian expansionism and achieving unity and collective effort for advancing the revolutions in South Asia. But, after your 12-point agreement with the SPA, this struggle against Indian expansionism began to be blunted over time, finally reaching a stage where your leadership even went to the extent of showering praise on the Indian ruling classes and taking their guidance. We appeal to the leadership and the entire rank and file of the CPN(M) to reconsider their stand towards Indian expansionism and to adopt a firm stance against it. The diplomatic relations between states should not run counter to the principle of proletarian internationalism.

On the South Asia Soviet Federation

The concept of South Asia Soviet Federation (SASF) was brought forth by the CPN(M) in 2001 and was described as a contribution of Comrade Prachanda to the theory of MLM. To cite from the document entitled Great Leap Forward:

Comrade Prachanda, in course of studying the particularity of Nepalese society and revolution, has paid necessary attention to the context of revolution in South Asian countries too. Comrade Prachanda says, “Because of the distinct conditions of this region, it becomes clear that it is inevitable for the Communist revolutionaries to devise an integrated strategy against the Indian ruling class of monopoly bourgeoisie and their agents in various countries. This inevitability has knocked at the door of the necessity of turning this region into a new Soviet federation of the twenty-first century.” (Great Leap Forward, p. 24)

Explaining the meaning and significance of this concept, your party wrote:

Here, special attention has been paid to the necessity of developing a unified strategy as a common responsibility of the revolutionary Communist Parties of this region in their struggle against Indian expansionism. The concept of a unified strategy and that of a New Soviet Federation carries special significance. This concept is based upon the historic necessity of fighting jointly against Indian expansionism that has been a common enemy of the revolutionary Communist parties and oppressed masses of different countries in this South Asian region. This reflects theoretically the common feeling of historical friendship and aspiration of liberation that has developed for a long time among the people of different countries in this region.

In an interview in 2002, our General Secretary, Comrade Ganapathy, expressed our party’s stand on the concept of SASF and the wrong understanding of the CPN(M) that it is extremely difficult to make revolution in Nepal and almost impossible to sustain the revolution after achieving a victory without the establishment of the SASF. Your party made the formation of SASF as a pre-condition for the victory of revolution in Nepal. This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of permanent revolution that denies the possibility of the establishment of socialism in one country. Your party document specifically mentioned that it is almost impossible to sustain the revolution in Nepal without a revolution in the entire sub-continent. The success of revolutions in India and other countries of South Asia has been made into a pre-condition for sustaining the revolution in Nepal. We think this too is a reason for the loss of conviction in advancing the revolution in Nepal to its final victory and, instead, taking the path of reconciliation and class compromise.

On Prachanda Path

Much has been written about Prachanda Path in your documents, articles and interviews in the past seven years. It has also been a topic of discussion during our bilateral meetings in the initial years of the initiation of the People’s War in Nepal. When specifically asked by your delegation, we reiterated our stand in our bilateral meetings that building a personality cult will not help the party or the revolution in the long run. We cited our own experiences in India at the time of Comrade Charu Majumdar and advised you not to inculcate blind faith in individuals. Our firm opinion had always been that isms, paths, thoughts, etc. get established over a long process after they are vindicated in practice and have a clear scientific basis. We advised you that it was too hasty to speak of a new path or thought in Nepal just because some significant victories were achieved in the People’s War. You were not convinced, and proceeded with “enriching and developing” MLM in the form of Prachanda Path and giving it a universal character. While asserting that it is the creative application of MLM to the concrete conditions of Nepal and assuring others that you do not attribute universal significance to it you at the same time tried to project it as a further development and enrichment of MLM with universal significance. Your document mentioned:

Prachanda Path has been termed in the historical Second National Conference of C.P.N. (Maoist) an ideological synthesis of rich experiences of five years of the great People’s War. The party, in this conference, has taken up Prachanda Path as an inseparable dialectical unity between international content and national expression, universality and particularity, whole and part, general and particular, and has comprehended that this synthesis of experiences of Nepalese revolution would serve world proletarian revolution and proletarian internationalism. (The Great Leap Forward: An Inevitable Need of History).

You tried to explain the development of Prachanda Path theoretically as follows:

The development of Prachanda Path is advancing ahead in its third phase. These phases can be thought of as the first phase: the political and military line of Nepalese revolution that was adopted in the Third Expanded Meeting of C.P.N. (Maoist) held in 1995; the second phase: the ideological synthesis of the rich experiences of five years of great People’s War that took place in the historical Second National Conference of C.P.N. (Maoist) held in 2001; and the third phase: the process of development following this conference. Along with its grasp of MLM, Prachanda Path has been developing in the process of its defense, application and development, and this concept also carries specific international significance regarding the process of development of revolutionary theory.

Your party listed the contributions of Comrade Prachanda in the fields of ideology, dialectical materialism, political and military line, and so on. But after going through the documents and writings of the leaders of CPN(M), it is still not clear what has been developed anew in the real sense in the formulations made by Comrade Prachanda in these fields. In the name of the creative application of MLM to the concrete conditions in Nepal and the further development and enrichment of the theory of MLM “in the conditions of 21st century”, your party and its chief, Comrade Prachanda, have brought forth several formulations that negate the fundamental teachings of comrades Lenin and Mao. You have justified this by asserting repeatedly that dogmatism has become the main obstacle for advancing the revolutions in the contemporary world. For instance, Comrade Basanta, a CC member writes:

Our party, under the leadership of Chairman Comrade Prachanda, believes that the analysis of imperialism made by Lenin and Mao in the 20th century cannot scientifically guide Maoist revolutionaries to develop correct strategies and tactics to fight in the 21st century. (“International Dimension of Prachanda Path”, The Worker #10, p. Page 84)

Your CC Plenum document of November 2005 goes on to show how globalised imperialism has caused some of the analyses of Lenin and Mao to lag behind, thereby implying that these have become outdated and irrelevant. It says:

An important preface that today’s globalized imperialism has caused some of the analyses of Lenin and Mao on the strategy of imperialism and proletarian movement to lag behind in the same manner that a number of Marx’s and Engels’ analysis of revolution in Europe, in the period of competitive capitalism, lagged behind in the situation when imperialism developed till the First World War.

How the analyses of Lenin and Mao on the strategy of imperialism and proletarian revolution are lagging behind is not clear. But for some rhetoric, there is no substantial reasoning or analysis on the part of CPN(M) to show the inadequacy of the analyses of Lenin and Mao or how their analysis of imperialism in the 20th century cannot scientifically guide Maoist revolutionaries to develop correct strategies and tactics to fight in the 21st century. After witnessing the full flowering of the concept of Prachanda Path, one thing has now become clear to Maoist revolutionaries everywhere: Lenin and Mao indeed become an obstacle to Prachanda and the CPN(M) for carrying out their reformist, Right opportunist formulations. They needed to discard the Leninist concepts of state and revolution, imperialism and proletarian revolution. They needed to throw overboard Mao’s theory of New Democracy and the two stages of revolution in semi-colonial semi-feudal countries, and to replace the path of PPW with an eclectic combination or fusion of People’s War and insurrection, and finally pursue the same old revisionist line put forth by the CPSU under Khrushchev against which Comrade Mao fought relentlessly. Prachanda Path finally turned out to be a theory that negates the fundamental teachings of Lenin and Mao, and the essence of Prachanda Path is seen to be no different from the Khrushchevite thesis of peaceful transition.

On Proletarian Internationalism

Another serious deviation in the leadership of CPN(M) lies in its abandoning the principle of proletarian internationalism, shelving the CCOMPOSA and the fight against Indian expansionism and US imperialism and adopting a totally nationalistic approach and sheer pragmatism in dealing with other countries and Parties. We can describe this trend as Left nationalism or radical nationalism displayed by the bourgeois class during its incipient stage of development. That is, nationalism of the national bourgeois class. Comrade Prachanda obliterates class content and class perspective, mixes up bourgeois democracy with people’s democracy and justifies all opportunist alliances as being in the interests of Nepal. When any tactic is divorced from our strategic goal of New Democratic Revolution, it ends in opportunism. This is contrary to the principle of proletarian internationalism as envisaged by our great Marxist teachers, and is opposed to MLM ideology. This stand will not promote, but rather harm, the interests of Nepalese masses, undermine Nepal’s sovereignty in the long run, and create illusions about the reactionary parties inside Nepal and Indian expansionists outside Nepal. It undermines the need for a united struggle by M-L parties worldwide against imperialism, particularly US imperialism. What is surprising is that it was the same Prachanda who earlier spoke of South Asia Soviet Federation and attacked Stalin, accusing him of displaying a narrow nationalist attitude by subordinating the interests of the world proletariat to the interests of Russia. Whatever he spoke against Stalin then actually applies to his policies now after assuming power through elections. It is a great paradox that a Maoist-led government has not even ventured to sever its ties with the Zionist Israeli terrorist state, particularly after its brutal blatant aggression in Gaza and the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians when even governments such as those in Venezuela and Bolivia dared to do so. Even more disgusting is the manner in which the CPN(M) leadership has been trying to get into the good books of the American imperialists. To curry favour with the American imperialists, a section of the CPN(M) leadership had even assured that it would remove the Maoist “tail” from its party’s name. It is high time the CPN(M) take a consistently anti-imperialist, anti-Indian expansionist approach and work to forge close, working relations with other forces worldwide to weaken imperialism and the reactionary forces. Only through a resolute struggle against the Right Opportunist Line pursued by the leadership of the CPN(M) can a revolutionary line be reestablished and bring the Nepalese revolution to its consummation. Lack of conviction in the ideology of MLM, a concept of quick victory and eclecticism with regard to the path of revolution in Nepal arising out of the series of successes in the People’s War, a wrong assessment of the impact of changes in the contemporary world leading to the conclusion that a qualitative change had occurred in the nature of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, and a lack of a strategic outlook to transform temporary defeats in a few battles into victories in the overall war led to a drastic drift in the stand of CPN(M) and its slide into Right opportunism. The turning point in the People’s War in Nepal occurred when the PLA led by the CPN(M) failed to smash enemy fortifications and suffered serious losses in the second half of 2005. The 2005 CC Plenum:

…resolved that the very strategy of Protracted PW needs to be further developed to cater to the necessities of the 21st century. In particular, several decades on, it is seen that the Protracted PW’s launched in different countries have either faced serious obstacles or got liquidated after reaching the state of strategic offensive, as imperialism has attempted to refine its interventionist counterinsurgency war strategy as a “long war.” In this context, if revolutionaries mechanistically cling to the ‘protracted’ aspect of the PW at any cost, it would in essence play into the hands of imperialism and reaction. (The Worker #10, p. 58)

Thus the reason for the present predicament of the CPN(M) and its change of strategy and path of its revolution lies in its inconsistency in adhering to the political line and the path of PPW enunciated in its own basic documents. While it correctly formulated the present stage of revolution in Nepal and the strategy and path of revolution in its founding documents, it landed into confusion regarding the strategy within five years of the initiation of the People’s War. The series of victories in the first few years of People’s War were beyond the expectations of even the party leadership. These victories also created a wrong thinking in the party leadership that final victory could be quickly achieved, and instead of firmly adhering to the strategy of PPW which  brought about these successes, it began to develop new theories like fusion theory and began to develop new strategies not only for the revolution in Nepal but also for  world revolution. Initially it expected to capture Kathmandu in a short period without a sober assessment of the support which the Nepalese ruling classes led by the King could get from the imperialists and Indian expansionists and also overassessing the contradictions between the imperialists and big countries like China and India. The document entitled Present Situation and Our Tasks, presented by Comrade Prachanda and adopted by the CC of CPN(M) in May 2003, made the following assessment:

Had world imperialism, particularly American imperialism in today’s context, not helped the old state directly, the Nepalese revolution would have by today developed further ahead with relative ease and somewhat differently through the use of the thought, strategy and tactics synthesized in the party’s historic Second National Conference. The Nepalese revolution has been affected by the activities of American imperialism, like bringing the most brutal and fascist feudal elements through the infamous palace massacre to take on the Nepalese People’s War, to intensifying its interventionist activities in Nepal with the declaration of the so-called war against terrorism after the September 11 event. We can clearly and with experience say that had the old feudal state and its royal army not had direct involvement of American military advisers in planning, construction, training and direction in the post “emergency” period and had it not received financial and military assistance from foreign reactionary forces including America, the old rotten feudal state in Nepal would have had no chance of surviving in the face of People’s War.

In an interview with The Times of India in September 2005, Comrade Prachanda said that his party would have “captured Kathmandu by now if countries like the US, India and the UK had not extended military support to Nepal’s tottering feudal rulers.” Is it not wishful thinking on the part of the CPN(M) and Comrade Prachanda to expect that revolution in Nepal can become victorious without fighting imperialist intervention? Intervention in the internal affairs of every country is the very essence and nature of imperialism. Even to imagine that they could have rapidly achieved victory if other countries had not extended military support to the tottering feudal rulers of Nepal smacks of romanticism. Thus, due to all these factors which are but natural in the course of any revolution, the People’s War in Nepal  became stuck in the stage of strategic stalemate or equilibrium in spite of tremendous victories and the formation of revolutionary organs of power in the vast countryside. Although it declared that it entered the stage of strategic counteroffensive in August 2004 and even successfully implemented the first plan of the counteroffensive, which it finished a year later, it realized that it was not possible to capture the urban centres and Kathmandu in the immediate future. Its assessment of a quick victory did not seem feasible. Presently, while it has control over the vast countryside it is unable to stage a general armed insurrection or to implement its theory of fusing the strategies of the Russian model of armed insurrection and the Chinese model of Protracted People’s War, or the so-called fusion theory. The United Revolutionary People’s Council (URPC), which the CPN(M) formed as early as September 2001, has not been able to establish itself as a an organ of new democratic people’s power at the central level, nor is it likely to do so in the immediate future. CPN(M)’s deviation from the concept of PPW and its longing for a quick victory did not allow it to think of tiring out the enemy in incessant war, accumulating its own strength further, and making long-term preparations for defeating the enemy and smashing the state machine at the opportune time. It erroneously thought that the longer the war dragged on, the more difficult and unfavourable the situation would be for the revolutionary forces, as the reactionary forces and the armies of imperialist powers and India were bound to intervene militarily. The CPN(M) became skeptical about the prospects of victory in a small country like Nepal when it is confronted by imperialism and there is no advancement of any strong revolutionary movement in other parts of the world. You said:

In the present context, when along with the restoration of capitalism in China there is no other socialist state existing, when despite objective condition turning favorable, currently there is no advancement in any strong revolutionary movement under the leadership of the proletariat, and when world imperialism is pouncing on people everywhere like an injured tiger, is it possible for a small country with a specific geopolitical compulsion like Nepal to gain victory to the point of capturing the central state through revolution? This is the most significant question being put before the party today. The answer to this question can only be found in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and on this depends the future of the Nepalese revolution.

If the CPN(M) had a deep and thorough understanding of the strategy of PPW, it would have had adequate clarity on how to grapple with the situation in the event of external military intervention and thereby transform the war into a national war and capture state power. But its lack of such an understanding of PPW and its desire for quick victory led it to the highly dangerous short cut method of coming to power through an interim government and participating in the elections of a so-called multiparty democratic republic following the elections to the Constituent Assembly. Thus, instead of adhering to the Marxist-Leninist understanding on the imperative need to smash the old state and establish the proletarian state (the people’s democratic state in the concrete conditions of semi-feudal, semi-colonial Nepal) and advance towards the goal of socialism through the radical transformation of society and all oppressive class relations, it chose to reform the existing state through an elected Constituent Assembly and a bourgeois democratic republic. It is indeed a great tragedy that it has come to this position in spite of having de facto power in most of the countryside. The conclusion regarding the impossibility of achieving victory in the revolution through armed struggle is reflected clearly in Prachanda’s answer to a question by a correspondent of The Hindu in his interview with Comrade Prachanda in February 2006. He was asked whether the decision was a recognition by the CPN(M) of the “impossibility of seizing power through armed struggle” and that “because of the strength of the RNA and the opposition of the international community, a new form of struggle is needed in order to overthrow the monarchy.” Comrade Prachanda replied that his party had taken three things into consideration for arriving at the conclusion: the specificity of the political and military balance in today’s world; the experience of the 20th century; and the particular situation in the country – the class, political and power balance. One is reminded of PKI (Indonesian Communist party) Chairman Aidit’s thesis during the 1960’s, according to which it was impossible to launch and carry out People’s War anywhere in the contemporary world. The PKI announced the “Method of Combining the Three Forms of Struggle”: guerrilla warfare in the countryside, strikes by workers (especially transport workers) in the cities, and work among the armed forces. By putting forth such a combination, the focus of the work of the PKI  shifted from the foremost strategic task of developing People’s War in the countryside and establishing Base Areas towards other tasks. In an article you rightly pointed out the reformist thinking in the Nepalese Communist movement in the following words:

In the Nepalese Communist movement a Rightist thinking has been dominant that accepts New Democracy as a strategy but follows reformism and parliamentarism as tactics, that sacrifices the totality of strategy for practical tactical gain and that regards strategy and tactics as mutually exclusive. Against such thinking we should pay special attention to understand the relations between strategy and tactics in a dialectical manner and to adopt such tactics as to help the strategy.

Now your party itself has become a victim of such Rightist thinking by accepting New Democracy as a strategy but following reformism and parliamentarism as tactics. Whatever be the tactics adopted by the CPN(M), the most objectionable part is your projection of these tactics as a theoretically developed position which you think should be the model for the revolutions in the 21st century. You consider the ideologies developed by Lenin and Mao at the initial phase of international imperialism and proletarian revolution as having become inadequate and lagging behind at the present imperialistic phase. And therefore you claim:

The main issue is to develop MLM in the 21st century and to determine a new proletarian strategy.

But what is new in the so-called new tactics proposed by the CPN(M)? How is it different from the arguments put forth by the Khrushchevite clique in the Soviet Union after the death of Comrade Stalin? In the name of fighting against dogmatism or orthodox Communism, the leadership of CPN(M) had landed into a Right Opportunist Line. Comrades! Today the entire world is going through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. With American imperialism as the focus, every country in the world is engulfed in the crisis which is threatening to erupt into social and political explosions. In such an excellent situation Maoist revolutionary forces in every country can grow in strength by properly utilizing the favourable objective situation created by the crisis and achieve great advances in the revolutions in their respective countries. But unfortunately the Maoist party in Nepal has chosen to strike a deal with the reactionary anti-people forces in the country and form a government that can in no way address any of the basic problems facing the Nepalese people or achieve the basic programme of New Democracy and socialism. This peaceful path of Comrade Prachanda has already led the party and the PLA into a dark tunnel. Our CC appeals to the leadership and ranks of the UCPN(M) to undertake a deep review of the wrong reformist line that the party has been pursuing ever since it had struck an alliance with the SPA, became part of the interim government, participated in the elections to the CA, formed a government with the comprador-feudal parties, abandoned the Base Areas and demobilized the PLA and the YCL, deviated from the principle of proletarian internationalism and adopted a policy of appeasement towards imperialism, particularly American imperialism, and Indian expansionism. All these are a serious deviation from MLM and only work towards the strengthening of the status-quoist forces and help imperialism in its hour of crisis. These have also created confusion among the revolutionary masses, weakened the revolutionary camp and gave the reactionary forces and imperialism a baton to attack Maoist revolutionaries and Communism ideologically. A Maoist victory in Nepal, or at least the further consolidation of the vast Base Areas in that country, would have given rise to a new situation in South Asia, and a new democratic Nepal advancing towards socialism would have become a focal point, a rallying point, for the revolutionary forces in the region as well as all anti-imperialist, genuinely nationalist and democratic forces. It would have also played a significant role in the worldwide front against imperialism and assisted the various national liberation struggles and revolutionary struggles, thereby strengthening the cause of world socialist revolution. But the government led by CPN(M) under Comrade Prachanda, on the contrary, has not even condemned the Israeli Zionist brutal aggression and massacres of Palestinians in Gaza. It is really distressing and alarming to see this narrow nationalism, a policy of appeasement towards imperialism and a non-proletarian approach on the part of the CPN(M). The same approach of CPN(M) is seen in the relations with India too. Comrade Prachanda, soon after the electoral victory, was full of praise for the role played by the Indian ruling classes in forging the alliance between the Maoists and SPA and bringing about the “smooth, peaceful transition” from monarchy to parliamentary democracy in Nepal. And when Comrade Prachanda visited India in September he went a step further by hobnobbing with the worst reactionary leaders of the Hindu chauvinist BJP, such as LK Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi and Rajnath Singh. Whose class interests would all these serve? Do not these point to a high level of opportunism on the part of the UCPN(M) and abdication of all proletarian norms in fraternal relations? We call upon the entire rank and file of the UCPN(M) to immediately shed these bourgeois nationalist (if these even qualify for such a description), non-proletarian policies which totally deviate from MLM and proletarian internationalism. Our CC has followed the deliberations at the national convention of CPN(M) in November 2008, gone through the two documents placed by Comrade Prachanda and Mohan Baidya and the various writings by your party leaders in the magazines and news papers. While the inter-party struggle is an encouraging sign and a positive development in the life of the party, it is very important and vital to ensure that it is carried out in a more thoroughgoing, fearless and frank manner so that the initiative of the entire party cadre is released and a correct revolutionary line is established through collective participation of the entire party. Now that the government headed by Comrade Prachanda has collapsed after the withdrawal of support by the UML and others at the behest of the Indian ruling classes, American imperialists and the local reactionaries, the party leadership should be better placed to understand how the reactionaries can manage the show either from the sidelines or from outside and obstruct even moves such as sacking of the Army chief by a Prime Minister. This is a clear warning to the Maoists in Nepal that they cannot do whatever they like through their elected government against the wishes of the imperialists and Indian expansionists. At least now they should realize the futility of going into the electoral game and, instead, should concentrate on building class struggle and advancing the People’s War in the countryside. They should pull the PLA out of the UN-supervised barracks which are virtually like prisons for the fighters, reconstruct the organs of people’s revolutionary power at various levels, retake and consolidate the Base Areas and expand the guerrilla war and class and mass struggles throughout the country. There is no short cut to achieve real power to the people. If the party leadership hesitates to continue the People’s War at this critical juncture of history and persists in the present Right Opportunist Line, then history will hold the present leadership responsible for the abortion of revolution in Nepal. With Revolutionary Greetings, Politbureau, CPI(Maoist) May 20, 2009

Simon Jones "Mordechai Vanunu Interview"

Repost from the old blog. Although it is four years old, it is still interesting because Vanunu has not given many interviews. This is guest poster Simon Jones’ transcription and cleanup of an informal interview Israeli nuclear dissident Mordecai Vanunu gave on a Norwegian chat site. Note: I have added my own editing to the piece, with the proviso of changing only grammar, style and punctuation, not substance. Anyway, the interview below is with Mordecai Vanunu. Vanunu, a Sephardic Moroccan Jew, worked as a nuclear technician in Israel’s top secret nuclear laboratory, the Negev Nuclear Research Center, from 1976 to 1985. It was there that he learned about Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Vanunu somehow managed to sneak a tiny camera into Israel’s most heavily-guarded facility, leading most to assume he was a Mossad agent at the time. He amazingly took many photos of the lab, then, even more shockingly, managed to leave the country after he was laid off from the plant in 1985. Even more oddly, Vanunu, while getting his Master’s Degree at Beersheba University in Israel in 1975, had gained a reputation as a far Leftist who spent most of his time hanging around with Arab students. Given his background, why was he hired for this ultra-sensitive job? After he left the country, he wandered to Nepal, where he thought of converting to Buddhism, then wandered to Burma and Thailand. Next he drifted down to Sydney, Australia, where he lived in a hostel and worked odd jobs. He began going to a local church and later converted to Christianity, which caused his Jewish family back in Israel to renounce him. In Sydney, he met Peter Hounam, a British journalist working for the British paper The Sunday Times. Hounam and Vanunu then took a plane to London, where Vanunu showed his nuclear evidence to the paper’s editors. The paper took their time confirming the story, fearing a hoax. The paper was wary because it had been previously burned when it published a fake diary of Hitler that it had thought was genuine. Frustrated with the delays, Vanunu naively approached another London paper, the Sunday Mirror, now The Daily Mirror, which was run by Zionist Jew scumbag mega-millionaire Robert Maxwell, who according to a later report, was a longstanding Mossad agent. Vanunu tried to sell the story to Maxwell but Maxwell notified the Mossad instead. Very quickly (possibly within a day) a beautiful female spy was dispatched to London, and she someone managed to seduce the naive Vanunu and begin a wild love affair with him (also within a matter of days). Within a matter of maybe only four days, she convinced Vanunu to go off to Rome with her. Once in Rome, she got him alone and somehow drugged him. On September 30, 1986, a team of Mossad agents somehow managed to sneak him through Rome’s traffic and the next thing Vanunu knew, he was being shipped out of Italy via freighter. The ship took him back to Israel, where he was secretly tried and convicted of treason. Around the same time, the Sunday Times published its blockbuster story based on Vanunu’s photos, claiming that Israel had 200 nuclear weapons. The details the paper published about Israel’s nuclear weapons program rocked the world. Given all the bizarre particulars of the case, many have long assumed that Vanunu was a Mossad agent. A more recent analysis by Uri Avnery in Alexander Cockburn’s brilliant Counterpunch magazine indicates that Vanunu was probably not a Mossad agent. Avnery concludes that the bizarreness of the case is due to the fact that Vanunu was an idealistic, naive Leftist, and that Israel’s much-touted Mossad is, at times, much more incompetent than anyone thinks. Vanunu, son of well-off Moroccan Jewish immigrants, spent his early years in Israel in a primitive camp before moving to Beersheba, where his family lived in poverty. He still managed to get a Master’s Degree, but complained of discrimination and rude treatment by the Ashkenazi Jews who have always run Israel. All of these experiences seem to have alienated Vanunu, and pushed him into leftwing politics. At his secret trial, Vanunu was convicted of treason and received a long sentence at a trial that made international headlines. He was sent to prison and spent 18 years there, 11 of them in solitary confinement, for which there was probably no justification for, only punishment. While in prison, Vanunu infuriated guards and prison officials by befriending Arab freedom fighters at the prison who were jailed for waging attacks on Israel. Vanunu says the Arabs accepted him completely and they got on famously. Soon Vanunu was asking to have his exercise breaks at the same time as his Arab brothers. Vanunu’s jailers spent most of the time trying to break him psychologically, but he says they never succeeded. Vanunu was released from prison almost exactly one year ago in the midst of a media circus. Interestingly, one of the first things he said upon his releases was that the female agent who entrapped him was either a CIA or FBI agent, and not a Mossad agent. In my opinion, Vanunu has failed to make a good case of this. Vanunu bases his reasoning on the fact that the agent was an American, and therefore must have been a US agent. But it’s well-known that the Mossad has recruited many Americans, especially US Jews like the agent in question. I believe that the female agent was a Mossad agent. A little-known fact about this spy movie case is that the entrapping agent, known as “Cindy”, is actually a woman named Cheryl Hanin Bentov. Bentov now lives with her husband, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, in Orlando, Florida, where they run a successful real estate business. Bentov is “Jews don’t need a state”, Vanunu said recently. “We should give the land back to the Palestinians.” On that note, let us move on to the interview! Here are some of Mordechai Vanunu’s answers to questions fielded by Net surfers in an informal, 3-hour interview on a Norwegian chat site. What follows is just a short summary of some of Vanunu’s statements during the interview. I have corrected most of the grammar and spelling of the interview and included the surfer’s question only when it was necessary for clarification. I see now why the Israeli government doesn’t want Vanunu to leave – he is eloquent, has a sharp wit, and will be a brilliant world peace campaigner once he is freed. Let’s keep up the pressure to free him. Peace, SJ The Interview: Q by Anonymous: Were there more people like you who wanted to tell the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons program, or were you the only one? **** MV: There is no one else in Israel who wants to speak about Israel nuclear weapons because you need to be not only against NW’s but also believe in peace and criticize Israeli policies in many fields, including their own Jewish religion. **** ***** The way to survive [in prison] is to be very, very strong, trusting your humanity and believing in humanity. But the human race is good and we are doing this for the survival of the human race on this earth. I decided that they can imprison my body but not my mind and spirit, so I keep this belief all the time. I practice my freedom by exercising the freedom to read and write what I want. Also, I listen to classical music like opera. I studied philosophy and geography in Beersheba University. I have my first degree. I started my second degree but didn’t finish it. But now I have a doctorate in modern psychological brainwashing in a modern spy mind war. That’s what I learned in 18 years in prison. I am not at all bitter [about prison]; I’m very sad for Israelis that they are not mature enough to accept my acts and my life and to respect me as a human being. We need to save the Jewish people of Israel from their past history and bring them to live in this new age. I would do it again and again without any regret. Israel is a military dictatorship governed by security and secrecy. This is a modern phenomenon in a democratic system. Israel is destroying the democratic system from the inside and exporting this policy to the US and Europe. Your ‘Israel – the only democracy in the region’ is demolishing houses of families without any crimes; is arresting thousands of young people without trial. Israel invaded Italy to kidnap a citizen [Vanunu himself] and they have been occupying foreign territories for 35 years, building settlements. They expelled 8 ***** Q by Sigurd: Are you guided by a scientist’s ethics, or are you a genuine humanist? Perhaps it is something else that drives you? ***** MV: Yes, something from our humanity that no one can control is driving us to save this earth from crazy militarism spy power. I am very proud and happy that I have 6 billion people around the world regarding me as a hero. ***** Q by Joakim: Are you still interested in art and do you have a favorite Norwegian artist/painter? ***** MV: I like Edward Munch’s The Scream. ***** ***** I know you have very beautiful fjords and very beautiful women! And very beautiful human rights activists and the Alfred Nobel Peace Prize. ***** ***** Why is it when someone like Salman Rushdie writes a book about Satan writes ‘hate all Muslims’ poetry, you all lift Rushdie to the sky and worship him? But now when a man is imprisoned for 18 years because he let the world know about a nuclear project… And I am still paying for it. ***** ***** Terrorism is not a real threat. The real danger is nuclear weapons in secret – that is the main problem for every state, including Norway. ***** ***** About the US – we are now in the new century post-Cold War and we need to have a new world order. That could be started by all of Europe and US together behaving fairly with Israel to end the Middle East conflict. That could happen if both Europe and US made the right decision to confront Israel with a series of demands. They should demand that Israel become a secular democracy, that she give equal rights to every citizen and that she end her colonialism of the Middle East with her nuclear weapons. Next, we need all the world to be free from nuclear weapons – to take from the nuclear weapons away from every superpower. That is the only way for a new world order, governed by the people of the world, by the United Nations for the people of the world, and not for any State. ***** Q by Ken: You converted to Christianity from Judaism. Was it because you believed in Jesus? Was it because you disliked Judaism? Or was it another reason? What was the reason? ***** MV: All the answers are very good. One more reason I converted is that Judaism is one of the faiths that believes, supports, and encourages racism, and is based on supremacy – creating an apartheid regime. Israel is government by Judaism. But I believe in secular democracy. Jews should accept and respect Jesus’ teaching, values, and the New Testament as much as the Old Testament. I’m a Christian. I was converted in Australia in 1986 because I reject the Jewish traditional beliefs of Judaism supremacy. I believe all human beings are equal. In Israel if you are Jewish you have all the rights. If you are Christian or Muslim, you are second-class with no rights. The best solution is a secular state with equal rights for all citizens. Not a Jewish religious state or Muslim religious state, but one secular state. I am a Christian and no one hates Jews [now]. All the world now respects any human being. Europe has all kinds of minorities. There is no more anti-Semitism. I think if I was [still] Jewish the Israelis and US would have loved me very much and received me as a hero in all the world. But because of my Christianity the Israelis [are] trying to destroy my image and deny me the right to celebrate my freedom. In Israel I am still regarded as a double traitor – for the nuclear weapons issue and for my Christianity. ***** Q by Gabriel: What reason do you believe Israel has for being a nuclear power? Offensive or defensive? Threat and power or war? ***** MV: In my view, in 1950’s, Israel decided as an act not to go for peace but to trust power and impose on the Palestinians and the Arab world this Israeli Jewish apartheid state. They did that instead of making peace and receiving back the Palestinian refugees. Now they say the nuclear weapons are for defence. But for defence of this racist state. ***** Q by Innsendt: Is Israel capable of using these horrible weapons of mass destruction and do you think they will use them? ***** MV: Yes, yes, they have them and they will use them. ***** Q by Innsendt: I guess you must now know what it is like to be a Palestinian living in Occupied Palestine under tough restrictions? **** MV: Yes. And I knew before, and I was against it since 1967. ***** Update: This blog is offering respectful readers the interesting opportunity to contact Mordecai Vanunu on your own. We only ask that you be respectful in your dealings with him. His email address is here. He also goes by his new Christian name of John Crossman. MV may be reached at St. George Cathedral, 20 Nablus Road, East Jerusalem, PO Box 19122. His mobile phone number is 052 2260908. MV was elected rector of Glasgow University in Scotland in December 2004 in a ceremony at the church above, St. George.

The Role of Iran in Arab -Islamic Resistance to Imperialism and Zionism

This post will provide an overview of why the Iranian regime is hated so much by US imperialism and Zionism, and why they plotted a Green “color revolution” to throw out one of the last holdouts of Arab – Islamic resistance in the region. Except for Iran, Syria, Hamas-Gaza and Hezbollah, all of the rest of the Arab and Islamic World has folded in the face of the Zionist onslaught or been bought off by US imperialism. Saddam was another rejectionist, but the Zionist traitor neoconservatives engineered an illegal invasion to bring him down. Ghaddafi was threatened with invasion by the same folks, and promptly folded. The Palestinians now effectively have no outside support. Egypt collaborates with Zionism to police the Gaza border and assists in the starvation and deprivation of the Gazans. Egyptian police prevent guns from flowing to the Gazans for their noble resistance to the Zionist enemy. Jordan was captured long ago. Elections are not allowed in Jordan, because the 6 Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are bought off and sold to the US. Anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations are regularly crushed with brutality in Tunisia. None of these states are democracies, because democracy would allow an anti-Zionist and anti-US regime to be elected. In Arabia, there are no democracies. All of the regimes are sold out to the US. There are US military bases in all nations, for the sole reason of policing the Arabian peoples. The effect is that the Arabian peoples are under a dictatorship of US military bases combined with local satraps and Quislings. It’s true the Saudis allow fighters to go to Arab lands, but only to Iraq to fight the Shia that they hate so much. Lebanon has been under imperialist-Zionist assault for years now. With the election of a French Jew to head the French state, France is now firmly in the Zionist camp. This, along with a colonial attachment to the Lebanese fake state that never died, explains why France has gone along with imperialism-Zionism in Lebanon. Iraq is now occupied by imperialism-Zionism in the form of the US military and will be occupied into the forseeable future. Iraq was attacked because it was one of the only Arab holdouts that stood steadfast against imperialism and Zionism in the region. Also, they allowed no bases and opened up their oil to non-Americans. The invasion, in collaboration with the Zionist enemy, was planned to remove the holdout Saddam of the Arab resistance, to remove the competitors of US oil companies from the oil fields they were developing, to take over Iraq’s oil for the US, to use Iraqi oil to flood the oil market and lower the price, killing the Saudis and Gulf states of their oil weapon (the Gulf Arabians, while US allies, are distrusted by International Zionism, and they hatched the Iraqi invasion). With permabases in Iraq and the biggest US embassy on Earth in Baghdad, US control over the region was seized by force. It was only due to fortitude that the Iraqi resistance soon led an insurgency against the invaders. If they would not have done this, we know for a fact that the US military would have done a “left turn at Baghdad, and headed for Syria”, as their Zionist masters were ordering them too. With Iraq out of the way, Libya was quickly subdued with threats of force. Arafat was murdered by the Israelis. They placed a Mossad agent as his cook and poisoned his food. The Abbas clique went along with the poisoning since they hated Arafat. Getting Arafat out of the way was a long-standing goal of the Zionist agenda. Then elections were held in Palestine, but the results came out wrong and Hamas won. The Abbas forces were trained by the US to be the shock troops of Zionism in Palestine. Indeed, Abbas forces are utilized primarily against those Palestinians in Hamas who still dare to resist the Zionist enemy. A plot was concocted to oust the pro-Syrian regime in Lebanon, but it failed. Syria probably killed Hariri, but Hariri was selling out Lebanon to imperialism and Zionism, and Syria would not stand for that. What does Syria want? One thing and one thing only. They want the Golan back. For this, they will sacrifice everything, the Palestinians, Arabism, you name it. The only card left that Syria holds to enable it to get back the Golan is their auxiliary force in Lebanon, Hezbollah. This is why Syria must not allow Hezbollah to be dismantled. If Hezbollah is dismantled, Syria has lost their last cards too get the Golan back, and they will never be able to get their land back. The killing of Hariri resulted in international pressure against Syria, including sanctions. There was also an international effort made to disarm and dissolve Hezbollah. The effort to get rid of Hezbollah seems to have failed, although pro-Hezbollah forces won 4 A few years ago, with the connivance of US imperialism, US neoconservatives along with Israel concocted a plot to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. The purpose here was to decisively defeat Hezbollah and wipe out their substantial missile stockpile. This invasion largely failed to accomplish this mission. The UN was then given the task of occupying South Lebanon to enforce Zionist and imperialist rule on sovereign Lebanese land. This effort has largely failed, as Hezbollah has restocked their missiles and they are now better armed than before the invasion. This background shows you that Ahmadinejad is one of the last holdouts in the region against total dominaton by US imperialism and Zionism. This is why the Iranian regime is being targeted so forcefully.

Azmi Bishara, “Ways of Denial”

Repost from the old site. Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab Parliamentarian and university professor, published an excellent article in the Egyptian paper Al Ahram Weekly in 2007. It’s dated, but it’s very much worth a read. It’s about Holocaust Denial and Zionism and the way that they intertwine.

If I am not mistaken, Bishara was charged with treason for visiting Syria on some sort of a peace mission during or around the time of the Lebanon War. The charges appear to be trumped up. He fled Israel in order not to be prosecuted, and I think he lives in Syria now.

It deals with some issues that continue to confuse many people to this day. What was the cause of the Holocaust?

Why did the Nazis and other Europeans kill the Jews – what made them so angry? What were the essential components of Nazism, and to a lesser extent fascism? What was the response of the Arab Left to the Holocaust? Why has Holocaust Denial taken such a baffling and disturbing root in the Arab and Muslim World?

This work by Bishara is a bit of a tough read in spots, but if you slow down and think about it as you read it, I think most will be able to glean the gist of it. My comments appear in bold. They deal with ultranationalism, ethnic nationalism and its German expression in Nazism, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Zionism and the ways in which these things tangle together.

Ways of Denial

By Azmi Bishara

The Nazi Holocaust aimed to rid Europe of its “Jewish taint”. By this was meant banking capital as opposed to industrial capital and the moral degeneracy, lack of patriotism, scorn for national values, heritage and other such ills caused by the “worm” that ate away at all that was noble and pure in the Germanic people.

That worm was the racial strain that never belonged, that was intrinsically alien and that nevertheless insisted on remaining in order to wreak its pollution; it was European Jewry and its various manifestations including capitalism, communism and liberalism, and its mere presence, according to this diabolical system of thought, that were a scourge to racial purity.

[RL: These lines here are very important. The nationalism that arose in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1800’s and married itself to emerging racial science was unique. Previously, nationalism had generally not been racial. Often, anyone could marry into a tribe and become a full-fledged member – in fact, this has been a well-known norm of tribal societies.

The only nations were either tribes or empires, and empires were not racial. A Roman was anyone who lived in the Roman Empire. If you wanted to cross the Mediterranean and move to Rome and speak Latin, you could become a full-fledged Roman. It had nothing to do with any notion of an Italian race of people.

The Persian Empires were made up of individuals of a variety of ethnic groups, only one of which was Persian. The new nationalism changed all of that. The nation was seen as being only made up of one ethnic group, organically linked to the land through blood, soil and religion, and, tragically, all other groups on the land, including those who had lived there for centuries, were said to be aliens, as they were not part of this organic whole.

The nation was now an area with lines on a map – a territory with borders. Within this area – the nation – a vision formed of the nation as being akin to a human body. Its rivers and lakes were akin to the blood and water in our bodies, and its solid parts were akin to our flesh. The nation had a mind, a soul and emotions, as a human body does.

As we alone – our pure selves – have lived in our human bodies our whole lives, a notion was created that only one ethnic group, a pure ethnic group without outside admixtures, had lived in the national territory for all of recorded history. This people was an organic part of the land, the same as the rivers, rocks and trees.

Indeed, this organic national race was seen, mystically, as almost as much a part of the geological features of the land as the features were likewise seen as a part of the people. A religion and a set of cultural values, always glorious and perfect, was married to this pure people. Their religion and culture was obviously superior to those of their neighbors, if not of everyone else.

The pure people had died and fertilized the soil with their blood, flesh and bones, often in defense of the sacred land. Hence the dirt itself was impregnated with the glorious ancestors of the people.

From this blood-drenched soil sprang the plants and the animals that fed on them. And the soil sprouted crops, and the crops provided food for the animals, and the crops and animals sustained the life of this pure people.

As we prefer our bodies not to be contaminated by poisons, viruses and other unnatural interlopers, so the pure people tended to see the other ethnic groups on the land as akin to viruses coursing through the bloodstream of our bodies.

As we take medicine to rid our bodies of harmful contaminants, so the nation-race suggested “medicine” to rid the “body politic” of those “contaminating” peoples resident on the land who were not part of the pure people. I have striven to paint a rather elaborate picture here, but if you will try to picture this word-painting in your mind, you will begin to understand the essence of Nazism, and indeed all ultranationalism.

In this way, Jews who had lived in German lands for centuries were still defined as aliens.

The notion of the Jew as representative of banking capital – or “parasitic” capitalism was an old one, but it was married to new organic notions of nationhood that defined industrial capital with “national” capitalists. That is, industrial capital was of the land and the soil; i.e., it was “organic” and “natural” (see above) and was run by true Germans (the pure people).

Industrial capital could not migrate at a whim to other lands, and hence was rooted in the land as a plant is rooted in the soil (this was before outsourcing and offshoring). The Jew was seen as a “rootless cosmopolitan”, having no real (“organic”) ties to the land, and hence, a sort of a suspect traitor by default.

The connection of Jews with lack of patriotism, moral degeneracy, scorn for national values, etc. is another long-standing charge. Diaspora Jews tended to be rebels and were often hostile to their host nations, regarding such nations, often rightly so, as hostile to Jews. Furthermore, Jews regarded societies with strong national values, especially religious values, as bad for the Jews, again often rightly so.

The connection with Nazism refers to 1920’s Germany, when many liberal Germans were questioning the nation’s values, which they felt had led them into a disastrous war that had ruined the land. Amongst this group were a number of prominent Jewish comedians, actors, filmmakers, play directors, authors, etc.

As Jews were only

Many German Jews had actually fought bravely for Germany in World War 1, and even in the US, US Jewry largely supported the Germans until the US got into the war, because so many US Jews had German roots, and because Germany was regarded as the cultural center of World Jewry.

Those questioning German values were de facto defined as being unpatriotic. Actually, they were the finest of their generation, and their questioning spirit was right and proper.

Moral degeneracy refers mostly to 1920’s Berlin, teeming with artists, writers, actors, playwrights, directors, drug users, drinkers, prostitutes, and especially homosexuals and bisexuals. Christopher Isherwood comes to mind. Surely most of these folks were Gentiles, but once again, Jews being prominent in the arts, they were overrepresented among this group, and it came to be associated with Jews. Most Germans were still quite conservative, and the antics of the Berlin crowd outraged a traditional population.

The association of Jews with both capitalism and Communism is one of the mysteries of Nazism. Yet Nazism promised to transcend both capitalism and Communism. The newly emerging capitalism was vicious and brutal and seemed to lack all morals, and traditional people regarded it with alarm.

Communism was regarded by the German middle class as a direct threat. In particular, Communism, being explicitly opposed to ethnic nationalism, was regarded as Enemy Number One by nationalists of every stripe – and still is to this day.

Jews were prominent in both German capitalism and Communism, and in the early development of both systems in general. The rational explanation for this is that “Jews lead movements.”

But the Nazis looked at the Jewish factory owner locked in savage conflict with the radicalized Leftist union currently striking his plant and concluded that the owner and his workers must be in cahoots, part of a conspiracy to tear the land apart in order to seize power for the Jews.]

Late capitalism, as forcefully imposed by the centralized bureaucratic state, converged with a fanatical and rabidly xenophobic and very ideological late nationalism of the “Vesrspaeteten Nationen” with a history of religious anti-Semitism dating back to the Middle Ages and the crusader expeditions that attacked Jewish villages in central Europe en route to Palestine, a religious exclusionism that targeted both Muslims and Jews in Andalusian Spain and that shaped part of European identity in terms of both an external determinant — the Muslims — and an internal determinant — the Jews.

But the Nazis’ obsession with the annihilation of the Jews was also fired by an ideology that incorporated totalitarian social engineering, founded upon social Darwinism and assorted recent biological discoveries that were applied to human beings, together with a populist romantic socialism that was hostile to communism, democratic socialism and liberalism, all regarded as alien to the “Volksgeist”, “the spirit of the people”.

[RL: This explains how Nazism could have espoused a strange fake socialism “rooted in the land” while opposing everything on the Left as being de facto unpatriotic. The fact that the Nazis targeted the entire Left shows how bizarre the notion that Nazism is a leftwing movement really is.]

This form of pseudo-scientifically justified and coldly carried out mass extermination would not have been possible without a strong ability to compartmentalize between the bureaucratic functionary and the duty to obey orders, on the one hand, and the individual and his private moral sphere on the other, a phenomenon that is one of the characteristics of the modern state apparatus.

Nor would it have been possible without all the business of documentation, recording and archiving, which is also a characteristic of the modern state.

The irony of all this pseudo-scientific human taxonomy and the obsessive documentation of the names, addresses, confiscated possessions and physical details of the people who were rounded up and freighted to the concentration camps and from there to the gas chambers is that this paperwork has become the most important primary historical source for the Holocaust and the most important instrument with which to refute the claims of those who deny it occurred or belittle its magnitude.

[RL: Yes, the Nazis, in their bureaucratic zeal and German thoroughness and work ethic, pretty much wrote everything down, even if only in code. Thus making Holocaust Denial an even more trying task and ultimately an exercise in absurdity in the face of the mountain of contrary documentation.]

It is not so much the sheer numbers of victims that distinguishes the Holocaust. As unique as it was in the 20th century, millions of native inhabitants were exterminated en masse in the Americas over the course of previous centuries.

Nor is it just a question of scale: many more millions died in the course of World War II, alone, than in the Nazi gas chambers and these included Russians, Germans, Poles, French, Italians and many other nationalities.

The true horror of the Holocaust resides not only in the deliberate singling out of entire peoples — Jews and Gypsies — for extermination and in the scale of this crime, but also in the totality of the target and the “rational” way in which it was carried out.

[RL: This is apparently accurate, but I am very wary of the typically-Jewish efforts to make the Holocaust into the ultimate massacre of all time, such that we cannot even use words like Holocaust for other genocides. To do so, according to perverse tribal-nationalistic Jews, is somehow…get this – anti-Semitism! Ridiculous.]

Jews were snatched from their homes amid the general silence of their neighbors, a silence interspersed by hatemongering by anti-Semitic groups and by the active complicity of informers. Most of the Jews who died in the concentration camps were not Zionists; in fact, many may not have even heard of Zionism.

[RL: This is an important point, and seeing as it is the case, how is it now that the super-racist Zionist state has appointed itself Ultimate Spokesman for these largely anti-Zionist Jews, anyway?]

Moreover, the role of the Zionist movement in saving Jews, or in conspiring with the Nazis, was very marginal, regardless of the number of studies that have been produced on both cases and regardless of the fact that most of their findings have been corroborated.

[RL: This is a good point. Zionism did collaborate with the Nazis in various ways. For the most part, they were only interested in saving those Jews who were Zionists and all the rest could just die. Zionists actively worked to keep Jews from fleeing to places other than Palestine.

Zionists believed that Jews should be cut off from all escape routes except for Palestine, thereby forcing the European Jewish refugees into Palestine, where they were surely not wanted. This history is almost unknown to the vast majority of Americans. Lenni Brenner’s books are a good place to start your digging into this sordid history.

Such was, and is, the insanity of the doctrine that undergirds the Jewish state. On the other hand, the anti-Israel crowd has made much too much of this collaboration. This group, many of whom are out and out Holocaust Deniers and sadly even Nazi sympathizers, make much of the fact that “evil Zionists worked with the Nazis.”

Worked with the Nazis to do what? Apparently to help kill Jews. Except the Nazi “good guys” never killed any Jews because the “Holohoax” is a gigantic fraud! The wildly ironic discrepancies of these mutually contradictory lines is embarrassingly clear.]

Zionism did, indeed, have two faces; it was the perspectives and aims of the researchers that were and remain at odds. The Zionist movement began, and had set its sights on Palestine, long before the Holocaust.

[RL: Precisely! Let us chant this over and over, every time some misguided US liberal tells us that “Israel was created due to the Holocaust.” How many times have you heard that line?]

Zionists only used the Holocaust to justify their national project in hindsight, even if that justification is what drove some Arabs to deny the existence of the Holocaust.

Yet, while there are people who have felt that by minimizing or even refuting the Holocaust they undermine Jewish claims to a state in Palestine, the majority of educated and informed Arab opinion has never denied the Holocaust or the existence of anti-Semitism in Europe.

[RL: This would be news to me, but I am not an Arab. Most of the Arabs that I have known were Holocaust Deniers, including, I am ashamed to say, Arab Communists.]

In the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist movement, Holocaust Denial and Revisionism in its various insipid formations is spread out like ivy on an overgrown lawn. As a believer in the traditional Holocaust story, I have often felt like I was odd man out.

Rather, they have argued – correctly – that since this horror took place in Europe the Palestinians should not have to pay the price.

Although it vaguely existed as a blend between the residue of a religious culture and extremist nationalist ideas imported from Europe even in early stages,anti-Semitism in the sense of hostility towards the Jews only began to spread significantly in the Arab world in the form of cultural and intellectual output after 1967.

[RL: I don’t agree that anti-Semitism was a marginal factor in the Arab World before 1967, but I agree that it exploded after 1967. After 1967, also, many previously rather apathetic US Jews finally came around and starting supporting Israel full bore, and it was after that war that the Israeli Lobby in the US really exploded, as it was not really that powerful before.]

Clearly, the rise of this phenomenon coincided with the rise of a metaphysical attitude that sought to explain the overwhelming Arab defeat of that year in terms of the confrontation with an absolute evil bent on a global conspiracy of the nature of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which has been proven to be an invention of the Russian secret service at the end of the 19th century but which nevertheless found many gullible ears in the Arab world in the wake of the 1967 defeat.

[RL: How tiresome is it to hear the line that The Protocols may indeed be a forgery but they still accurately describe the agenda of the Jews? The curious are urged to read the Protocols. Don’t worry, you won’t catch a disease from reading it. It’s a pretty short document and you can read it quickly online in a number of places.]

Reading it, one is struck by how silly and paranoid this document really is. Nor does it have much relation to reality, except that I agree that various wealthy Jews have indeed conspired to control the media in various Western countries in the 1900’s, more to create an environment that is safe for the Jews in that country than for any nefarious means.

Holocaust denial similarly emerged during this period and in the same spirit of a fantastic conspiracy theory that ascribed to an international Jewish cabal the power to invent and dupe the entire world into believing a stupendous set of lies.

I would like to suggest that there are two types of Holocaust denial. One, espoused by elements of the European traditional right and neo-ultra-right, is to deny it happened. This form has not acquired sufficient roots to become a determinant of the behavior of nations and societies.

The other form of denial is to ignore that the Holocaust occurred within a particular historic context and, hence, to deal with it as some fiendish aberration that somehow occurred outside the bounds of time and place.

[RL: I think this is very important. Jews and their allies have worked very hard at the mystification of the Holocaust, along with the mystification of anti-Semitism. In practice, the two are simply tied together. Why did the Holocaust happen?

According to the Jewish line, it was an outbreak of sheer evil that occurred for no reason at all, other than “pure hatred”. Why were these folks seized by such “pure hatred” anyway? Because they were simply evil. How do we know they were evil? Because they were anti-Semites. How do we know anti-Semites are evil? Well, because Jews say they are. Starting to get the feel for the inane circularity of this approach?

Did Jews do anything to make any of these anti-Semitic nasties mad? Nope. Well then, why did the ugly little anti-Semite devils hate Jews, other than the fact that the were just lil’ balls of evil in human form and all that? A very typical Jewish response is…get this – no reason! Ok, now please, try to stop laughing. Jews actually believe that millions of folks hate Jews for absolutely no reason whatsoever . Does it make sense? Nope. Does it serve Jewish ego-defensive needs? Sure.

Or, sometimes, the truly ludicrous Jewish chauvinist argument is offered that because Jews represented good (with a capital G), this infuriated the anti-Semitic beasties so much that they tried to wipe out the Jews. This profoundly disturbed way of thinking is actually very common, especially amongst more militant Jews.

Well, other than being evil, why were these folks anti-Semites anyway? The answer given is…they were always that way. Or, is is said about the Poles, “The Poles learn anti-Semitism at their mothers’ breasts.”

This seriously depressing analysis offers us neither hope nor understanding and merely serves Jewish needs for ego-defensive theories about their history.

The truth is that the only fraud about the Holocaust is the Jewish mystification of it. The sad fact is that the Holocaust was rooted in normal human tendencies that lie within all of us, and if we do not work hard to nip these tendencies in the bud, Holocaust-like phenomena can occur over and over again.]

Some regular, ordinary Nazis, people just like you and me, except that they had fallen into the trap of ultranationalist genocidal racism, play with a kitten they found. As you can see, these folks are not the pure evil people Jews make them out to be. Evil people don’t play with kittens – that’s what folks like you and me do. These are just regular folks who took a really, really wrong turn.
Yet they could be you and me, and you and me could be them. If you don’t believe that, toss it around in your head and see if it starts to make sense for a while.
Photo via Robert John, a colleague. His website is here. John is one of the pre-eminent scholars on the Middle East, especially Palestine.

 

One major consequence of this approach is that it inhibits the study of the Holocaust as a historical phenomenon and as a sobering primer on the dangers of racism, extremist nationalist chauvinism and totalitarian social engineering in modern mass societies.

[RL: Exactly. See my comments directly above.]

But Holocaust denial can assume another face, which is to reduce it to an instrument for realizing political ends. The Zionist movement has excelled in this, its rituals and rhetoric in commemoration of Holocaust victims far outstripping its concern for the victims and its activities to combat the phenomenon when it occurred.

[RL: See Norman Finkelstein’s “The Holocaust Industry” for more on the nauseating “Shoah Business” aspect of Jewish politics.]

In fact, the subject was not even on the agenda of the Jewish organized community, the “Yeshov”, in mandate Palestine during the war years and many Zionists at the time found it embarrassing to hear of Jews being dragged off to be slaughtered without putting up a resistance; it conflicted with the nationalist fighting spirit and the image of the new man they were trying to inculcate.

[RL: Exactly. And Holocaust survivors arriving in Israel were often regarded with open contempt and hostility by the abrasive “Jews with an attitude” Sabras.]

To some extent, this line continues to this day, as bad-ass Sabras attack Diaspora Jews, especially those in the US, as some species of traitorous wimps. The friction between Israeli and non-Israeli Jews is little known outside of Jewish circles.

It was not until the Eichmann trial that the embarrassed silence was broken and emotions suddenly gushed out.

In the course of Zionism’s attempts to portray the history of the entire Jewish people as one uninterrupted stream of oppression and persecution that culminated inevitably in the Holocaust.

[RL: I refer to this as the “false pogrom and persecution view of Jewish history”. It is extremely deeply rooted, even amongst liberal, secular, assimilated US Jews. Actually, it is mostly associated with Ashkenazi Jews and was traditionally not part of the worldview of Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews, although many non-Ashkenazim inside Israel have sadly taken this up. Students of ultranationalism will note that there is nothing unique about the Jewish craving to be a victim. It is simply a component of ultranationalism.

There is even a perverse human need to be a victim, which can be observed as a psychopathological symptom in many people, including those you know. On the individual level, ultranationalism is represented as egocentrism, and ultranationalism is simply egocentrism writ large across the face of the nation, with the tribe standing in for the ego.

Students of psychology are aware that egocentrism is associated with feelings of persecution, and grandiosity (manifested as ultranationalism on the tribal level) is associated with paranoia. Hence we can see that psychological processes that work on the ego level also manifest in aggregations of humans, including entire tribes and nations.]

Holocaust history has been transformed into an exclusively Israeli property.

Victims of the Nazi gas chambers have been nationalised and converted, in spite of themselves, either into an episode in the Zionist struggle to create a state or into an instrument for blackmailing others into supporting Zionist aims or for justifying the crimes the Zionist state perpetrates against others. It is as though the magnitude of the crime entitles Israel to play the victim par excellence or the victims’ sole proxy, placing it beyond accusations of wrongdoing because it is the victim by definition.

The Zionist casting of all Jews as victims of Nazi atrocities has given rise to two curious phenomena. The first is that any Israeli can speak and act as the victim even if he has more in common ideologically and psychologically with the offender or the “Capo” — the Jews who cooperated with the Nazis in the concentration camps.

In other words, the mere fact of being born to a Jewish mother somehow gives license to represent all victims, including in front of those who actually are more victims than he is and those who are more hostile to Nazism, racism and its offshoots.

The second phenomenon is the monopoly claimed by the Israeli ruling establishment to speak on behalf of Jews and Jewish history in general, which largely translates into soliciting, and pressuring for, political and financial support for Israel.

[RL: Feeling bad about the Holocaust? Sure you are. So fork over that donation to the Israeli Lobby today!]

In the first instance, the challenge of truly understanding and learning lessons from the Nazi phenomenon is reduced to something akin to a therapy session in which those in the role of victim help those in the role of perpetrator purge their guilt by satisfying the psychological and material demands of the former.

There is something morally repugnant in this passing of the sins, or innocence, of the fathers to the sons, as opposed to engaging in an objective process of historical investigation with the aim of combating racism in all forms and in all societies. After all, the main victims of European racism today are not Jews, and in Palestine Zionism is not the victim but the perpetrator.

Unfortunately, the Israeli-German therapy sessions ignore such stark realities and, in so doing, offer both the Israelis and the Germans carte blanche to vent their racism on others, as though the Holocaust were a purely German-Israeli concern and the greater phenomenon of racism something else entirely.

It is as if through their mutual catharsis with regard to the former they exonerate themselves from responsibility for the latter. Meanwhile, Zionism’s unwarranted, illogical and historically unsubstantiated monopoly on the role of Holocaust victims’ spokesperson sits well with Europe. Most of Zionism’s aims and demands do not require Europe to engage in a serious process of introspection in order to uproot the deeper causes that gave rise to the Holocaust.

Contrary to what one may logically expect, this suits Zionism’s purposes because it keeps the monolithic discreteness of the Holocaust intact and diminishes, in comparison, the significance of Europe’s other crimes. The upshot is to toss the entire Jewish question outside Europe and dump it in the Middle East. It may come as a relief to European officials to be able to exonerate themselves for the Holocaust by placating Israel with anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and even anti-Muslim sympathies.

[RL: Have you ever wondered what is behind the Europeans’ curious support for Israel? This is it – Holocaust guilt, and Jewish Zionists never dare let them forget it.]

If anything, however, this form of behavior confirms the continuation of the underlying syndrome, a syndrome that is nevertheless glossed over with a fresh bill of moral health, authorized and stamped by Israel after every visit of atonement a European leader makes to the “Yad Vashem” Museum in Jerusalem.

[RL: Surely it is a legitimate question to ask when radical, racist, nationalist and militant Jews will finally cease their never-ending demands for apologies from Europeans for this crime, even though those asked to apologize are typically now not those present at the scene of the crime, but their offspring.]

It is for this reason that all victims of racism across the world should campaign to break the Zionist hold over the role of spokesman for victims of the Holocaust. Conversely, the Arabs and Palestinians who deny the Holocaust offer European and Zionist racism no greater gift than this denial of the occurrence of the Holocaust.

[RL: I have always said that anti-Semites are the greatest gift that Zionists ever received.]

What possible Arab or Islamic interest can it serve to even offer to exonerate Europe of one of the blackest pages in its history? To do so is not only to absolve Europe of a crime that was, in fact, committed, but also to earn its contempt and to wake up one day to find Europe and Israel joining forces against Arab or Muslim Holocaust deniers with such venom that one might imagine that the Holocaust had occurred in Egypt or Iran and that Holocaust denial is a far graver crime than the perpetration of the Holocaust itself.

Holocaust denial is just plain stupid, also as a political argument. But Israel will be no less expedient in turning the provocation against its regional adversaries who had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

On the other hand, the Holocaust is a phenomenon that merits proper scholastic study, the purpose of which is to sort fact from fiction, and myth form reality. No incident in history lies beyond the realm of historical research.

[RL: Here Bishara delves into the all-too-typical, and silly, line we hear so often these days – that the research into the Holocaust is somehow banned! The many diligent Holocaust scholars toiling for years and decades would be very interested to learn that their studies are forbidden.]

In fact, the entire corpus of the Holocaust story is up for grabs, including the incident itself. The fact that Revisionists are reviled is because they are historically illiterate or deliberate historical forgers, not because inquiry is somehow banned.

This said, Tehran can hardly be said to have a tradition of Holocaust studies; the subject does not rate very high in Iranian academic priorities.

And a conference in Tehran that was proceeded by a political speech denying the Holocaust cannot be said to be an academic conference; it was a political demonstration, one that harms the Arabs and Muslims and serves only the ultra-right and neo-Nazi forces in Europe and the Zionist movement.

During World War II, when some Arabs and other Third World peoples were rooting for Germany because it was fighting the colonial powers France and Britain, the Arab and Third World left, which had allied with the Soviet Union, argued that it was wrong for the victims of racism to side with the racist Nazi regime. Their position was correct.

Today, there is not even a pragmatic immoral justification whatsoever for siding with European racism. Holocaust denial does not undermine the moral justifications for the existence of the state of Israel, as some imagine.

What it does, however, is hand the European right and Israel a convenient enemy upon which to unload their problems. This enemy comprises Palestinians and Arabs, specifically fundamentalist Muslims, those Bush is fond of calling “Islamic fascists”.

The initial Arab reaction to the Holocaust was simple and straightforward and much more rational. The Holocaust occurred, but it was a tragedy for which the Europeans, not the Arabs, should assume responsibility. This is the opinion that prevailed throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the sense of normalcy that survived in all of us continues to hold it.

Anti-Zionist Site Posts Nazi Propaganda

This is the usual “Judeo-Bolshevik”, Jews caused the Holocaust, variety. What’s next? Holocaust Denial? From Palestinestinktank, run by anti-Zionist Jews Gilad Atzmon and Mary Rizzo, with a lot of help from Jordanian Haitham Sabbah. This site is just getting worse and worse and more and more into rank, raw anti-Semitism. Way to go guys! Sooner or later, a vast number of anti-Zionists fall into this stinky anti-Semitic mud puddle. Why, I’m not sure. The behavior of Zionists in Palestine is pretty terrible and their buddies in the West control a lot of the media and a few of the governments. To be an anti-Zionist is to feel very helpless. It’s like you’re fighting a war against space aliens or something. The Palestinians don’t seem to have a chance, and the Zionists hold all the cards. It’s a very frustrating and enraging experience, and I guess the end result for a lot of folks experiencing this kind of frustrated rage is just to go anti-Semite. I can understand it, but adults ought to have more self-control. As for an analysis of the article itself. The article in question is quite good, and in general is not anti-Semitic, except where it echoes the Judeo-Bolshevik, Jews caused WW2, Jews caused the Holocaust crap. That article even outrageously implies that Jews gave Nazis the idea for the Holocaust! The poor innocent Nazis! They never wanted to kill all those people. But they developed their evil Nazi ideology from those wicked Jews! Poor Germans! Poor Hitler! My God. The main premise of the article is simply false. The premise is the typical Nazi and fascist accusation called Judeo-Bolshevism. Hitler set off the Holocaust in the name of this phantom. That is why Hitler tried to kill every single Jew on Earth – because Jews were Communists, and Communism was Jewish. The headquarters of World Communism was in Moscow in the USSR.When you run propaganda echoing the Judeo-Bolshevik line, you wittingly or not serve the interests of Nazi propaganda. I do not know if you know this. I have a policy on my blog that I do not run anti-Semitism. Also, my blog is officially pro-Jewish. I would like to point out that in addition to the Judeo-Bolshevik crap, that article also says Jews caused the  Holodomor. A Holodomor which never even happened. There was no Holodomor. There was no deliberate famine. Almost all scholars now agree on this. Even Robert Conquest, who singlehandedly did more than anyone else to promote the Holodomor lie, now agrees. The article also flirts with another lie. That the JewSSR (this is the lie that the article promotes – a lie called the JewSSR) killed tens of millions of Russian Christians. It is true that Communists killed 1.6 million people in the USSR, if we do not include the war. The overwhelming majority of Russians were Christians. In killing 1.6 million Soviets for whatever reason, it is clear that the overwhelming majority would be Christians. This is like accusing Mao of being a Buddhist-hater or Confucionist-hater for the deaths of millions in China. That the millions killed were Buddhists or  Confucionists is mere historical accident. Communists presided over the famine. Communists caused the deaths of 1.6 million people during peacetime over 32 years. Not Jews. Communists. The Jewish era in the USSR, such that it even existed, was over by 1927. Super-Jews even accuse Stalin of being an anti-Semite. Stalin was a reaction against the Jewish era in the USSR and he instituted a kind of Orthodox Christian very conservative Great Russianism. During the 1930’s, these evil Christian-hating and Christian-murdering Jews killed a very large number of the top Jews in the USSR. Funny how evil Jews even kill their own kind. Surely there was some evil Gentile-hating and Christian-hating conspiracy behind the self-immolation of those Judeo-Bolsheviks in 1937! This is a classic degeneration. Almost all anti-Zionists degenerate into this gutter European anti-Semitism at some point or another. Almost all of them either start echoing Nazi propaganda, or defend Nazis, or blame Jews for starting the war or setting off the Judeocide against themselves. Almost all of them at some point start flirting with some species of Holocaust Denial. Gilad Atzmon is an intellectual anti-Semite, and he and Mary have been flirting with anti-Semitism and fascist terminology, apparently ignorantly or unwittingly, for some time now. I do not know why they are doing this. Atzmon’s anti-Semitism gets worse by the year. Gilad is not a Nazi. Certainly Mary is not. I guess Haitham is not. But the whole Judeo-Bolshevik line, which this piece promotes, is anti-Semitic, and it does echo Nazi propaganda, whether they want to believe it or not. These people are just foolish. They are running anti-Semitism, promoting the most rank kind of anti-Semitism and in fact knowingly or not, fascist and even Nazi propaganda. I realize that they do not know what they are doing, but it’s still just wrong. These people are just idiots. Irresponsible idiots. What do they think they are doing?

Gilad Atzmon, Jewish Assimilation and the Roots of Jewish Hatred

Gilad Atzmon continues to post in the comments section. The following is the most recent exchange:

Lafayette: So, Gilad is not an anti-Semite, and is not against Jews or Judaism, but is against Jewishness? That’s a bit of a mouthful already – we’ll be tying ourselves in more knots with that one. Why not be an antisemite until Jews join ‘ Jews against Zionism’ or ‘Jews against Jewishness’ organisations in their millions, i.e. make some effort to dissociate themselves from the Zionists and the elite financial mafia Gilad: 2 reasons I can think of a. to expect Jews to operate politically and collectively is to assume that Jews are a ‘collective’ after all and this in itself is an approval of the Zionist philosophy. b. Jews against, X , Y or Z is in itself a tribal and racially orientated mind set, thus it must be opposed. The bottom line is very simple. There is no collective or a national solution to the Jewish problem. The only possible solution is personal and individual, joining humanity for real rather than imposing yourself on humanity.

When Gilad Atzmon says Jews need to join humanity, he only reiterates the progressive project vis a vis the Jews since the Jews left the ghettos. The need for the Jews to assimilate and that the progressive solution to the Jewish Question is the assimilation of the Jews. That this is still a problem today is highlighted by Gilad’s call. Let us recall that when the Jews first came out of the ghettos 200 years ago when they were liberated by Napoleon (all Jews today are Napoleon’s children as much as Abraham’s – most people do not recognize this), progressive European opinion felt that they were a mess. They were backwards, tribal, inward-looking, given to superstition and stupidity, and consumed with fear, suspicion and hatred for non-Jews. Centuries in ghettos had not been kind to them. Progressive, anti-racist forces felt that the best remedy for these messed-up people and advocated the progressive solution of the assimilation of the Jews. This is really what Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” (a very difficult read) is in part about. It is really not an anti-Semitic document, though the anti-Semites love to claim it as their own. In truth, it is allegorical, whereby “Judaism” stands for “capitalism.” Over 200 years, the debate about Jewish assimilation has raged in the Jewish press, but most of the rest of us know nothing of it. Out of this debate came Reform Judaism. A reaction to it, Modern Orthodox Judaism, actually only began in the late 1800’s in an attempt to revive the old ghetto religion. The resurrection of Orthodox Judaism was in more ways than one a return to the ghetto. So, in a similar way, was Zionism, the ultimate Jewish rejection of assimilation. To this day, the least assimilated Jews, and those who behave in the most unpleasant Jewish stereotypes, are in Israel and the Orthodox community. Antisemites make much of Jewish hatred. There is nothing new here. It’s just human tribalism. An allegory would be the racial hatred of the White nationalists. Yes, the Super Jews and the White nationalists are mirrored reflections of one and the same. The Jews were not stupid. As a minority tribe living surrounded by a majority, they were determined to prevent the extinction of their tribe. They probably learned what the WN’s are figuring out. Mere exhortations to not marry with the Other are futile. In order to truly maintain your line and prevent extinction, separation is probably necessary. In some cases, the Jews built those damned ghettos themselves to prevent assimilation. To prevent intermarriage, strong rules were set up to prevent Jewish women from marrying out. In Spain, a Jewish woman who had sex with a Gentile was sentenced to having her nose cut off. The solution for wandering males was that their offspring were lost to the tribe. Hence, the Jews were able to maintain their genetic line and tribal existence for centuries in a hostile Europe. But nasty laws could not always be enforced. Telling your people to only marry another Jew was not good enough. Children are rebellious and especially young women like to defy their fathers by marrying the Other. To prevent sex with Gentiles, it was necessary to prevent friendship with Gentiles. You can’t say you can be friends with the Gentiles but you can’t have sex with them. We are mammals. Friendship leads to sex, there is no stopping it. In the 1800’s and certainly before, an Orthodox Jew would not eat with, nor drink tea with, a Gentile under any circumstances. To this day the Yemeni Jews refuse to eat with their Gentile neighbors and have little to do with them. Eating together leads to friendship, friendship leads to sex, sex leads to tribal extinction. It’s all so rational. But you can’t just forbid people to make friends. Kids and others are rebellious. You have to give people a good reason not to befriend the Other, or they will do just that. So Jewish Hatred was cultivated. The Jews promoted hatred of Gentiles in their customs and religion in order to keep their people apart from them, in order to prevent tribal extinction. Along with hatred comes fear, as usual. If the Gentiles were portrayed as genocidally murderous, rising up to Final Solution the Jews with every generation, as the idiot Jewish religious saying goes (“Every generation they rise up against us…”), you don’t want to associate with them anyway, even if you are a rebellious adolescent. This is the unalterable reality that the WN’s are discovering. Just telling Whites to mate with and befriend their own kind doesn’t work. White people are doing it anyway and you can’t stop them. In order to keep Whites from befriending non-Whites, which leads to having sex with them, which leads to White extinction, the WN’s cultivate incessant hate propaganda against any and all non-Whites. Just check their websites. That’s the reason for all the hatred. The hatred is all about prevention of extinction. In this way also we see that Jewish hatred is not unique at all, but corollaries of it can be found in tribes all over the world. Jews are evil only in that human tribes are evil.

Gilad Atzmon is Continuing to Post Here

A celebrity, Gilad Atzmon, is continuing to post on this humble blog abode, on the Fuck Off Israel thread. He may be here for some time, at least on that thread. Background on Atzmon is in this post. I never thought this silly little blog would attract real live famous people. If you are interested in what he has to say, you can head on over there.

Gilad Atzmon On Robert Lindsay

It’s not very often that we get celebrity commenters on the blog, but Gilad Atzmon stopped by the other day to comment on the Fuck Off Israel thread, which seems to be breaking all records with 182 comments so far. If you do not know who Atzmon is, he is an author and a jazz musician. This Wikipedia article should sum him up well. He is Jewish and is a former resident of Israel, now an expat living in the UK. He is quite controversial, and there has been a big fight about him on the British Left concerning whether or not he is a Jewish anti-Semite. It’s clear that he is not an anti-Semite at all on a personal level as he has Jewish members in his band. This alone sets him apart from most anti-Semites, most of whom simply dislike most to all Jews period on a personal level. This is one of the lies of the Super Jews – that there are all these horrible anti-Semitic neo-Nazis running around saying, “Some of my best friends are…” Forget it. I know these people. They don’t like Jews – any Jews. I think that primarily Atzmon is just an anti-Zionist Jew who is trying to figure out why Jewish Zionists act like they do, and his analysis has taken him into some funny places. I would suggest that if Atzmon wants to find out what motivates his fellow Israelis, he should consult anthropology texts. There is nothing unique about Zionist behavior. It’s simply normal tribal behavior for human beings. This is the way that human tribes act, the way they have acted for thousands of years and the way they will continue to act until we detribalize mankind. The more ethnocentric the tribe, the more likely it will display these typical tribal behaviors. There is nothing uniquely evil about the Jews only in that there is something uniquely evil about mankind. This is a major flaw of anti-Semitic critique. For those unfamiliar, the Bund was one of the original Jewish trade union political formations in Russia. It was very leftwing. I always liked them, but I knew an Arab Communist member of the PFLP who really hated the Bund.

Terminology wise, ….Rather than being an anti Semite, which is a very misleading title, I am anti Jewish (ness), I oppose Jewish ideology right left and centre.I do not have a problem with Jewish people and I tend to agree that a Jewish cab driver or my Jewish band members have nothing to do with the crime committed in the name of the Jews. I refrain from criticising Judaism, though I expose some inhuman narratives within the biblical context. It is actually the current implementation of these thoughts that is so devastating. It is the transformation of the Bible from a spiritual text into a land registry which I oppose. Jewish nationalists in the Left and in the Right are complicit in a similar racially orientated tribal activism. This applies to Zionists and to the Bund!!! The crime of Zionism is well established. The problem with the Bund had been explored by Lenin in 1903. The relevant text are available on line. I am actually far from being an opponent of Marxism or Bolshevism. I do differentiate between ideology and praxis. I can live in peace with Marxism as long as it promotes brotherhood and universal thought. I believe that materialism and class politics are far too restricting. Both are failing to explore the complexity of humanity and human landscape. The danger with left ideology is the product of some dogmatic tendencies. I believe in humanity, I believe in the spirit of freedom, I believe in philosophy as in love of wisdom. I do not find much of it in the institutional left discourse. Thus, I operate alone, and I am rather happy.

Israel Has No Right To Exist

This is an interesting comment about Israel from a recent post. The commenter is a Macedonian.

We had a fundraising meal for Gaza last night in my home city in Macedonia…I brought a very big dish of onion bhajis containing Jordanian spices as well as the usual cumin, fresh root ginger and fresh chillies, but most of the food was done by local Muslim women…and we raised many thousands of denars, maybe over ten thousand. Betty Hunter of the PSC (she sounds like a Geordie) was down to give the keynote speech. She’d made the trip specially by air to see us, and we provided an interpreter. Good speech, but personally (although I do it myself at times) I don’t think we should fuck around anymore calling for a Palestinian state as she did, since that is clearly not going to happen in the country of the blind. At least the first generation of Zionists were brutally honest. Israel was all about conquest. Now Lieberman is here and expressing the inner essence of Zionism once more: no compromise with the Palestinians, making a Hiroshima of Gaza is conceivable (Betty alluded to it last night), and a Palestinian state is absolutely out of the question. We should really thank Lieberman for being so clear. A Palestinian state is a nemesis for Israel, since it represents an end to expansionism and the expropriation of Palestinian land. It would be more realistic in these circumstances to make no bones about calling for the fall of the Israeli state, since it is clear, to me at least, that that way lies the only hope of justice for the Palestinians. This view comes up against “Israel’s right to exist” and fear of offending Jews. It is up to Jews if they want to support the genocide their Torah so clearly advocates. I think it would be more honest, rather than cowardly and politically expedient, to say that Israel does not have a right to exist. Not only does it not have the right, but demography, the lack of enthusiasm of Israeli Jews themselves for their Mediterranean stetl, and the world awakening in favour of the Palestinians do not make its survival longer than a generation likely or tenable…

I have always thought that the 2 state solution was pretty ridiculous. It made about as much sense as giving the South African Whites 8 No state anywhere has any kind of permanent right to exist. Maybe nations have a right to exist, but states? Why? Did Nazi Germany have a right to exist, Tojo’s Japan, Mussolini’s Italy? I say no. Israel has about as much right to exist as Apartheid South Africa, and we all know what happened to that place. The whole argument about “right to exist” is a fake argument. Why does any crappy, apartheid, racist state anywhere on Earth have some permanent right to exist? I’d be happy to see every one of them toppled. His points about the early Zionists at least being honest hit right on the head. Of course they were. There is something to be said about clearing the air, getting all the crap out of the way and being honest about one’s position. The current generations of serial liars, obfuscators and prevaricators is particularly disturbing, but it’s a good scam, because they’re fooled millions all over the world. The Palestinians and other Arabs have seen through this bullshit ideological saran wrap from Day One. In that sense, the Lieberman’s et al are a breath of fresh air. They’re merely exposing the true (and logical) face of Zionism for all to see. Hear hear.

Ethnocentrism, Racial Supremacism and Zionism

It really is a tricky subject, is it not? All humans are logically and normally ethnocentric. I said before that I have met folks all over the world, and they were all ethnocentric. But it is not just that! Many of them, especially in the 3rd World, are not only ethnocentric in that they love their race, ethnicity, tribe, nation, etc. but they really do think that their they are better than everybody else! This often takes the form that they are center of something or other. Hindu nationalists think that much of world civilization started with them. Chinese nationalists say that all four winds start in China, the Middle Kingdom, meaning it is the center of the world. Japan was the Land of the Rising Sun, the place where the sun itself actually came up and warmed the world. I talked to a Moroccan once who informed me that first of all, he was a Berber, not a Moroccan, but also that the Berbers had started all of modern man’s civilization. Vietnamese nationalists say that they are center of East Asia. It’s almost as if the ethnic nationalist sees themselves as like the Sun in the solar system, and other nations as revolving around them. I used to work with American Indians. There is no Amerindian solidarity, not even in the US. They dislike each other too much for that, and they care nothing about the Indians across the border. Dislike is too strong of a word. Indifference is better. The others are like they are almost not really there. Or if they are, they are not on the same level. It’s almost as if they are like those deer out in the fields, nice to look at, but not on the same level as fellow humans. They only cared about their own tribe! They were indifferent to the other tribes around them, and they were overtly hostile to some of them. I talked to some folks in the surrounding tribes and they were the same way. Now and again I would mention something about some other Indian tribe. The tribal members I was working with would act kind of bored, like this was not important. “Yeah,” they would say. “But that’s not us. They’re not us.” On the other hand, ethnocentrism can and does lead to supremacism, but most of the naturally ethnocentric folks I have met from other places were not all that racist. If they were, they would not have even been talking to me. One may logically ask what is wrong with supremacism. If you think about it logically, ethnic or racial supremacism taken to its logical end can lead only to expulsion, apartheid or separation of the outgroups or Other. Apartheid meaning any kind of ethnically restrictive legislation or practice including Jim Crow. Much of the polemic against the Jews is that they are some sort of supremacists. It’s true, but more for the less assimilated. The less assimilated the Jew, the more tribal, supremacist and bigoted they are. Anti-Semites act like this is something special about Jews, a uniquely evil fact. Yet when you spend time with other ethnic supremacists you realize how much their supremacism is simply a mirror of that of the Jews. So Jewish chauvinism, supremacism and racism is simply the human variety. What’s interesting is this statement: If you think about it logically, ethnic or racial supremacism taken to its logical end can lead only to expulsion, apartheid or separation of the outgroups or Other. And what exactly has happened in Israel? Precisely this, no? Israel is the racial ethnocentrism and supremacism of the Jews, codified into a political movement (Zionism) and taken to its logical and probably unavoidable conclusion. Things are not as hard to figure out as they seem sometimes.

"Israel's Key Vulnerability" by Abiezer Coppe

Here is another post by guest poster Abiezer Coppe, Israel’s Key Vulnerability. I agree with several of his points here. First of all, armed resistance to Israel by the Palestinians is clearly futile. What’s the point? They are up against the 4th largest army on Earth with 200 nuclear weapons. These measly rockets are going to beat them how. On the ground, there’s no contest. The Palestinians got creamed in this last invasion of Gaza. I agree that it is absurd for Hamas to declare to a victory when they just got their ass handed to them in the worst way, but this is how Arabs are. An Arab will never admit he lost. Even if he gets creamed worse than Custer at Little Bighorn, it’s still a Great Victory for the Mighty Arabs. I also agree that Israel has violated its own UN Charter that it signed in order to be admitted to the UN, and as such, I think Israel ought to be thrown out of the UN on its butt. This will never happen, but it’s a nice fantasy. I can see Abe Foxman and the US editorial pages squirming and writhing like Linda Blair in the Exorcist right now. Boycotts of Israel are driving the world’s Jews and their media and government Gentile buddies into insane conniption fits, but it’s a great idea. It worked for South Africa. It’s important to note that South African anti-apartheid Blacks who have been to Palestine often say that the Israeli Apartheid regime under which the Palestinians live is worse than Apartheid South Africa. So if it was righteous to boycott South Africa, and I say it was, it is even more righteous to boycott Israel. The Jews usually say an Israeli boycott is outrageously anti-Semitic because we are not boycotting all the other asshole countries on Earth. Instead we are singling out one asshole country, Israel, and letting the other anal pores off the hook. It’s Intra-Asshole Country Discrimination and dammit, it’s just not fair! Equal protection for assholes! I really do not know what to make of this bizarre argument, except to ask if anyone ever used it against the South African campaign. To Israel, I say, yeah we’re singling out as one Asshole Country in a world full of Butt Nations. One Buttland at a time, please. We will get to the others later on. I’ve long been a supporter of Fritz Fanon. The only anti-Semite I have ever met who truly hated Nazism was a Leftist Fritz Fanonist who likened the Palestinian liberation struggle to the Algerian Civil War.

Israel’s Key Vulnerability

Abiezer Coppe

Israel has once more sent out a message to the Islamic and Arab world with its onslaught on Gaza that the struggle for the Middle East will be uncompromisingly bloody and violent. It was the same message in the summer of 2006 with the invasion of the Lebanon, with the Qana massacre of 1996, with the invasion and the 18 year occupation of the Lebanon in 1982 to 2000, and all the way back to 1948. For those who abjure violence in their personal lives, and for those, like me, who have never carried or used a gun, the boycott campaign is an important tool of nonviolent struggle against the Occupation of the West Bank, and the racist polity within the ever shifting borders of Israel, the borderless state in Occupied Palestine. I admire Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s armed resistance against overwhelming force, but it should be by now clear after sixty one years that by itself armed resistance to Zionism will not lead to its overthrow. The most these organisations can do to Israel is harass, with as much impact as a wasp stinging a human being. This in itself is not negligible. The main effect of the missiles launched over Israel’s border is psychological terror, and occasional fatalities, against which the fourth most powerful military machine in the world is powerless. Psychological terror may discourage new Jewish immigrants from arriving in Israel, and that is to the good. However such tactics do not even elicit a pause from Israel’s political leadership, Right and Left, in the ongoing war on the Palestinians, the Zionist project of clearing the land of Arabs, and the continued illegal settlement by Jews of the Palestine’s West Bank. Clearly Hamas and other resistance organizations are quite powerless by themselves to stop Zionism in its tracks. In a defensive struggle the Shi’ite organization Hezbollah did succeed in throwing the IDF out of Lebanon in the year 2000, and successfully frustrated Israel’s attempt to reoccupy the Southern Lebanon in 2006. Israeli expansionism was thus contained. At no point in the last sixty one years have Arab armies succeeded in crossing Israel’s 1967 borders, or even in invading the annexed West Bank. Israel’s wars, including that of 1948, have been fought on the territory of other countries. The Yom Kippur War of 1973, although a partial defeat for the Arabs, did eventually lead to the return of the Sinai to Egypt (under American pressure) during the Carter administration. The regional military balance has been shifting in Israel’s favour for the last sixty years (Mayer 2008). Talk of Hamas’ “victory” in Gaza in 2009 is in my view self-deluding and misplaced. An unopposed massacre of over 1400 civilians is not a victory. I do not want to see the Palestinian resistance reduced to the equivalent of the Native American “ghost dances” of the 1880s, as the last resistance of the aboriginal inhabitants of Palestine is vanquished. I do not think for a moment that this will happen, because the Palestinian Diaspora now numbers more than 7 million, but the weakness of the opposition to the Zionist colonisation of Palestine within Israel is very concerning, and a helping hand from an international citizens’ boycott of Israeli goods and services is its chief, but not its only hope. Arab resistance and Arab demography are other reasons to hope. Armed resistance to military occupation, as enshrined in the UN charter, is legal: Israel itself is of doubtful legality, as outlined below. As the infamous Irgun terrorist Menachem Begin and future Israeli Prime Minister remarked the day after the UN vote on the partition of Palestine in November 1947: “The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized…Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever.” Israel has not accepted a single UN resolution on Palestine from Day One, and its founding act as a state was a massive and violent process of ethnic cleansing, illegal in International Law. The current prime minster of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a direct descendant of the brand of Zionism represented by Begin. In order to be accepted as a member state in the United Nations, in 1949, Israel was required to endorse General Assembly Resolution 194, which recognizes the right of return of the Palestinian refugees and commits itself to the return of all “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours” (700,000 in total at the time), to its sovereign territory. Israel accepted, was made a member state and immediately after announced it had no intention of implementing the UN resolution. Israel thus announced its illegitimacy as a member state of the UN. The Security Council, dominated by the imperialist states of the West, and in particular the UK, which helped to implant Israel in the Middle East in the first place, went along for the ride, as did the Soviet Union. Israel’s key vulnerability lies in its being a trading state with a highly skilled workforce but few natural resources. The boycott of Israeli products, coupled with divestment in Israeli companies and a cultural embargo has to be a key way of supporting the Islamic and secular Palestinian resistance (PFLP), as well as a way of applying pressure to the Zionist establishment to moderate its penchant for atrocities, encouraging dissent within Israel and the deepening of existing fissures within Israeli society. If an international boycott can be linked to the issue of Return for the Palestinians and the cancellation of the Jewish Right of Return, an uncontroversial strategic goal in support of the Palestinians can be flagged up for the movement. In January 2009 479 Israeli citizens signed a document called A Call From Israeli Citizens calling for the boycott of Israeli products, divestment from and sanctions against Israel as the only way forward to begin the Civil-ization (in both senses – demilitarisation as well – Occupied Palestine to become a civilian society once again rather than a garrison state) of the Zionist military machine and stop the ongoing war on the Palestinian population. In the 1980s Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli writer and ex-deputy mayor of Jerusalem, ran the West Bank Data Project, which analyzed the interaction of the Israeli and Palestinian economies in the Occupation. The resulting study concluded that the West Bank had effectively been annexed by Israel, not merely occupied (Benvenisti 1995). As pre-1967 Israel was also an annexation by military force, accompanied by some strong arming of Truman and the infant United Nations by Zionist elements in the American Jewish community, the term “Occupied Palestine” correctly refers to the whole of the land between the river Jordan and the sea. Any other designation fudges the evidence, which suggests that the military occupation of the West Bank will remain until the post-1948 colonial regime itself is either brought down or collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions, to be replaced by a non-colonial political order and the re-establishment of political and economic equality between Arab and Jew. Before 1967 Palestinian civilians of Israel also lived under a military occupation, and were in a similar position politically to those of the West Bank and Gaza now. The Palestinian American writer Rashid Khalidi uses the term helot (a term from the Greek language of Ancient Greece to designate an indeterminate status between that of a slave and that of a citizen) to designate the position of Palestinian civilians who have neither the civil rights nor the political opportunity to influence the behaviour of the state that dominates and controls their lives in endlessly demeaning and demoralising ways. Palestinian terror in the form of suicide bombing, a response of the powerless to the removal of liberty and civil rights and the ongoing illegal confiscation of land for Jewish settlements, first arose in Palestine in 1994, the year in which the grotesquely unjust Oslo Peace Process faltered. In the same year, the Jewish physician and the extremist Kach Party member Baruch Goldstein, who now has a shrine in his honour drawing hundreds of tourists and supporters, murdered 29 Muslims at prayer and wounded a further 150 at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron. Israeli Jews who view suicide bombing as a peculiarly Palestinian or Islamic pathology should recall the biblical story of Samson, the first recorded suicide attacker, and ask themselves under what extreme conditions of dispossession and oppression, and under what conditions of political despair, would they themselves consider such an act to be an attractive course of action. Those who do not like equality before the law and citizenship for all will leave, just as the Algerian French did together with some of the pieds noirs in 1962, helping to solve the problem of housing some of the Palestinian refugees from Occupied Palestine at a stroke. Frantz Fanon’s two most important books, Black Skin, White Masks, and The Wretched of the Earth, have now been translated into Hebrew as of 2004. I am sure that they have been available in Arabic for a long time, but the political culture of the Hebrews is backward and inward looking, which is to be expected in a colonial state. Were the champion of the Algerian liberation struggle Fanon alive today (he would be 82 years old) he would certainly support the Palestinians. It is our privilege and  duty as free citizens of the international community to do the same by supporting the boycott of Israeli goods. Dorothy Naor, a 77 year old Jewish Israeli with whom I have been in email contact since the invasion of Gaza, is a signatory to the aforementioned boycott document A Call From Israeli Citizens, has been an Israeli resident of Occupied Palestine since 1958, immigrating from the USA. Her activism starts from the premise that the occupation of Palestine, of which she is part as an American Jew, began in 1948, and can be reversed. She is one of a very small minority of historically conscious Israeli Jews. Reversing a colonial occupation, which in this case does not mean throwing the colonists out, is an enormously ambitious project, but it can be done, and the worldwide tide of protest and action is rising.

References

Mayer, Arno J. 2008. Plowshares Into Swords: From Zionism to Israel. London, New York: Verso Books. Benvenisti, Meron. 1995. Intimate Enemies, Jews and Arabs in a Shared Land. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ethnic Nationalism: Good For Jews, Bad For White Gentiles

Condemning Zionism as a racist inhuman ideology similar to Nazism only makes sense if you are a non-racist or an anti-racist. It doesn’t make sense if  you are any kind of an ethnic nationalist or bigot yourself. This is why most of the Arab critiques against Zionism fall flat. Islamists and Arab nationalists of course have an excellent critique of Zionism, but they have nothing to offer instead but another variety of racism, bigotry and supremacism. Arab nationalists wish to replace the Zionist Jewish racist state with a racist Arab nationalist state, and believe me, the Arab nationalists make Zionism look like child’s play. Try to point this out to any Arab nationalist and you get a barrage of crap and defenses in reply. Try to point out that they are a bunch of anti-Semites and they throw you out of the group and accuse you of being a Zionist spy. Nowadays, Arab nationalism, even Arab Communism of all things, is all tied up in Islamism, and most Arab nationalists, even Arab Communists, are overt apologists for Islam. Except for the leftwing Arab women. They have a consistent critique of both Zionism as a racist oppressor of them as ethnic entities and of Islam as a religious oppressor of them as females. Arab nationalists deny or apologize for the most outrageous crimes of Arab nationalism. The genocide in Darfur is largely a result of an Arab nationalist ideology via Qaddafi of Libya infecting a sector of Arabized tribes in North Sudan and their elite in Khartoum. So, the Darfur genocide more than anything else is another one of the endless crimes and mass murders committed in the name of Arab nationalism. It is important not to pin this on all of the Arabs of Sudan. The largest Arabized tribal grouping in Darfur has long gotten along with the African tribes in Darfur, and they have stayed completely out of the conflict, despite risks to their safety from the Arab Nazis in Khartoum for doing so. So those Zionist quotes in the previous post that the Arab nationalists find so abhorrent find their mirror in the same ideology of the Arab nationalists. They wish to impose on the Israeli Jews an Arab version of the same Zionist racist crap that got imposed on them. Forget it! Life is not a zero-sum game played out by barbaric Middle Eastern tribes. We in the West at least have moved beyond this. No ethnic nationalist anywhere has a right to condemn Zionism, which is what makes the White Nationalist and neo-Nazi critique of Zionism so absurd. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. No ethnic nationalist can condemn the ethnic nationalism of another. But the problem is that all of these are supremacist, disenfranchising and ultimately expansionist ways of thinking, and obviously they will clash. The Slobodians who mistreat the Ruritanians in Slobodia will face the wrath of the expansionist Ruritanians preaching Greater Ruritania in Ruritania. Those same Ruritanians who mistreat their own ethnic minority Slobodians in Ruritania face the wrath of the Slobodians preaching Greater Slobodia in Slobodia. Get it? Ethnic nationalism doesn’t work for the same reason any gathering or conglomeration of narcissists doesn’t work. Clashes between supremacists of the ego or the Reich are unavoidable. Why do you think rock bands never last? So all White nationalist critiques of Zionism, and the reaction is nearly instinctive, need to be rejected out of hand. If White  Gentiles deserve a White separatist state, how can supporters of such deny a similar thing to the Jews? They can’t. In the same way, anti-Zionists cannot possibly support White nationalism, or any other ethnic nationalism for that matter. Opposition to Zionism is part and parcel of opposition to ethnic nationalism. Let us take a look at one of Kevin MacDonald’s latest writings. MacDonald is an interesting fellow who has written a lot about Jews and has been accused of being an anti-Semite. Actually, much of what he says about them is simply true. It is perhaps due to that that the reaction to him has been so violent. After all, the most infuriating insults of all have some truth behind them and therefore sting the hardest. Unfortunately, in recent days, MacDonald is turning into an actual anti-Semite, but I guess after the Dresden Firestorm of attacks against him, it was an inevitable turn of mind. He still has a lot of good things to say, but we need to read him more critically now. MacDonald notes that he does support Zionism in an abstract sense, since he is a White nationalist and realizes the obvious fact that Zionism is just White nationalism for Jews. What makes him so mad is the same thing that has pissed off nationalists about Jews for 200 years. Jews are a bunch of hypocrites. As a minority in Western lands, they typically rebel against the society, culture and religion and work to dismantle them and turn them into some sort of deracinated or deculturalized mush. Supposedly this is done because ethnoculturally neutered states are safer for the Jews, but there may be other reasons. Your average Jew is raised from an early age to feel he is superior to the Gentiles around him, and in some respects this is true. So the rebellion may be from the point of view of a culture that sees itself as superior rebelling against a culture they see as inferior. Both of these reasons are probably why so many Diaspora Jews are rebels, but the good for the Jews thing is probably the main reason. White Gentile cultures with a single dominant ethnicity, culture and religion tied together by some sort of Volkisch nationalism have always been the hardest on the Jews. Christianity has a track record of centuries of evil and crimes against Jews, and Jews don’t forgive or forget easily. In fact, their latest motto seems to be a tribal “never forgive, never forget” thing. Obviously Hollywood Jews bash Christianity. How could they not? This is the WN complaint against Jews. MacDonald offers Jews a deal. WN’s will support Israel and Zionism if the Jewish Lobby works just as hard to retain White (where White includes Jews) political and cultural dominance in America. Jews won’t go for this. Ethnic nationalism is only ok for Jews. Everywhere else, especially in White Gentile nations, it needs to be dismantled and replaced with some sort of Brazilified racial/ethnic/cultural mystery casserole that if applied to Jews themselves would make them a mere memory in a few generations. So it’s not Zionism that WN’s object to. It’s Jewish hypocrisy, and the word “hypocrisy” nearly rhymes with the word “Jew.” As long as Jews lead the charge for throwing the world’s White Gentile cultures into a racial, ethnic, cultural and religious Cuisinart, they certainly can’t expect any support from ethnocentric White Gentiles for their own separatist playground in the Levant.

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