The anti-Jewish riots in Norway, and communalism

20Feb10

A long and well-worth reading post at Z-Word: The Anti-Jewish Riots in Oslo, a guest post by Christian Tau of NIJ, about Eirik Eiglad’s recently published The anti-Jewish riots in Oslo.

I find the post somewhat problematic because of this passage:

A left-wing activist

Author Eirik Eiglad is the editor of Communalism, a journal which reports as its purpose to “provide a forum for the exposition of Communalism as a viable political alternative”, and his political outlook on life is made glaringly obvious on almost every page of “The anti-Jewish riots in Oslo”.

While watching a pro-Palestinian attack on a completely peaceful pro-Israel peace rally, Eiglad finds himself caught between “hell and a hot place, between Hamas supporters and the Christian Right“. Later in the book, Eiglad and a friend reminisce over the good old days of the pre-Hamas intifada, when the Palestinian struggle could still be perceived as a noble cause. The political right-wing is consistently portrayed as xenophobic rabble rousers, and when Behind the Humanitarian Mask* (Ed:Manfred Gerstenfeld, JCPA) makes the list of recommended reading it is “despite the conservative focus of many of its contributors”. For an appendix, this kind of warning is rare.

To really show his colours the author at one point even admits to having participated in Blitz* and AFA* “mobilisations” against neo-Nazis. This is less than savoury. For the first thing Blitz and AFA indiscriminately apply the badge of neo-Nazi to anyone they take a dislike to. For the second, during the riots in Malmö in 2009 AFA fought shoulder to shoulder with the very neo-Nazis it proclaims to be fighting against, merely in order to stop an Israeli citizen from playing tennis. Rather than being anti-fascist, AFA is basically a rivalling outfit. For Eiglad to unashamedly admit to contacts with such a group is breathtakingly worrying and indicative of the dire moral straits in which the Norwegian left finds itself.

I don’t know the details of Blitz and AFA in Norway. Blitz is or was a squatted social centre in  Oslo which has been attacked by Nazis a number of times. I haven’t heard from them since the 1990s, and am not sure of their current status. AFA is the Norwegian Anti-Fascist Action. I have read allegations from right-wing sources about Swedish AFA, and have reported Norwegian AFA demonstrating against the David Cup in Malmo. But I believe that this anti-imp turn of Scandanavian AFA groups is a recent phenomenon, a turn away from its core values, and says nothing about the AFA mobilisations of the 1990s. The idea that they simply call “anyone they take a dislike to” neo-Nazis is ridiculous.

Nonetheless, as well as the importance of the post’s topic, I was grateful for the intro to the social ecology group Communalism.org. Among its texts which you might find interesting are:

• Anti-Semitism in the Socialist Tradition, by Kjetil Simonsen
• Theses on Social Ecology and Deep Ecology, by Janet Biehl

* = Hyperlink added.

UPDATE: Norm on Malmo.

Filed under: Antifa, Fascism and antisemitism, Fascists in the anti-globalization movement, Northern Europe   |  6 Comments
Tags: AFA, Antifa, Eirik Eiglad, Norway, Oslo