As for your 'REAL Communist test'... (Palestine, Israel, and the far left) (557 hits)
Category: PoliticsRating: 0.5 on 13 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by TheRedUnderYourBed (View user info) at 2006-08-26 21:08:29 EDT
This letter, which is the continuation of a debate, and its reply are an example of where I believe liberalism fails. It isn't intended to be even a moderate sampling of the opinions present, it's intended to give you something to read critically.
Read it, laugh at how much time we've wasted arguing, check up on your history. Wikipedia has a moderate article under 'Palestine' that details both historical Israelite influence and modern Arab influence, which is good for establishing facts (such as, that the UN and British rule in the region was what allowed for displacement of the Palestinians).
So if your brain wants a Salmon cutlet, rather than a cheeseburger, dive right in. That's not to say you'll agree, but the experience of thinking may well be worthwhile. Then, when you've read it, rate it if you can be bothered.
Names have been changed for reasons of privacy.
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TheRedUnderYourBed,
I am not sure what you are on but a two state solution is a real and feasible solution unlike the complete and utter destruction of a state, which by the way is supported by religous fanatic groups who condemn homosexuality for example...Iran recently hanged two male lovers in public merely for being in a homosexual relationship. I thought you stood against homophobia. Do you have any pamphlet cut and paste comments on that little issue? Oh I forgot, Iran is ok because they are anti-America. Don't say they are anti-capitalist because they are not...I don't see an Iranian socialist state that stands for the working class. I see a state that is fuelling the ongoing conflict over what seems to be US interest in the Middle East (Israel....and possibly Iraq). I see a state that executes people for being in relationships that do not agree with the Holy Qu'ran. I see a state that is run mainly under grounds of faith. A state, ulitmately run by clergy. A theocracy? Do you support theocratic states? Well the Christian and Jewish Bible may say the same about gays but we do not execute them for it (yes they persecute them on a different level but there is a level of acceptance).
I am only for a two state solution as it would see the end of fighting between Israel and Palestinians. It is in this way I do consider myself to be pro-Palestinian. To have a Palestinian state existing side by side with another state is not pro-Zionist in any way shape or form. I naturally as a MARXIST(1) despise the establishment of a state based on grounds of faith. This means, I am against the nature of the Iranian Muslim Republic, Israel and the Vatican for that matter. No people should be bound to a piece of land in that case. This is what creates wars as well as the desire for the domination of markets by the capitalist powers that be...I have not left that dialiectic out.(2)
In the case of the Aboriginals in Australia this is their land and for fuck's sake we have to recognise that as a country and apologise to them for taking it off them.(3)
We should condemn militancy that fuels an un-necessary war. How long do you want the killing of Palestinian and Israeli children to go on? Would you personally strap bombs to yourself to blow up a bus full of civilians or get in a gunship and destroy a residential area in the Gaza Strip or would you pose as an Israeli soldier and shoot worshipers in a Mosque in the West Bank like Goldstein did ages ago? Would you kidnap a country's olympic team and hold them to ransom to further you cause? Would you bulldoze houses to further your cause? How about intimidating the local population into supporting your group for your cause, such as what is done in the Palestinian territories. I don't support any of these acts of violence. I find them sick and depraved and I don't care whose side it comes from. How can you call yourselves anti-war when you support one side in an ongoing conflict? Do you seriously run on the old grounds of "my enemy's enemy is my friend"?(4)
How dare you desecrate the Eureka Stockade(5) in such a manner. What developed from it was democracy and a Trade Union movement. There was no room for dialogue with the British back then. Violent resistance was the only way out in that case. It has been proven that dialogue could have ended the conflict in the Middle East. Some small groups who have lots of media coverage tend to mess it all up though. If you think that violence is the answer to this current situation then you are deluded immensly and are no better than the bastards who bomb eachother and destroy communities...and kill the people. Socialists believe in the people, the people working as one. You seem to contradict that.(6)
How does one claim victory in this case? Do we pile up the dead bodies from both sides and compare who has the larger pile? The IDF may be responsible for the death of civilians but where does that leave your freedom fighters who blow up buses full of people going to work or school. Would you support a movement that had people in Melbourne walking into a place like Revolver or Young & Jacksons or The Nott(7) or onto the 630 Bus to Monash Clayton or onto a train with bombs strapped to them and blow themselves up? I sure as hell wouldn't. That shit happened a lot in Israel. They talk about market bombings, well let me put that into context for you...a young Aboriginal person going into the Vic Market and blowing themselves up in protest of the Crown having taken their land off them.
You say the Bolshviks allowed religious people to practice their faith??? I have never heard such revisionist garbage in my life. Explain the destruction of churches and mosques and synagogues and explain the pogroms focused on Jewish communities in Russia during the civil war on both the sides of the Reds and the Whites. Under Stalin, who was a Bolshevik and was the worst representative of Bolshevism, priests were arrested and sent off to the gulags.
I could go on and on but I think this should suffice for now and I will wait for you cut and paste job of a response...give me a response that is of your own thought and feeling rather than one that is taken straight out of a party propaganda booklet.(8)
JewNotZionist
(1) A self-proclaimed Marxist, not necessarily in reference to theoretical groundings - Karl Marx is quoted: "I am no Marxist!"
(2) The dialectic is a process of formal logic whereby an apparent contradiction between states is resolved by describing the fundamental relationship between them. It is to formal logic as calculus is to mathematics.
(3) No relation to the previous debate whatsoever.
(4) I admit to ignoring most of this rant in my reply. Poor choice of tactics is not a reason, politically speaking, to not side with the oppressed - if siding with the oppressed is your condition of political support.
(5) Historical mining conflict in Australia, leading to the development of a universal suffrage movement and unionism.
(6) Proper socialists do not believe in 'the people', they believe in the workers.
(7) Various bars.
(8) Personal attacks make for a great political argument, don't they?
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JewNotZionist,
There is no pamphlet that has directly covered this material, nor has there been for any of the other responses to your questions. I'd rather have had this discussion in person so as to show you I'm not kidding, but I haven't had the time.
I'll grant you that in the short term it's somewhat more likely that the Palestinians will be granted their own mini-state, but certainly anything that will be offered whilst the state of Israel and its interests and backers exist cannot be fair. A two state solution, as being offered by the state of Israel as it stands, is both politically and economically unworkable; this includes split territory, lack of infrastructure, and resource access (including water) - in some cases Palestinian farmland is on the other side of the security wall to their houses.
I do not know what you mean by suggestion that I denigrate the Eureka stockade. That's just nuts. You cannot compare that to the middle east today as dialogue will not, by itself, bring justice. To have a genuinely fair and equal outcome to a two-state solution would require a movement for democracy of such political clout that cross culture solidarity would almost certainly develop, and would have to in order to cancel the massive negative impact of US imperialism there currently. As such, there would be no further need for two separate states, and separation would be no more than bureaucracy.
That is in fact how you're not Marxist in your analysis of this case, at least not any more than, say, Che Guevara. He also mechanised the dialectic argument, although in his case it was a matter of not understanding class or the power of workers to change things.
I am not for theocratic states, in and of themselves - I am against the biggest imperialists. If the world's worst problem-solvers go around making more Saddams and Osamas, or even just avoiding demoralisation and loss, then we've got a real problem in future as they will continue to wreak havoc. This is also why I picks sides in long conflicts, and why we should acknowledge that Hezbollah can claim victory - their aim in this particular engagement was to escape their own total destruction, and they have done so. Israel did not wipe them out, as was their goal, so by default Israel lose.
Some ultra-left or self-interested members of the Bolshevik party did indeed go about the practical destruction of places of worship, but then, some members of the Cadets (the right-wing party in Russia) changed their minds and started helping when they realised the revolution had won. Both are relatively rare. I admit that I do not know for a fact whether or not your claim of pogroms by the Red Army during the civil war was true (but I doubt it). I strongly suspect that places of worship were used as military edifices in some places. The soviets under Bolshevik leadership legalised freedom of religion. Stalin did have formal Bolshevik party membership, but that doesn't change the circumstances that shifted him to the right.
I agree that we want reconciliation with all remaining Aboriginals of Australia, but this will take some doing. A two state solution is probably not the answer in that case either, though following the Bolshevik example, I would strongly push for autonomy for any community that wishes it, once in a position to do so.
TheRedUnderYourBed
User Reviews
Submitted by Phallic_Cymbals (user info) at 2006-09-19 02:11:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"In the case of the Aboriginals in Australia this is their land and for fuck's sake we have to recognise that as a country and apologise to them for taking it off them".
They gave us their land when they all chose to die of influenza.
Submitted by Genko (user info) at 2006-09-19 01:35:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You're going down, buddy.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-08-28 16:53:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
HAR HAR TROTSKY
Submitted by FuckTheArmy (user info) at 2006-08-27 10:00:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Furthermore: Whilst some portions of the Red army did indeed blame (and therefore conduct pogroms against) the Russian Jews, as did the White army, I did not intend to trivialise the pogroms themselves - disgusting and racist as they are - but to suggest that this wasn't the purpose or intent of the Red army.
I hope I didn't offend anyone by my flippancy.
Submitted by FuckTheArmy (user info) at 2006-08-27 09:55:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
>The USA should give back Texas to Mexico if Israel gives back any of the land it got through military gain.
You could at least stop shooting immigrants. Then it wouldn't matter who 'owns' the land... US business interests control the lives of so many Mexicans already.
>Fuck the so-called palestinians. Israel was a desert wasteland before 1948...and nobody cared about it until the jews starting flocking there. Funny how the plight of the jews, that were forced to flee Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and the rest of the countries of the middle east and Africa, is completely ignored.
The plight of the Jews isn't ignored here. However, the context of the debate is the plight of the Palestinians. Quite frankly I'm not suggesting they should have to leave, but that a Jewish state that fundamentally excludes people of other backgrounds is the problem, as is its backing by, and support for, US interests.
More Jews live in NY state than in Israel, and the idea of a Jewish state didn't exist before 1897.
Moreover, the idea that the Palestinian mandate was a desert before 1948 can't be true. It wouldn't have supported so many people as to create the 750,000 odd refugees who fled in 1948, and there is historical evidence that a number of the orange groves date back to around the end of the 17th century.
>Arafat believed in a two-state policy...only because he knew once he got his state that he would use it to get even more land. That's how these guys work and the liberals are mindless, clueless, pacifist morons to the reality of the world.
I didn't say I agreed with Arafat, and I am not a liberal. As far as I am concerned that would make me more right-wing than I am.
>These countries will not ever recognize Israel and will stop at nothing less than Israel's complete destruction.
Bull. Most of these countries now have some sort of formal or informal treaty with Israel. It's the people who were forced into permanent refugee camps who want Israel's destruction as a segregated state.
>In that case, I'll pick the Israelis over any towel-head terrorists any day of the week.
That sounds rankly racist to me!
But thankyou for reading it, at least.
Submitted by Stabkill (user info) at 2006-08-27 01:54:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
The USA should give back Texas to Mexico if Israel gives back any of the land it got through military gain.
Fuck the so-called palestinians. Israel was a desert wasteland before 1948...and nobody cared about it until the jews starting flocking there. Funny how the plight of the jews, that were forced to flee Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and the rest of the countries of the middle east and Africa, is completely ignored.
Arafat believed in a two-state policy...only because he knew once he got his state that he would use it to get even more land. That's how these guys work and the liberals are mindless, clueless, pacifist morons to the reality of the world.
These countries will not ever recognize Israel and will stop at nothing less than Israel's complete destruction.
In that case, I'll pick the Israelis over any towel-head terrorists any day of the week.
Submitted by 2004Dreaming (user info) at 2006-08-27 01:46:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by FuckTheArmy (user info) at 2006-08-27 01:20:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
To be self referential:
(8) Personal attacks make great political arguments, don't they?
I don't actually care what my mother gets up to. It really doesn't offend me in the least. In fact, if it's true, good for you both.
You didn't actually read it, did you.
No-one's actually too dumb to understand this. It's just a matter of how willing you are to engage with the ideas - and if you're not, you should have looked at the statement at the top of the page.
The one that says, if you're not going to read it properly, don't rate it.
Submitted by rockdocc (user info) at 2006-08-27 00:41:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by Foolproof (user info) at 2006-08-26 23:04:44 (#)
Ranking: -1
America, good on paper. Bad in practice.
======================
your mom, good in bed. bad at breakfast...
ooooooo BURN! yeah!
Submitted by extacy_red (user info) at 2006-08-26 23:40:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
http://lolconspiracy.ytmnd.com/
Submitted by Foolproof (user info) at 2006-08-26 23:04:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
America, good on paper. Bad in practice.
Submitted by rockdocc (user info) at 2006-08-26 22:54:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
communism, good on paper. Bad in practice.
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2006-08-26 22:18:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
I'm too dumb to understand this. Good thing I blame others for my own shortcomings.