David King: graphic artist and socialist
Shiraz (like most of the left) has been remiss in failing to mark the recent passing of the outstanding socialist graphic artist and archivist David King. Here’s an excellent interview published at Mike Dempsey’s Graphic Journey blog; the Graun obituary is here.
He identified as a Marxist and a Trotskyist and his images will be immediately recognisable to any leftwing activist who’s read books or attended demos over the past forty years.
His style is a mix of forceful sans serif typography, solid planes of vivid colour and emphatic borders; a modern reworking of the graphic language of 1920s Russian Constructivism and the collage of John Heartfield.
Below are some of the outstanding, and instantly recognisable, book covers and posters he produced over the years; but we should start with what is probably his most ubiquitous creation:
King’s 1977 poster for a march against the Official Secrets Act
Lansman on Labour and the Jews: from ethnic cleansing to truth and reconciliation
Jon Lansman, writing at Left Futures, shows how Labour’s commitment in 1944 to a Jewish national state in Palestine wasn’t due to Zionist agitation or imperialist self interest but the effects of the holocaust; an important and well-researched piece:
Who is responsible for the Middle East conflict? And how do we help resolve it? We can do worse than to begin by looking at Labour’s own history.
On this day [ie 30 May] in 1944, Labour’s annual conference was taking place in London. A week before D-Day and two weeks before V1s started hitting London, the Allies were making progress through Italy and were bombing targets in France in preparation for the invasion. And amidst all that, Labour delegates were focussed on “The International Post-War Settlement“, on how to build a post-war world.
They knew about the Holocaust though they had not yet really understood its magnitude. And in building a new world, they were prepared to contemplate some drastic measures. I recently purchased a copy of the NEC statement which was agreed at the conference. It included, in a section headed “Palestine”, the words I found profoundly shocking when I first read them:
There is surely neither hope nor meaning in a “Jewish National Home”, unless, we are prepared to let Jews, if they wish, enter this tiny land [Palestine] in such numbers as to become a majority. There was a strong case for this before the War. There is an irresistible case now, after the unspeakable atrocities of the cold and calculated German Nazi plan to kill all Jews in Europe. Here, too, in Palestine surely is a case, on human grounds and to promote a stable settlement, for transfer of population. Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in. Let them be compensated handsomely for their land and let their settlement elsewhere be carefully organised and generously financed. The Arabs have many wide territories of their own; they must not claim to exclude the Jews from this small area of Palestine, , less than the size of Wales. Indeed we should re-examine the possibility of extending the present Palestinian boundaries, by agreement with Egypt, Syria or Transjordan.”
And so, without opposition, Labour’s conference committed itself to not only ethnic cleansing, but to a Greater Israel extending even beyond the boundaries that it currently occupies in 2016. It did so not because it was persuaded by the “Zionist lobby”, not in order to serve British imperial interests (which had been the only objective of the Balfour declaration in 1917), but because of the Holocaust, and the refugee problem that they expected.
This nevertheless shocking commitment to ethnic cleansing should be seen in the context of an earlier section of the report in a section headed “Frontiers“:
All Germans left outside the the post-War German frontiers, unless they are willing to become loyal subjects of the state in which they find themselves, claiming no special privileges, should go back to Germany. Indeed they will be well advised to do so in their own interests, for, in the early post-War years at any rate, there will be a depth of hatred against Germans in the occupied countries, which it is impossible for us or for Americans to realise.
Germans in many of those areas may have to face the choice between migration and massacre.
The organised transfer of population, in the immediate post-War period, may, indeed, be one of the foundations of better international relations in a later phase. Nor would this be a new departure. Between the Wars the transfer of population between Greece and Turkey was an undoubted success.
In any case, there will be a vast problem of repatriation and resettlement in Europe, when tens of millions of refugees, slave labourers and prisoners of war return to freedom and their own homes. Compared with this, the transfer even of substantial national minorites, German and other, to the right side of the post-War frontiers will be a small affair. “
Shocking as it may be to those of us who observe from a safe distance the fall-out from the ethnic cleansing that did in fact take place in 1947 in Palestine and the conflict that followed, it was seen as a relatively “small affair” in the context of the end of World War II. Ethnic cleansing had allegedly been an “undoubted success” in Greece and Turkey in spite of the deaths from epidemics in transit and the resulting poverty and hardship on arrival.
Churchill who had promised “that we British will never seek to take vengeance by wholesale mass reprisals against the general body of the German people” – with the backing of Labour’s leaders and conference – agreed with Allied leaders to back the ethnic cleansing of 12-14million Germans across central and eastern Europe after the war.
“The largest forced migration in history” was “accomplished largely by state-sponsored violence and terror” including being herded into camps including former Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz or Theresienstadt, victims being subjected to beatings, rapes of female inmates, gruelling forced labour and starvation diets.
Estimates of those who died in transit vary upwards from 500,000 though the German government clings to earlier estimates of 2million. This included those who died of disease or malnutrition which included a high proportion of children and the elderly. What’s more, other minorities were expelled on the back of this forced migration: Hungarians from Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Romanians by the USSR. And that is on top of the forced repatriation of Soviet POWs.
Labour was right to expect massacres from populations that had suffered German brutality under occupation. And the League of Nations and post-World War I treaties had utterly failed to protect ethnic minorities subjected to the racism of right-wing nationalist governments right across central Europe in the new ethno-centered nation states Western leaders had created in the dismemberment of the old empires. On the altar of “self-determination”, Allied leaders had handed multicultural cities and towns across Europe to be ruled by strident ethnic nationalists.
By 1944, they didn’t want to make the same mistake again. Not in Europe, and not with the Jews. And so it was they that created Israel. Of the Allied leaders, it is true that both Bevin and Attlee were persuaded by the complexities of managing inter-communal conflict in the Mandate of British Palestine (rather than by Ernie Bevin’s antisemitic prejudices though he had them) to abstain on Israel’s creation. In addition to the pressure of US diplomats on countries like Haiti, Philipines and Liberia, it was the three votes controlled by Stalin (cast on behalf of the USSR, Ukraine and Belarus) which ensured that the two-thirds majority for resolution 181 was achieved.
And so what of the role of Zionism? For all the diplomacy and organisation of the World Zionist Organisation for half a century, it was not that which led to the creation of Israel. It was the Holocaust, the plight of the survivors seeking safe refuge, and the guilt of the American, British and other Allied leaders who did not wish to take them in (though many would have been satisfied with that).
So they did for the Jews what they were not prepared to do for the Kurds, nor for the Roma. And the Jews, a majority of whom in almost all countries had not supported Zionism prior to the War, rejoiced at the prospect of a safe place to live. And who with the knowledge of their circumstances cannot understand that?
And the Palestinians understandably saw and still see the loss of their land as a catastrophe. The Nakba. And who that reflects on their circumstances and what they have experienced since cannot understand that?
If there is to be peace, justice, democracy and equality in Israel/Palestine, both of those realities need to be acknowledged. Only truth can bring reconciliation.
It’s right that Jackie Walker is reinstated: but we don’t have to agree with her
Above: Walker puts her case on RT (aka Putin TV)
Sean Matgamna has argued persuasively, here, that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party should generally be dealt with by argument and education, not disciplinary measures.
I would, personally, make an exception for Ken Livingstone, whose long record of Jew-baiting is such that he should be expelled.
The case of Jackie Walker is much less clear-cut, based as it is (or was – she’s now been reinstated), on some ambiguous comments made in the course of a private Facebook exchange with friends. Nevertheless, the comments do give cause for concern, especially this:
“As I’m sure you know, millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues today on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews …
“Many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean. So who are victims and what does it mean? We are victims and perpetrators to some extent through choice”
As a comrade commented to me, “I would ask, what is the relevance of Jewish slave-traders in the 17th century to anti-semitism today? I genuinely don’t understand what point Jackie was trying to make.
“That may be partly because I haven’t seen the whole conversation the comments were part of, but could someone explain what the point was? The only interpretation I can see is that the role of Jews in slavery somehow mitigates anti-semitism today. If that’s not the point, then what was it? I’d be very happy to have it explained”.
The participation of some Jews in the slave trade was, of course, terrible (as anyone’s participation was), but actually relatively minor. Jackie Walker’s ignorant comments (she claims, just about her own family, but quite obviously aimed at Jews as a whole) suggest that Jews played a leading role (as “chief financiers”) in the slave trade, which warrants special mention to this day. This argument is usually based upon the spurious “research” of the US Nation of Islam and/or various neo-Nazis.
And, certainly, the gloating of various obvious anti-Semites since Walker’s reinstament should give leftists and anti-racists some pause for thought:
Anyone who wants the truth about Jews and the slave trade, should read this and this.
Another Europe Is Possible: sign the ‘London Declaration’
From Another Europe Is Possible:
Today, Yanis Varoufakis, John McDonnell and Caroline Lucas are launching this call to vote In and change Europe. You can add your signature here.
THE LONDON DECLARATION: VOTE IN TO CHANGE EUROPE
28th May, 2016
We come together from different backgrounds, political parties and movements. We are joining forces to call on people across the UK to rise up, campaign, and vote ‘IN’ to change Europe.
The people of Britain will make a historic decision in the referendum on 23rd June, 2016. In the next four weeks, progressives must mobilise to win their hearts. We cannot leave the future of our country in the hands of regressive politicians and vested interests who do not speak for us.
This is the first step in a bold campaign to reclaim our democracy – not just here in the UK, but all over Europe.
The European Union has built a lasting peace, helped protect our shared environment, created possibilities for protecting the rights of citizens and workers, and established common ground for Europeans to live, study and work together.
It suffers from serious flaws – a vacuum of democracy and economic policies which are unleashing a vortex of deflation and depression in several countries, yielding nationalism and xenophobia everywhere.
We are faced with a stark choice today. Either we walk away from the European Union and reap the whirlwind – or we join together across parties and borders to build an open, democratic Europe that works in the interests of all its citizens.
We know another Europe is possible. It is down to us to work for it.
If we leave the EU, who stands to benefit most? The political and financial elites of this country. Be under no illusion that a vote to leave will somehow strengthen British democracy, bring shared prosperity, or strengthen the influence of the majority of Britons over decisions that affect our common future.
‘Brexit’ would strengthen nationalism and xenophobia in Britain and across Europe, sowing conflict, strengthening toxic politics and accelerating an economic crisis that will drag all of us down. Being outside the EU will not insulate us from this fate.
We, the undersigned, have joined forces to campaign together for a democratic and progressive IN vote. We are against walking away from Europe, and we are against surrendering to the status quo in Brussels.
Our campaign against Brexit is also a campaign to join forces with democrats across Europe to confront the status quo and to democratise the EU. The unity of working people and progressives striving for a sustainable future is the only source of hope for better things to come. And this unity cannot, and should not, end at the British Channel.
By joining forces to promote the Remain vote on June 23rd, we are beginning a passionate campaign for a Britain that prospers in:
- A Democratic Europe in which authority stems from Europe’s sovereign peoples, decision-making is transparent and communities are empowered;
- A Social Europe that recognises rights and freedom from exploitation as a prerequisite for true liberty;
- A Dynamic Europe that unleashes the creative and productive powers of its citizens;
- A Peaceful Europe, which serves as a force for good in our neighbourhood and around the globe;
- An Open Europe that is alive to ideas, people and inspiration from all over the world, instead of building fences and borders to divide us;
- A Sustainable Europe, leading the way in the green transition to the flourishing economies of the future, and living within the planet’s means.
We are united in this call; now we are calling upon all of you to join us. This is your campaign. Let us work together to vote IN on the 23rd June, and to change Britain and Europe for the better!
Fight antisemitism – though it doesn’t exist
I have just received a leaflet from the Birmingham branch of Socialist Resistance, advertising a meeting entitled ‘Fight antisemitism – Fight Zionism’. The speaker is Roland Rance, and one side of the leaflet carries a statement supposedly (*) from him:
********************************************************************************************************
Roland Rance, a socialist Jew and anti-Zionist writes:
The current controversy over alleged anti-Semitism in the Labour Party comes from a convergence of several different forces: apologists for Israeli, always keen to denounce supporters of Palestinian rights; the Labour right, looking for any stick with which to beat Corbyn and the left; and the Tories and their press supporters, desperate to prevent a Corbynled Labour victory. It is no coincidence that this issue burst into public during an election campaign marked by outright racism and Islamophobia.
These attacks are rooted in a continuing campaign to change the meaning of the term anti-Semitism, to include anti-Zionism, or even opposition to Israeli policies and practices. We must be clear on this: anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, has no place on the left, or in society as a whole. Zionism is itself a racist ideology, and anti-Zionism is a legitimate political position. We should also bear in mind that an increasing number of Jews oppose Zionism and very many Zionists (probably the majority) are actually not Jewish, but fundamentalist Christians.
The targets of the current attacks (some of whom are themselves Jews) are not antisemites. Some of them may have been guilty of clumsy phrasing or thoughtless responses; but they are not anti-Jewish racists. Most of the attacks are based on comments on social media, some dating back years; it is evident that there has been a systematic trawl through people’s previous activities.
We must resist this. We call for free speech on Israel, and an end to the witch-hunt. We oppose racism, whether directed at Jews, at Muslims, or at any other community. And we stand firmly alongside the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation and justice.
**********************************************************************************************************
The leaflet also carries this cartoon by the, err, “controversial” cartoonist Carlos Latuff:
So there we have it: according to Socialist Resistance, antisemitism “has no place on the left” and, indeed, as proof of that statement, it simply does not exist on the left! All allegations of antisemitism come from “apologists for Israeli … the Labour right … and the Tories”.
None of the individuals recently accused of antisemitism are guilty, and anti-Zionism cannot ever be antisemitic. As a result of these false allegations, free speech itself is now at stake!
In other words, “nothing to see here, comrades, move on!”
* in fairness to Roland Rance, I note that the wording of the leaflet seems to be loosely based upon a much longer and more nuanced article by him on the Socialist Resistance website, that does very reluctantly admit that in one or two isolated and extreme cases antisemites have “infiltrated” the left and the pro-Palestinian movement. It’s a politically weak and evasive article, but nowhere near as bad as the appalling drivel put out under his name, by his comrades in Birmingham.
Junior doctors: is the deal a sell-out?
From A Healthy Blog, republished with the permission of the author, Dr Peter Campbell:
During the past year we have learnt an incredible amount. From how to organise a picket and dealing with the media, to contract law and equality impact assessments.
On Wednesday (last week) we were taught a lesson by the Government. A lesson on media management. The power of the Government to define a story in its own terms. When the news of the deal broke and we were faced with an onslaught of media and press reaction. ‘The war is over,’ ‘the deal is done,’ ‘BMA agrees terms with NHS Employers.’ It left a lot of Junior Doctors scratching their heads. Is it? Have we just lost?
The appearance of Jeremy Hunt on the national news did nothing to reassure us. His usual mix of factual inaccuracies and scorn for Health Professionals driving many into a frenzy. How could the BMA have done a deal with this man, and how could any deal be any good with the claims Hunt has made?
But if you look beyond the spin, the picture is a lot less clear cut, and there are parts of the deal which are very good for Junior Doctors, and directly oppose Hunt’s narrative on the contract. There are bits of the contract which quite frankly are not good enough and will the apparent return to a position of a cost neutral contract leave Junior Doctors open to more attacks down the line?
There is a lot for Junior Doctors to consider, and there is much to discuss as we plan the way forward. Industrial action and tough negotiation has won us concessions from the government that I did not believe were possible. The Junior Doctors Committee will meet on the 3rd June prior to the referendum of all Junior Doctors (and penultimate and final year medical students) to articulate a way forward.
Here are my thoughts on some of the issues:
Pay & Weekends
Currently junior doctors receive a pay uplift for unsociable hours (called banding.) The new contract splits this pot of money into sections. A pay premium for hours worked at night, retains a banding for Non-Resident on-call (NROC) and introduces a graded banding for weekend work.
This graded banding, based on the number of weekends worked is vital for Junior Doctors. It means there will be an escalating cost to increased weekend working, putting trusts off from rostering more doctors at weekends. Because it is a banding system it applies to the entire weekend. The risk of a junior doctor being asked to work repeated Saturdays as plain time has gone. Junior Doctors have got what they wanted, a financial disincentive to routine weekend working, and Jeremy Hunt is left trying to spin a defeat into victory.
Pay for all work done
When we look back at this contract negotiation I believe this will be seen as the biggest mistake made by the government.
Late last year the Junior Doctors Committee stated that it wanted pay for all work done. A reasonable request. The previous version of the contract honoured this on paper, but not in practice by stating that if a Junior Doctor could predict the hours they were going to be overworked they could request to be paid for these hours. Any junior doctor could tell you this was a joke, and would never work in practice.
The ACAS agreement states that we will now be able to claim for these hours before, during or after the period of extra work. This means the system will now be able to cope with the realities of the work. Doctors will be able to ask for this time to be added to annual leave or claim it back as pay if there is no space in the rota for them to take the leave.
This will be overseen by the Guardian. This newly created role with have oversight over a number of aspects of safety, rotas and exception reporting. The mechanism of reporting overworking. This was rightly described as a weak point in the previous contract. But it has been beefed up, and crucially will now be under scrutiny by Junior Doctors.
Equality
Unfortunately it is here that the ACAS document doesn’t stand up so well to scrutiny. The March contract offer was rightly attacked for its discrimination towards women, lone carers and the disabled. While this contract makes some moves in the right direction, many of these are of speculative benefit.
The reality of the loss of annual pay progression is a less equal contract. A week point of the new contract is also evening working. Particularly important for carers. The governments desire for the political victory will currently see this contract implemented before much of the work around rotas, equality issues or safety has been completed. Not a good starting point for a complicated, divisive new contract.
Cost Neutrality
Jeremy Hunt argues this contract is ‘cost neutral.’ What he means by this is that compared to October 2015, this new contract would not cost any more than our current contract. Therefore if we were to transport ourselves back to October 2015 and put all Junior Doctors on the new contract the pay envelope would be the same.
Nobody believes this contract is cost neutral. An accurate estimate of the extra work done by Junior Doctors is difficult, but there is clearly a lot of it. If we start paying out for that cost neutrality is blown out the window.
But by saying it, and if Junior Doctors do not oppose it, it gives the Secretary of State political leverage for further cuts. In a years time when the pay bill has grown due to the NHS actually paying doctors for the work they do how will the government respond. In order to keep the pay bill cost neutral will it cut doctor numbers? Will it ask hospitals to cut services? Will it try and close whole wards or hospitals?
Junior Doctors have put themselves in an incredibly powerful position. We should not lose faith in our collective power now. Baring any surprises in the terms and conditions released on or before the 31st May I will be voting ‘no’.
Austrian election: a wake-up call to the UK idiot-left
Above: Norbert Hofer came within a few thousand votes of winning
To #Lexit:
Wake up you idiots!
Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) has come terrifying close to winning the Austrian presidential election. The FRO is still on track to finish first in the next Austrian parliamentary election, due within the next two years.
The FPO has Nazi origins and like the French Front National and right wing populist parties that are coming to the fore throughout Europe, it is viciously anti-immigrant, with a particular hostility towards Muslims. In Hungary, Poland, Finland and Switzerland these parties are already participating in national governments. They are all, of course, anti-EU. Marine La Pen’s Front National could well win next year’s French presidential elections.
How long would it be before these new and resurgent right wing movements tear the EU apart?
Which poses a question for you people on the British left who advocate what you call “Lexit” or “Exit Left” – the Communist Party/Morning Star, the SWP and its spin-off Counterfire, plus the Socialist Party tagging along, together with the RMT union:
Do you really want the break-up of the EU at the hands of these forces? Do you really think anything progressive could possibly come of such an outcome?
Presumably, as self-proclaimed internationalists, you do not merely favour the UK pulling out: you must, logically, favour the break-up of the EU in its entirety.
Have you given any serious thought to what this would mean?
The freedom for workers to move across Europe would be lost. ‘Foreign’ workers in each country from other ex-EU states would face increased hostility and racism.
Any possibility of a humane and fair resolution of the migrant crisis would be completely ruled out, as each European country competed with each other to increase border controls and deport migrants even more ruthlessly than they mare doing now.
There would be a big reduction in the productive capacities of the separate states, cut of from broader economic arenas.
Governments and employers in each state would be weaker in capitalist world-market competition, and would thus be pushed towards crude cost-cutting. In the same way that small capitalist businesses, more fragile in competition, use cruder cost-cutting than bigger employers. The limited, but real, workers’ right brought in by the EU would be swept aside.
There would be more slumps and depression, in the same way that the raising of economic barriers between states in the 1930s exacerbated the slump then.
Inevitably, economic tensions between the different nations competing elbow-to-elbow in Europe’s narrow cockpit would lead to increased tensions and, eventually, war – as happened in Europe for centuries and twice in the last century.
Austria’s close-run presidential vote reveals people are disappointed with the mainstream parties and don’t feel represented any longer, while the refugee crisis, the euro crisis, Islamist terror attacks and dissatisfaction with the EU have also caused a shift to the right in Austria and throughout Europe. But the answer is to put forward internationalist, pro-working class, anti-austerity policies across Europe, not to attempt to jump on the nationalist, racist anti-EU bandwagon of the far-right.
In the weeks that followed Hitler’s seizure of power in February 1933 the German Communist Party (KPD) and the Communist International clung rigidly to their view that the Nazi triumph would be brief and that it would be a case of “after Hitler – our turn”: is that what you #Lexit people really expect to happen after the far-right succeeds in breaking up the EU? If so, you are not just politically illiterate: you are criminally irresponsible.
Lenni Brenner’s revisionism: “hysterically and obscenely stupid”
The veteran Jew-baiter Ken Livingstone says his claim that Hitler “supported Zionism” before he “went mad” is supported by the books of “historian” Lenni Brenner. In fact, Livingstone’s misunderstood what Brenner actually wrote (though that was bad enough in the first place).
Anyway, we seemed destined to hear a lot more about the dodgy self-proclaimed “Trotskyist” Brenner, who’s been promoted by the now defunct anti-Semitic Workers Revolutionary Party (with whom Livingstone was closely associated) as well as the SWP and its spin-off Counterfire.
Here’s what a contributor to Socialist Organiser wrote about Brenner when he first started attracting attention in 1984:
By Gerry Ben-Noah (first published in Socialist Organiser 199, 04/10/84)
DENIAL of the holocaust has become the stock-in-trade of the far right in Europe and the USA, from Richard ‘Harwood’ ‘s Did Six Million Really Die? to Arthur Butz‘s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. That pro-Nazis should seek to excuse their heroes of one of the greatest crimes in history can hardly be surprising.
What is remarkable, however, is the recent emergence of a “left wing” version of holocaust revisionism.
At the most extreme, a French Trotskyist defends Robert Faurisson‘s right to deny the existence of gas chambers and extermination camps. More often, though, the “left” revisionists do not deny that the holocaust happened: they merely argue for a redistribution of responsibility for the tragedy. They suggest that the Nazis were not solely to blame for the disaster that befell the Jewish people. Zionism, too must share the guilt.
Now, in fact, various Zionist leaders did calculate that anti-semites would for their own reasons collaborate with them. They understood that there was logical common ground Zionism and anti-semitism — old-fashioned, central-European, pre-Nazi Christian anti-Semitism — in that both rejected assimilation.
Zionism was generated by anti-Semitism. Then once embarked on their project of removing the Jews to Palestine, out of the reach of the anti-semites, the Zionist leaders made hard-headed calculations and assessments of the world they lived in, seeking to find ways of realising their programme.
Thus Zionist leaders had discussions with ministers of the viciously anti-Semitic Tzarist government, with Von Plehve, for example.
In the same way the Zionists have allied in succession with Turkish, British and then US imperialism. Brutal realism and cynical real-politik in the service of their central goal of creating the Jewish state has always characterised the central leadership of the Zionist movement. It has led to shameful episodes and unsavoury contacts.
The realpolitik of the Zionist leaders — together with a slowness to realise that older strains of anti-Semitism had evolved into the lethal, genocidal Nazi variant, with which there could be no accommodation — may well have helped blunt the response of European Jews to Nazism
Identify
But to go on from this tragic confusion to identify Zionism and anti-Semitism, to place the moral or political responsibility — or any share of it — on the Zionist Jews, for Hitler’s holocaust of European Jewery — that is hysterically and obscenely stupid.
Yet that is what the new revisionism — at its sharpest when it stops playing with hollow, abstract logical identification between Zionism and anti-Semitism and bases itself on the historical facts — concludes and now proclaims to the world.
It is important to recognise that whilst holocaust revisionism is absolutely central to the ideology of the far right, “left” revisionism remains — so far — a marginal and aberrant belief within the socialist movement.
Until now it has been propagated only by scattered articles in the “Workers Revolutionary Party” press, or by quaintly-titled pamphlets such as Tony Greenstein’s ‘Zionism: Anti-Semitism’s Twin in Jewish Garb’.
Until now it has looked like the work of cranks.
Until now. Lenni Brenner, “left” revisionism’s newest recruit is a Jew, whose books have all the appearance of serious works of history and are published (expensively) by commercial publishers.
Both the books [ie: The Iron Wall and Zionism In The Age of Dictators – JD] argue, with apparent authority, that Zionists did not fight back against anti-Semitism because they were in sympathy with it. According to Brenner, the Zionists saw anti-semites as nationalists like themselves, with a common objective in the removal of the Jews from Europe and a similar evaluation of the intrinsic worth of diaspora Jewry.
Where does one begin to review work like this? The revisionists of the right have shown how easy it to contest and even subvert what had seemed unassailable historical facts. For, of course, very little history can survive scepticism of this kind, based on the rejection of any evidence one does not like.
Now Brenner does not, by and large, engage in this kind of revisionism. Brenner’s unique contribution to historical revisionism lies in the sense he makes of events.
Most of the events he refers to are real and publicly known. They have been described before by pro-Zionist writers, notably Hannah Arendt in Eichman in Jerusalem (this is not to say that a sizeable catalogue of inaccuracies and contradictions within the Brenner corpus could not be assembled — but such an exercise would miss the point).
Congruence
Brenner’s “theory” of Zionist-Nazi congruence rests upon two sets of phenomena: the actions of individual collaborators who were Zionists, and the policies of Zionist organisations which, for him, were lacking in anti-Nazi resolution.
With the benefit of hindsight it is, of course, easy to see that many Zionists underestimated the Nazis. They thought the new anti-Semitism would be like the old: brutal, humiliating and dangerous for individual Jews.
They could not and did not conceive of the annihilation that was to come. Thus, their strategy was based on a series of assumptions about the immediate prospects for Europe’s Jews which were horribly wrong.
Inner logic
To move from this tragic confusion, however, to the suggestion that the Zionists were unconcerned about the fate of the European Jews is absurd. To argue that they were therefore in sympathy with the Nazis is bizarre.
It would be foolish to deny that there were Zionists who collaborated. So, no doubt, did some Communists, Bundists and liberals. In the nightmare world of Nazi Europe many people did bad things to save their own lives or the lives of those they loved.
For Brenner, though, these individual acts of collaboration are expressions of the inner logic of Zionism. Individual or collective acts of anti-racist resistance by Zionists, on the other hand, are dismissed as merely historical accidents, exceptions that in some unexplained way, prove the rule.
It would be trivially easy to write a similar account of the “inner logic” of capitalist democracy, or of Marxism, which proved to this standard their affinity with Nazism. Such accounts have little to do with serious history.
Brenner claims to be opposed to Jewish, Arab and every other kind of nationalism. Perhaps he is so far from nationalism that he does not feel the need to avoid racial slurs, which he sprinkles throughout his writing. Thus, the inter-was Palestinian Arab leadership were not only “a parasitic upper class” but also “classic levantines” (Iron Wall p, 57); and the Palestinian Arabs as a whole had a “low level of culture” (ibid p.65). As for the Jews:
” … the old Jewish slums were notoriously filthy: ‘Two Jews and one cheese make three smells’ was an old Polish proverb. Karl Marx was only being matter-of-fact when he remarked that ‘The Jews of Poland are the smeariest of all races’ ” (ibid p. 11).
For a self-proclaimed socialist to repeat anti-semitic Polish proverbs as matters of fact is simply incredible. Such remarks are frequent in Brenner and range from the paranoid: the suggestion that rich Jews control the US Democratic Party and thus American foreign policy — to the merely unpleasant — Agutal Israel demanding from the Likud “their pound of flesh” (p. 207) as the price for parliamentary supplrt.
There is, then, a curious ambivalence in Brenner’s writing. He censures Zionism for despising Jews and on the other hand he clearly despises them himself. Similarly, he characterises the Zionist-Revisionists as near-fascists, and cites quotes from anti-Revisionist Zionists to establish this. But he also argues that the Revisionists were the most authentic Zionists, closest to the inner logic of the movement.
Therefore, the opposition of the Labour Zionists to Revisionism, of which good use is made in proving the latter to be reactionaries, is then dismissed as either bad faith or false consciousness. Either Labour’s disagreements with Jabotinsky’s followers were entirely tactical, a contest over who should control the colonialist venture — or the left simply did not appreciate, as Brenner can appreciate, that they were really just logical Zionist-Revisionists.
For a Marxist, Brenner places enormous weight on his own ability to critically examine other people’s psyches across the years (this ability is not restricted to the minds of Labour Zionists: Brenner also ‘shows’ that Betar was Fascist by reference to the mental states of a hypothetical “average Betari” (ZAD, p. 114).
Psychoanalysis
We are also offered a psychoanalysis of Jabotinsky:
” … there was nothing ambiguous about Jabotinsky’s oral fixation … he hated mathematics and was always undisciplined as a student: the infallible signs of oral fixation … He had other stigmata of the fixation … he became hopelessly addicted to detective stories and westerns” (Iron Wall, p.6).
This is the sort of thing that gets psychoanalysis a bad name. It reveals, too, that underneath the glossy covers Brenner’s work is every bit as crankish as former attempts to construct a “socialist” version of historical revisionism.
Why then, has it any credibility? A comment by Isaac Deutscher offers a clue:
“The anti-Zionist urged the Jews to trust their gentile environment, to help the ‘progressive forces’ in that environment … and so hope that those forces would effectively defend the Jews against anti-Semitism … The Zionists, on the other hand dwelt on the deepseated hatred of non-Jews and urged the Jews to trust their future to nobody except their own state. In this controversy Zionism has scored a terrible victory, one which it could neither wish nor expect” (The Non-Jewish Jew, p. 91).
Brenner, like most socialists, wishes that this victory had not happened. But instead of thinking seriously about what kind of socialist strategy could win the Jews away from Zionism, he constructs a fantasy-world in which Zionists did wish for and expect the holocaust, and in which the most fanatical Jewish nationalists were, in reality, ardent anti-semites.
All of this would undoubtedly be an interesting case study for psychoanalysts. Marxists would be better off by turning to Nathan Weinstock’s Zionism: False Messiah.
Happy birthday, Fats!
Things have been a bit depressing for many of us lately, so let me bring a little bit of joy into your lives, courtesy Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller, who was born this day in New York, 1904.
Here is the “Harmful Little Armful” himself in the 1943 film Stormy Weather, also featuring drummer Zutty Singleton, bassist Slam Stewart, Benny Carter on trumpet, Lena Horne and dancer Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson.
Fats died shortly after this was filmed, but you’d never for a moment guess that from the sheer joie de vivre of this performance of his own most famous tune:
Shiraz Socialist 