Atzmon On Secularism and Marxism

Introduction by Israel Shamir

These two most recent and angry texts of our friend Gilad Atzmon are united in his rejection of atheism, of enforced godlessness of the Left. Like other most radical and leading members of our small community, he has turned to God and to Faith, and had parted with barren antireligious attitudes of yesterday.

Fight against God was (is?) an integral part of Marxist doctrine for historical reasons, caused by heavy participation of secular Jews in the Left and Revolutionary movements of 19^th- early 20^th cc. After parting with Jewish faith, these persons could consider themselves ‘ex-Jews’, ‘no Jews any more’, like Marx did. This way was too difficult for many of them, so they preferred to construct a new identity, nationalist secular Jewishness, i.e. to become ‘secular Jews’. These ‘secular Jews’ demanded from other members of the Left to part with their faith.

The Left doctrine including its anti-religious component has been exported to the large world outside of Europe as preferable, progressive, working radical opposition idea. It won the day in Russia and China, and elsewhere. Only after collapse of the Soviet Union the new radical native movements sprung forth, totally independent of European influence: Hamas of Palestine, Islamic republic of Iran, Hezbollah of Lebanon, and to some extent the Bolivarian revolution of Latin America.

The Left is still burdened by anti-religious attitude: the Marxist Communist ruling party of Nepal navigated itself into a heavy crisis by trying to wean people away from their faith. They objected to the native Nepalese cult of Child Goddess Kumari, and have brought down their own government. Likewise, the Chinese Communists unnecessarily antagonized the Tibetans by trying to fight their religious life.

Instead of joining with local radical anti-imperialist movements, the Left fights them. Thus, Communists of Iraq practically welcomed the US occupation, Communists of Iran supported the richest man of the land, Rafsanjani, against Ahmadinejad, Cuban Communists were against Castro, Venezuelan Communists were against Chavez and Palestinian Communists are against Hamas. This schism has to be defeated, if the Left is to survive and flourish.

Criticism of Gilad is not always fair: though historically Jewish Marxists were responsible for this development, nowadays they do not lead anymore. The non-Jewish Palestinian Left is as anti-Islamic as the Jewish Left. In Ramallah and in Yasouf, I’ve heard more anti-Hamas talk than in Golders Green. We have to restore the anti-imperialist front, and this calls for containing militant secularism on one hand and militant anti-communism, on the other.

Gilad is mistaken when he postulates his two points:

1. The Palestinian liberation movement is basically a national liberation movement. By acknowledging this we lose the internationalist Left with its opposition to nationalism.

2. Due to the political rise of Hamas, Palestinian resistance is now regarded as Islamic resistance. This is where we are losing the secularists and rabid atheists.

Hamas and the Islamic resistance are an important part, but not the whole of Palestinian resistance. And the Palestinian liberation movement today may be seen as a civil rights movement aiming to provide equal rights to all dwellers of Palestine/Israel. Likewise, there was a Black liberation movement of Black Panthers with its religious component of Luis Farrakhan, but it was the US civil rights movement that won the day with Obama’s victory. Without Black Panthers and Farrakhan it may never happen, but they had to concede ground. We should strive for a similar shift in Palestine, by speaking more forcefully for One State solution.

Recently, one Hussein Ibish, an indecently obese American Lebanese lapdog of Mahmud Abbas, attacked the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement) asking: what BDS would be promoting: an end to the occupation or an end to Israel? ‘End to Israel’, like ‘end to slavery’ or ‘end to apartheid’ is the correct answer to Ibish’s query. And at this point we may find an agreement of the secular and the religious wings, both at home and abroad.  

 

And now, read Gilad Atzmon’s double bill on secularism.

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Thinking out of the Secular Box

By Gilad Atzmon

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Karl Marx, 1843

A Comical Departure

Before I launch into a disclosure of liberal and leftist delusional treatment of religions, Islam and Palestine in particular, I would like to share with you a bad racist joke. Beware; you may not want to share this short tale with your feminist friends.

“An American feminist who visited Afghanistan in the late 1990s was devastated to find out that women were marching 15 ft behind their men. Once back in America the devastated activist campaigned for women's rights in Afghanistan. Last month, she visited Kabul again. This time she was amazed to find a worsened situation: women were actually marching 30 ft behind their husbands. Her Afghani translator explained: it is because of the landmines’ increased range.…”

As tragic as it may sound to some, we are not as free as we believe ourselves to be. Our thoughts and realizations are not only ours. Our human condition is imposed on us; we are a product of our culture, language, ideological indoctrination and in many cases, we are victims of our intellectual laziness. Like the semi-fictional American feminist, in most cases we are trapped within our preconceived ideas and that stops us from seeing things for what they really are. Accordingly, we tend to interpret and in most cases misinterpret remote cultures employing our own value system and moral code.

This tendency has some grave consequences. For some reason ‘we’ (the Westerners) tend to believe that ‘our’ technological superiority together with our beloved ‘enlightenment’ equips us with a ‘rational secularist anthropocentric, absolutist ethical system’ of the very highest moral stand.

The Lib-Left

In the West we can detect two ideological components that compete for our hearts and minds; Both claim to know what is ‘wrong’ and who is ‘right’. The Liberal would insist on praising individual liberty and civil equality; the Leftist would tend to believe to possess a ‘social scientific’ tool helping to identify who is ‘progressive’ and who is ‘reactionary’.

As things stand, it is these two modernist secularist precepts that act as our Western political ethical guard. But in fact, they have achieved the opposite. Each ideology in its own peculiar way has led us to a state of moral blindness. It is these two so-called ‘humanist’ calls, that either consciously prepare the ground for criminal interventionalist colonial wars (the Liberal), or failed to oppose them while employing wrong ideologies and faulty arguments (the Left).

Both Liberal and Left, in their apparent banal Western forms suggest that secularism is the answer for the world's ailments. Without a doubt, Western secularism may be a remedy for some Western social malaise. However, Western Liberal and Left ideologies, in most cases, fail to understand that secularism is in itself a natural outcome of Christian culture, i.e., a direct product of Christian tradition and openness towards an independent civic existence. In the West, the spiritual and the civil sphere are largely separated [[1]]. It is this very division that enabled the rise of secularity and the discourse of rationality. It is this very division that also led to the birth of a secular ethical value system in the spirit of enlightenment and modernism.

But this very division led also to the rise of some blunt forms of fundamental- secularism that matured into crude anti religious worldviews that are no different from bigotry. It is actually that very misleading fundamental secularism that brought the West to a total dismissal of a billion human beings out there just because they wear the wrong scarf or happen to believe in something we fail to grasp.

 

Progressive vs. Regressive

Islam and Judaism, unlike Christianity, are tribally orientated belief systems. Rather than ‘enlightened individualism’ it is actually the survival of the extended family that is at the core interest of those two belief systems. The Taliban that is regarded by most Westerners as the ultimate possible darkest political setting, is simply not concerned at all with issues to do with personal liberties or personal rights. It is the safety of the tribe together with the maintenance of family values in the light of the Qur’an that stands at its core. Rabbinical Judaism is not different at all. It is basically there to preserve the Jewish tribe by maintaining Judaism as a ‘way of life’.

In both Islam and Judaism there is hardly a separation between the spiritual and the civil. Both religions stand as systems that provide thorough answers in terms of spiritual, civil, cultural and day to day matters. Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah) was largely a process of Jewish assimilation through secularization and emancipation, and spawning various modern forms of Jewish identities, Zionism included. Yet Enlightenment values of universalism have never been incorporated into the body of Jewish orthodoxy. Like in the case of Rabbinical Judaism, that is totally foreign to the spirit of Enlightenment, Islam is largely estranged to those values of Euro centric Modernism and rationality. If anything, due to the interpretation of the Scriptures (hermeneutic) , both Islam and Judaism are actually closer to the spirit of post modernity. [[2]]

Neither the Left ideology nor Liberalism engage intellectually or politically with these two religions. This fact is disastrous, for the biggest current threat to world peace is posed by the Israeli-Arab conflict; a conflict rapidly becoming a war between a Jewish expansionist state and Islamic resistance. And yet, both the Liberal and the Left ideologies are lacking the necessary theoretical means to understand the complexities of Islam and Judaism.

The Liberal would dismiss Islam as sinister for its take on human rights and women in particular. [View http://blog. authenticjudaism .org/ for similar Jewish take on women – ISH] The Left would fall into the trap of denouncing religion in general as ‘reactionary’. Maybe without realizing it, both Lib and Left are falling here into a clear supremacist argument. Since both Islam and Judaism are more than just religions, they convey a ‘way of life’ and stand as a totally thorough answer to questions regarding being in the world, the Western Lib-Left are at danger of a complete dismissal of a large chunk of humanity. [[3]]

I have recently accused a genuine Leftist and good activist [presumably, Moshe Machover, see the second article – ISH] of being an Islamophobe for blaming Hamas for being ‘reactionary’. The activist, who is evidently a true supporter of Palestinian resistance was quick to defend himself claiming that it wasn’t only ‘Islamism’ that he didn’t like, he actually equally hated Christianity and Judaism. For some reason he was sure that hating every religion equally was a proper humanist qualification. Accordingly, the fact that an Islamophobe is also a Judeophobe and Christiano-phobe is not necessarily a sign of a humanist commitment. I kept challenging that good man; he then argued that it was actually Islamism (i.e., political Islam) which he didn’t approve of. I challenged him again and brought to his attention the fact that in Islam there is no real separation between the spiritual and the political. The notion of political Islam (Islamism) may as well be a Western delusional reading of Islam. I pointed out that Political Islam, and even the rare implementation of ‘armed jihad’, are merely Islam in practice. Sadly enough, this was more or less the end of the discussion. The Palestinian solidarity campaigner found it too difficult to cope with the Islamic unity of body and soul. The Left in general is doomed to fail here unless it elaborates by means of listening to the organic Islamic bond between the ‘material’ and the so called ‘opium of the masses’. For the Leftist to do so, it is no less than a major intellectual shift.

Such a shift was suggested recently by Hisham Bustani, an independent Jordanian Marxist, stating:

“The European left must make a serious critical assessment of this ‘we know better’ attitude and the ways it tends to deal with popular forces in the south as ideologically and politically inferior.”

Palestine

Solidarity with Palestine is a very good opportunity to review the gravity of the situation. As it happens, in spite of the murderous Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, solidarity with Palestinians has yet to become a mass movement. It may well never make it as such a movement. Given the West's failure to uphold the rights of the oppressed, Palestinians seem to have learned their lesson; they democratically elected an Islamic party that promised them resistance. Interestingly enough, very few leftists were there to support the Palestinian people and their democratic choice.

Within the current template of conditional political solidarity, we are losing campaigners on each turn of this bumpy road. The reasons are as follows.

1. The Palestinian liberation movement is basically a national liberation movement. By acknowledging this we lose the cosmopolitan Left with its opposition to nationalism.

2. Due to the political rise of Hamas, Palestinian resistance is now regarded as Islamic resistance. This is where we are losing the secularists and rabid atheists who oppose religion, catapulting them to being PEP (progressive except on Palestine) [[4]].

In fact the PEP are divided largely into two groups.

PEP1. Those who oppose Hamas for being ‘reactionary’, yet approve Hamas for their operational success as a Resistance movement. Those activists are basically waiting for the Palestinians to change their mind and revert to a secular society. But they are willing to conditionally support the Palestinians as an oppressed people.

PEP2. Those who are against Hamas for being a ‘reactionary’ force; and dismiss its operational success. These are waiting for the world revolution. They prefer to let the Palestinians wait for the time being, as if Gaza were a seashore holiday resort.

With these rapidly evaporating solidarity forces we are left with a miniature Palestinian solidarity movement with an embarrassingly limited (Western) intellectual power and even less positive performance on the grass roots level. This tragic situation was disclosed recently by Nadine Rosa-Rosso, a Brussels-based independent Marxist. She states: "The vast majority of the Left, including communists, agrees in supporting the people of Gaza against Israeli aggression, but refuses to support its political expressions such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.” This leads Rossa-Rosso to wonder “why do the Left and far Left mobilize such small numbers? And indeed, to be clear, are the Left and far Left still able to mobilize on these issues?”

Where next?

“If the left’s support for human rights in Palestine is conditional and dependent on the Palestinians denouncing their religion and ideological beliefs, cultural heritage, and social traditions and adopting a new set of beliefs, alien values and social behaviours that matches what its culture deems acceptable; that means the world is denying them a most basic human right, the right to think, and to live within a chosen ethical code.” Nahida Izzat

The current left discourse of solidarity is futile. It estranges itself from its subject, it achieves very little and it seems to go nowhere. If we want to help the Palestinians, the Iraqis and the other millions of victims of Western imperialism we really must stop for a second, take a big breath and start again from scratch.

We must learn to listen. Rather than imposing our belief on others we better learn to listen to what others believe in.

 

Can we follow Bustani’s and Rossa-Rosso’s suggestions and revise our entire notion of Islam, its spiritual roots, its structure, its unified balance between the civil and the spirit, its vision of itself as a ‘way of living’? Whether we can do so or not is a good question.

 

Another option is to reassess our blindness and to encounter humanist issues from a humanist perspective (as opposed to political). Rather than loving ourselves through the suffering of others, which is the ultimate form of self-loving, we better for the first time, exercise the notion of real empathy. We put ourselves in the place of the other accepting that we may never fully understand that very other.

 

Rather than loving ourselves through the Palestinians and at their expense, we need to accept Palestinians for what they are and support them for who they are regardless of our own views on things. This is the only real form of solidarity. It aims at ethical rather than ideological conformity. It puts humanity at its very centre. It reflects on Marx’s deep understanding of religion as the “sigh of the oppressed”. If we claim to be compassionate about people we better learn to love them for what they are rather than what we expect them to be.

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http://palestinethi nktank.com/ 2009/06/30/ gilad-atzmon- tribal-marxism- for-dummies/

Tribal Marxism for Dummies

"The European left must make a serious critical assessment of this “we know better” attitude and the ways it tends to deal with popular forces in the south as ideologically and politically inferior." Hisham Bustani

“The subsequent emergence of Islamism holds a false promise. While it poses a challenge to Western domination, it is backward looking and inherently unable to deliver progress.” Moshe Machover June 2009

For very many years the Palestinian solidarity discourse was dominated by leftist ideology carried largely by Jewish Marxists. Though the support of Jewish leftists was rather important at an early stage, it lost its primacy and urgency as Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian solidarity discourse evolved into a vivid autonomous discourse based on widely accepted ethical grounds. The Israeli war crimes against Palestinians are now well documented. No one needs the odd kosher ‘righteous Jew’ to approve that this is indeed the case.

And yet, in spite of the clear fact that Palestinian solidarity discourse moved ahead, Jewish Marxists are still insisting upon dictating their tribally orientated pseudo-analytical vision of reality.

Jewish Marxism is very different from Marxism or socialism in general. While Marxism is a universal paradigm, its Jewish version is very different. It is there to mould Marxist dialectic into a Jewish subservient precept. Jewish Marxism is basically a crude utilisation of ‘Marxist-like’ terminology for the sole purpose of the Jewish tribal cause. It is a Judeo-centric pseudo intellectual setting which aims at political power.

Palestinian thinkers were probably the first to realise that the situation in Gaza, Nablus and the refugee camps had little in common with 19th century Europe. This was enough to defy Marxism as a sole analytical political tool. However, the Jewish Marxists had a far more adventurous plan for Palestinians, Arab people and the region in general. They wanted Arabs to become cosmopolitan atheists. They suggested that Arabs should drop ‘reactionary Islam’ and liberate themselves as ‘the Jews did’ a century ago.

Seemingly, Palestinian and Arab intellectuals grasped that the method that successfully transformed Russia into a Soviet Union, at the expense of millions, was not going to liberate them. They obviously realised that the Jewish Marxists did not intend upon bringing millions of Palestinian refugees home either. It wasn’t even set to launch any form of an adequate resistance. It was there to saturate the discourse with empty rhetoric and pseudo-analytical jargon in order to divert the attention from questions having to do with Jewish tribal politics and Jewish identity.

As interesting as it may be, it is actually the Jewish Marxists, those who support Palestinians as long as they drop Islam, who are the ultimate exemplary exponents of Jewish tribal politics. It is the Jewish Marxist rather than the 'Zionist’ who exposes the Jewish political ugly attitude in its worst crude form. This is good enough reason to monitor the Jewish Left and to understand its philosophy. As we will see soon enough, Jewish Marxism is there to suppress any form of engagement with the Jewish question by means of spin. It is there to stop scrutiny of Jewish power and Jewish lobbying. The Judeo Marxist is an imposter prophet who claims to know the answers and yet, for some reason, his reading of historical events is no less than a total catastrophe. None of his predictions stand the reality test.

One of the last prime exponents of Judeo Marxist ideology is Professor Moshe Machover. Machover was born in Tel Aviv, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, he moved to Britain in 1968. He was a founder of Matzpen, a miniature Socialist organisation in 1962.

Machover’s reading of Zionism is pretty trivial. ‘Israel’, he says, is a ‘settler state’. For Machover this is a necessary point of departure because it sets Zionism as a colonialist expansionist project. The reasoning behind such a lame intellectual spin is obvious. As long as Zionism is conveyed as a colonial project, Jews, as a people, should be seen as ordinary people. They are no different from the French and the English, they just happen to run their deadly colonial project in a different time.

However, as much as Machover is desperate to divert the attention away from the Jewish question, Jewish tribal politics and the Jewish identity, his entire premise can be demolished in a one simple move. If Israel is a ‘settler state’ as he says, one may wonder, what exactly is its ‘Mother State’? In British and French colonial eras, the settler states maintained a very apparent tie with their ‘Mother State’. In some cases in history, the settler state broke from its mother state. Such an event is a rather noticeable one. The Boston Tea Party may ring a bell. However, as far as we are aware, there is no ‘Jewish mother state’ that is intrinsically linked to the alleged ‘Jewish settler state’. The ‘Jewish people’ are largely associated with the Jewish state, and yet the ‘Jewish people’ is not exactly a ‘material’ autonomous sovereign entity. The lack of material Jewish mother state leads to the immediate collapse of Machover’s colonial argument. [Not really: World Jewry is the Mother State for the Israel as a settler state. – ISH]

Moreover, native Hebraic Israeli Jews are not connected culturally or emotionally to any motherland except their own state. As an ex-Israeli, I can testify that neither my parents nor myself or any of my fellow expatriates have ever been aware of our ties to any other (mother) state except Israel [Again, they were surely loyal to World Jewry even more than they were to Israel – ISH]. Accordingly, it may be true that Zionism carries some colonial elements and yet, it is not a colonial project per se, for no one can present a material correspondence between Jewish ‘motherland’ and a Jewish ‘settler state’. The Jewish national project is unique in history and as it seems it doesn’t fit into any Marxist materialist explanation.

We are therefore entitled to assume that Machover’s ‘settler state’ is just another Judeo Marxist spin that is there to divert the attention from the clear fact that Israel is the Jewish state. In order to understand Israel’s unique condition we must ask, “who are the Jews? What is Judaism and what is Jewishness?” In fact answering these questions will help us understand why Machover and other Jewish Marxists invest so much effort producing all those spinning lines. As interesting as it may sound, Machover’s alteration of Marx’s ideology is very similar to the Zionist distortion of the Old Testament.

Machover’s recent publication is a pompous lengthy talk delivered in November 2006 at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theater (SOAS). For some reason it was published this month by the ‘International Socialist Review’ (ISR).

Considering the embarrassing fact that none of Machover’s prophetic predictions ever stood the reality test, the publication of such an embarrassing paper raises serious concerns regarding the editors of the ISR’s understanding of world current affairs. It would be very interesting to learn from the ISR whether they approve Machover’s suggestion that Islam “is backward looking and inherently unable to deliver progress.” It may also be important to make sure that every Muslim on this planet grasps that an Elder Jew Marxist from London is convinced that they should throw away their Qur’an.

I may as well mention that here in Britain and in some other European countries more than just a few people are concerned with the latest rise of nationalism. Shockingly enough, comparing Machover’s pretentious and supremacist take on Islam with rightwing nationalists reveals a very amusing fact. As it happens, Machover, the supremacist tribal Jew, has managed to locate himself on the right of Nick Griffin and the BNP. While Griffin is kind enough to offer ‘foreigners’ £50,000 to go back to their ‘homeland’, our Kosher Marxist Machover is set to rob the indigenous of his belief on his land. Griffin would not be able to get away saying about Islam that it is 'backward looking'. This is hardly surprising, while Griffin has to meet a vast opposition, Machover would have very little opposition within the left. One reason is obviously due to the fact that Machover and his three Jewish supporters are unnoticeable. Another reason may be that racism and supremacy is, unfortunately, a Jews only territory. As we can see Machover is getting away with it. Hopefully, this will change soon.

Machover launches his 2006 talk raising an interesting question: “How should we think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?”

One may notice that Machover uses the word ‘should’ and ‘we’. This form of speech suggests that the elder may possess the right answers within his intellectual arsenal. Following the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, Machover declares with confidence “We must be clear as to how the issue ought to be approached.”

I may admit that when a Jewish marginal Marxist voice utilises the “we”, “should” and the “ought”, my red alert light turns on. I recently read about some Bolsheviks who held similar ideas to Machover’s did to Ukrainians peasants in the name of just another “we”.

Machover dares to come with pretence of an analytical argumentation that will produce a concept of resolution. “Understanding,” he says, “ought to precede judgment.” Someone should remind the Hebraic ‘prophet’, who probably failed to read a single philosophical text in the last 50 years, that ‘understanding’ is itself subject to prior ‘understandings’ and ‘judgments’. In fact Machover’s own systematic failure to understand the power of Islam and Arab resistance is in itself due to his own prior understandings and some severe Judeo Marxist indoctrination.

It would take Machover many thousands of words of pseudo-analytical text before he outlines his vision of ‘Resolution—principles and preconditions’.

“Above all,” he says, “pressure must be applied on Israel to end its military occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights.” “Equal rights”, he affirms are “essential elements that a lasting resolution must embody”. This is quite an astonishing insight from a man who claims to understand the conflict. In spite of his ‘analytical research’ Machover somehow failed to realise that the Jewish state is not going to willingly approve any form of equality, for Jewish political ideology does not succumb to the belief in human equality.

“The right of return,” he continues, is the “recognition of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, to be rehabilitated and properly compensated for loss of property and livelihood.”

This is indeed beautiful and correct and yet, Machover fails to tell us what is going to lead the Israeli Jews to give away their little ‘Jews-only state’.

Machover eventually comes with a very simple resolution. “The third and most fundamental element in a genuine resolution is removal of the fundamental cause of the conflict: the Zionist colonisation project must be superseded.” I may stress at this point that Moshe Machover is not one of my satirical fictional characters. He is real and he even has at least 3 Jewish Marxist followers. The crucial question here is how these 4 Judeo Marxists are going to sell this reasonable idea to the Israeli Jews?

Like other deluded solidarity campaigners who fail to realise that the Palestinian future will be determined by ‘facts on the ground’, Machover engages himself in the one state/two state academic resolution discourse. “For a two-state setup to satisfy them, Israel would have to be de-Zionized: transformed from an ethnocratic settler state into a democratic state of all its inhabitants.” For some reason, Machover, who doesn’t even live in Israel, believes that he can tell the Israelis in what kind of country they should live in. “On the other hand, a single state would have to be not merely democratic (and hence secular) but have a constitutional structure that recognizes the two national groups and gives them equal national rights and status.” Once again the Elder Jew Marxist, the embodiment of the ultimate possible marginal voice, is telling the Palestinians and the Israelis that if they want to live together they better be secular. One should admit by now, it indeed takes some chutzpah to be a Judeo Marxist.

After 22 pages of Marxist self-indulgence on the verge of verbal masturbation, the man himself comes with the necessary goods. He admits that he was wasting the time of his listeners.

“Indeed, no genuine resolution is possible in the short or medium term, because of the enormous disparity in the balance of power.”

So in case you happen to wonder what may bring a change. Here it is. ‘Moishe of Arabia’ has two answers to offer. “First, decline in American global dominance” as if Israel is bound to crash with its current allies. As Machover knows, Jews changed their allies rather often in the last century.

“Second,” he continues “a radical-progressive social, economic and political transformation of the Arab East, leading to a degree of unification of the Arab nation—most likely in the form of regional federation.” Seemingly, the archaic Marxist fails to gather the most obvious evolving story, the Arab nation is largely Islam. Arab people are becoming more and more united around their love of Allah and the notion of Ummah. As far as reality is concerned, Islam is the rising force, whether our four Judeo Marxists like it or not.stunning win

 in the first Palestinian parliamentary election which it has taken part in. Would elections take place in the PA today, the Hamas victory would even be greater. Considering the fact that Islam is the only successful resistance force against Western colonialism and the Zionist war machine, the fact that ISR published Machover’s Judeo-centric intellectually lame analysis is there to prove that the time may be ripe for Socialists and Marxists to save themselves from the Judeo political grip. In 1884, in his invaluable paper ‘On The Jewish Question’ Marx argued that for the world to emancipate itself of capitalism, it should liberate itself of the secular Jew [1]. I do not know much about people liberating themselves. I would narrow it down and argue that for Marxist and socialists to liberate their discourse in accordance with their master mentor, they may have to consider liberating themselves of their tribal infiltrators.

As we saw before, in terms of tolerance and ethics, Machover positioned himself to the right of Nick Griffin and the BNP. In terms of political pragmatism, he is to the right of Shimon Peres and his ‘New Middle East’. Machover has his own plans for a New Middle East. He is going to unite them all and throw their Qur’an away.

By now we are really accustomed to the fact that Machover doesn’t like Islam. “The subsequent emergence of Islamism hold a false promise …Nor can it possibly be a uniting force: on the contrary, it is deeply divisive as between Sunnis and Shias, and has no attraction whatsoever for non-Muslim and secular Arabs (including Palestinians) , let alone Hebrews.”

Interestingly enough, Moishe of Arabia comes with these embarrassing lines in November 2006, just 5 months after the Shi'a Hezbollah gave a signal of support to its Sunni brothers in Gaza, reminding Israel that they were just to the north, and wide awake, serving the Israeli army with a humiliating defeat. The Marxist elder comedian gave his 2006 talk less than a year after Hamas has scored a

In fact, many Socialists and Marxists do, especially out of the Anglo-American world. However, those Marxist and Socialists who keep spreading anti-Islam views better just join the Jewish Lobby, Wolfowitz and the Neocons, the NJF They better do it because this is where they belong.

[1] “What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.” Karl Marx On The Jewish Question, 1844

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from Ken Freeland:

Thanks for forwarding these pieces by Gilad Atzmon.  The need for a rapprochement between the Left and progressive religions has never been more urgent than it is today.  I have noticed this same appeal from time to time in your writing also, Adam. 

 

The godlessness of the Left, the popularity of atheism, the disdain for all religious manifestations as "obscurantist," has a long history.  The collusion of religion with reactionary rulers is part of the reason, but somehow it never occurs to these doctrinaire Leftists to question whether this collusion is endemic to the religion, or represents a corruption of it.  Let me hasten to add that I do think such collusion is endemic to some religions, and this only adds grist to the atheistic mill.  But Gilad is right in that by lowering its level of hubris about religion (as if a political ideology had the last word on it and everything else, reminding us of the stories coming out of Maoist China where peasants unable to get their localized steel mills to operate properly, instead of reading a textbook on metallurgy, would recite verses from the Sayings of Chairman Mao). 

 

I think it might be fair to argue that the worst effect of Marxism-Leninism was to alienate religious people from the Left -- to make the two beliefs seem incompatible.  The over-weaning nature of that ideology attempted to replace religion with ideology…the god that failed.  Notwithstanding, the essential principles of socialism are, according to my best research, derived from Christian sources in the first place.  People often forget that "Christian Socialism" antedated the Marxian variety, and this is documented by Marx's giving it short shrift by name in his Communist Manifesto.  But the antireligious nature of the Marxist-Leninist brand (and the very real atrocities committed under its name in the USSR, the Ukraine, etc.) soon set the majority of the Christian intelligentsia against socialism in general…the distinction was lost.

 

As a student of the papal "social encyclicals," I have noticed over time a softening in this regard, albeit over a very long period of time.  But the current Pope continues this trajectory.  Caritas in Veritate, published just last week, contains little that would cause alarm to a socialist, and quite a bit that is objectionable to votaries of capitalism.  The socio-economic vision of Christianity (of Catholic Social Teaching at any rate) is brought into clearer focus, and any Leftist would be foolish not to try to make common cause with it.  Indeed, the various principles enunciated by these social encyclicals adumbrate the very principles missing from Marxist-Leninism that have led to its totalitarian tendencies,  especially the principle of subsidiarity, that the lowest level of social organization capable of making a decision or carrying out a task (the family, the church, various civic organizations of civil society) ought to have the autonomy to do so, and that it is the state's  job to protect that autonomy, not to encroach upon it.  Anyway, the prospects for this rapprochement between the ecclesium and the Left has never been brighter since the "schism" occurred.  That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!

 

Peace,

Ken Freeland

 

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