I have actually been working you know...

Nope, just been lazy and ill, however here is my recent work looking at anti-Semitism and the Muslim Brotherhood. Comments welcome

Introduction

‘Many among the people of the Book (Jews and Christians) wish they could somehow
turn you back to unbelief, due to their selfish envy, after the truth has become quite
clear to them. Forgive them and bear with them until Allah brings about His decision;
rest assured that Allah has power over everything.’ The Qur’an, al-baqarah – the cow [109] 2:[109][1]

[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: "We desire death like you desire life."’ Hamas MP Fathi Hammad[2]

In June 2007, after increasingly stringent complains from the last surviving child of Walt Disney and the corporation itself, it was announced that Farfour the Mouse, the co-host of the Hamas produced childrens program ‘Pioneers of Tomorrow’ had been martyred[3]. A somewhat transparent copy of Mickey Mouse, Farfour’s death ‘at the hands of the criminals, the murderers, the murderers of innocent children who killed Iman Hijo, Muhammad Al-Duro, and many others’ was solemnly conveyed by Saraa, the 11 year old ‘surviving’ presenter. His last onscreen appearance was being beaten to death by an actor playing an Israeli official seeking to buy Farfour’s land. In Farfour’s own words, ‘Grandpa entrusted me with this great trust but I don't know how to liberate this land from the filth of the criminal plundering Jews who killed my Grandpa and everybody’[4]. To its audience of 9-13 year olds, it communicated a series of classic anti-Semitic tropes, the Jew as land grabber, despoiler, murderer of innocents, a existential plague upon the entire Muslim Ummah. Thus a narrative of hatred was be transmitted via a modern and innocent pedagogical technique
The Muslim Brotherhood[5] was set up in 1928 in Egypt, the prime mover being Hassan Al-Banna, a language teacher. Growing in strength with the rise in Arab nationalism during the thirties, the movement was initially close to the ‘Free Officers’ who ceased power from the monarchy in 1952. Having proved under the old regime to be behind various acts of violence, it was not long before the Nationalist regime cracked down on the Brotherhood. Until the death of Gamel Nasser, the Brotherhood was to remain a suppressed party. However, the brotherhood had spread to other parts of the Sunni world, in particular, Lebanon, Syria and Transjordon. In Egypt itself, the Brotherhood has a network ‘numbering over a million’[6] sympathisers by 1952. By the 60s, large franchises of the movement were found in Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Pakistan and south-east Asia and its doctrines had been transmitted across the intra-Muslim schism to Shia Islamism. Beginning with the relaxation of proscription in Sadat’s Egypt, the Brotherhood began to expand further. The teachings of it’s foremost thinker Sayyid Qutb were widely propagated, funded by the new Saudi led phenomena of Petro-Islam.
In 1987, building on a considerable network of existing charities and social service providers, the Brotherhood formed Hamas[7] in Gaza. This was to be a political movement dedicated to both the brotherhood’s generic mission of re-Islamification and a particular mission of ‘resistance’ to the Israel state.
The Brotherhood’s motto is ‘Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope’[8]. Al-Banna, Qutb and Ahmed Yassin (the founder of Hamas) considered present society as corrupted by impiety and lacking the moral rectitude of early Islam. The seemly terminal decline of the Muslim world since the 17th century, culminating in the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 and the establishment of Israel in 1948 was taken as proof of this collective lack of faith. Qutb called this fallen state ‘Jahiliyyah’, recalling the environment of Arabia before the revelations of the Prophet, characterized by ‘vices and corruption…nervous and mental diseases and sensula disorders’[9]. By implementing Sharia, law divined from the Qur’an, the Sunnah and the Hadiths, the Brotherhood sought to ‘re-pristinate’ society. What was required ‘a “return” to the early communities of believers’, given that ‘…modernity had failed to deliver’[10]. Only by weaving together Muslim faith and the legal rules of the community could corruption be expelled. The path to this recreated utopia was to come through jihad, in particular outward worldly struggle. This struggle was a virtuous and necessary means to a glorious end.
The founding of Israel was taken as a standing insult to the Brothers faith. The movement had particularly taken off during the Arab revolt of 1936-39 against the British mandate and the Jewish communities within. After 1948, the Jewish state was perceived as both evidence of the moral fall of the Muslim world and as an existential threat to the future of Islam. The defeats of 1948 and 1967 were represented as systemic failures of the part of the traditional monarchies and the new nationalist regimes. It was to the Brothers, ‘divine punishment for forgetting religion’[11]. By the beginning of the 1st intifada (1987-93), the Muslim Brotherhood had placed the Israel/Palestine conflict at the centre of its discourse. Hamas would seek to take over leadership of the mass uprising, forming its own militia, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades[12] in 1992. Taking up Islamic Jihad’s tactic of suicide bombing in 1994, it became the leading practitioner of Palestinian terrorism by and during the ongoing 2nd or Al-Aqsa intifada in 2000. After taking part in the Palestinian Authority’s legislative elections in 2006, Hamas emerged as the majority party with 74 of the 132 seats. Tensions between the PLO/Fatah and Hamas rose during the summer of 2006 until outright fighting broke out. By the end of the year, Hamas were left masters of the Gaza strip and the PLO held power in the west bank. Ongoing negotiations to reform a national unity government have yet to bear fruit.
With regards to anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, there exist a rough binary divide in historiography[13]. Such analysts such as Daniel Pipes[14], Ronald L.Nettler and Robert S. Wistrich[15] have seen a continuity of ‘Judeophobia’ throughout Muslim history. From the Qur’an statements about the ‘treachery’ and ’deceit’ of the people of the book via the supposed golden age of medieval Islam to the bloody history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, Islam has always been opposed to the Jews. It is ironic that this narrative is echoed exactly by the leading Islamists in recent years (including Qutb and Madi). These ‘Essentialists’ see anti-Semitism as a core part of both Muslim identity and perception, ‘Islamic archetypes of the Jews…have, over the age, remained firmly rooted’[16]. While some such as Pipes are remarkable a-historic in their arguments[17], Nettler sees at least some dynamics in Muslim perceptions of Jews. During periods of stability, the Jew is just another class of dhimmah, but in times of crisis, the early Islamo-Jewish conflict is re-imagined as a matter of life and death.
Such ideological isolation is challenged by what might be termed ‘Modernists’. To Bernard Lewis[18], Gilles Kepel[19], Gudrun Kramer[20], Alexander Flores[21] and Mattias Küntzel[22], Islamic perceptions of the Jew are primarily shaped by the agency of modernity and European anti-Semitism. To these scholars, the intensifying conflict between Jews and Muslim during the modern period brought new elements into Islamic anti-Semitism. As Kramer notes, the blood libel was exported into Arab discourse ‘by local Christians (often supported by European Consuls, teachers and missionaries)’[23] starting with the Damascus affair of 1840[24]. In particular, European notions of the Jews as a meta-physical entity and threat to rootedness were to redefine Muslim/Jewish relationship amongst Islamist thinkers and activists. By importing anti-Semitic tropes from the European nationalists of the late 19th/early to mid 20th centuries, Islamists such as Qutb and Mawludi could combine the Koranic sectarianism with modern anxieties over identity, nationality and modernism. Jews became ‘harmful by their very character’[25]. While Küntzel directly ascribes this influx to Nazi propaganda, in particular the transmissions from the Zeesen aerial by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, the ‘cross-pollination’ is wider. In ‘publications, posters, cartoons, caricatures, films or newsreels’[26], from the Protocols to ‘the International Jew’ of Henry Ford to Spengler, the whole range of European anti-Semitism became part of the Islamist synthesis.
When examining this ‘modernist’ anti-Semitic narrative, it may help to use the main thrusts of its most durable legacy, the forgeries that are the Protocols. The work of the Russian secret police, the Protocols has become the anti-Manifesto of anti-Semites. Not only does it pertain to carry an elicit truth of the Jews’ evil; it also draws the contours of the ‘enemy’. The Jews control ‘…The despotism of Capital’[27] thus they are masters of new and disruptive economic patterns which they wield maliciously. They are arch-deceivers and would-be despots, practicing only ‘Force and Make-believe’[28]. They are the source of all dissonant thought, attacking tradition and rootedness. From ‘Darwinism’ to ‘Nietzsche-ism’ to godless communism, the Jews watched as these ‘disintegrating’[29] ideas weaken the Goyim. They seek the end of faith, they will ‘tear out of the mind of the “Goyim” the very principle of God-head and the spirit’[30]. They will set nation against nation for their own gain using ‘the guns of America or China or Japan’[31], regardless of the cost. They seek to poison the next generation, ‘We have fooled, bemused and corrupted the youth of the “Goyim”’[32] with false principles. Their entire relationship with Gentiles is parasitic, ‘The Goyim are a flock of sheep and we are the wolves’[33]
Thus the Jew in such anti-Semitic discourse is a world controlling entity[34], holding absolute economic and political power. Such a totem seeks to destroy nomic certainties and spread corruption, materialism and decadence in the place of faith. This imagined monster is ruthless, without compunction about shedding blood and a master of deceit and conspiracy. Indeed the Jew in such a narrative is the cogs behind history, the motive power, always malicious, ethereal and meta-physical. This is, while not racial but essentially cultural bigotry, a paradigm shift from what even Netter calls a ‘casual and descriptive’[35]religious hierarchy that existed before the perceived crisis of the Muslim Ummah. Before 1936, 'there could be no talk of anti-Semitism in Egypt’[36] or in Palestine, as Flores points out (EDIT, actually that is untrue, I have since found out sectarian violence had plagued Palestine since the Balfour Decaration in 1917, particular in the 1929 pogrom). In this crisis, the Jews were transformed from a well-behaved yet stubborn ‘unenlightened’ minority to a vigorous competing identity, linked to both modern upheaval and outside interference.
The Jewish ‘threat’ was much changed from the Jewish tribes of seventh century Arabia as was the state of the Muslim world. The Jew was now international, the Jew was now the master of capitalism and explosive new ideas, the Jew had harness nationalism and a world system that did not count Sultans and Emirs and commanders of the faithful. These narratives stated ‘the Jew is the source of all evil in the world….and the Shoah was therefore no crime’[37]. In the imaginings of the Islamists, this demonic force could not be conceived via the Qur’an alone, just as in the thoughts of the Turkish CUP on the Armenians could not rely of the ideas of the Sublime Porte[38]. European ‘modernist’ anti-Semitism allowed Islamists to frame this new contest within their ideological synthesis. It transformed that ‘everything Jewish (was) evil…’ into ‘…everything evil was Jewish’[39]. It was to bridge the Qur’an message of Muslim triumph to the crisis of the present.
For the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the nature of the Jew, of Zionism and of Israel continues to be immediate. The shocking reversal of the triumph of the Prophet over the Jews is taken as an affront at deep philosophical level. The frankly ‘modern’ aim to give their societies a binding and ‘magical’ meta-narrative of Allah’s wisdom and powers is based on the assumption of Islamic victory. In Hamas’ words, ‘Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day’[40], Israel was thus a suspension of Allah’s will. Making a political religion out of the Qur’an is fundamentally challenged by the existence of a successful and militarily strong Jewish state. The return of Al-Quds and Palestine from the sea to the river is a symbol of both Muslim revival via modernist Theocracy and an urgent matter of identity. It is the mythic core, worldly and indeed anti-spiritual, of a sanctified political system, inverted, it is the world turned upside down

[1] The Qur’an, trans. by F. Malik, http://www.mideastweb.org, 7/12/08 13pm
[2] http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1710.htm, 08/12/08, 13pm
[3] See http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1183053066461&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull 7/12/08 13pm
[4] http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP164207 7/12/08 13pm
[5] Full name - al-ikhwān al-muslimūn, or ‘The Society of the Muslim Brothers’
[6] G. Kepel, The Revenge of God, (Cambridge, Polity, 1994), pg. 18
[7] Full name - Harakat al-Muqāwama al-Islāmiyya or "Islamic Resistance Movement", the source of Hamas is disputed, its arabic translation is ‘zeal’ or ‘élan’, in hebrew, the cognate term means ‘to pillage’ or ‘to corrupt’
[8] H. Al-Banna, The Message of the Teachings in S. Qutb, Milestones, trans. A.B. al-Mehri, (Birmingham, Maktabah, 2006), pg. 270
[9] Qutb as quoted in H. Hansen & P. Kainz ‘Radical Islamism and Totalitarian Ideology: a Comparison of Sayyid Qutb’s Islamism with Marxism and National Socialism’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 2007, 8/1, pg. 58
[10] M. Whine, ‘Islamism and Totalitarianism: Similarities and Differences’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 2001, 2/2, pg. 59
[11] G. Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, (London, I.B. Taurus, 2006), pg. 63
[12] al-Qassam was a Palestinian militant, in communication with Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of the Palestinians. He led a violent struggle against the British Mandate government and Jewish communities till his death in a gun fight in 1935. Hamas’ rockets are named after him.
[13] A third camp might be added who deny that there is such a phenomena as Islamist anti-Semitism. Some like the late Edward Said are scholars attached to the increasing threadbare model of the Islamic Golden Age. Other like Juan Cole for instance place such anti-Semitism as a purely reactive and minor detail, coming entirely from the Israel occupation of Palestine and with no life beyond this. Added to this is the quite audaciously insane agrument that as Arabs are Semites as well, anti-Semitism (a intense irrational animus towards Jews) cannot effect Arabs
[14]D. Pipes, In the Path of God, (New York, Transaction Publishers, 2002)
[15] R.S. Wistrich, Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger (New York, The American Jewish Committee, 2002)
[16] R. Nettler, ‘Islamic Archetypes of the Jews: Then and Now’ in R. Wistrich ed. Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism in the Contemporary World, (New York, NYU press, 1990), pg. 63
[17] Indeed such is the iron determination of the Islamic dialectic to Pipes that he rivals Georgi Plekhanov in his humorless Hegelianism. One point should be noted. Such essentialist arguments could be transferred to Christian anti-Semitism. Thus, was there no change between the Judeophobia of Martin Luther and that CZ Codreanu for instance?
[18] B. Lewis, The Jews of Islam, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984)
[19]G. Kepel, 2006, ibid
[20] G. Kramer, ‘Anti-Semitism in the Islamic world: A Critical Review’, Die Welts Des Islam, 2006, 46/3, pg. 243-276
[21] A. Flores, ‘Judeophobia in Context: Anti-Semitism among Modern Palestinians’, Die Welts Des Islam, ibid, pg. 307-329
[22] M. Küntzel, ‘From Zeesen to Beirut: National Socialism and Islamic Anti-Semitism’, Telos, 2004, pg. 55-74
[23] G. Kramer, 2006, ibid, pg. 255
[24] See J. Frankel, The Damascus Affair: Ritual Murder, Politics and the Jews in 1840, (Cambridge, CUP, 1997)
[25] A. Flores, 2006, ibid, pg. 317
[26] G. Kramer, 2006, ibid, pg. 256
[27] Protocol 1, http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion1.htm#TABLE%20OF%20CONTENTS, 7/12/08 13pm
[28] ibid
[29] Protocol 2, ibid
[30] Protocol 4, ibid
[31] Protocol 7, ibid
[32] Protocol 9, ibid
[33] Protocol 11, ibid
[34] There is an old Jewish joke where one Jew sees another reading a deeply anti-Semitic paper. ‘My goodness, why would you read such stuff’, the other man replies ‘Well when I read Jewish journalists, its all woe is me, insecurity and angst, when I read this stuff, I’m told how incredibly powerful I am…’
[35] R.L. Nettler, Past Trial and Present Tribulations: A Muslim fundamentalist’s view of the Jews, (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1989), pg. 11
[36] M. Küntzel, 2004, ibid, pg. 64
[37] M. Küntzel, 2004, ibid, pg. 67
[38] See the chapter on Turkey and the Armenian Genocide in M Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy, (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006)
[39] M. Küntzel, 2004, ibid, pg. 71
[40] Article 11, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp 23/10/08 4 am

Now thats what I call Hyperbola....

However, I will not and do not congratulate him. He is a despot in the making and to congratulate him would be like thanking the guard before entering the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Thanks but no thanks. This entire congratulatory, conciliatory, thank you for screwing me in the rear attitude most conservatives exhibit was the reason for our downfall in this election. McCain practiced it with great finesse and look at him today. At his age, he had nothing to lose since he's in the twilight of his life but think about all the young people who never had a chance to grow up in the America most of us have grown up in.

This is not a day of celebration, it's a day of mourning. A National Day of Mourning.

For months I’ve been bitching about Hussein and watched this site and others call him every name in the book, all mostly justified, and for me to congratulate him now would be super hypocritical on my part.

That said, we are all free to say and do what we please in this dying Democracy so knock yourselves out.....but not me, sorry.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31817_President_Barack_Obama/comments/#ctop

Wing.....
Nut.....

Into the Blue Mountains....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4adxe5N6Ato

Great!

Of Generals and Weathermen....

William Ayres...Pah! Jonny McCain palls around with successful Terrorists, not wannabe hippies. Four figure terrorists, not your namby-pamby 'oh, pass the dookie', kaftan wearing freak-asaurs. Ones with nice uniforms and fine economic theories, guns, camps, torture chambers, you know, infrastructure. Jonny McCain admires their international reach (the 1976 assassination of former ambassador to the US and former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington), with ambition and a great deal of ingenuity, pluck if you will. Ones with access to delightful country retreats ('The McCains spent the three and a half days fishing for salmon and trout and riding horses').

This is not particularly to do with McCain, but rather the grime and the muck, the residual evil that enthusiastic dabbling in the Dirty Wars, both in South America and Asia that stuck to politicians of varied stripes in the west. Lest we forget....the Cold War was hot

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dinges/mccain-meets-a-bloody-dic_b_137422.html

God, I love this man

Pardon my flithy mouth, but I've got a right wet-on

Help, Help...I'm being assessed

I was wondering if any of you fine fellows and fellow-ettes might aid me.

I'm currently doing a project for the tail end of my BA. It will comprise of a reader of primary sources with commentary. The subject I've decided is the recent evolution of anti-semitic discourse.

Now I am taking stuff like the Hamas covenant, the protocols and Nazi/Iron Guard stuff as a starting point but I would love any examples in English that you might 'recommend' that show the changes i.e. the Zionist euphemism, the neo-protocols narrative, world control and conspiracy.

I'm looking for primary sources, preferably quite focussed (anti-Semites tend to be both remarkably foccussed and rambling simultaneously). I've already started (oh lucky me) on the Joe Quinn and SPSC stuff, but any help would be most welcome

Please post any links or ideas

Many thanks
SR (Stu)

Finally, a vast conspiracy of Lefties actually gets results....

Hat tip CT

'How many socialists do you know who lost millions in the recent stock market crashes? Just as I thought—none—and that’s not only because you don’t know any socialists. The truth is that we, the Socialist International Conspiracy, not only saw this coming, we are the ones who made it happen. The plan took shape during a particularly intense criticism/self-criticism session at our 2000 annual convention in a booth at an Akron IHOP. … we would focus on destroying capitalism, hedge fund by hedge fund. First, we selected a cadre of crusty punks from the streets of Seattle, stripped off their Che t-shirts, suited them up in Armani’s and wingtips, and introduced them to the concepts of derivatives and dental floss. Then we shipped them to Wall Street with firm instructions: Make as much money as you can… send it out to make more money by whatever dodgy means you can find – subprime loans, credit default swaps, pyramid schemes … Spend your own earnings in the most flamboyantly gross ways you can think of—$10,000 martinis, fountains of champagne – so as to fan the flames of class resentment. … we could not have inflicted such massive damage to capitalism if we hadn’t also planted skilled agents in high places within the government and various quasi-governmental agencies. Phil Gramm … will be getting a Hero of Socialism award … If you happened to have… noticed an impeccably dressed elderly man poking around under rocks, that was a certain Federal Reserve Chairman, looking for his weekly orders from the central committee. … After months of studying the candidates’ economic plans, we have determined that one of them, and only one, can be relied on to complete the destruction of capitalism. With high hopes and great confidence, the Socialist International Conspiracy endorses John McCain!'

http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2008/10/report-from-the-socialist-international-conspiracy.html

All hail the march of the Wreckers!

America the Insecure....

Over on Norm Geras' blog, he is running a series of posts by Samuel Fleischacker on the I/P conflict. I suggest it to anybody as a finely constructed argument and generally very alluminating. However in the latest post, Samuel makes the following assertion -

'Nationalism' is the name of a kind of political ideology, and it's not a synonym for 'patriotism'. (The United States, where people trumpet their patriotism all the time, is not a nationalist country at all: in fact few people here understand the idea.) It is a distinctive view of politics, according to which a primary purpose of government is to express and maintain the culture of a particular group'

This is, to my mind, a false conclusion. America is deeply nationalistic. The rituals and symbols of the Nation are deeply ingrained within society and culture. Indeed nationalism as an ideology in America is so successful, it has no antithesis i.e. Liberal or Socialist Internationalism. Local identities such as the states themselves are given gravitas by proclaiming their (unique) deep rootedness within American tradition and the mythical essence of Americanism. The integration of the melting pot required on entrance the primacy of American identity and loyalty. This nationalism, proudly liberal, is at the core of much American self-perseption, from Isolationists, cutting off the new Jerusalem from the corruption and strife of the Old World to the prophets of America's global mission, spreading the blessings of Liberty to those beyond the pale.

To give a topically example and to further my own pet theory of (soft) social scission, recent annoucements from the GOP's presidental campaign and it's surrogates have made a classical nationalistic case. Nancy Pfotenhauer divined a gap between an increasingly democratic northern Virginia and 'real' Virginia, that is one that is solid McCain territory. Thus there is a false Virginia, polluted, and a real one, that remains pristine.

Sarah Palin has developed a ongoing narrative between this dictotomy of Real and false. She adds more texture. The real is made of small towns, is kind, faithful, independant and hard working. Whilst she is clever enough not to spell out the antithesis of this that logically includes large urban areas, they are deeply 'anti-american'.

Such 'anti-americanism' has been taken up by a obsure representative, Michele Bachmann, to colour not only Obama but the entire Democratic party as an un-part of the nation.

Notice the terms are vague, what consists Americanism, what are the lines of demarcation between good and bad, what is to be done with such deviants is left unclear. This, to be fair, is the sound of the culture war reaching its climax, it's logical end. Faced with a seemly certain collaspe of both their political power and public repudiation of their philosophy, Republicans have sought to raise the stakes. The terms by which they have are unmistakably Nationalist.

I am very pro-american. Jokes about the stupidity of 'em yanks erks me as much as the French Military victories one (VERDUN, AUSTERLITZ, ROCROI, you fucking idiots). However, I know that there is more to that great nation that some spiel about manifest destiny, rugged individualism and the cult of the Cowboy. America is not defined by one narrative, that of cod-theocracy and ruthless capitalism. It is too large and too dynamic. The Socialist party of the US was one of the largest working class movements in the world, just behind the German SDP, it encompassed a naive but still powerful dream of a free yeomanry and of community. American as a label is big enough for Bill O'Reilly and Eddie Vedder, Ann Coulter and Ani Difranco, Joe the Plumber and Ralph Stanley. My nation was not just Robert Peel, it was also Fergus O'Connor, it is not just Richard Littlejohn but Dave Osler. I submit with Nationalism, like all political ideologies and recreational drugs, moderation is everything

For some righteous mirth on the subject, please check out Jon Stewart's take on http://www.thedailyshow.com/ (go to videos and look for the 20th Oct show - One of his best)

In Memorial

I've been busy with uni stuff so my posting habits have gone southwards, but I'm working on a few things to be up soon

However I have received some very sad news

Prof. Detlef Muhlberger, a lecturer at my university, passed away. A fine and insightful historian and despite a somewhat taciturn (and stereotypically teutonic) character, always willing to give time and thought to his student's worries and concerns. His work was of remarkable importance in the analysis of fascism, particularly the NSDAP. His advocacy of the Volkpartei thesis brought a great deal of light on the genesis and dynamics of the Nazis and his analysis of the output of the The Völkischer Beobachter is now the standard work on the Nazi press.

He will be missed and my thoughts are with his family

A list of his works:-

(ed.), The Social Basis of European Fascist Movement (London/New York/Sydney: Croom Helm, 1987) ISBN: 0-7099-3585-4

Hitler’s Followers. Studies in the Sociology of the Nazi Movement (London/New York: Routledge, 1991) ISBN: 0-415-00802-6

The Social Bases of Nazism, 1919-1933 (Cambridge: CUP, 2003) ISBN: 0-521-80285-7
Hitler’s Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920-1933. Vol. 1: Organisation & Development of the Nazi Party (Oxford/Bern/Berlin/Bruxelles/Frankfurt am Main/New York/ Wien: Peter Lang, 2004) ISBN: 3-906769-72-0 US-ISBN: 0-8204-5909-7

Hitler’s Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920-1933. Vol. 2: Nazi Ideology and Propaganda (Oxford/Bern/Berlin/Bruxelles/Frankfurt am Main/ New York/ Wien: Peter Lang, 2004) ISBN: 3-906769-72-0 US-ISBN: 0-8204-5909-7

Dog Whistles

Is it just me or do the following terms mean you are conversing with an idiot? -

*Kool-Aid

*Obama as a prefix

*Zio as a prefix

*Zanu Labour

*Islamo as a prefix

*Political Correctness gone mad

*blanket use of Neo-Con

*non-ironic use of 'Splitter'

*just as bad/worst than the Nazis

*I love Top Gear

*McStalin

*Dhmini

*references to the Siege of Vienna (generally the 1529 battle, the 1683 battle seems oddly neglected)

*Democratic Centralism

*David Duke is a reliable source

*Axis of Whatever

*What an intellect that Seamus Milne has?

*Femi-Nazi

*Eco-Nazi
*Nazi-Nazi


Further suggestions welcome

Degrees of seperation....

Zeev Sternhell, author of one of the great books of fascist analysis, 'Neither Right nor Left' has been injured in a pipe bomb attack 'as he stepped out of his front door to close the garden gate in Jerusalem'.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/26/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast1

The culprits seem to be Ultra-nationalists, seeking to kill a prominent supporter of the Peace Now movement. Indeed posters around his neighbourhood placed a One million Shekel bounty on such lives of such Activists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/29/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast

Sternhell is a controversial figure. His historical work, to my wee mind, has some flawed conclusions (such as the exception of the NSDAP from the Fascist genus). Yet, he remains a colossus of historical writing and a critics of one of the most (again, to my mind) grievous self inflicted wound on Israeli society, the settlement movement

His words from his hospital bed: -

"if this act was not committed by a deranged person but by someone who represents a political view, then this is the beginning of the disintegration of democracy."

"The very occurrence of the incident goes to illustrate the fragility of Israeli democracy, and the urgent need to defend it with determination and resolve,"

"if the intent was to terrorize, it has to be very clear that I am not easily intimidated; but the perpetrators tried to hurt not only me, but each and every one of my family members who could have opened the door, and for that there is no absolution and no forgiveness."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1024412.html

It is reassuring that the Government have taken this attack seriously, with both outgoing PM Olmert and the new Kadima leader Tzipi Livni.

However, Itamar Ben-Gvir of the National Jewish Front, a settler group was mealy mouthed, saying "I don't denounce this incident, but say categorically that we are not involved,"

Keep well, Zeev

The Fanatic and Social Schizophrenia

As I'm coming up to the last year in my BA (first lectures of term in but seven hours), I've been reading up on my planned thesis for my PhD. This will be focused on a comparative dissection of Political movements, their ideology and their acts of political violence. The case studies will hopefully be The Romanian Iron Guard, the Jacobins of the French Revolution and either the MB or the wider Salafist movement (tho just in case , I'm having a look at SR and Black/Red violence too). Every now and then a little weird gem comes my way - Such as this by Gilles Kepel

'If you take a character like Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian-born, German-educated leader of the group of 9/11 hijackers, you have the characteristic of schizophrenia: Atta wrote his M.A. thesis in Hamburg on the benefits of cohabitation between Christians and Muslims in the Syrian city of Aleppo, to keep its multi-cultural dimension, and how to develop solutions for Christians not to flee Aleppo. But this is the same man who, while he was with his group hijacking planes, had one of his Saudi acolytes write “the will of Mohamed Atta” which said “if any one of your victims is trying to rebel, slit his throat like the Prophet said and plunder him, but be careful when you plunder that you are not stabbed in the back,” using a very narrow interpretation of Qu’ranic verses, which puts you back in the 7th century A.D.'

http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/5014.html

Hobos and the struggle...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1JIa5r5nkE

Found this a while back, I think on CT, well worth a look

The Republic reviews....

Eurofascism by Øyvind Strømmen (ISBN 978-1-4303-1356-4)

Following on from my post on Sorel and Social Scission, Øyvind was kind enough to forward a copy of his book for me to review. Here goes...

Eurofascism is a well written and despite the labyrinthine nature of the subject, lucid account of nationalist politics today. Its thesis is simple and supported by a fine collection of sources. Fascists have not disappeared, rather they have 'evolved', seeking new forms in which to enact their ideology. These developments, from a Leninist vanguard conception of the 'Political Soldier' to the NER's move towards meta-politics and a Gramscian 'war of position' do not particularly change the nature of the beast. They remain incidental, clothing for the wolves. What remains constant is their 'Strong focus on the 'nation', on 'ethnicity' and in some cases
also on race' and 'An understanding of a certain European unity, mostly expressed in the division into Europeans and non-Europeans' (pg. 17).

Strømmen thus traces the roots in both shared ideas, political platforms and personnel between the myriad of groups and groupuscles. In these web like connections, he details a increasingly adept movement, one that is seeking and gaining respectability and legitimacy whilst continuing to be wedded to extremism. The threat of Jihadi terrorism or militant Islamism has become its core mystical mode of energising support. Islam becomes a perfect other, alien, dangerous and the engine behind devious plots. Eurabia, the protocols of the 'The Elders of Mecca' (pg. 49) has been taken on by Eurofascists as a prime motor for gaining votes, members and just as importantly legitimacy. And as he points out, this concentration on Muslims in no way prejudices the long held hatred of Jews. Similarly, in looking at the henotheistic nature of the new 'Fascist' international of the NRA and the Eurofascists, he detects the intrinsic violence within such weltanschuung. As a primer to the nationalist right of today, Eurofascism is a fine work.

Whilst I enjoyed the book and it has some great vignettes of the internal craziness of the far right, it misses a few tricks. Whilst Strømmen is more carefully than some in defining fascism, quoting the eminant Stanley Paine, other related definitions might have allowed a deeper understanding. One of the central planks of fascist ideology is the notion of rebirth and temporality. Time and again, the quotes Strømmen uses mention rebirth, regeneration, new eras and new men. This obsession with decay then rebirth is one of the grand motifs of the fascist mindset, one acknowledged by a considerable number of specialists in the field. The Kali Yuga (age of vice) of the post war age, where stability rather than crisis ruled the liberal world is to these fascists a terrible time of anomie and mediocrity. Without considering the fascist consideration of time and temporality, the bizarre lust for upheaval is near impossible to analyse properly.

Similarly I would have like more on the nature of the Eurabian myth and how it manifests itself as well as the nature of larger far right movements such as the 'reformed' FN, the Alleanza Nazionale and the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs. One of the main developments within the far right is to base an ethno-centric conception of society within a liberal framework. These 'ethno-cratic Liberalism 'respects' and 'defends' the rights of liberal society but excludes 'the other' from this gesellschaft. Here lies a far wider danger.

However, the book is remarkably readable and remains a fine investigation of a troubling phenomena. Whilst there might of been more meat to the thesis, it remains a fine addition. Hats off, Øyvind....and sorry for being such a pedant :)

Poetry Fruit Corner #3

Resistance by Humphrey Astley

I

The so-called path
of least resistance
lined with toes:
the early mourners crowd the flanks
of this procession, watching mankind
crawl through gallows
since the carpenter’s commission
was deployed.

II

Here is the schoolboy
kicking a stone
all the way to his door
and not knowing why;
there the deflection
that looses the birds
in a freak of directions
out from the birch.

III

Horizons are the churches
of the sceptic;
they lay thresholds
in a ring around his home.
And where the curvature of Earth
is found to falter,
with his twin eye
she reties the skyline’s bow.

IV

The so-called path
of least resistance
lined with toes:
the early mourners crowd the flanks
of this procession at the bell.
And it would be hell
without my fellow fool,
with whom I fear no heaven.

Hump's new book, excellent...http://www.lulu.com/content/2472098

If I may be so bold...

Found on Sarah's blog...

http://cafeturco.wordpress.com/about/

'I am a cicada, and one day the good, honest, hard-working ants will surely ask me to dance for a cup of soup. Until then, I’ll keep singing, regardless of what the ants think of me.'

Beautiful, methinks...

This is what a Socialist looks like...

Nearly forgot her 90th anniversary.

'My name is Fanya Kaplan. Today I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details. I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution. I was exiled to Akatoi for participating in an assassination attempt against a Tsarist official in Kiev. I spent eleven years at hard labour. After the Revolution I was freed. I favoured the Constituent Assembly and am still for it.'

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSkaplan.htm

May Tyrants tremble...

A League of Democracies? Conflicts and Problems

In Norman Geras' Blog, there is a regular feature, the profile that appears most Fridays. In it, various bloggers answer questions about themselves and their blogs. One of the regular questions is 'What would you do with the UN?'. A godly percentage of answers evolve around either reforming it into, or replacing it with a League of Democracies. Indeed the idea of a revived LOD (it has a long heritage) has moved from the blogosphere into mainstream politics with John McCain's endorsement and reported support from Obama's advisers. In response, defenders of the UN has come forth, declaring the project unworkable, a front for western Imperialism and a new and dangerous proto-entente that would threaten 'stability'.

I am quite taken by the idea but alas the practicalities seem overwhelming. Setting aside national sovereignty, which is worthy of a whole career spent on it...

1# The definition of a Democracy

How do we define a democratic nation, is it the forms of governance or the political culture or the government of the moment? My minimum definition of a functioning democracy; a freely elected legislative assembly, elected local government, an accountable executive, a independent judiciary, equality before the law, constitutional safeguards against state power and the defence of individuals' liberties (conscience, assembly, speech et al) and a free press is a web of subjective terms. Terms like freely elected, accountable, independent, liberties and a free press are still contested terms within well established democracies, they are an ongoing conversation about the nature of the demos. To construct a democratic minimum for the purposes of international matters is ossify an ongoing examination of these principles. Those on the libertarian right might suggest that the Scandinavian Social Democracies are merely a softer variety of statist authoritarianism and as such, cease to be meaningful democracies. Lest us not wander onto the subjet of Israel (defo a democracy). There is, of course, a popular long running and fallacious account of the US as a faux democracy. Yet for the institution to have moral and political legitimacy, these contradictions need answers and a common discourse. Can that arise?

Aside from trying to compare the electoral laws of various nations or to define weather what makes up a free press, the issue of the nature of the current governing party or parties arises. The Lega Nord or the FN or Vlaams Belang or the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs/Bündnis Zukunft Österreich are, to put it politely, agnostic to the claims of the demos over the ethnos yet they have gained political power at both local and national levels within democratic systems. Similarly Chavez's increasingly Caudrillist activities have sought to cement his personal power via a democratic mandate and within charitably 'democratic' norms. Again, Hamas' election victory in the PA assembly was 'free and fair' but the acolytes of the MB are constitutionally committed to destroy democracy. If a LOD member were to elect a party with a anti-democratic program which sought to enact illiberal measures via a democratic framework, would this popular bonapartism or dictatorship of the majority see them expelled? What forum would decide this?

In sum, how one defines not only the 'steady state' of democracy but the eddies and flows of party politics and the arising of anti-democratic Krakens 'in our midst's' remains a paralysing issue if one is serious about removing hypocrisy (one of the main charges against the UN) from supra-national cooperation.

2# What would be the mission of the LOD?

If the LOD became a reality, what goals should we set it. Its it the defence of democracy or the vigorous promotion. Is it to strengthen the 'internal' democratic workings of member nations, promoting 'good practice'. Would it have a judicial role in dealing with supra-national crime or crimes against humanity?

If we consider the external role, we again see contradictions. Spreading democracy is a virtue, it is the highest form of political organisation in my opinion, both morally and in function. Yet how to bring about that change within a democratic ethos is so circumstantial as to defy codification in the tomes of international law. The liberation of Iraq has brought about a democracy but one that has been ravaged by ethnic violence. Can Iraq rebuild a civic society after these scars? In the act of intervention, is such damage intrinsic? The famous comment by Robespierre about liberty on the end of Bayonets must raise the divide between assisting democracy and asserting it. Indeed an alliance of liberty was formed in the high of the first revolutionary war, between France and the series of new republics that sprung up under the cannons of 'Les Blues'. This league mixed a certain degree of French altruism and liberal solidarity with real politik, a need for money and men and a chauvinistic creed of spreading liberty's blessings to 'beyond the pale'

Consider this list of phantom republics, set up in the name of freedom - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_client_republic

The cynicism and the imported nature of change caused this little galaxy of liberty to fold once French arms were defeated. This admittedly extreme case merely highlights how contentious the export/nurturing of democracy can be.

As for the internal mission of a LOD, how would nation states react to such an infringement of their sovereignty. I would consider the abolition of the death penalty would be a fine role for the LOD to play but doubt that it would be 'welcomed' by the US. Indeed, I would oppose a campaign via supra-national levels to restrict state broadcasting given my illogical weakness for the BBC, despite there being a case that it is a undemocratic and regressively funded institution. British operations in Northern Ireland could hardly be rated as a fine example of democratic governance and policy, yet the issue of separatism and minority rights is very marshy ground in all societies. Can democracies really take criticism from their 'fraternal' societies without reverting to nationalist and particularist pique? An activist LOD might soon find itself in the same situation as its unlamented predecessor, via a surplus of integrity rather than a deficit.

3# The relationship between a LOD and non-democracies

Until democracies cover the earth (ho ho, har har), there will always be non-democratic governments as well as those who 'fail' the test of LOD membership on technicalities or during periods of upheaval. Do we 'engage' with them like with the fossilied gangster sate of China or play out great game politik with the Russian bear (defo not a democracy....) or keep them at arms length as with Iran or just forget about critical engagement as with Saudi Arabia? In an inter-dependant world, do we seek to make the LOD area 'self-sufficient' so trade can be used a diplomatic tools? Or must we rely on force or the threat thereof?

If we seek to end human rights abuses and mass brutality in Darfur and Zimbawme for instance, without making China cease its vital economic support, what is there we can do beyond 'the use of bayonets'. If we are true to a high moral conception of democracy, will we end up pariahs via this exclusiveness rather than those who deserve it?

As per with me very few answers, but many questions

Fear and Loathing in I/P threads...

I/P posts and threads are probably the most trenchant examples of the interwebs of the deaf shouting at each other. Rare indeed does one find a blog post on this conflict that doesn't descend into the worst type of Blogo-bigotry (tm socialrepublican). So when over on Dave Osler's site this very early morning, I came across Dave's fine intro to the I/P debate.

http://www.davidosler.com/2008/08/israelpalestine_some_parameter.html

Now I disagree fervently with him on two versus one state, it is trying to put the genie back into the bottle 60 years on. Similarly with respect to Hamas, I believe their ideological dynamics cannot be accommodated in peace with Israel, Jew hate is pretty much all they do...Yet within that spirit of seeking discussion on I/P sans bile with (hopefully) added enlightenment, I lay before my three readers (or possibly two, given Sarah is away on holiday :), the competing nationalism and steady state aggression model of the I/P conflict

In the last few years I've come to the conclusion that the problem is tripartite

#1 Palestinian nationalism has been a wholly reactive phenomenon. From the Grand Mufti onwards, defining the Arabs of Palestine from the Jews has been the objective. The Jews of the National home and then Israel have been depicted not as neighbours (fellow travellers of the Book?) but as an intrinsic threat to Arab identity. In the inter-war period, the Jewish community had a highly developed sense of group identity and represented a modern society at a time where Arab society had yet to undergo a 'nationalisation of the masses' in Mosse terminology. Jews ceased to be one particular community within a multi-ethnic system of estates but rather a competing (and winning) nation state in waiting. The inter-war period saw a rise in social scission as both sides sought to maximise their advantage and in the case of those around the Mufti, bring about a final ethnic solution. The fragile ethnic peace was torn apart by these competing identities and as such partition became increasingly necessary.

Neither Fatah's faux-socialism nor Hamas' Islamism has added to that. Hamas are still doctrinally committed to the forced expulsion of Jews, be they of immigrant descent or of ancient 'Levantine stock'. Fatah built its legitimacy not as a shadow government but as a resistance movement, it never attempted to govern as an elite but rather as a vanguard of action. Anti-Semitism of the darkest and most brutal type was maintained within public discourse as useful ideological glue.

This discourse thus fertilised the ground for Hamas' more violent and cathartic program of endless war and endless reiteration of identity. It should be remembered that for Hamas, Palestinian nationalism is merely a tool and a stepping stone towards a future Caliphate based on Qutb's blend of Islamic modernism. They did not even try to govern, as governance beyond partisan gain and the reinforcement of their military capacities would be counter-productive to their strategy of tension.

Hamas have yet to see beyond this Utopian caliphate, nor the dead ends of MB doctrine. Theirs is a universal and unlimited creed, so in a very real sense, without the room for compromise on essentials. I hope, and alas that is all I can bring to this conflict, that Fatah can begin to act like a party of competent governance and move on from the stasis of suffering that they, the Arab governments and Israel have left many Palestinians in.

#2 Those Arab governments, who for 60 some years have made so much propaganda gain and popular legitimacy from their support of violence need to transfer their monies and efforts towards ending the continued suffering of the Nabka. Rather then support Hamas with guns whilst keeping their own Palestinian populations in camps as second class citizens, both disenfranchised and excluded (to a degree absent in Israel), they should seek to make their 'brother Arabs' a prosperous Diaspora, ready and confident for the founding of a true Palestinian national home.

The use of the I/P conflict as a heroic grand narrative for domestic suppression in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia has been a energising myth, one that has been taken up by the radicals of the MB, HuT and Islamic Jihad. It has poisoned both discourse and policy wherever it has been raised. Its hypocrisy, as demonstrated by the Hama massacres and Black September, must be realised before progress of any kind can be made.

#3 As for Israel itself, it bears the scars of a society baptised in wars with its neighbours. Its society is aware of both its historic uniqueness as the sole Jewish state and the seemly systemic enmity of the Arab world towards it. It is of course, a remarkable successful nation, rich, democratic and comparatively for the region extremely liberal. Yet it has had to deal with an existential threat for much of its life, endemic violence and what might be called the seduction of the periphery. The expansion of settlements has been lead not centrally but from those on the border.

Given the legalistic blur which surrounds the extents of Israel's borders and the status of the West Bank and Gaza, there is a powerful incentive to claim Arab land as Israeli. Given the overlapping jurisdiction of spoils of war, partition plans of yesteryear and the diplomatic no-mans land that resulted from the treaty-less peace, Settlers and Soldiers could claim land and gain government protection. The Jewish right of return made the land betwixt ‘the Sea and the Jordan’ seem over-crowded and certain voices (never unanswered and un-argued) sought a complete conquest via expulsion. The anti-Nabka, the fleeing of North African and Middle Eastern Jewry from their ancient communities after 1948 under intense pressure gave a righteousness to a cause that would lead a democracy towards a half solution: neither ethnically cleansing historic Palestine nor keeping to the partition or the green lines. The solution is clear. The former is a dead end, of deepening a bloody conflict with one ‘last’ act of conquest. The latter requires a worthy and competent Palestinian government, facing down the dogmas of the past, Arab non-interference and putting the plight of the Palestinians first and an Israel brave enough to take the risk.

Weather or not this convergence can occur is unlikely. But peace needs these self-destructive trends to cease.

We're all HPers now...

Harry's Place, that bizarre mix of crazies, eccentrics and wordy fellows has been attacked by some no-mark idiot from the UCU. I love that mix of crazy/weirdo/genuinely interesting and informative that HP provides a forum for and I am in (badly phrased) solidarity with them.

Read Modernity's site for details http://jennadelich.wordpress.com/

Against One, against All

Eurabia, Georges Sorel and Social Scission

If I was to compile a list of thinkers from the Fin de Siecle period whos' ideas where still very much in vogue today, I would have to save space near the top for Mr Sorel. Although the political ideology he was most associated with, that of revolutionary Syndicalism is probably deader than the career of John Leslie say, many of his ideas have remained both in use as heuristic tools of interpretation and as strategies of political extremism. His admiration for the Bolshevik coup d'etat of 1917 and the subsequent terror and his position as one of the primary thinkers in early fascism mark him out as the totalitarian's thinker of choice, regardless of their place within the political spectrum.

Today, we can clearly see the work of his 'energizing myths' and of social scission (the increasing violent separation of a multi-polar society into a bi-polar one) in the rhetoric of the totalising Islamists such as HuT, the various MB fronts and Jamaat-e-Islami. The myth is based on the Ummah versus everything else, controlled as is the fashion for these constructs by a shadowy cabal of Jews/Zionists/ZioNazies depending on their preferred level of euphemism. Cultivated by the sectarianism of the Koran and thereby sacralised, the myth marks out the contours of an apocalyptic battle, where via will and violence, by the destruction of any areas of grey or overlap, Jerusalem is retaken, the Jews of Israel are flung into the sea and the Ummah is reunited and refortified with a homogeneity of faith and ritual. Sorel's mission for the proletariat of early 20th century France (and indeed his challenged to the bourgeoisie) has been successfully franchised out.

Yet never to be out done, the home of idiotic modern group identities, Europe has begun to produce examples of a counter myth, sacralised in part by religion but mainly by ethnocratic ideology and good ol' nationalism. The myth is Eurabia, a vast, baffling and deeply threatening conspiracy of a cabal (see....) of 'bureaucrats', 'leftists', 'liberals' and 'Big Business' to turn Europe over to Islam as part of some unclear but no doubt nefarious plot. Eurabia is a booming mythological narrative, taken up by both the 'core constituency' of Ultra-Nationalists such as the BNP and the VB and moving gingerly into ethno-cratic Liberals such as the NF and the FPO and the wider radical right community such as the Northern League. Just as contact with Islamist thought (and a great deal of lazing thinking) has poisoned the left with toxic antisemitism, this grand narrative of 'Islamisization' has taken a hold over much of the right.

The myth is clear only in its division of good and bad, it's manichean axis, if you will. If you buy into the conspiracy that Gordon Brown, Paddy Ashdown and Romano Prodi are actively seeking to institutionalise Islam as the dominant faith or that they are merely seeking cheap labour (the National Bolshevik tendency), then you logically must seek to combat that. Thus increasingly virulent calls for 'de-islamisization', defending Serbian ethnic cleansing and Russian expansionism and a full blown rhetorical attack on the 'rotten' liberalism' that has brought us to this point of crisis are in order. The jump from violent and inciting language and actual violence comes when the idea becomes not only widespread but so does its urgency. This democratisation of panic feeds of Islamist tactics of their stragedy of tension, making any common ground treachery and indeed sacralige. The contours of the mythology are self-creating and self-reinforcing

On the other half of the divide will eventually be lumped all those who failed to respond to the clarion call. Now inseparable from the the most vicious of Islamist demagogues and terror fetishists, old skool Conservatives, leftists of all shades (even those actively fighting for an anti totalitarian left) and of course, the true bete-noire, limp wristed decadent and effete liberals become a evil conglomerate. This Kraken is thus defined, formed from a contradictory Chimera and made real by the permutantions of the myth, its intent universally evil and malignant.

If i might suggest Oyvind Strommen blog here http://eurofascism.info/ (I have yet to read the book as I am very very poor)

As for those would be Sorel fans, may I recommend Jack J. Roth's 'The Cult of Violence: Sorel and the Sorelians' (London, University of California, 1980), old but still very good.

Hurrah for Jumpers for Goal posts

I think I'm in love

http://newcastleunited.rivals.net/News/pgArticle.aspx?artid=13498_4008869&id=55

Poetry Fruit Corner #2

The long hard tale of Jonathan Brecht by socialrepublican

equipped with
a certain memory condition
so each day was all new
so his loving father
slapped him
round the head
his beautiful beau
brought lovers over for tea
with coitus on the table
and thieves waited for him
outside his door
for his pocket change

drowned reluctantly
in a septic tank
whilst it
was raining

Neither Tblisi nor Moscow?

Dave Osler has a fine post on the Georgia/Russia pissing competition here - http://www.davidosler.com/2008/08/south_ossetia_the_left_doesnt.html#comments

For a informative but deeply skewed opinion, check Greater Surbitan here - http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/

Looking at the conflict, now in the thoes of ceasefires rather than T72 shells, it appears to me Georgia intended to reverse the ethnic cleansing of South Ossetia and recent Russian bullying whilst Russia was deemed distracted and weakened and being confident of US support. It was a miscalculation of considerable proportions. It might be an attempt at 'la glorie' to combat growing cynicism at the 'Rose revolution' but it has left Georgia weakened. Stories of Georgian atrocities uttered by the Butchers of Gronzy are difficult to give credence to but clearly, Georgian actions caused a wave of refugees across the border.

Marko's corralation between Operation Storm and the situation now is prescient, possibly for different reasons to which he raised it. Both are military attempts to rectify ethnic cleansing by a stronger power via invasion and seemly enforced expulsion of the now dominant ethnic community. I can only speak of one particular example. A very good friend of mine who is a quarter Serb told of her extended family's expulsion (evacuation) from the Krajina, fearful and hurried. These people were not radical nationalists and had not been involved in the ethnic cleansing during the founding of the RSK yet they were still made to flee their homes. This is no apologia for the greater Serbian project, merely a reminder that such 'corrections', even at the behest of saving Bihac from a fate like Srebrenica's, have victims, innocent victims. Being trapped under the cogs of Geo-politics is an horrific fate, one we should not forget nor rationalise away.

Update - The evacuation of the Krajina was carried out by the RSK (Ta, Mike Baresic)

The bitter heritage of the Ustaša

Marko comments on the relationship between the Ustaša and wider Croatian society here -
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/ in the aftermath of the funeral of Dinko Sakic, one of the commandants of Jasenovac. This event, the laying down of a foul murderous individual has been taken up by some of the Croatian far right as an opportunity to push their re-evaluation of the NDH as a legitimate part of Croatian national inspirations. Marko rightly points to the nihilistic and self-destructive creedo of Pavelic, Bubak and Kvaternik leading to a Croat Golgotha but I believe fails to recognise how such ultra-nationalism can still maintain a legitimate place within a wider, less radical nationalist discourse.

A few points.

Marko gives a sophisticated recap of a long standing interpretation of the roots and origins of Croatian fascism. Within this, Pavelic's followers and his ideology are foreign imports, nurtured in Italy and Horthy's Hungary and then given the opportunity to run an independent Croatia after Hitler had failed to find an alternative. The treaty of Rome is demonstrative proof of the Ustaša 'treachery' and their disconnection from 'kosher' Croatian Nationalism, leaving many thousands of Croats under a ruthlessly Italianising regime in Dalmatia. The Ustaša tragedy of tension against the Yugoslav regime in the thirties was aimed at 'disgracing and undermining Croatia' rather than 'liberation'. This historiographical trend, which includes Fikreta Jelić-Butić and Bogdan Krizman and more recently Mark Biondich, Aleksa Djilas and Hoare himself draws a line between the fascism of the Ustaša and that of the wider Croatian Nationalist milieu. I believe it is an overly sharp distinction and mistake the nature of nationalism in general.

The Ustaša were a tiny party before the takeover in 1941. Estimates by Srdjan Trifkovic and Ivo Goldstein put their numbers in the very low thousands. The Ustaša were the very antithesis of the NSDAP or the PNF in opposition. Yet this issue of size before the seizure of power does not support the 'foreign import' thesis as fully as first glance might suggest. Pavelic believed that mass agitation was foolhardy given the nature of the Yugoslav regime. After the death of the leader of the HSS, Radic at the hands of a Serbian nationalist on the floor of the Yugoslav assembly, Pavelic's more radical and confrontational ideology stood little chance of mass mobilisation or of creating a open volkpartei. Instead he sought to create a fighting organisation in the mode of the Macedonian IMRO or a Leninist Vanguard. That is to sat a small disciplined unit that would be able to strike violently at the Royal dictatorship. The Ustaša could not form as a 'classic' fascist mass movement because they faced a determined traditional authoritarian regime, willing to use force and violence to defeat its internal enemies.

Yet it's violent actions and terrorist activities were praised by a wider audience. Stipe Devcic, a Ustaša militant who faced with capture, killed himself with a hand grenade was lionised not only by the small Ustaša press but in the catholic and some of the HSS papers too. The Ustasa were not beyond the pale, they were within the nationalist coalition against Serbian hegemon, misguided and overly romantic, but still 'good' Croatian boys. As Radic's successor, Macek sought to gain increasing autonomy within Yugoslavia, the Ustasa gave an alternative vision of total Independence, one that saw their numbers increase as chaos seem to encamp in central Europe. By the point of takeover, the Ustasa had as many as 10000 members in Croatia and a significant hold over much of the nationalist community

The division between Macek and Pavelic's visions and conceptions of Croatia were deep rooted. Macek was a pan-Slavic believer, he believe in the joint heritage of Croat and Serb but wanted to defend and define Croatian 'uniqueness' within a federal Yugoslavia. Pavelic and various other ideologues on the other hand believed that Serbs were ethnically different from Croats, the formers being Slavs and 'oriental', the latter being of Dinaric/Gothic/Iranian (mythical constructs one and all). Croats were a princely class, invested with a civilising mission in the harsh valleys of the Drina. Thus on the one hand, Macek's nationalism was cultural, linguistic, inclusive and demo-centric, Pavelic, supported in part by Ante Starčević and Ivo Pilar was racial, belligerent and ethno-centric. This divide within national identities, concerning the defining contours of a people, of a volk remain. Indeed they are universal poles of national identities.

To give one case study, Max Bart's micro-study of the small Bosnian community of Medjugorje demonstartes how small scale levels of ethnic strife were transformed and the Ustasa ideology popularised as tension wiped away middle ground. The Slavas, intra-community meeting places were abandoned as the ethno-cratic forms of expulsion and annihilation of the Ustasa and to a certain extent, the Cetniki took over.

The power of the Ustasa was their powerful and bloody reinterpretation of a popular and authentically Croatian strand of nationalist discourse, of Serb otherness and accompanying corruption, of purging and remaking. That link should not be ignored.

Facsism is a natural part of the European experience of National identity. It is systemic to nationalism, although thankfully not in any way inevitable. It explains why when the forming of national identity as a primary collective experience was a european wider project (1860-1930), the seeds of fascism were sown.

More on Sozhenitsyn and the gutter of CIF

Anna Applebaum does a good job of summing up Solzhenitsyn's significance to Russia here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/06/solzhenitsyn.russia

For those with a strong stomach, check out the comments thread. CIF can get very low but this is pushing the boundaries

Poetry Fruit Corner

Cupcakes by Eve Riley

The neighbours are fighting
I’m making cupcakes
fingers in my ears
music playing
giddy happy
with icing
or diabetes
and realisation
for just a few nights ago
we were fighting
and I think the neighbours
were making cupcakes

Alexander and Me

My mother was and is a great lover of books. Her bed side table generally had about 20 or so volumes stacked up awaiting her consideration. On the various bookcases in the halls were many more, stacked neatly like paper bricks. In dark hues, adorned with gold lettering, they fascinated me as a child, coyly promising some magical enigmatic quality called knowledge or culture or some other totem. She had brought these either as a mature student before I was born or in the seemly constant parade of car boots sales and clearance auctions that made up the 1980s for me. They were as part of my Childhood as my sisters or my cat.

As I grew, in those neat and organised piles, I found Marx, Sartre, Dostoevsky, Rousseau, weird little trinkets like Field Marshall Slim's account of the Burma Campaign or David Maland's 'Europe in the Seventeenth Century' . Each brick became like a hand grenade, breaking from its cover, flinging its contents forcibly in the room and my wee head.

The most important finds were 'The First Circle' and volume one of 'The Gulag Archipelago' when I was 16 or so. Solzhenitsyn provided in these two books a personal and upfront challenge to me and indeed the world. He broke the tacit deceit of the Soviet regime and its apologists, he broke open a window in a history being erased by time and coerced ignorance and shouted the truth from the rooftops. As a young, precious little doctrinal Leninist, it snapped me in two. It held together the rage of the old testament with the clarity and wit of a scientist probing a unexplored phenomena. I had to go back to first principles under the intensity of his ringing probation and rethink. I will always be indebted for that

One of the most remarkable talents Solzhenitsyn had was to evoke a time and place that is now very distance and foreign, especially to a western audience. The density of his work, in terms of ideas, characterisation and historical detail is transporting. When reading the knots of 'August 1914', you are back into the debates of the third Duma and the rush to war. In 'The First Circle', you feel the breadth and conversely the interrelation of Stalin's Moscow. Cancer Ward is the only book that has brought me to tears as Oleg, now healthy but penniless comes out of the hospital. Whilst he couldn't write female characters to save his life (a common male condition), he still used the 19th century novelistic form like a broadsword and a rapier.

For his courage and intellectual vigour, he was a fascinatingly flawed character. He had willing swapped the hegemony of Bolshevik Communism for Nationalist Orthodox Christianity and the fallacies of the worst of the Slavo-philes. His historical reinterpretations of paradigm about the nature of the tsarist regime, the revolutions and the Bolshevik party were mixed by great insight and blinded by partisan bias of the most dogmatic type. His criticisms of the west as decadent seemed unworthy of his great mind and kind of hypocritical given the Stalinist conformity he had escaped. Further his failure to engage with the specific nature of the Holocaust and his defence of the slavo-phile narrative of the Jews in Russia spoke of an unreconstructed base level of anti-Semeitsm. Even more baffling was his late endorsement of that son of the NVKD, Vladimir Putin as the hope for Russia. Russia has never had the chance to suffer from a surplus of democracy, whilst the history of its strongmen is, to put it mildly, mixed

Yet for all his contradictions and flaws, he remains a hero of mine and a beloved, talented and passionate writer.

I will miss you Alexander

A F$#king Rocket!!!!!

Thats me sold!

The 'Islamo' affix and lazy thinking

Full disclosure - I am studying History, in particular the ideology of fascism and violence. It was the basis of my dissertation and, mysterious Grades deity willing, will be the core of my doctorate too. I am thus very very touchy about the use of the term fascist in serious debate and discourse.

To many very good and very bad commentators, Islamofascism is a useful and accurate term of reference. As far as i can tell, this is because it places the struggle against militant Islamic fundamentalists in a suitably dramatic light, being both existential for democracy and 'liberty' (or in the case of some, Judeo-Christian tradition) and adheres the affix Islamo to a well know brand of horror and malignant morality. It has been used by high priest decents of the left as well as the theo-right. It has even been uttered in the hallowed halls of the White House. Such universality is not surprising, it has a rather cathartic resonance. It places a complex and differing situation within a mythical and manichean world of the great struggle with fascism in the 30s and 40s. It is still lazy thinking, a-historical and possibly dangerous to defeating a very real threat.

Islamofascism correlates two ideologies or families of ideology together using somewhat outdated comparisons.

Mr Hitchens gives a fine defence of the term here - http://www.slate.com/id/2176389/

His list of comparison is as follows -

1. Both have a death cult centred within their perception and historical narrative
2. Both are anti-intellectual
3. Both are obsessed with mythical 'humiliations'
4. Both are anti-Semitic
5. Both are in hock to a leader cult and 'one great book'
6. Both are deeply misogynistic
7. Both are militantly philistinistic and abhor culture
8. Both 'steal' tricks from the mass movements of the left
9. Both dream of a greater 'volk' for their particular chosen people

1. Death cults are not particular to either movement of course. Japanese Bushido Militarism, the quasi- marxian spiritualism of the Shinning Path, Necheav's dreams of purifying violence, the Blanquism cult of the day at the barricades are all death cults and come from the extremities of political ideology. They are more linked to temporal matters on a socio-psychological level. For these movements, violence offers a temporal break, between a dying age, termed by one mystic of the post-war fascist movements, the Kali Yuga (the age of vice) to a new rejuvenated age of purifying violence and spiritual regeneration. This temporal break is not ideologically particular, rather it is primordial, even anthropological. Perceived decay of a social system is to be defeated or reversed or transcended by plunging the 'patient' into a crucible of violence, reforging it and reinvesting it with meaning.

Islamo-Bushido anyone...?

2. The anti-intellectualism of fascism is a half truth. How else could one classify Gentile, Evola, Rosenburg, Spengler, Heidigger, Junger or De Benoist as anything but intellectuals and dilettante ones at that. The fascist attack on the intellect was directed against sources of perceived decadence that corrupted the gemeinschaft being reborn. Thus Marxist and Liberal academics were attacked for the content of their thought, their materialism, their lack of spirituality. Their ideas were the font of the volk trouble, not idea 'creation' itself. Critical thinking was fine if it did not produce (as it systemically would) ideas that 'rocked the boat'.

As for the those 'Islamofascists', they too are involved in a war against perceived corruption. Indeed one of the particular horrors of their war against the people of Iraq is the decapitation of higher education (http://www.petitiononline.com/Iraqacad/petition.html). These academics are not good scholars like the sainted Qutb (possibly the less competent revolutionary of the 20th century). By their continuing to teach their students in the worst possible conditions, they are, to the 'Islamos', complicit in moving Iraqi society away from their telos of a theocracy in the midst of the purifying conflagration. Neither the 'Islamo' or fascist program can be accurately characterised as a war against intellect rather than a war against intellectual decadence. It is an instructive difference.

Islamo-Iconoclasts anyone...?

3. As for humiliations,they are again a common element to political extremism. To the fascists of the PNF, the mutilated peace demonstrated the lowly position of Giolottian Italy despite the sacrifices of the Italian Army on the Isonza. The stab in the back myth (actually propagated at the behest of the Prussian high command as a toxic first feed for the Weimar Republic) 'highlighted' how the decadence of Wilhelmine Germany had cowardly failed to stand on its 'honour'. The 'humiliation' of Israel victories and western intervention (from the independence of Greece to the Iraq war) were a ongoing proof that the traditional and nationalist elites of the ME had failed in their missions. Humiliation was thus a powerful reproof to current regimes, cutting away basic legitimacy. Avenging these was a milestone towards the completion of internal revolution. Yet we find these in the nationalist discourses of the Gironde in 1790-91 where Prussian and British humiliations of French arms were used as indictments of the Ancien Regime. The nationalist right in Russia failed to defend the throne in March 1917 as they were convinced that the Tsarist regime had 'humiliated' Russian honour via it's incompetence and border-line 'treason'.

Islamo-Black Hundreds anyone...?

4. The anti-Semitism of Islamism is fairly central to its identity. The Jews via their existence and the sectarianism within the Koran are the bete-noires of the mythical Ummah, their chosen other. While in Islam, this choice of 'otherness' is prescribed by the tenets of the Meccan Koran and the Hadith, in fascism, there is no set formula for those beyond the pale. The founding fathers of the PNF in 1919 Milan included Jews, who would feature in the mechanism of Fascist Italy till into the thirties. Then Mussolini became increasingly enamoured with a racial definition of Italian identity as he drew more dependant on the Reich. Fascism is in no way philo-semitic, as some have described the Ustasa foolishly. Rather fascism sought to destroy alternative and 'irredeemable' identity as seen from its own nationalistic lens. Anti-Semitism itself was not the strongest bond that held together the genus. In a similar vein, popular leftist movements of the early to mid 19th century were deeply embedded with christian anti-semitism. Fergus O'Connor being a particular virulent hater of the 'Jew'

Islamo-Chartism anyone..?

5. Here Hitchens is on very marshy ground. Islam declares only one intermediary betwixt God and Man, the Prophet (though the Shiite have their martyred Imans). A Leader cult is hardly a way to describe this. Indeed Islamo is not a top down phenomena, it is fractious diverse and multi-headed. Thus the Challenge.

As for Fascism, the leader cult was a primary element in its manifestation, even with remarkably uncharacteristic leaders like Pavelic. Indeed, this is one of the most divergent elements between Islamo and fascism (in the inner-war period certainly).

As for 'one great book', Mein Kampf was in no way a blueprint or central text for Nazism, its turgidness guarenteed that. Apart from short tracts, no other fascist leader produced a comparable work nor any movement adhered to one solitary text.

Islamo-Marxists anyone...? (actually that has been suggested)

6. Basically who ain't. Apart from a handful of liberals and some mightily hypocritical leftists, Misogyny remains mostly unmoved and unchallenged outside of the west and pockets elsewhere. Kinder, Kurke und Kirke is neither a fascism speciality nor an Islamic monopoly.

Islamo-Churchillians anyone...?

7. Again culture is contingent. Islamists don't destroy their own shrines and they don't burn their own books. Fascist modernism is a increasingly accepted term for the onrush of various styles seeking to become the national 'vernacular'. Certain types failed and were deemed decadent, others were applauded. Gropius carried on working and being commissioned in Germany long after 1933. Evola was Italy's leading Dadaist. Culture as a source of decadence was the enemy. Those giant Buddhas were an affront to the Taliban's monopoly of imagery, their destruction was meant to ensure that. Art and culture as a source of decadence and corruption is as old as art itself.

Islamo-Tipper-Gorists anyone..?

8. Mass movements, take a deep breath comrades, are not the monopoly of the left. Mass movements are simultaneously communities bound by ritual, vehicles for political action and a collective based on belief. These elements are in no way incompatible with rightist or Theocratic thought. Indeed one of the most vibrant early mass movements were connected to both. The Guerrilla movement in Spain 1808-14, the peasants of the Vendee and the Christian Social Party of Vienna. The left merely had a head start in organising a mass following, fascism was were right caught up. Islamists in contrast have been split between mass movements like the MB and vanguardist tactics of which the groups around AQ are a fine example. Mass movements are contingent to both left and right and neither is the result of some absolute higher rationality.

Islamo-Leninists anyone..?

9. Between the Volk and Ummah are a variety of differences. The Ummah is a mythical collection of believers brought together by the revelations of the Koran. The Volk is defined by a fair more nebulous series of conditions, cultural, identity, race. For Islamos, the ummah is a well defined construct, a united and morally purified flock of believers. The Volk is particular to each movement. By ascribing to the norms of the ideology, membership of the ummah is gained. Indeed conversion, either via missionary work or coercion is a mainstay of Islamo thought. This cannot be said for fascism. One example being the Ustasa's 'nationalising war' against the Serbs. As annihilation became counter-productive, ideological bypasses were created to allow Serbs to live as Croats as long as they refuted Serbian primacy of identity. Only in the defeat of their maximinist goals did they fall back to assimilation.

One might bring to mind considering the Ummah the example of the Jacobin conception of the Body Politic. It required an acceptance of the mythology of the Great Nation and abandoning 'couter-revolutionary' thought, practice and tradition.

Islamo-Jacobins anyone...?

Islamism, my preferred term, is its own beast. Using heuristic models of fascism that are 30 years behind currently scholarship and applying them slip-shod onto a very different ideological position is a worthless exercise. It might sound pleasing to the ear, but it is to confuse what the Kraken is about and how to confront it