Socialists: racist, anti semetic?

John Pilger is often quoted approving by socialists here and in other forums.

This is quite interesting as Pilger is a racist anti semite.

Most recently in the New Statesman, a leftist magazine in the UK:

Its quite chilling to hear a leading light of the left saying that a jewish doctor living in Miami who has absolutely nothing at all to do with Israel is culpable for preventing a better world.

Of course we know that guy has his own campaign against 'zionists' here at Hipforums, which hasn't really created much of a fuss except amongst "the right". So its no wonder that the same socialists here quote John Pilger approvingly - what's not to like?

Similarly, Pilger condemned Barrack Obama as a "glossy Uncle Tom" before he had even stepped foot in the white house. South Africa under Mandela was still a while Apartheid system, as he had "betrayed" the revolution. As one commentator put it,

And anti americanism? Where to start.

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So will the left confront these issues or just try to bury the debate with endless distractions? LOL! You really need to ask?

 

really? i never realised that my opinion of genocide and general warmongering and misinformation was so intolerant.

tell me more "hiptastic" or rather don't tell it to your handlers.

 

Who are my handlers guy?

 

Pilger has got the goods on Israel as do many Jewish people, who are more often than not just as vocal in their criticism.

 

What "goods" are they?

 

More like "bads."

Hiptastic, I'm pretty sure the "handlers" he is referring to are members of the Israeli government. It's true, those goofs publicly admitted to hiring bloggers to promote the zionist cause - through blogs and blog response comments. paranoid conspiracy theorists have taken this to mean what they want it to mean - that anyone who disagrees with them on a forum about their conspiracy theories is most likely one of these hired bloggers. Unfortunately the Israeli government never said a thing about sending their bloggers to troll forums - the conspiracy theorists have just inferred this because it is what they want to hear. The idea that that government would pay to send people here and try to convince the relatively small number of us that frequent this form to support zionism is just silly.

I do agree with them on two things though; The Israeli government and its attitude toward the surrounding muslim countries (essentially that they can do with/to those countries and their people as they please) is despicable; and the concept of zionism - the idea that because members of a group of people were subjected to something horrible, land should be stolen from people who already live on it and given to these people because their fairytale religion says it rightfully belongs to them - is completely insane.

Hiptastic, I had never heard of this guy you quoted before just now, but the quotes you posted sound neither racist nor anti-semitic. Saying that any jew who doesn't specifically speak out against israel is responsible for israel's actions is probably a bit extreme. However he is not denouncing these jews because they are jews. He is doing so because they are not speaking out against the terrible things that the country that is, in a sense, "theirs," is doing.

Neither do I think that calling Obama a "glossy uncle tom" is racist. Of COURSE he was pandering to and kissing as many white asses as possible. He stood no chance of winning the election or maintaining support if he didn't.

Also, are you on that ever-popular bandwagon that is using the "socialist" label to make Obama sound scary? I think its such a popular label because a lot of people can't differentiate between 'socialism' and 'communism.' They think they are the same thing. Since communism sounds scary, socialism does also. Its a quick, easy and effective way to drain unintelligent and reactionary supporters from Obama's side, or more generally, from any kind of liberal politics.

Socialism and what we consider liberal politics in this country are closely related. The only difference is that people generally use the word "socialism" to refer to a more extreme form of the same idea. There is no concrete differentiation, though, so somebody who calls a moderate-leaning liberal a "socialist" would not technically be wrong. If you were to go onto, say, wikipedia and look up both of these terms there are many more differences in the strict definitions of each. . . but as far as their use in political debate goes, they both refer to leftist ideas, with socialism generally indicating something further left than plain ol' liberalism.

I vote that liberals should fight fire with fire and start labeling any and all socially conservative agendas and politicians as fascism/fascists, because they would just be using the exact same defamation and scare techniques that conservatives are currently using against liberals. Just as "socialism" is a scary sounding word that often refers to extreme left ideas, fascism is a scary word that refers to extreme right- wing ideas. Seems fair to me.

 

First up

Here is the full article by John Pilger
Listen to the heroes of Israel

I phoned Rami Elhanan the other day. We had not spoken for six years and much has happened in Israel and Palestine. Rami is an Israeli graphic designer who lives with his family in Jerusalem. His father survived Auschwitz. His grandparents and six aunts and uncles perished in the Holocaust. Whenever I am asked about heroes, I say Rami and his wife, Nurit, without hesitation.
Soon after we met, Rami gave me a home videotape that was difficult to watch. It shows his daughter Smadar, aged 14, throwing her head back, laughing and playing the piano. "She loved to dance," he said. On the afternoon of 4 September 1997, Smadar and her best friend, Sivane, had auditions for admission to a dance school. She had argued that morning with her mother, who was anxious about her going to the centre of Jerusalem. "I didn't want to row," said Nurit, "so I let her go."
Rami was in his car when he turned on the radio to catch the three o'clock news. There had been a suicide bombing in Ben Yehuda shopping precinct. More than 200 people were injured and several were dead. Within minutes, his mobile phone rang. It was Nurit, crying. They searched the hospitals in vain, then the morgue; and so began, as Rami describes it, their "descent into darkness".
Rami and Nurit are two of the founders of the Parents Circle, or Bereaved Families Forum, which brings together Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones. "It's painful to acknowledge," he said, "but there is no basic moral difference between the [Israeli] soldier at the checkpoint who prevents a woman who is having a baby from going through, causing her to lose the baby, and the man who killed my daughter. And just as my daughter was a victim [of the occupation], so was he." Rami describes the Israeli occupation and the dispossession of Palestinians as a "cancer in our heart". Nothing changes, he says, until the occupation ends.
Open your eyes

Every "Jerusalem Day" - the day Israel celebrates its military conquest of the city - Rami has stood in the street with a photograph of Smadar and crossed Israeli and Palestinian flags, and people have spat at him and told him it is a pity he was not blown up, too. And yet he and Nurit and their comrades have made *extraordinary gains. Rami goes to Israeli schools with a Palestinian member of the group, and they show maps of what ought to be Palestine, and they hug each other. "This is like an earthquake to children who have been socialised and manipulated into hating," he said. "They say to us, 'You have opened my eyes.'"
In October, Rami and Nurit sat in the Israeli high court as the state counsel, "stammering, unprepared and unkempt", wrote Nurit, "stood like a platoon commander in charge of new recruits and refuted . . . allegations". Salwa and Bassam Aramin, Palestinian parents, were there, too. Tears streaked Salwa's face. Their ten-year-old daughter, Abir Aramin, was killed by an Israeli soldier firing a rubber bullet point-blank at her small head as she stood beside a kiosk buying sweets with her sister. The judges seemed bored and one of them remarked that Israeli soldiers were rarely indicted, so it would be best to forget it. The state counsel laughed. This was normal.
“Our children," said Nurit, at a rally last December to mark the first anniversary of the Israeli assault on Gaza, "have learned this year that all the disgusting qualities which anti-Semites attribute to Jews are actually manifested among our leaders: deceit, greed and the murder of children . . . What values of beauty and goodness can we squeeze into such a sophisticated apparatus of brainwashing and reality distortion?"
Rami now tells me the high court has decided to investigate the case of Abir Aramin after all. This is not normal: it is a victory. “Where are the other victories?" I asked him.
“In America last year, a Palestinian and I spoke five times a day in front of thousands. There is a big shift in American public opinion, and that's where the hope lies. It's only pressure from outside Israel - from Jews especially - that will end this nightmare. People in the west must know that while there is a silence, this looking away, this profane abuse of Israel's critics as anti-Jew, they are no different from those who stood aside during the days of the Holocaust."
Guilty silence

Since Israel's onslaught on Lebanon in 2006, its devastation of Gaza in 2008-2009, and Mossad's recent political murder in Dubai, the criminality of the Israeli state has been impossible to disguise. On 11 February, the influential Reut Institute in Tel Aviv reported to the Israeli cabinet, which it advises, that violence had failed to achieve Israel's ends and had produced worldwide revulsion instead.
“In last year's Gaza operation," the report said, "our superior military power was offset by an offensive on Israel's legitimacy that led to a significant setback in our international standing and will constrain future Israeli military planning and operations." In other words, proof of the murderous, racist toll of Zionism has been an epiphany for many people; justice for the Palestinians, wrote the expatriate Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon, is now "at the heart of the battle for a better world".
However, his fellow Jews in western countries, such as Britain and Australia, whose influence is critical, are still mostly silent, still looking away, still accepting, as Nurit said, the "brainwashing and reality distortion".
And yet the responsibility to speak out could not be clearer, and the lessons of history - family history for many - ensure that it renders them culpable should their silence persist. For inspiration, I recommend the moral courage of Rami and Nurit.

http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/03/pilger-israel-rami-nurit

 

Second

Mark Gardner is director of communications for the Community Security Trust (CST Protecting the Jewish Community) A charity that was set up to represent and advise the Jewish community on matters of security and anti-Semitism.

I think the full text from which the quote is taken is form

http://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=1271

Although it could be from the letter to the New Statesman.

http://www.newstatesman.com/2010/03/march-labour-car-foot-atzmon

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Sunny Hundal is editor of the left-wing blog Liberal Conspiracy

I believe the article being quoted is at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/obama-white-house-barackobama

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Now not everyone in the Jewish community seem happy with Mark Gardner and the CST

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/01/community-security-thugs-bar-jewish.html
Its also claimed that it has something against lefties (even when they are Jewish lefties).
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/03/community-security-trust-policeman-of.html

 

I printed the whole of Pilger’s article because it’s clear Hip didn’t read it. In fact he doesn’t even seem to have read Gardner’s reply to it either.

Hip claims – [/quote]Its quite chilling to hear a leading light of the left saying that a jewish doctor living in Miami who has absolutely nothing at all to do with Israel is culpable for preventing a better world.[/quote]

But Pilger doesn’t say that what he does say is -

In other words that preventing Palestinians from receiving justice is preventing a better world.

If you actually look at the letter and compare it with the article it does seem to be trying to portray an ant-Zionist stance as an anti-Semitic one.

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Now lets look at Hip’s other claim that the left are all the same – as if the comments of some Stalinist communist are also those of a just left of centre leftie.

So he quotes Sunny Hundal - who is a left winger - confronting the comments of another left winger and that is somehow meant to prove that the left doesn’t confront such comments?

I hope even Hip can see the flaw in his argument?

Anyway as another poster has pointed out the left comes in many shades as does the right. Picking out a comment from an individual from one side or the other to colour the whole group is just plain silly.

 

...did that answer my question?

 

Well, argument supported by evidence.

Really what else could it mean?

 

Balbus you evaded the entire debate. Stop trying to drown me out with long rambling posts.

Pilger says that jews, just for being jews, are culpable if they don't criticise Israel as Pilger requires. This is utterly reprehensible anti semetism. And comparing Gaza to the holocaust - what more do I need to say?

Pilger calls Obama an Uncle Tom - a comment you deliberately chose to completely ignore.

Pilger calls Mandela a sellout to capitalists who is actually continuing Apartheid - a comment you deliberately chose to completely ignore.

"Some on the left this, other on the left that". What sort of mumbling nonsense is that. You approvingly quoted Pilger before and are now here defending him.

 

Hip

Well you obviously don’t like Pilger which is fine, but you seem to be trying to imply all left wingers are by definition racist and anti-Semitic because of this one man’s comments.

 

A little more publicity for Pilger.

Clearly Pilger has the privilege of not having to make hard decisions and difficult compromises, as is the case with both Obama and Mandela. Unlike some I do not think they would give a toff what Pilger thinks or does.

On the issue of hard decisions and compromises Israel certainly needs to make more of those rather than well thumbing the world and insulting the VP.

 

Ok here is a view of John pilger from the critic Hip quoted earler

 

Can you explain why you, as a left winger, hold racist anti semites like Pilger in such high regard? I mean you quote him approvingly.

Please don't try to run away with long cut and paste jobs and obfuscations about the left in general. You approvingly quote this racist anti semite. Show some backbone and explain why.

 

Hip

Have I ever ‘approved’ an anti-Semitic or racist comment?

Are you accusing me of been an anti-Semite and a racist?

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John Pilger is a controversial journalist and as such often courts controversy, and the thing is that that I don’t think you’ve ‘proved’ he is a racist anti-Semite.

I think he lets his passion or anger get the better of him but the examples you’ve given seem blown out of all proportion and more of a matter of seeing what you want to see.

I think Pilger was wrong to call Obama an ‘uncle tom’ figure but I would say that I think ‘big money’ has too much influence in the US’s political system and that most of that money is under the control of mainly white people.

As to the Jewish thing well I think everyone should be promoting peace in the Near East and speaking out against Israeli government action such as the Gaza attack and the occupation of Palestinian land etc (and yes I’m against Palestinian terrorism as well).

But it could be argued that since Israel was declared a Jewish state, Jews around the world should be more concerned than others, and I’ve meet a number of Jews that think that way, and say such things as ‘not in my name’.

And there are a number of Jewish organisations that do speak out against the occupation, the war and try to promote peace and justice.

http://www.jatonyc.org/
http://www.peacemideast.org/
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
http://www.nimn.org/

 

Calling Barack Obama an 'Uncle Tom' is racist.

Calling Mandela's government a continuation of Apartheid is racist.

Saying jews everywhere are CULPABLE for not actively opposing Israel is anti semetic.

Whitewash it all you want though. "it could be argued" - weasel words Balbus.

 

Hip

Well as I’ve said before, you’re entitled to your opinion.

The thing is I get the feeling that you’re noisy burst of righteous indignation is a lot more politically motivated than to do with genuine concern.

I think what we have here is a case of someone trying to smear the messenger to kill the message.

But hey that’s just my opinion

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So John Pilger thinks that Jews should speak out about some actions of the Israeli government and thinks they are amiss if they don’t, well I’m not sure that is proof positive that the man is a raging anti-Semite, especially since many Jewish people seem to share the same viewpoint.

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A black Britain I heard recently said that having come back from a visit to South Africa she felt like ringing the BNP up and telling them they were amateurs.

Pilger’s actual article rather than the hyperbole you have attached to it points out that in many ways the divisions of apartheid continued that an economic apartheid system has replaced the legal one.

I don’t think that could be construed as racism.
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And I repeat - I think Pilger was wrong to call Obama an ‘uncle tom’ figure it’s not a nice term, but I don’t think it grounds enough to call him a racist.

And I would say that I think ‘big money’ has too much influence in the US’s political system and that most of that money is mainly under the control of white people.

I don’t think Obama is subservient to these people or seeks their praise but I think he and any other US President has to work within a system where he could be seen as doing so.

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