Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, leftists

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby American Dream » Thu Aug 30, 2018 5:33 pm

League Of The South President Burns Talmud, Israeli Flag

By Jared Holt | August 30, 2018 3:31 pm

An Alabama member of the neo-Confederate group League of the South posted a video on Monday showing members of the group setting fire to a copy of the Talmud and Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto,” in addition to an Israeli flag.

In the video that the Alabama member uploaded to their page on VK, a social media site popular with Russian users, a group of seven men stand in front of an outdoor fireplace holding Confederate and League of the South flags. One of those men is Michael Hill, co-founder and president of League of the South.

“We are here tonight as the League of the South to put three items to the flame, into the ovens of justice. One is this insidious star of Remphan, the symbol of the Jew. The second is ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ written by Jew Karl Marx, which was responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th century,” Hill says to the camera. “And the Talmud, the blueprint for international Jewry’s plan to rid the world of the white race. All of these will be consigned to the flames of justice tonight.”

After the man speaking mentions Marx, an older man standing behind him throws up a Nazi salute.

“One hundred nine times in the history of the world, the Jew has been banished from our midst. Lord, we ask that you make number 110, come soon, for our Southland. And we also, father, ask you to reveal to the world that hoax that the Jew has been perpetrating now for many years—something called the Holocaust, which is nothing but a con game based on all three of these symbols,” Hill says.

He adds, “We stand for the white race against all of our enemies, particularly the Jew, and all of these symbols represent that enemy.”

While Hill proceeds to place the items into the flames, another Nazi salute is made by his colleague.

“Heil Victory!” the men assembled yell.

Earlier this month, Hill announced that League of the South was severing its formal ties to such neo-Nazi groups as the Traditional Workers Party, National Socialist Movement, and Vanguard America, but it’s apparent that the neo-Nazi rhetoric has stuck.


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/leag ... aeli-flag/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby American Dream » Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:19 am

Trotskyism and the War in Syria

Image

Syria: A Conflict Magnified by Imperialist Discord
The imperialist conflagration in Syria is a tragedy for the working class not only in Syria but also in the rest of the world. The only future for the world working class is if it begins to act as a class of itself and for itself. This means recognising that its chief enemy is its own bourgeoisie. Trotskyism has never supported the only proletarian position possible in imperialist war, namely revolutionary defeatism – “turn the imperialist war into a civil war”. This is the Bolshevik position that led to the October Revolution. Despite the counter-revolution in Russia, it remains the only time in history the proletariat has taken state power away from the bourgeoisie for even a short period of time.

The Trotskyist Kaleidoscope
The Syrian war has now been going on for nearly seven and a half years. During this time, as you might expect, the Trotskyists have been continually altering their positions. Today, a majority of Trotskyist groups support one faction or another of the opposition in Syria, even if it is only “critical support”. Some groups take a neutral stance. However, this doesn’t mean they are internationalist, it simply means that a faction hasn’t yet emerged to whom they can give their support. Some of the groups who support the opposition claim it is because there was a “revolution” in Syria that needs to be defended. This is the position of the International Socialist Tendency3, which says,

“The Syrian Revolution is in a tragic situation. It is attacked on all sides – by the forces of the Assad regime and its regional and international allies, by the open allies of Western imperialism, and by sectarian jihadi groups. Despite their antagonisms, these different forces have a common interest in crushing the original democratic revolutionary movement, which united Syrians of all religious and ethnic backgrounds in the struggle to overthrow the regime.”4

Yet the Syrian “revolution” had no proletarian character whatsoever. The war in Syria saw an initial burst of enthusiasm in the struggle against the regime. People created various committees and councils, but this was not a workers' struggle. Ultimately, as armed gangs took control of what rapidly became a war, enthusiasm and popular involvement died down. Of course some committees remained, but it was armed men giving the orders. The councils that appeared may have been democratic in form but they were not workers’ councils. What invests workers' councils with their revolutionary content is not their democratic form but the fact that they are representative of workers in struggle. As internationalists had stated right from the start there was no progressive side in this war.

The League for the Fifth International (L5I)5, which also supports the opposition, wrote in 2015, “Certainly, the choice between an IS caliphate or a restored totalitarian Baathist dictatorship is a choice between the plague and cholera.” “The fact that, despite four and a half years of struggle, Syrian revolutionaries are still fighting Bashar al-Assad is as much a testament to their resolve, and to their popular support, as it is to the utter absence of any forces assisting them for much of that time."6 Those fighting Assad can be classed as nationalist and islamist gangs but they are certainly not “revolutionaries”. What “popular support” they may have is not proletarian and the proletariat has nothing to gain by giving them support.

Other groups however, take a neutral stance such as the British based Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.7 This group claims not to support any side although it originally supported the initial protests against the government. It criticises the opposition for sectarianism and criticises the Kurdish PYD for opportunism, authoritarianism and pro-imperialism.

In a resolution on Syria passed by the AWL's National Committee on 31 August 2013 the AWL stated that,

“Assad's regime is the main problem, but we oppose the planned US bombing of Syria. We will not mourn damage and destruction of Assad's military bases. However, informed military opinion is that there is no chance of a one-off operation, such as planned, seriously incapacitating Assad's regime; and in any case we do not want the victory of the opposition military forces, whose dominant character is reactionary and sectarian. Rather we want and work to support the emergence of a Third Camp of democratic and working-class forces between Assad and the main opposition militias. In the meantime, even a rotten peace deal (which socialists could not support) would be better than outright victory for either force.”8


Unfortunately for the AWL, no “democratic” force has emerged in the ensuing five years. And if it had it would not be in the interest of the working class. From the same resolution they say, “The biggest problem in Syria is Assad's policy, not US intervention. We demand Iranian and Hezbollah forces get out of Syria, and condemn Russia's arming of the regime.”9

Does the AWL seriously imagine that the imperialist powers; the US and its Allies, Russia and Iran, would allow an independent democratic Syrian government to come to power? Does it really think that a democratic Syrian government would not be obliged to fall into one or other imperialist camp in order to survive? In the era of imperialist dominance no nation’s struggle is simply anti-imperialist but the product of the support of a rival imperialist. Instead of condemning the Syrian war as an imperialist struggle and opposing it on the basis of class, the AWL mourns the absence of a democratic nationalist gang (one preferably, no doubt, supported by the working class) that it could support, and which would necessarily become a client of the dominant imperialist power.

Russia in Syria
Unsurprisingly, there are Trotskyist Groups that are pro Russia in its involvement in Syria but of course there are also groups that are against Russian involvement. To take just two of them:

Socialist Action10 originally supported the uprising, but now “critically supports” the Russians. In 2012, they said that “the economic exploitation of Syria’s workers and peasants by its ruling class, a class subservient to global capital, and the horrific oppression and murderous policies of the Syrian regime to enforce that exploitation, mean that we stand with the Syrian masses in their uprising against the regime.” But then they say, the US took advantage of Assad’s brutality to try to set up a new regime. “… in the absence of anything resembling a revolutionary leadership, the democratic and popular thrust of the anti-Assad mobilisations rapidly dissipated.” They allege that the US and Gulf monarchies support IS. Although critical of Assad, Socialist Action says, “the removal of Assad’s oppressive capitalist Syrian regime is the sole responsibility of the Syrian people, not US imperialism and its reactionary allied forces.” “Syria’s right to self-determination necessarily includes the right of the Syrian government to seek and accept the support of the militia fighters that are today defending Syria against imperialist intervention in several of its manifestations. Russian military support is therefore, seen by Socialist Action as a defiance of US imperialism and support for Syria’s right to self-determination. But Russia has no interest in an independent Syria. Russia has its own imperialist interests to defend in the region. A Syria free of US imperialism would be a Syria dependent on Russia and Iran.

The International Socialist Organisation12, on the other hand, is very critical of Russia and Iran and was opposed to the US-Russian-backed negotiations in 2016. The ISO says, “Overwhelmingly, these people (those killed in the war) have been slaughtered by the Assad-Iran-Russia Triple Alliance.” “True, Saudi Arabia has funded jihadis, among other militias, but the Saudis and the US are only the number-three culprit in creating the Syrian disaster. Assad is clearly number one, and his allies are number two.

These contrasting positions highlight the absurdity of the idea that Trotskyism is a revolutionary current. In fact, the positions of both groups are equally reactionary. Revolutionaries do not take sides in imperialist wars. Nor do they rank imperialist gangsters in order of barbarity and give their support (“critical” or otherwise) accordingly.


More: https://libcom.org/blog/trotskyism-war-syria-01092018
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby American Dream » Thu Sep 13, 2018 8:13 pm

Right-wing “anti-imperialism”

To build a new global anti-imperialist movement, we have to confront the growing problem of right-wing “anti-imperialism.” This ugly trend constitutes a major crisis for the Left. Lauesen has it on his radar screen. He makes brief mention of the “populist right-wing movements” that profit from the current crisis of capitalism. (p.430) He specifically identifies one of the main forms of right-wing “anti-imperialism”–Islamist fundamentalism. (p. 218) I certainly agree that this is a big danger. But right-wing “anti-imperialism” exerts a strong attraction on Left activists in the US and Europe, too.

For instance, today we see the rise of a Left-Right alliance centered around the imperialist Russian regime. Former left-wing anti-imperialists are uniting with the forces around Vladimir Putin and his favored fascist ideologue, Alexandr Dugin. Critics call this a “Red-Brown” alliance.[47]

Leftists, unmoored from their principles, attend conferences, go on tours, give speeches, write articles and books, and appear on Russian state TV, sharing platforms with holocaust deniers, white nationalists and anti-immigrant thugs, pledging to “fight Western imperialism” side by side. They are united in the view that it’s a good thing to strengthen Russia–and China–in order to weaken the Triad. The euphemistic buzzword for this opportunist strategy is “multipolarity.” Its advocates allege that having more imperialist powers contending for power will open up (unexplained and unspecified) “opportunities” for anti-imperialist movements. This perspective has been endorsed not just by fringe elements like LaRouchites, crypto-Stalinists and the Workers World Party, but a host of well-known mainstream leftists from the US and Europe.[48]

It goes without saying that members of this Left-Right alliance absolve Russia of any bad behavior in the Crimea, Ukraine, or Central Asia. The most prominent focus of this opportunist united front right now is Syria, where supposed “anti-imperialists” from the Left and Right join together in supporting the brutal Russian-backed Assad regime–barrel bombs, poison gas and all. The Left-Right alliance falsely defines all opposition to Assad’s dictatorship as fundamentalists. This convenient lie apparently eases their consciences about deserting the secular resistance–they simply pretend it doesn’t exist. This same lie allows them to politely avert their eyes while Assad’s torture chambers work overtime, and while Russian bombers massacre civilians in support of the dictatorship.

The Left-Right line on Syria has been adopted by, among others, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, John Pilger, Patrick Cockburn, writers for CounterPunch, Black Agenda Report, and The Nation, Slavoj Zizek, Ben Norton, and, notoriously, by Max Blumenthal, who completely switched his position on the Syrian regime after a paid trip to Moscow in 2015.[49]

I think that the Left-Right alliance currently gathering around Russia clearly demonstrates the dangers of embracing one imperialist power in order to oppose another. Is anybody asking the hundreds of millions oppressed by Russian and Chinese imperialism how “multipolarity” would work out for them? Are the people of Chechnya or Tibet supposed to endorse their tormentors as advocates for the Global South?

Image
BRICS leaders, 2016. At the meeting of BRICS leaders, from left: President of Brazil Michel Temer, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, and President of the Republic of South Africa Jacob Zuma.

Reading Torkil Lauesen’s “The Global Perspective” (Bromma, 8/18)
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 17, 2018 7:21 pm

Twitter bars League of the South head Michael Hill, who immediately creates a new online identity
September 17, 2018

Brett Barrouquere


In what has become a game of racist whack-a-mole, Twitter has barred the head of the neo-Confederate League of the South, Michael Hill. Hill quickly reupped on the platform with a new account.

The account hopping is the latest example of someone on the racist fringe getting barred by Twitter and starting a new account without any repercussions from the social media platform.

Twitter closed the @MickCollins1951 belonging to J. Michael Hill, who heads the racist group based in Killen, Alabama, over the weekend after he retweeted a video of himself and others burning an Israeli flag and saying: “We stand for the white race against all our enemies, particularly the Jews.”

The banning marked the second account of Hill’s to be suspended. His original account, @MichaelHill51, is also offline, but it is unclear for how long that one has been barred.

Hill, though, wasn’t deterred. He created a new account, @TheBigMick1951, and began tweeting on Sunday, saying: “Y’all help a Southern nationalist boy out!” By midday Monday, Hill had tweeted 94 times and had 295 followers on the new account.

The new account makes no secret of who is tweeting and Hill’s affiliation.

In the biography section of the page, Hill listed himself as a “Southern nationalist, Rhodesia, Dixie Mafia, Northern Ireland, and other White Man stuff …” It also features a banner photo of the League of the South marching with a Confederate flag.

He also retweeted the video that got his old account closed and later said, “Y'all make this video go viral!”

Changing accounts has become the norm for white supremacists and racists who are barred from Twitter. And the platform has been inconsistent about which racists, white supremacists and far-right figures it allows on the social media network.

People such as racist “alt-right” frontman Richard Spencer, former Ku Klux Klan leader and career racist David Duke, “Unite the Right” organizer Jason Kessler and male supremacist and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich all maintain a presence on Twitter.

Twitter only recently bounced Alex Jones and Infowars, known for trolling the families of the school shooting victims in Newtown, Connecticut, from the platform after it concluded the accounts had violated its behavior policies.

Twitter has been a magnet for racists, antisemites, white supremacists and others, an open field where they could spread their message with little or no accountability. Before that, Twitter boss Jack Dorsey stepped in personally to stop Twitter staff members from banning Jones and Spencer from the platform.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Dorsey expressed frustration with other executives and staffers by jumping in at the last minute to make decisions on whether or not controversial figures should be suspended.

It took until November 2017 for Twitter to decertify Spencer, Kessler, English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson and others. Decertification means that the accounts would no longer have the iconic blue check marks next to the name.

During that sweep, Twitter suspended the account of @BakedAlaska, aka 29-year-old Tim Gionet, a white nationalist who had about 200,000 followers.

But Twitter has come under criticism for not doing enough to rid the platform of racists and others of that ilk.

Actor Seth Rogen tweeted in July that he’s exchanged messages with Dorsey about the problem: “I’ve been DMing with @jack about his bizarre need to verify white supremacists on his platform for the last 8 months or so, and after all the exchanges, I’ve reached a conclusion: the dude simply does not seem to give a fuck."

Writer and author David Simon, who created the show “The Wire,” also took on Dorsey after receiving a temporary ban earlier this year after a post in which he told Dorsey he should “die of boils.”

“I find it harder and harder to believe that Jack Dorsey or the others engaged in regulating speech on his horror-show of a platform are unaware that their detached and dystopic vision of what is responsible speech and what is in fact crippling to our republic is not a solution,” wrote Simon, a prolific tweeter whose account has been restored. “Having given us Twitter, they are in this moment, ruinous to its best purposes.”

When Twitter ran an ad from the white supremacist group New Order in 2016, Dorsey apologized, but not before a tweet pointing out the ad went viral.

“We made a mistake here and we apologize,” Dorsey said. “Our automated system allowed an ad promoting hate. Against our policy. We did a retro and fixed!”

For League of the South, the video of the Israeli flag burning is the latest public sign that the group is moving further away from its roots in the neo-Confederate movement. Instead, the move seems designed to draw the attention and possible membership of a more active and potentially violent set of recruits to League of the South.

The League has shifted in recent years from “advocating for the survival, well-being, and independence of the southern people” in 2014 to brawling with antifa alongside white nationalists and neo-Nazi skinheads in 2017 and 2018.

The most visible example of that shift came at “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, which devolved into a series of fights and a riot. Three people — two Virginia State Troopers and 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was there to protest against the racists — were killed.

The group once presented itself as the premier “Southern Nationalist” organization that stood for “the southern people,” which it defines as “white, Christians of Anglo-Celtic stock” who live in a geographic area variously described as “the states of the Old Confederacy,” “the Bible belt” and “white man’s land.”

But, earlier this year, the League began publishing a Russian language page as it has turned to flash demonstrations to get its message public. It also served as a cheap, attention-getting stunt with little or no known impact on getting the group members overseas.

How long Hill’s new account will last is unknown. But if the past is any guide, he won’t be off Twitter for long.


https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... e-identity
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby American Dream » Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:00 am

NEO-NAZI LEADER JAMES PORRAZZO MIXES RACISM WITH LEFTIST IDEOLOGY


Dugin and the Fourth Position

Today, as chairman of New Resistance, Porrazzo is pushing his new Fourth Position ideology, an attempt to meld together revolutionary nationalists and ethnic separatists of all backgrounds with Communist holdouts and anti-Zionists. As recently as August 2011 a post on his website had promoted the AF by saying the “Third Position offers a real future for the People of North America.” But shortly thereafter he did an about-face, claiming that Third Positionism had been ruined both by neo-Nazis who used the term “while keeping all their worst ideas” and by moderates who favored change through the electoral process. Porrazzo said, “The true ‘idea’ of the Third Position as left-right synthesis that we fought so hard for is valid, though dated, and was the starting point of what we are doing today.”

Now, Porrazzo holds that the Fourth Position — which he also describes as a kind of “left-nationalism” — is the “future of the revolutionary struggle against globalism, capitalism and liberalism.” His New Resistance supports authoritarian Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad, mourns the defeat of Libya’s late ruler Muammar Gaddafi, and praises Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez.

Followers are encouraged to read leftist classics by Karl Marx, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara, all of which sit uneasily on his website next to fascist thinkers like Claudio Mutti and Julius Evola. Porrazzo’s favorite writer is Alexander Dugin, a Russian far-right political theorist who advocates a Eurasian super-state to oppose the Anglo-American alliance, liberalism and globalization. The Fourth Position takes it name from Dugin’s book The Fourth Political Theory.

Porrazzo’s group also employs left-wing slogans, calling for environmental sustainability, “social justice” and “direct democracy.” Still advocating racial separatism, it claims that in the future this will be voluntary; in areas where this is not possible, a form of ethnically based representation is proposed.

The New Resistance promotes the rambling Global Revolutionary Alliance (GRA) manifesto, which calls for global opposition to the United States, which is described as a country of “absolute evil.” In line with much anti-Semitic thinking, America is said to be inorganic, without collective identity, “a giant golem, controlled by the oligarchy.” The manifesto calls for an alliance of groups, from all races and religions, to destroy the “blood-sucking American oligarch liberal scum.”

Previously, Porrazzo was known for his high-octane anti-Semitism, calling Jews “a filthy, evil people the world would be better without.” But now, Porrazzo says his anti-Semitism was a “serious ethical error,” and that it was a mistaken outgrowth of his hatred of Zionism and capitalism; anti-Zionist Jews are welcome to work with New Resistance. However, just as the GRA manifesto’s description of the evil, inorganic, and cosmopolitan United States draws from traditional anti-Semitic formulations, so do Porrazzo’s descriptions of what he calls the “bandit state of Israel.” The “New Resistance Manifesto” that the New Resistance endorses states that “[w]e believe that Israel is nothing more than an imperialist, landlocked ‘aircraft carrier’ permanently moored to the Middle East, spreading destruction and subversion throughout the region.”

Although he has decades of political experience behind him, the jury is still out on whether Porrazzo and his New Resistance can establish a group with any real influence on the American radical right. One thing that seems certain is that he will be fighting an uphill battle, both because the American extreme right loathes the far left and because Porrazzo’s own penchant for infighting could destroy him.

Image
Alexander Dugin


Read more: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate ... t-ideology




American Dream » Tue Aug 21, 2018 2:23 pm wrote:
Most of the Left was wildly euphoric about the early resistance in Iraq and the outpouring of mass global anti-war sentiment. Triumphal statements about the emergence of a new movement for social justice were the common currency of left-wing discourse. Larry Wing of “War Times” exulted that, “Most important of all, and underlying all the other developments, is the emergence of a new superpower: the world’s people. As one we rose up on Feb. 15 to smite the empire. Antiwar sentiment is so great in most countries that even most reactionary leaders dare not cross us.” Tom Hayden, not to be outdone, proclaimed, “There is rising a new movement in the world. It is bigger than the movement of the 1960s.” “A global anti-war movement unlike anything that has existed for three decades — that is, since the close of the Vietnam War,” trumpeted International A.N.S.W.E.R. According to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, “The issue of the war and Bush military policy is beginning to coalesce an incredibly wide range of social forces: anti-globalization, anti-capitalists, labor, national movements, students, greens, liberals, anarchists, etc., etc. This movement is beginning to reflect, in embryonic form, the coalition of social forces that can ultimately transform society.”

Yes, but transform it in what direction?

Can it really be that leftists didn’t notice the actual politics of the forces leading the armed struggle against the Western imperialists in Iraq? Has the Left somehow missed the virulent global opposition to the Iraq war that comes from the Right? Can it be unaware that the “incredibly wide range of social forces” opposing the Bush and Blair regimes’ war includes millions of right-wing political Islamists, Baath Party torturers, reactionary Japanese nationalists, Hindu fascists, dozens of right-wing dictators, former heads of the CIA and NSA, the Pope, capitalists in every country, conservative Republicans, antisemitic Russian nationalists, Pat Buchanan, the hard right British National Party, generals and admirals, David Duke, and most neo-nazi organizations worldwide?

For some time after the anglo-american invasion, it was difficult to find mention—let alone serious analysis—of the role of right-wing religious fundamentalism, antisemitism, fascism and reactionary populism among the global forces opposing the invasion and occupation. In fact, the Left usually spoke and acted as if there were one big progressive anti-intervention coalition on the rise. There seemed to be an assumption that the Left was the natural vanguard of these forces. This assumption was—is—as false as it is dangerous.

With the passage of time and events in Iraq, this delusional attitude has become less and less rational. But that hasn’t provoked any self-criticism. Most of the Left still tries to downplay or evade the whole uncomfortable issue of right-wing anti-imperialism, hoping it will go away by itself. In fact some leftists have adopted an even more reprehensible course: They have decided to participate in an open alliance with the fundamentalists. These “super” anti-imperialists demand “unconditional support” for the “resistance,” and consider anyone uncomfortable with this formula to be liberal and chauvinist.

It’s as if the tragedies in Iran and Afghanistan had never happened. Once again, the Left is pushing women’s freedom to the sidelines, supposedly in the name of anti-imperialism. Once again, “politics” is being twisted into a struggle between imperialist men and “anti-imperialist” men—even if those “anti-imperialist” men enslave women.

It’s now glaringly obvious that right-wing Islamist fundamentalism has become a major actor in world politics; that fact puts the pathological denial among leftists into stark relief. But we should be clear that Islamist radicalism is only one version of the right-wing “anti-imperialism” in motion today. It might be most accurate to say that right-wing Islamist insurgency is the leading edge of a worldwide phenomenon. Right wing populism, with fascist elements contending for vanguard leadership, is coming to life in country after country. Including much closer to home than Iraq.

Militant right-wing “anti imperialism” is growing in the U.S. White supremacists and fascists like Louis Beam, Matt Hale and Tom Metzger hate the neo-cons and Bush; they despise globalization’s New World Order. Therefore they study Left-led movements, coopt their language and even try to attract the activists working within them. They reason that, as Beam writes, “The New American Patriot will be neither left nor right, just a freeman fighting for liberty…The new politics of America is liberty from the NWO [New World Order] Police State and nothing more.”

Many neo-fascists and Christian fundamentalists loudly “support” Palestinian struggle against Israel, and Left activists in the solidarity movement find that they are forced to weed antisemites out of web forums and events. Organizers against the Patriot Acts are consciously building a coalition between the Left and Right. “Third Position” neo-fascists in Europe and North America actively petition Leftists and progressives to a join in a common platform opposing U.S. interventionism and hegemony in the world. Today, just as in Mussolini and Hitler’s time, many fascists claim a “spiritual kinship” to the natural world and claim to “defend” it. (“Ecology is for Aryans too,” says Tom Metzger.) Criticisms of the New World Order and its negative effects on the domestic social contract in the metropolis now crop up everywhere on the Right; they sometimes sound indistinguishable from Left anti-globalization arguments.

Remarkably, some of the hard Right’s leadership is even moderating its public positions on race in order to pave the way for potential “anti-capitalist” alliances with non-white movements. Perhaps the races should be separate, they say, but we should all unite against the common enemy—global capital. James Porazzo, head of the neo-nazi skinhead group the American Front, argues for a program of “White autonomy, Black autonomy, Brown autonomy and death to the current twisted system. The only other obvious route would be an eventual winner take all race war: I don’t think anyone with any sense would want that.”


More: http://kersplebedeb.com/posts/false-fro ... ist-right/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 24, 2018 7:34 am

INSURGENT SUPREMACIST: AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW N. LYONS ON ANTIFASCISM, ANTI-IMPERIALISM, AND THE FUTURE OF ORGANIZING

Image

I’m an anti-Zionist Jew: I reject Israeli apartheid rule over Palestinians and Zionist appropriation of Jewish identity for racist and imperialist ends, and I reject smear campaigns that equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. But it’s disturbing and dangerous when we see self-described leftists portraying Zionists as some kind of super-powerful force controlling U.S. foreign policy or global capitalism, or dismiss any concerns about antisemitism on the left as Zionist propaganda.

Third, I think we need to reject simplistic left analyses that celebrate any perceived opposition to U.S. international power as “anti-imperialist” – and that automatically equate anti-imperialist with “progressive.” The Assad government has implemented neoliberal economic policies, collaborated with the CIA’s rendition program, and murdered thousands of Palestinians, but somehow it’s supposed to be anti-imperialist now. And if all anti-imperialism is automatically progressive, are we supposed to celebrate the 9-11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Those attacks hit the centers of imperialist power more forcefully than anything Assad and his allies have ever done, but they also killed 3,000 people and were carried out in the name of a deeply reactionary ideology. And if all anti-imperialism is automatically progressive, are we supposed to join forces with the neonazis who did in fact celebrate the 9-11 attacks as heroic blows against globalist Jewish elites? What’s needed here, again, is a recognition that there are more than two political poles in the world, and – as radical antifascists have been saying for years – my enemy’s enemy is not necessarily my friend.


More: https://antifascistnews.net/2018/10/22/ ... rganizing/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)


Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby Elvis » Thu Nov 08, 2018 5:42 am

Matthew N. Lyons wrote: I think we need to reject simplistic left analyses that celebrate any perceived opposition to U.S. international power as “anti-imperialist” – and that automatically equate anti-imperialist with “progressive.” The Assad government has implemented neoliberal economic policies, collaborated with the CIA’s rendition program, and murdered thousands of Palestinians, but somehow it’s supposed to be anti-imperialist now.

Imperialism is imperialism is imperialism—and by his own "logic" this jerk supports it.


Matthew N. Lyons wrote:And if all anti-imperialism is automatically progressive, are we supposed to celebrate the 9-11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Those attacks hit the centers of imperialist power more forcefully than anything Assad and his allies have ever done, but they also killed 3,000 people and were carried out in the name of a deeply reactionary ideology. And if all anti-imperialism is automatically progressive, are we supposed to join forces with the neonazis who did in fact celebrate the 9-11 attacks as heroic blows against globalist Jewish elites?


As most members of this board know, this upside-down framing of the 9/11 attacks is red-herring rubbish, and Lyons uses it in a shameless, weak and offensive smear tactic. What a jerk.

Lyons has a long history of exposing the far right, but also of poo-pooing anything but the official 9/11 narrative. Exposing the far right is easy, as is berating 9/11 skepticism with facile smears. It's those seemingly little things, like ignoring or excusing neoliberal U.S. hegemony that beg the question, "spook?"


Assad government has implemented neoliberal economic policies, collaborated with the CIA’s rendition program and murdered thousands of Palestinians


Explain again how this excuses the US/UK's destruction of Syria and the death and displacement of millions of Syrians? More bullshit framing, exonerating neoliberal violence. Shame on you.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7411
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby American Dream » Thu Nov 08, 2018 7:08 am

None of this is new, Elvis. We each have our own opinions. The others who have formally taken on the sacred trust of moderation, in this case Jeff and 82_28, surely have all manner of opinion but I believe that they very much do support expression of opinions which differ from their own. That's how it should be.

Each of us is a person, going through our own struggles and pain, discoveries and joys. In that, I wish us all well and I hope that we each move forward in finding ways to be compassionate and in solidarity, very much including those victimized by War.

I'm not a moderator but you are. This gives you added powers but also added responsibilities. This is important.


American Dream » Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:47 pm wrote:If saying it’s a bad idea to work with fascists makes you a pro-war neoliberal, then who was phone? More on red-brown alliances, smears and all that

Image

...anti-fascist opposition to co-operation with the far-right is not something new, a neoliberal attack on the left... Instead, it’s a theme that’s come up again and again in debates within our movements, running back at least as far as the arguments made by people like the Dutch antiracist organisation “De Fabel van de illegaal” and the authors of the “My Enemy’s Enemy” collection during the summit protest/anti-globalization movement of almost 20 years ago, through to people like Spencer Sunshine warning of the danger of far-right and antisemitic participation in the Occupy movement, and a subject that’s been brought up to the present day by a wide variety of writers including Elise Hendricks, Sol Process, Vagabond, Matthew Lyons and other contributors to the Three-Way Fight project, Andy Fleming, the Olympia anarchists who spoke out against Sadie and Exile, along with others like Bob from Brockley, Louis Proyect and Andrew Coates. If all the contributions made by all of these people are now to be written off as a neoliberal smear campaign, it’d be nice to have a little bit more evidence first.

https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com ... -all-that/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Nov 08, 2018 7:47 am

Matthew N. Lyons wrote:And if all anti-imperialism is automatically progressive, are we supposed to celebrate the 9-11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Those attacks hit the centers of imperialist power more forcefully than anything Assad and his allies have ever done, but they also killed 3,000 people and were carried out in the name of a deeply reactionary ideology. And if all anti-imperialism is automatically progressive, are we supposed to join forces with the neonazis who did in fact celebrate the 9-11 attacks as heroic blows against globalist Jewish elites?


This is the lowest sophistry, trolling worthy of FOX and Limbaugh and O'Keefe. It has nothing to do with the writer's opinions, but with his false ad-aburdum logic with which he attributes imaginary opinions to others that they did not remotely express themselves, and that they would not endorse if they even conceived of them. This makes the writer dishonest. Also, highly typical of a lot of the shit you post, AD.*

As if it has to be deconstructed, or as if this will make a difference to someone who is determined to be as invincibly right as you, AD, let's go through the motions and illustrate by analogy: "If all expression of opinion is to be protected, as AD says [he didn't necessarily say this but who cares? he said something close enough to allow distorting the words in the same way as Lyons does, using crude tactics to which no use of language no matter how legalist is immune], are we supposed to let Nazis and supporters of pedophiles post on this board?!" Pretending to have discovered a logical fallacy by parsing AD's language in a ridiculously over-specific way that could be done with any other statement, I shall now insinuate Matthew Lyons and American Dream are, support, or in some way encourage or are in bed with or are indifferent to or somehow soft on Nazis and supporters of pedophiles. Their other statements don't matter. Even if they are not saying what I'm claiming they say, it would still be wrong if they were, so we don't care anymore about what they may have actually said. We'll just bask in how we have shown they are WRONG on anything they think or say. QED! Devastated! WIN!!!

Personally, as no mod, my modest proposal given his evident disrespect for difference of opinion (which would be tolerable under many circumstances) coupled with determination to flood the board always (which is not) AD should be allowed to choose three of his threads to post in, and be restricted solely to posting only to those for at least a year. Violation would be a ban, in this fantasy of mine.

One of these threads could non-stop attack everyone on the left as the real Nazis, whether they've realized it or not, using the same kind of fact and argument by which Nazis link everything to Soros. (Basic approach: A hundred years ago, some fascist wrote something fascist, and by the end of this 9,000-page work I shall have proven that Jill Stein and Jimmy Dore and Tulsi Gabbard and probably Bernie Sanders by some associative acrobatics are also covertly fascist, although they are not. At the same time, I shall show that anyone who locates any level or hint of fascism or fascist potential in any institution of U.S. governance or capitalism is... fascist!!!)

Another could accuse those who oppose US bombing of Everywhere of eating babies, unless they stop talking about US bombing, ever. There will be one exception allowed. One may mention opposition to US policy in brief disclaimers claiming to oppose "ALL imperialism." Such statements shall be allowed if provided at the beginning of interminable attacks on "Assad," "Putin," Venezuela, Nicaragua and the Brazilian PT, preferably echoing State Department or neoliberal corporate media line; also the aforementioned Green Party, US socialists, and US "leftists" generally (no specification needed, in fact it's better not to cite examples). Also of course everyone who ever wrote for or can be six-degrees associated, rightly or wrongly, with RT, Sputnik, Mint Press, Counterpunch, Consortium News, "Russia," or the entire PropOrNot list, especially the leftist ones.

A third thread could archive all content on random apparently unread web-sites that espouse the AD-approved brands of anarchism. These may have their own URLs, but we can pretend more people will read the material here than there.

Everyone will know where to go to get their daily dose of AD with Triple CP Action (tm). They won't have to click on every single thread to see if it has been blessed with a new AD intervention. I think this leaner and more centralized version of AD-RI Enterprises Inc. will achieve far greater productivity, impact, virality and e-virility, so really it's a favor to all. Thank you.

.

* Insofar as there is a genuine opinion in the passage, it's also laughable, but he is entitled to it. For example, the idea that "those attacks hit the centers of imperialist power... forcefully" is dubious. Killed several thousand civilians and a couple hundred Pentagon workers in a way that had no effect on imperial power whatsoever, but was guaranteed to prompt a new imperialist jeremiad. The latter is central to both the liberal-official and the skeptical versions of 9/11. It's basically doctrine that "OBL intended" to lure the Americans into Afghanistan and Middle Eastern wars so that they would discredit themselves. Anyway, Lyons' stupid opinion about that is fine, but when he attributes it to hypothetical "anti-imperialists" and beats on them it turns into dishonest sophistry.

.

I tolerated and mostly defended you for many years, AD. Your copy-paste round of once again discovering "anti-Semitism on the left" (no evidence in the form of actually cited leftists necessary) in the immediate wake of a Nazi murdering 11 Jews at a liberal-reform synagogue (with the announced motive of wanting to punish them for helping refugees) was an eye-opener. So now I've finally joined the club of people who have had it with your shit, even if I'm not happy about all of the members in it.

.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Moscow conference draws fascists, neo-Confederates, left

Postby Elvis » Thu Nov 08, 2018 6:38 pm

American Dream wrote:None of this is new, Elvis. We each have our own opinions.


But your opinion refuses to take in the pertinent facts, so that's all it is—opinion and sophistry.

In the derailed Socialist Response thread I wrote:
The furthest I've seen AD go to acknowledge the bountiful evidence of the White Helmets' overlap with ISIS terrorists was a dismissive dodge along the lines of, 'there might be some interesting things in that video, but....' — never addressing the evidence issues. I have brought it up and laid it out many times, but there is never discussion, no counter-argument from AD. That's not critical thinking, it's heel-digging denial.


It's also dishonest: "show me some evidence" then completely ignore the evidence presented. And, it should be added, it's always, predictably, in favor of US/UK/NATO/imperialist aims and actions in Syria. Much has been speculated about AD's motivations for this, but does it matter? The effect is the same.


JackRiddler wrote:Post by JackRiddler » Thu Nov 08, 2018 4:47 am

Matthew N. Lyons wrote:
And if all anti-imperialism is automatically progressive, are we supposed to celebrate the 9-11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Those attacks hit the centers of imperialist power more forcefully than anything Assad and his allies have ever done, but they also killed 3,000 people and were carried out in the name of a deeply reactionary ideology. And if all anti-imperialism is automatically progressive, are we supposed to join forces with the neonazis who did in fact celebrate the 9-11 attacks as heroic blows against globalist Jewish elites?



This is the lowest sophistry, trolling worthy of FOX and Limbaugh and O'Keefe. It has nothing to do with the writer's opinions, but with his false ad-aburdum logic with which he attributes imaginary opinions to others that they did not remotely express themselves, and that they would not endorse if they even conceived of them. This makes the writer dishonest. Also, highly typical of a lot of the shit you post, AD.*



JackRiddler wrote:Personally, as no mod, my modest proposal given his evident disrespect for difference of opinion (which would be tolerable under many circumstances) coupled with determination to flood the board always (which is not) AD should be allowed to choose three of his threads to post in, and be restricted solely to posting only to those for at least a year. Violation would be a ban, in this fantasy of mine.


This proposal has some merits—awkward solutions have been devised and extended to perennial problem posters before—but administering and enforcing it would not be the most productive use of anyone's time.

For now, the most rational response is to lock this thread.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7411
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Previous

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: SonicG and 42 guests