Drawing Lines Against Racism and Fascism

[stillrobertpaulsen]

How about a programme along these lines?

Nationalisation of all major industries and utilities, including water, gas, oil, coal, iron, steel, telecommunications, railways and airlines;

Free education for all (uncomplicated & unbureaucratic), up to and including university level:

Free healthcare (uncomplicated & unbureaucratic) for all;

A living pension for all from the age of 65;

Tens of millions of spacious, well-equipped, centrally-heated homes, with rents so low that they are easily payable by a factory worker with a spouse and five children;

Etc.

What do you think? Completely unrealisable, a laughable pipe-dream? Or perhaps it sounds to you like a nightmare of oppression, a horrible dystopia?

Don't hesitate to speak your minds. I'm really interested to hear what Americans especially think (and feel) about this.

Great food for thought, MacCruiskeen. Many points on your list are possible realizable, some points have the potential for oppression, but hardly enough to qualify as dystopia. In America, I see things becoming progressively more dystopic politically as the ramifications of the Carbon Crisis (Peak Oil/Global Warming) become more pronounced - we've already seen that to some degree since the 70s: Nixon, bad enough to be forced to resign begat Reagan, whose Iran/contra was even worse, who begat George W. So your bullet points seem almost utopian by contrast.

Just want to follow up on this; I wasn't sure which thread to link William Greider's latest, but as it addresses some of the issues Wombaticus Rex, MacCruiskeen and myself have been grappling with, as well as the racism and fascism addressed in what American Dream started, I thought it would be best printed here. I'll bold the portions I think are most relevant. Who knows whether this group will accomplish anything or if it will be mired in the same old ideological problems that Wombaticus Rex nailed as "endless in-fighting, re-theorizing, witch-hunting and self-examination." Maybe this time will be different. Knock on wood.

A Radical Agenda for Hillary Clinton
by
William Greider

Some of the best minds of our generation’s left-liberal thinkers and political agitators are busy these days composing and publishing “to-do” lists for Hillary Clinton. Their sincere suggestions are worthy ideas for economic and social reforms, nothing very radical but smart measures that will make life better for lots of people. Raise the minimum wage, pay equity for women, reform college loans, abolish usurious lending, paid vacations for all workers and many more similar proposals.

It’s not that these policy advocates are necessarily for Clinton. But if she is to be the Democratic nominee in 2016, they want her to embrace a more ambitious program that might be characterized as a “post-New Democrat” agenda. That is, the stuff her husband dodged when he was the president because these people-friendly propositions were too liberal.

This time, I have a hunch many of these proposals will become part of her program. Hillary Clinton will run on them, reactionary Republicans will denounce her as a big-government liberal and the media will say this Clinton is “running to the left” of the last Clinton. It sounds plausible. If Republicans cooperate by nominating a right-wing nut-bag for president, who knows, she might win.

But here’s the real problem: incremental changes may be worthy, but they have no possibility of curing what are the country’s deeper maladies (or the world’s). The US governing system is experiencing an end-of-era systemic breakdown. Pax America’s far-flung military adventures are mired in a bloody denouement. The onward-and-upward economy that sustained broad prosperity for so many years is over. The political system is dysfunctional.

People at large seem to know this. At least many people understand it better than the political elites who run things. The governing classes are in deep denial, still claiming that the right policy strokes can somehow bring back the good times (sort of) without disturbing the status quo and why it broke down.

The problem is that systemic breakdown is still a taboo subject in American politics. Nobody in the mainstream will talk about it, not just Hillary Clinton and possible GOP nominees for 2016 but both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as the deep ranks of powerful movers and shakers and billionaires who manipulate both politicians and government. When the authority figures and influence peddlers are clinging to the lost past, who will step up and speak for the future?

Gar Alperovitz, an historian and democracy advocate on the left, and Gus Speth, a pioneering environmental leader of long standing, are trying to create a new voice—actually many voices—for the future. Activists and thinkers will be drawn from both the academy and the grassroots where communities are dealing directly with the pain and loss people are experiencing in these new circumstances. The core objective is to encourage people to think anew about deeper structural change but also how to make themselves heard amid the dreary evasions of established power.

Speth and Alperovitz call this new collaboration of intellectuals and organizers the Next System Project. Some 350 reform-minded optimists have signed on to participate. They include many thought leaders whose names are familiar to progressives. To name just a few: Juliet Schor, Herman Daly, Noam Chomsky, Leo Girard, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill McKibben, Frances Fox Piven, Dean Baker, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, David Korten, Michael Albert and Erik Olin Wright. You can read the founding essay here.

“The first thing we are trying to do is make it okay to talk about this subject,” Alperovitz explained to me. “Because otherwise people talk about projects and policies rather than asking if there’s a systemic crisis and how we can deal with a much larger situation. What would it take to imagine a next system when it is clear now that both corporate capitalism and state socialism are failures?”

The spirit of this venture is captured in the title of Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Or in Gar Alperovitz’s new book What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution. Or Gus Speth’s new book, America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy. I shamelessly mention (without blushing) my own effort published a decade ago, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.

“The project is not about my position or Gus’s position,” Gar said. “There has to be thoughtful, serious discussion and debate. It’s about letting a thousand flowers bloom.” The intellectual critiques are already plentiful on the left and are often conflicting or competing with one another. Normally, I am not much interested in “letterhead alliances” that collect scores of organizations to sign endorsements but in reality do not have much muscle. What makes me think this project might be different and might gain real traction is the generous, open-minded tone of the invitation.

The stated purpose is “a concerted effort to break through the national media silence and to radically shift the national dialogue about the future away from narrow debate about policies that do not alter any significant decaying trends, and toward awareness that what must be changed is the nature of the political system itself.

“We believe that it is now imperative to stimulate a broad national debate about how best to conceive possible alternative modes of a very different system capable of delivering genuine democracy and economic equality, individual liberty, ecological sustainability, a peaceful global foreign policy and a thoroughgoing culture of cooperative community based on non-violence and respect for differences of race, gender and sexual preference.”

People could build a political party around those ideals, though that’s not the idea. Nor can anything so substantial happen until people have developed concrete ways of reorganizing the political system called democracy and the economic system called capitalism. The free-wheeling invention has already started at the grassroots level where suffering and loss are greatest, Alperovitz pointed out, but the process is necessarily slow-moving.

This vision is for the long term, obviously, not for the next electoral season. But it is based on the shared conviction that the US and the world really have entered a new, uncharted era that demands great transformations. Our situation is a little like what happened in the years after the Crash of 1929, but our circumstances are different and more ambiguous, because this time the American system did not collapse totally. “The whole system is decayed,” Alperovitz said. “It’s not collapse like the 1930s. It’s decay. At the top, the systemic reality is stagnation, stalemate and decay.”

The prospects are daunting of course but also exciting, invigorating. The range of disorders suggests a wide field of opportunities for deep change, from worker ownership and self-management to an ecological economy that does not derive its so-called “growth” from destroying nature. Small-scale local economic life versus the suffocating monopolies that feed off government and concentrate wealth at the top. The basic virtues of public ownership, from public schools to public utilities, against the torrent of destructive privatizations engineered by the billionaires. The reinvention of social democracy—a country that learns again to defend life and individual freedom, family and community, against the lusts of rapacious capitalism.

The terrain is vast and largely unexplored in our time. It is the undiscovered future—the place we might choose to create for ourselves or if we get our values right. The covering essay for The Next System reads like an intriguing map of the possible. Gus and Gar are like dreamy explorers, beckoning people to come along and help chart this new territory—discover the better country that lies ahead.

Many Americans will turn away, of course, too wounded or too cynical to believe in this promise. It does sound impossible, given the oppressive confinements imposed on us by the power elites. But what other choice do we have? The present system promises to deliver more of the same, more stagnation, stalemate and decay. That is not going to change unless more of us decide we have to try to change it.

[Searcher08]

My take on what he is suggesting is that he wants an outcome which is an informed generation of creative ideas by a wide section of stakeholders,who see the need for creating something new.
This is the 'same old, same old' seeking to maintain control.
What if the the situation we are in today emerges quite simply and elegantly from the interaction of simple elements - such as interest-based financial systems; accumulation of power and resources; sociopathy.
I see a global system of massive complexity - if that complexity is not designed for, then it will show up unexpectedly elsewhere in the system (like a carpet bubble), like post Enron when loads of new accounting rules came in... and new software to automate that... and new backdoors to allow system administrators to completely bypass normal accounting function (see Richard Grove's experiences)
In my opinion, the nearest that humans have come to actually achieving something like Mac suggested was during the Allende regime - and that required nationalising the banks. Why did it fail? Because although the cybernetic economy that was being created was more and more able to adapt to the economic warfare that was directed at it (the CIA were apparently amazed at it's resilience), what happened was like a bullet in the head to it. The larger system of which it was part had greater variety and was able to engage in behaviour that the the Chile system could not adapt to and remain viable.

Every large working IT system I have ever seen ALWAYS started small, went through multiple iterations and was *grown*. It tended to be produced by a 'monomaniac with a mission'.

Every fucked-up pile of poop IT system I have ever seen started as a vast scheme that was managed by lots of stakeholders, followed a detailed 'implementation plan' and was produced by peope who 'knew what they were doing' And it ended up as absolute bullshit.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gall


The system always kicks back. — Systems get in the way— or, in slightly more elegant language: Systems tend to oppose their own proper functions. Systems tend to malfunction conspicuously just after their greatest triumph.
p. 27 cited in: Kevin Kelly (1988) Signal: communication tools for the information age. p. 7

A temporary patch will very likely be permanent. (p.36)

Even Toynbee, floundering through his massive survey of 20-odd civilizations, was finally able to discern only that: Systems tend to malfunction conspicuously just after their greatest triumph. Toynbee explains this effect by pointing out the strong tendency to apply a previously successful strategy to the new challenge.
p. 35 cited in: Kevin Kelly (1988) Signal: communication tools for the information age. p. 7

The field of Architecture has given rise to a second major principle relating to the Life Cycle of Systems. This principle has emerged from the observation that temporary buildings erected to house Navy personnel in World War I continued to see yeoman service in World War II as well as in subsequent ventures, and are now a permanent, if fading, feature of Constitution Avenue in Washington... We conclude: A temporary patch will very likely be permanent.
p. 36

But how does it come about, step by step, that some complex Systems actually function? This question, to which we as students of General Systemantics attach the highest importance, has not yet yielded to intensive modern methods of investigation and analysis. As of this writing, only a limited and partial breakthrough can be reported, as follows: A COMPLEX SYSTEM THAT WORKS IS INVARIABLY FOUND TO HAVE EVOLVED FROM A SIMPLE SYSTEM THAT WORKED

I think that Jacques Fresco from The Venus Project has some great ideas, but his approach has one fatal flaw - it requires a 'global' / whole Earth action. In other words, it cannot be 'grown'. I think that something is needed which can 'absorb' the re-engineer variety/complexity in the existing system and to me that implies localisation, de-centralisation and above all *coordination*. The world has an economy which is as coordinated as a big school with no school timetable and is a hot mess of de facto arrangements, lessons in gyms, students in the staff room, supplies for one class hidden in another, appalling behaviour by pupils and teachers, nothing being learned or taught, an army of parasitic educationalists that feeds off the chaos etc etc

[minime]

Wombat (by way of Searcher08)...

As long as we're on the subject: who benefits from endless in-fighting, re-theorizing, witch-hunting and self-examination on the radical Left?

endless... self-examination on the radical Left? Good stuff. How can it not end if it's never begun?

Who benefits? Why much of the radical Left itself. god forbid there should traction, progress, resolution. The conflict itself is the end and the means.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

I think that Jacques Fresco from The Venus Project has some great ideas, but his approach has one fatal flaw - it requires a 'global' / whole Earth action. In other words, it cannot be 'grown'. I think that something is needed which can 'absorb' the re-engineer variety/complexity in the existing system and to me that implies localisation, de-centralisation and above all *coordination*.

Searcher08, I am in complete 100% agreement with you on this. Technocracy, so far, is one of the few concepts that actually has the capacity to change the way money works. But an attempt to institute it in a globalized fashion is doomed to fail for the very reasons you detail and more: the rulers who perpetuate our current paradigm would use technocracy as a tool to maintain their own precarious dominance.

So the answer is more than just revolution. It's devolution for the sake of re-localization.

[Searcher08]

I have been an admirer of Catherine Austin Fitts for many years. Do you remember her Solari idea, where you would look at place based information and monetary flows and re-engineer them to ensure moneyed flowed more around the locality (thereby creating HUGE amounts of new wealth in the district.)

One of the things I have become aware of in the last few years is a BIG thing of transparency of information (for example in the UK at the level of local council accounting) HOWEVER there is ALSO another trend, which consistently tops this - business confidentiality. I looked at my local council finances to see how much of the inflow and outflow into the area I could get a flavour of, yet I was stumped. It was like running into totally opaque 'black boxes' of financial information flow. I'll make up a wee example

"Great Sounding Statements"
According to EU Transparency Best Practice directive 2005, all local councils will show where council funds were spent.

"The Council Budget"
...
Line item 2501.6 Schools Buildings will have £5 million spent this year
...

"As good as it gets"
Following a sealed bid, GoldmanSex - School Buildings Speculators, Incwere awarded the whole £5 million contract.

The Black Box Layer
Commercial confidentiality forbids any public disclosure of
Strategies,
Plans,
Profits,
Project management,
Staffing,
Business organisation,
Salaries,
Sub-contracting,
Performance management,
Terms,
Conditions or
Anything else we've left out or you might think of later.

So what 'ticks a transparency box' is actually anything but, given the bigger domination ensured by commercial confidentiality, part of the Snowdenian 'meta-trend' towards 'Total Personal Disclosure' while at the same time the trend towards 'Total Corporate Opacity'.

Another meta-trend is towards all employment in an area being from companies owned and managed elsewhere, resulting in (just thinking aloud here) a type of multi-dimensional resource extraction (of humans time, humans attention, physical resource removal) in exchange for a gradually decreasing 'life support' level of keeping the district alive.

If we challenge this metatrend, then we could start with an individual and look at how much viability / autonomy / viability they could reasonably create by themselves (not survivalist stuff, more like urban aquaponics in your 1 bedroom apartment...)
If we looked at how far a 'Community of One' (an ordinary individual) might go towards meeting their own needs, then look at how a Community of Two might help meet the needs that a Community of One could not,then how a Community of Three etc etc... my intuition is that by the time around 150 people were reached, we could have maximum wealth potential... a sort intensely connected 'economic Buckyball'

<John Titor>
And that was how global economic transformation started... with half-baked drivel on a feisty message board back, in the spring of 2015...

I think that Jacques Fresco from The Venus Project has some great ideas, but his approach has one fatal flaw - it requires a 'global' / whole Earth action. In other words, it cannot be 'grown'. I think that something is needed which can 'absorb' the re-engineer variety/complexity in the existing system and to me that implies localisation, de-centralisation and above all *coordination*.

Searcher08, I am in complete 100% agreement with you on this. Technocracy, so far, is one of the few concepts that actually has the capacity to change the way money works. But an attempt to institute it in a globalized fashion is doomed to fail for the very reasons you detail and more: the rulers who perpetuate our current paradigm would use technocracy as a tool to maintain their own precarious dominance.

So the answer is more than just revolution. It's devolution for the sake of re-localization.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

:thumbsup I have been an admirer of Catherine Austin Fitts for many years. Do you remember her Solari idea, where you would look at place based information and monetary flows and re-engineer them to ensure moneyed flowed more around the locality (thereby creating HUGE amounts of new wealth in the district.)

Yes! I just realized it's been years since I've read anything from Fitts, but it looks like the Solari website is still alive and kicking.

http://solari.com/blog/

Also, I love what you just presented on trends toward transparency where individual/local interests are concerned and confidentiality where corporate/multinational interests are concerned. Great thing about trends though - they can be reversed, if people who give a damn work in a concerted effort.

You don't need John Titor to know which way the future blows.

[Luther Blissett]

I'm putting this here, about a whitelivesmatter rally in South Philly. The simple truth of this is that the Philly PD would never ever hesitate to make arrests on four black kids in this neighborhood, rife with racial strife. The calls had to have been for bogus complaints, and given the white folks in this neighborhood, that's not surprising.

http://gawker.com/philadelpihia-city-co ... 1709105642

…“Thank you for calls and texts asking how my sister is. After 4 blacks kicked her door in and attacked her. They had them but let them go,” another post reads, in apparent reference to the alleged attacks that inspired the demonstration.…

A friend of mine is the anonymous tipster, I was trying to help him get this carried in any local news, to no avail:

…Because the names of the alleged attackers and victims have not been made public, it is difficult to divine the circumstances surrounding the attacks. But the Philadelphian who sent us Jack Owens’ Facebook posts said that there are rumors that run contrary to the demonstrators’ version of events. Making clear that his claims were unconfirmed, the tipster wrote via email:

Supposedly there was an argument between some women wherein a white woman was struck by a black woman. The police were called and determined it was a mutual fight with no real injuries and left the scene without arresting anyone.

A small group of white people related to the white woman then organized a “protest” or rally. The rally was purportedly to speak out against violence in their neighborhood - specifically, they say, 4 black women they claim are “terrorizing” their neighborhood...

The general gist though is that it was a seemingly small incident (no blood drawn) but the locals wanted an arrest. When the arrest wasn’t forthcoming, it quickly became exaggerated into the neighborhood being “terrorized.” It’s just an unfortunate distortion of what happens in the neighborhood where a very small minority of white people feel inexplicably threatened by their diminishing role of “running” the neighborhood

…

Councilman Squilla's involvement in this is disappointing, I didn't think he was a bad guy before. At the very least he should have registered the signs and the chants and just gotten out of there.

More coverage on Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... an-attends

[seemslikeadream]

K. Kersplebedeb

Some interesting things i read in March
| Filed under: this week's stuff to read | K. Kersplebedeb | April 5th, 2015
“DRAWING LINES AGAINST RACISM AND FASCISM” By Spencer Sunshine, Political Research Associates, March 5, 2015

K. Kersplebedeb likes Spencer Sunshine too

I'm looking forward to the whole kerplebedeb blog being cut and pasted and posted here

[American Dream]

https://cbmilstein.wordpress.com/2015/1 ... f-freedom/

Feminism as Pillar of Freedom




Quick shout-out to women (broadly/queerly defined) around the globe, typically struggling so much harder to survive the many assaults on their bodies, minds, and lives. But when push comes to shove, they typically struggle so much more empathetically and fiercely.

Here in Greece, now on the island of Crete (October 16-19), for the 10-day Mediterranean Anarchist Meetings, I’ve been re-inspired by feminist-oriented and anti-heteropatriarchical anarchists and antiauthoritarians. Not only in terms of how they resist, though. I’ve rediscovered how the lens they are socialized to see through can serve as better ethic for that resistance — a resistance that is at once about self-constructing better selves in a better culture/society for all who would be human and free.

Last night (Octobert 17), we heard from three anarchists from Turkey and Kurdistan, including a female lawyer, who spoke of feminism as a key pillar of Kobane and Rojava, equal to other pillars, such as antistatism and anticapitalism, not some footnote — or worse, “women’s work.” Over drinks after the talk, the woman told us about the imperfect path of actualizing feminism. Yet she also said that whereas in the past, sexual harassment and assault were common, not spoken about or defended against, now women in the autonomous territory stand up for themselves, and there are communal consequences to such harassment and assault — justice without state or police or prison. The mere fact that sex can be spoken of, this female lawyer told us, is itself a huge part of this transformation in self and society. Indeed, she spoke of how gender relations in general are shifting, not simply on the battlefield, but including, for instance, that within self-governance structures, all of which now have to include two people as the facilitators, conveners, etc. — one female and one male. The impulse to do that is part of this shift in mentality, which increasingly over time, as she noted, starts to impact how people treat each other more generally, acting more egalitarian in everyday life.

Earlier in the day, a Swedish woman told me how their anarchist group has been part of a yearly gathering of European anarchist groups, mostly in the north, around themes. This past year the theme was antifascism. She told me that mostly women and queers came to this gathering, and they decided to ask the question: “How can we completely get rid of Nazis?” Or to mirror the “strong communities make police obsolete” phrasing from the United States this past year, “How can we make fascism obsolete.” At their gathering, they discussed the “band-aid” of fighting Nazis, where big guys literally fight each other, physically, in battles between Antifa and fascists. Instead, they looked to ideas like working with 10- and 12-year-olds who are “flirting” with fascism, and speaking to them directly “from where they’re at” (anger toward society, feeling alienated, experiencing “no future” ahead, etc.) to offer alternatives. In her community, she said, it’s worked. Those kids turn away from fascism, and over time, start convincing their friends to do so too. “It’s about compassion,” she told me. “To try to understand why people would be attracted to fascism,” and from there, use that compassion as strategic lever for different tactics. She added that both the goal of “no fascists” and feminist-inflected strategies and tactics flowing from that were so much more varied, expansive, and following along the prefigurative path (to phrase in my language) that anarchism and anarchists should be all about.

Not to reify “women” as category. I’m a humanist. Rather, it’s about seeing “feminism” not secondary but key to transforming our selves and battling the way in which structures unevenly try to destroy us, such as, say, rape being militarized as weapon of war and “statist” power.

We shouldn’t be copying Rojava/Kobane; we can’t. But perhaps one of the most inspirational points to draw from that experiment in “the beauty of freedom” is not that women are carrying guns and fighting off ISIS and various state militaries — which is of course inspiring — but that the values of feminism are being woven, intentionally, into the body politic and social fabric as linchpin of this fragile autonomous space.

So yeah, big love for feminism and all the variety of women who are strong warriors, both because they have to be and because they know it’s the right thing to do for everyone.

Notes on Women and Right-Wing Movements - Part One

By threewayfight | Tuesday, September 27, 2005

by Matthew Lyons

A "three-way-fight" approach to fascism challenges simplistic frames of analysis. In particular, it challenges (1) a dualistic "Oppressor-versus-Oppressed" model of struggle, (2) caricatures of far-right movements as simply agents of top-down repression, and (3) the idea that the left is the only insurgent force that speaks to people's grievances and needs. These points are clear in three-way-fight discussions of fascism's potential to rally mass working-class support.

We need to use this same nuanced approach when it comes to discussions of fascism and women. Women and gender politics are major issues for the right, and our analysis of fascism needs to address this in a central way. In particular, we need to address the following realities:

* Far-right movements range from some that are mostly or virtually all male to others that include large numbers of women activists.
* While all far-right movements are male supremacist, they embody a range of doctrines and policies on women and gender issues -- including some drawn from the left and even feminism.
* Far-right movements don't just repress and terrorize women but also mobilize them -- largely by offering them specific benefits and opportunities.

(I'm using "far right" here to include both fascist movements and also right-wing populist movements that are related to fascism in terms of ideology, organizing dynamics, and social base, but which stop short of fascism's revolutionary challenge to the status quo.)

Continues at: http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2005/ ... 92443.html

[American Dream]

Anarchosyndicalism against fascism: a response to recent insinuations

by akai



There may be problems with some people who identify with anarchosyndicalism, but it is not because there is any inherent correlation between it and fascism.

The question of anarchosyndicalism's theoretical stands against fascism, as well as it's long history of fighting against it, is certainly deserving of a long, well-documented article. But that is not what this is going to be. Rather, l would like to take on some recent insinuations, published in relation to the Michael Schmidt case, that there is some sort of inherent link between fascist ideology and anarchosyndicalism. This idea, l find, is grossly incorrect, but one which has been floating around for a while. However, as l come from a region where anarchists have actually flirted with fascists and sometimes ideas have intersected, l am interested in seeing how this can happen, with a view towards eliminating racist, nationalist, ethnopluralist and other ideas unworthy of an egalitarian anarchist movement.

A few weeks ago, one anarchist was observed linking syndicalism to fascism on the internet and now, in the 5th part of the expose on Michael Schmidt, Alexander Reid Ross and Joshua Stevens seem to posit whether there is a positive correlation between national and anarchist syndicalism. What they are saying is not exactly clear for me and l will quote the passages to let readers contemplate what is being said.

A clear example of this strategy appears in Schmidt’s understanding of nationalism and anarchism in terms of syndicalist thought. “I don’t think that there is any real correlation between anarchist syndicalism and national syndicalism,” Schmidt told us in our interview — a strange denial given that a number of origin voices within national syndicalism, including Mussolini, Valois, and De Ambris, either had been or were supporters of anarchism. However, Schmidt did admit, in a rather glaring contradiction of his own stated views, “I do feel that there is the possibility of purist syndicalism in the post-revolutionary period approximate [to] national syndicalism[.]” In other words, as in the case of the “proper Boerestaat,” a de facto white nationalist state in Africa could function on the basis of syndicalism — i.e., there is not only a correlation, but a positive correlation between national and anarchist syndicalism.

and

Schmidt sought to forward white nationalism using an approximation of anarchist syndicalism as leverage to reopen the colonial legacy of the Afrikaner volkstaat.

Due to somewhat ambiguous language, l could imagine that either the authors are claiming Michael Schmidt sees a correlation between national and anarchosyndicalism, or that they do. ln either case, the correlation is posited in the article.

ln my opinion, anarchosyndicalism cannot have any correlation with national syndicalism for exactly the same reason that anarchism cannot have any correlation with national anarchism. Both anarchism and anarchosyndicalism, are ideas which are supposed to be essentially egalitarian, therefore, all other ideas which divide people or assign them hierarchical roles in society are anathema to the beautiful idea that l and many comrades hold in our hearts: a world where the divisive and categorizing ideas of nationalists really have no place.

l really don't think this should be hard to understand. National anarchists exist, they call themselves anarchists, but for most legitimate anarchists, they are people who have encroached on our idea and perverted it. There is no shortage of anarchists screaming at the top of their lungs that National Anarchism is not anarchism, just like there is no shortage of anarchosyndicalists fighting against national syndicalism and other ideas related to nationalism and fascism.

This should be painfully obvious. Therefore, anybody who argues that there is some intrinsic correlation between anarchosyndicalism and national syndicalism or fascism, in my opinion, is mostly tendaciously showing their dislike of this anarchist tendency. Because why would anyone give credibility to the anarchists denouncing National Anarchism, but not to the anarchosyndicalists denouncing national syndicalism? Why not say anarchism has a correlation with National Anarchism because some nationalists wanna call themselves anarchists?

This, of course, does not mean that there is no problem for anarchosyndicalism in relation to nationalism and other matters. But simply this problem is similar to the problem faced by any other anarchist: how to keep these ideas away and effectively fight their growth. lt may come as a surprise to the ones insinuating otherwise, but anarchosyndicalists, at least the legit ones, are no less antifascist then they are.

Since l have been talking about the problems of nationalist ideas encroaching on the anarchist movement for the last 25 years, l certainly hope that none of the „syndicalism is close to fascism” people will claim that l support a fascist ideology or something of the sort. l hope rather that they will hear me out and stop making such insinuations that are essentially untrue.

To deal with the issue itself, the encroachment of nationalist ideas has been a problem in the places l lived, Russia and Poland, but it is clearly not limited to these. For example, there are also some types of nationalists in Spain. And if we talk about fascism, we can see that in the US, for the last 40 or so years, there have been tendencies which clearly were attractive to the far right. lf we put a microscope to it, we would find that some post-left celebrities had considerable interaction with essentially right-wing nuts and even came out in defense of white secessionist militias (like Hakim Bey, who l debated the issue with more than once).

This problem clearly is not something exclusive to anarchosyndicalism. To say so is ingenuine. lt would be like saying that some ecological anarchists went to the far-right, so there is a correlation between ecology and fascism.

l am curious what Reid Ross will say about Russia. (There is a chapter about it in his upcoming book.) There were quite serious problems there and, what might be news for some, is that, quite sadly, the problem was noticeable in certain circles of people calling themselves „antifascist”. l wonder if Reid Ross also will expose the long cooperation of some Russian „anti-fascists” with Russian nationalists?

ln case people are not aware, antifascism has a long tradition as an official ideology, promoted by the state in some countries. ln these places, a type of patriotic anti-fascism developed. There are also traditions of patriotic leftism, such as the PPS in Poland. Currently, with the situation in Ukraine, we saw a strong move of nationalist antifascism, trying to pass itself off as something „anti-imperialist” and gaining support amongst people in places like Spain, ltaly and Greece. Some anarchists were among those supporting.

ln Russia, the organization Autonom, plus projects connected to it, had many people who fell into the patriotic camp and eventually it had a split, with nationalists and homophobes breaking off or forming their own distinctive faction. The problems with their increasingly frequent cooperation with nationalist elements and problems with discussion with this had gone on for many years.

A rather long article would be needed to understand all the intricacies of this, but maybe l could mention one case to illustrate how certain ideas get legitimized in anarchist movements. National identity, as people may know, has been a point of manipulation by the Soviet state and then later by Russia. Patriotism has always been fueled by threats from the outside. ln recent years, this has grown to include threats to „unique Russianness”. The global world is seen as encroaching on Russian culture. With these ideas, people who were nationalists were able to pass themselves off in the anti-globalist movement with no problem. So one of the main Eurasianists of Ukraine was active in the PGA for a bit (and was their „infopoint”) and lndymedia chartered a right-wing nut in Russia … This kind of thing was becoming rather common since many leftists and some anarchists are focused anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism and see it as some equivalent of their ideas. Nationalists were able to go around in these movements, presenting their ideas as some legitimate defense of their ethnicity. And many an anarchist defended this as being distinctly different than nationalism.

ln the case of one person, who currently is one of the right-wing „anarchists” and homophobes poisoning the scene in Russia, a huge amount of debate was generated concerning his ideas. ln this case, we found anarchosyndicalists in Russia presenting very coherent argument, comparing his ideas to ethnopluralism and pointing out the problems for anarchists. ln short, the ideas of this person mean that people of other ethnicities inherently threaten pure ethnic identities, thus a king of cultural separation must remain in place.

l wouldn't like to get into all the details, arguments and counterarguments of this case because l had enough of it already when it was happening. But l would add that anarchists were threatening to beat up one of the anarchosyndicalists making the anti-nationalist analyses. Later, the mood of homophobia increased amongst self-professed anarchists. Arguing shit like, LGBT issues divide or scare the working class and are „secondary” (an argument we've heard numerous times in Poland as well), some homophobic anarchist tendencies grew, threatening LGBT activists who wanted to participate in some demonstrations. Then actually there was a physical attack on another anarchosyndicalist for their support of joint actions with feminist and LGBT activists.

Here, l specifically mention the positions of my anarchosyndicalist comrades for a reason. lt was they who most consistently, over many years, criticized the influx of not only national, discriminatory and neo-fascist ideas into the anarchist scene and clearly said that we have nothing in common with them. On the contrary, some anarchists took the position that we should in fact find the common things and only that attitude could result in the growth of the anarchist movement. The other attitude, more critical, was usually labelled „sectarianism”.

(Now, when a few of their old comrades are more clearly close to fascism, they create the narrative that they were „infiltrated” or that people changed their views.)

This is important because l believe there is some kind of connection with tendencies to water down anarchism to a minimum, seek out common points with as many people as possible and to becoming the victim of fascist and nationalist influence. l don't want to make this into an absolute correlation – because it isn't. But l see this to be a tendency where l live as well.

ln Poland there is a very long history of anarchist cooperation with the right and the influx of right ideas. A careful study of our „secret stash” in our library is very telling. The „secret stash” started years ago when we decided that we couldn't, in good conscious, sell certain „anarchist” or anti-globalists publications that we kept getting from people, so we put all that stuff in the refrigerator, where it could be read rather by people who wanted to criticize it. The stash contained lots of shit, like articles saying things like if the author doesn't like black people, it's not anarchist to force him to be with them, or booklets espousing something close to national syndicalism, discussing Sorel's and Pilsudski's ideas. The anarchist movement, in short, produced a lot of shit in their publications and continues to sell more, in the name of „open-mindedness”. For, for example, if you go now to Poznan, you can find a new right-wing book on Franco sold in the anarchist bookstore. Since some of my comrades were involved with the arguments on that, let's just say that, in short, there are enough anarchists who will argue that anarchist bookstores have some sort of moral right to sell things like this and are not too concerned that they are actually spreading dangerous ideas.

lf we dig deeper, we probably would find some more people around the world whose idea of libertarian behaviour would legitimize the distribution of books published by the far-right.

The difference of opinion on this issue has been sharply debated here for at least the last 15 years. Most recently this has been a topic in the anarchosyndicalist movement, so here l will add something to the question of whether or not anarchosyndicalism can have any correlations with national syndicalism.

Last year, during elections, at least two members of the organization Workers' lnitiative, which sometimes calls itself anarchosyndicalist (although sometimes not), ran in elections with fascists or right-wing nationalists. The more famous case was in my city (Warsaw) and the member is a very prominent member of that union and long-time activist. lt was famous enough that the mainstream press printed an article about it as well. Again, l will not go through all the details and arguments because it is simply sickening.

We never hid the fact that this happened (although we see plenty of people trying not to see this, just like some people did not want to come to terms with the fact that Schmidt is a sleazy racist and probably worse). But we reject any notion that this proves that anarchosyndicalists are close to fascists. Because for us, this is just more proof that these people are not anarchosyndicalists. And just like anarchists have a moral right to say that National Anarchists are not anarchists, anarchosyndicalists also have the right to say that certain people or tendencies are not anarchosyndicalist, no matter how they might label themselves.

The justifications l heard for many weeks during the internet debates of this topic showed that, despite all the references these people made to anarchosyndicalism, they were quite far from these ideas. lt is important to note that only many, many weeks after did the organization respond, claiming that member simply did not know he was running in elections with a few fascists. And the explanation that „we criticized him”, was taken a sufficient for some organizations to declare the problem solved. ln fact, most of the criticism instead went to anarchosyndicalists who opposed this, who were attacked while defending their members' rights to do as they want. This has been argued for many years as the definition of freedom and anarchism. Tellingly, the whole incident did not result in any expulsion or similar process against that person, who was back on the street at a demo with at least one of the fascists shortly after.

l don't think here l have to explain much why electoral escapades and fascists have nothing to do with our anarchosyndicalist ideals. What is more relevant is the way that they justify these things to themselves. That is, by arguing, among other things, that a union cannot invigilate in the politics of their individual members.

ln my opinion, this is not a question of invigilating or not; it is a question of taking clear stands and consistantly incorporating this into your organizational politics. Anarchosyndicalism, by definition, is connected to the creation of anarchism and is more clearly interested in anarchist means. Among other things, the organization must function according to our non-hierarchical principles and must avoid certain collaborationist and hierarchical models. Our ideas must clearly demonstrate a rejection of nationalism, racism, sexism, homophobia and other ideas which run counter to the idea of egalitarian society. This has to be not only in theory, but in practice.

Anything else isn't really anarchosyndicalism.

To come back to Michael Schmidt and the points made by the authors of the expose or by some other people, it may be worth pointing out that Michael Schmidt is not an anarchosyndicalist and never was one. That said, he certainly spoke a lot about anarchosyndicalism and tried to define it more to his liking. However, this does not prove any correlation between anarchosyndicalism and national syndicalism. This proves that Michael Schmidt, who had, at the very least, poor national politics, tried to create a confused and revisionist vision which would include the likes of Connolly in a „broad” tradition that he and Lucien van de Walt tried to fashion.

One thing needs to be pointed out. Often in this or other discussions, people use the terms „syndicalism” and „anarchosyndicalism” interchangeably. This is quite annoying and shows that people are not too clear about what they are talking about. For me, „syndicalism” is an extremely broad term, meaning „unionism”, and with more implied characteristics than expressed ones. Syndicalism in fact can be nationalist, socialist or whatever. lt can also be anarchist. Because syndicalism is not connected to anarchism, only to unionism.
So if you tell me syndicalism can be nationalist, l would say that is true. But anarchosyndicalism, which is predicated on an egalitarian society, cannot be.

ln some countries, this question is problematic, because some people use the terms „syndicalism” and „anarchosyndicalism” interchangeably and don't see much of a difference. This makes a lot of confusion in my opinion. Another issue is related to the conception of the organization. There are some tendencies which might stress the economic and class focus of a union and want to downplay other issues of egalitarianism. This tendency is visible in the political thought of Michael Schmidt, among others. My opinion is that this way of viewing anarchosyndicalism threatens to make it not anarchist syndicalism, but some form of syndicalism.

Many years ago, our forefathers and sisters (but mostly men), split with the Marxist train of thought. The lWA was later born, refusing to compromise on the issue of the Party and State, in the name of the class struggle.

A century later, some anarchists and anarchosyndicalists, frightened that they are too irrelevant, actively seek the cooperation of authoritarian leftists in building a „mass movement”. Having problems with „the mass”, some proponents of class anarchism, anarcho-communist and anarcho-syndicalists, have resorted to „broadening” the tradition, to focusing on class but downplaying other important issues of egalitarianism. ln essence, they are approaching the Marxist position of building an lnternational where everyone will fight agaist capitalism as the most important thing and the issue of anti-statism or other specific anarchist claims are put on the back burner. This is something that is happening now and is a concrete threat to the anarchist character of anarcho-syndicalism. lt is much more relevant than the threat of fascist infiltration. However, for the organizations and movements which have already moved to the „broad tradition”, infiltration can be an issue.

Anarchosyndicalism needs to be more relevant to people, this is for sure. And it also needs to gain in strength. But it cannot compromise its positions to do so.

lf anybody does not get the dilemna, they can look at our situation. For anybody who is not aware, Poles just voted in a Parliament consisting of 6 right-wing parties, with a few fascists here and there. Without going into a long explanation of how the right-wing got working class people hooked, it is enough to say that it is easier to get working class people by your side with nationalist slogans and by carefully avoiding talking against the church, about womens' rights, etc. The conclusion is not hard to draw: if our main goal is to grow and show we are „mass”, then the easiest way to achieve this is to turn a blind eye, be soft on nationalism, etc.

At some point, Schmidt even suggests that anarchists should use nationalism more, to get those people on their side.

For us, this would just be counterproductive. Using soft nationalism to attract people to a movement which should be anti-nationalist is not likely to get the effect you want.

Anarchosyndicalism, by its definition, must be antifascist. There is no correlation between it and national syndicalism or fascism.

But any time that the anarchist aspect of syndicalism is drowned under the issues of „pragmatism”, „massiveness”, and all other points that seek to water it down, there is a risk of the organization simply losing its anarchist character. This l think has already happened a few times. This doesn't mean that these organizations will be infiltrated by fascists, but when people start sweeping incidents under the carpet, this increases the chance that some really bad ideas can infect them.

Let's not turn a blind eye to this issues. The Michael Schmidt case has, l hope, because of his celebrity, drawn attention to potential problems and how certain ideas could be smuggled into our movements. Let's not let this happen.

Posted By
akai
Oct 31 2015

[General Patton]

Fascism, racism, classism and nationalism are spooks

[coffin_dodger]

from article above: Anarchosyndicalism against fascism: a response to recent insinuations - 1st para, after heading

The question of anarchosyndicalism's theoretical stands against fascism, as well as it's long history of fighting against it, is certainly deserving of a long, well-documented article. But that is not what this is going to be.

That bolded part kind of killed it for me, right there. Stating 'this matter is deserving of something so much more than I am willing to impart' at the beginning of an article you are hoping that people will engage with, does not bode well. Perhaps someone could have a gentle word with akai about his/her communication skills, assuming he/she takes this problematic, very important subject seriously?

Anyway, I persevered with the article (for you, Dear Sounder, for you!) and it's fascinating to behold the unfolding subtext - I have seen the enemy... and he is me. The desperation is palpable, witnessed by the few following lines of text, drawn from the article at random points:

"What they are saying is not exactly clear for me and l will quote the passages to let readers contemplate what is being said."
"Due to somewhat ambiguous language..."
"l really don't think this should be hard to understand..."
"This should be painfully obvious."
"A rather long article would be needed to understand all the intricacies of this..."
"l wouldn't like to get into all the details, arguments and counterarguments of this case.."

and a clincher:

"This is important because l believe there is some kind of connection with tendencies to water down anarchism to a minimum, seek out common points with as many people as possible and to becoming the victim of fascist and nationalist influence..."

Indeed, it's bound to be rather upsetting and disheartening, when realisation dawns that you have become the very people you have learned to despise.

All in all, a fascinating article from an ecosystem preparing itself to implode.

[American Dream]

Those who sincerely want to learn about Anarcho-Syndicalism from an anti-fascist perspective could certainly start here:

Anarcho-syndicalism - reading guide



Libcom.org's reading guide on anarcho-syndicalism, a tradition of anarchist-inspired workers' unions.

http://libcom.org/library/anarcho-syndi ... ding-guide

[American Dream]

The Irrepressible Rothbard

Essays of Murray N. Rothbard
Edited by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

RIGHT-WING POPULISM

Well, they finally got David Duke. But he sure scared the bejesus out of them. It took a massive campaign of hysteria, of fear and hate, orchestrated by all wings of the Ruling Elite, from Official right to left, from President Bush and the official Republican Party through the New York-Washington-run national media through the local elites and down to local left-wing activists. It took a massive scare campaign, not only invoking the old bogey images of the Klan and Hitler, but also, more concretely, a virtual threat to boycott Louisiana, to pull out tourists and conventions, to lose jobs by businesses leaving the state. It took a campaign of slander that resorted to questioning the sincerity of Duke’s conversion to Christianity – even challenging him to name his “official church.” Even my old friend Doug Bandow participated in this cabal in the Wall Street Journal, which virtually flipped its wig in anti-Duke hysteria, to the extent of attacking Duke for being governed by self-interest(!) – presumably in contrast to all other politicians motivated by deep devotion to the public weal? It took a lot of gall for Bandow to do this, since he is not a sacramental Christian (where one can point out that the person under attack was not received into the sacramental Church), but a pietist one, who is opposed to any sort of official creed or liturgy. So how can a pietist Christian challenge the bona fides of another one? And in a world where no one challenges the Christian credentials of a Chuck Colson or a Jeb Magruder? But logic went out the window: for the entire Establishment, the ruling elite, was at stake, and in that sort of battle, all supposedly clashing wings of the Establishment weld together as one unit and fight with any weapons that might be at hand.

But even so: David Duke picked up 55 percent of the white vote; he lost in the runoff because the fear campaign brought a massive outpouring of black voters. But note the excitement; politics in Louisiana rose from the usual torpor that we have been used to for decades and brought out a turnout rate – 80 percent – that hasn’t been seen since the nineteenth century, when party politics was fiercely partisan and ideological.

One point that has nowhere been noted: populism won in Louisiana, because in the first primary the two winners were Duke, a right-wing populist, and Edwin Edwards, a left-wing populist. Out in the cold were the two Establishment candidates: incumbent Governor Buddy Roemer, high-tax, high-spend “reform” Democrat embraced by the Bush Administration in an attempt to stop the dread Duke; and the forgotten man, Clyde Holloway, the official Republican candidate, a good Establishment conservative, who got only five percent of the vote. (Poor Human Events kept complaining during the campaign: why are the media ignoring Clyde Holloway? The simple answer is that he never got anywhere: an instructive metaphor for what will eventually be the fate of Establishment Conservatism.)

A left-wing populist, former Governor Edwards is a long-time Cajun crook, whose motto has been the rollicking laissez les bon temps roulez (“let the good times roll”). He has always been allegedly hated by businessmen and by conservative elites. But this was crisis time; and in crisis the truth is revealed: there is no fundamental difference between left-wing populism and the system we have now. Left-wing populism: rousing the masses to attack “the rich,” amounts to more of the same: high taxes, wild spending, massive redistribution of working and middle-class incomes to the ruling coalition of: big government, big business, and the New Class of bureaucrats, technocrats, and ideologues and their numerous dependent groups. And so, in the crunch, left-wing populism – phony populism – disappeared, and all crookery was forgiven in the mighty Edwards coalition. It is instructive that the Establishment professes to believe in Edwards’ teary promises of personal reform (“I’m 65 now; the good times have mellowed”), while refusing to believe in the sincerity of David Duke’s conversion.

They said in the 60s, when they gently chided the violent left: “stop using violence, work within the system.” And sure enough it worked, as the former New Left now leads the respectable intellectual classes. So why wasn’t the Establishment willing to forgive and forget when a right-wing radical like David Duke stopped advocating violence, took off the Klan robes, and started working within the system? If it was OK to be a Commie, or a Weatherman, or whatever in your wild youth, why isn’t it OK to have been Klansmen? Or to put it more precisely, if it was OK for the revered Justice Hugo Black, or for the lion of the Senate, Robert Byrd, to have been a Klansman, why not David Duke? The answer is obvious: Black and Byrd became members of the liberal elite, of the Establishment, whereas Duke continued to be a right-wing populist, and therefore anti-Establishment, this time even more dangerous because “within the system.”

It is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke’s current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleo-libertarians; lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites: what’s wrong with any of that? And of course the mighty anti-Duke coalition did not choose to oppose Duke on any of these issues. Indeed, even the most leftist of his opponents grudgingly admitted that he had a point. Instead, the Establishment concentrated on the very “negative campaigning” that they profess to abhor (especially when directed against them). (Ironic note: TV pundits, who regularly have face lifts twice a year, bitterly attacked Duke for his alleged face lift. And nobody laughed!)

WHAT IS RIGHT-WING POPULISM?The basic right-wing populist insight is that we live in a statist country and a statist world dominated by a ruling elite, consisting of a coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and various influential special interest groups. More specifically, the old America of individual liberty, private property, and minimal government has been replaced by a coalition of politicians and bureaucrats allied with, and even dominated by, powerful corporate and Old Money financial elites (e.g., the Rockefellers, the Trilateralists); and the New Class of technocrats and intellectuals, including Ivy League academics and media elites, who constitute the opinion-moulding class in society. In short, we are ruled by an updated, twentieth-century coalition of Throne and Altar, except that this Throne is various big business groups, and the Altar is secular, statist intellectuals, although mixed in with the secularists is a judicious infusion of Social Gospel, mainstream Christians. The ruling class in the State has always needed intellectuals to apologize for their rule and to sucker the masses into subservience, i.e., into paying the taxes and going along with State rule. In the old days, in most societies, a form of priestcraft or State Church constituted the opinion-moulders who apologized for that rule. Now, in a more secular age, we have technocrats, “social scientists,” and media intellectuals, who apologize for the State system and staff in the ranks of its bureaucracy.

Continues at: https://theavalogs.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... -rothbard/

Excerpted from:

Anarchism of Fools: “What’s Left?” April 2008, MRR #299

Part One: Anarchism of-by-for Fools

https://leftyhooligan.wordpress.com/200 ... 8-mrr-299/





We Fascists are the only true anarchists. Once we’ve become masters of the state, true anarchy is that of power.
The Duke in
Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Pier Paolo Pasolini

Today, both communism and fascism, ideologies that the French fascist Robert Brasillach once called “the two poetries” of the 20th century, seem exhausted given the triumph of multinational capitalism. Yet periods of ideological decay often breed strange new variants, such as the “Red-Brown alliance” in the former Soviet Union, which do not easily fit into conventional political-science categories of “left” and “right.”
Dreamer of the Day
Francis Parker Yockey and the
Postwar Fascist International (1999)
Kevin Coogan

...Keith Preston, an individualist anarchist, has also argued on his American Revolutionary Vanguard website that left and right anarchists, separatists and secessionists should all work together to overthrow the government. It is no coincidence that these calls for left-right collaboration, like the original call to go “beyond left and right,” invariably originate on the right. The right seems to actively syncretize with the left along the axis of revolutionary opposition to the state, a characteristic not limited to fascism. In the late 1960s, a significant segment of William F. Buckley’s conservative, college-based Young Americans for Freedom split off as anti-war, anti-state, right-wing libertarians and anarcho-capitalists. Under the influence of folks like Murray Rothbard, who published Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought with Karl Hess from 1965 to 1968, these right-wingers veered decidedly to the left and energetically courted left-libertarian elements on the moribund New Left of the day.

Jerome Tuccille describes all of this, rather humorously in his books It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand and Radical Libertarianism, from the perspective of one of those right-libertarian rebels. I was a left-wing anarchist at the time, and I’m here to confess that I was suckered into believing that some sort of left-right libertarian cooperation was possible. I participated in a couple of dismal efforts at seeking out some sort of common ground between left and right libertarians. I came to the realization, during a so-called left-right study group in which all the right libertarians were extolling the joys of hording gold and silver, that it was a waste of time trying to work with anarcho-capitalists.

Our supposedly minor differences-cooperative vs. competitive economics, social property vs. private property, collectivism vs. individualism-far outweighed our single, prominent commonality-our shared desire to abolish the state. We seldom attended the same events, we rarely took the same actions, and we hardly spoke the same language. What’s more, it wasn’t as if left leaning anarchists had all managed to get along, much less work together. And the shibboleth of unity on the Left was as much a pipedream, then as now. There was no good reason for left-wing libertarians to try and form an alliance with right-wing libertarians.

[solace]

Former NYPD Jewish Cop Reveals ‘Hard to Listen to’ Recordings of Antisemitic Abuse From Fellow Officers
November 27, 2015 11:25 am .

A Jewish New York Police Department officer who was forced to quit his job — after a request for a transfer to another department was denied by his superiors – released recordings of the relentless antisemitic abuse he suffered from fellow officers, ABC News show “The Investigators” reported this week.

David Attali, a six-year veteran of the NYPD with the World Trade Center Command, told ABC that the slurs he received began to escalate from jokes about Jews to constant references to the “good job” Hitler did.

Attali, originally from Israel, said he initially tried to ignore the incessant barbs, many of which were voiced in front of supervisors.

“Certain officers will come in, regardless of who is standing there, sergeant, lieutenant, not referring to me as David,” but rather “dirty Jew.”

Another commonplace greeting Attali recounted he would receive was, “I should throw you in an oven.”

When Attali’s request to be transferred to another command was denied, he decided to begin recording his fellow officers.

This week, Attali went public with the tapes for the first time on “The Investigators,” whose anchor called them “hard to listen to.”

The following are examples of the kind of comments to which he was subjected on a daily basis:

Police officer (in fake German accent): “Do you want to go to this camp for the summer?”
Attali: “Why?”
Police officer: “Oh, you will lose so much weight, you’ll be in the best shape of your life.”
Attali: “How so?”
Police officer: “It’s a concentration camp.”

Police officer: “Think about it. Where do Jews with ADD get sent?”
Attali: “Where?”
Police officer: “Concentration camps.”

“You smell like (expletive) and fish,” one officer told him. “You smell like Gefilte (expletive).”

Officer No. 1: “I hate that haircut.”
Attali: “Want me to shave my head?”
Officer No. 1: “I want to push you into an oven and (expletive) burn.”
Officer No. 2: “I want to tattoo a number on you.”
Officer No. 3: “DKS7741, step up, breathe in this tube. And, oh wait, he died, surprise, surprise.”

Attali said that his locker was also a target, with antisemitic slogans and photos – such as a supermarket ad for pork — being plastered in it by coworkers.

He eventually filed a complaint with the NYPD Office of Equal Employment, which concluded that though his locker had been vandalized, his allegations of verbal harassment were unsubstantiated.

“It was too much for me,” Attali said, bemoaning how his dream job had turned into his worst nightmare. “That’s it, I’m done. I’m out… I really had no option.”

Since quitting the force, Attali has filed a discrimination lawsuit against the NYPD and nine officers. His lawyer, Rocco Avallone, told ABC that his client “had to quit. He was what we call constructively discharged. They basically forced him to quit once the transfer got denied.”

The NYPD says it is conducting an internal investigation into this case, and disciplinary charges have been filed against three officers.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/11/27/fo ... -officers/