Variousness 21

01Mar10

Shift: Lost in Translation – Debating radical political culture in Germany, the UK and beyond. Extract:

Since its beginning, Shift Magazine has been in some kind of dialogue with the radical left in Germany, infusing the current theoretical discourses from over here into UK activist theory. However little has been said about the activist practice in Germany, its political culture and how it may compare to that in the UK. While I am myself regularly shifting between projects and actions in the UK and Germany I felt quite happy seeing what could be loosely called “anti-national theory” entering the activist stage in the UK. Just as over here, in the UK I was frequently surprised by quite shallow and foreshortened political positions. However theory itself does not say anything about political practice. Yes, there is a “strong autonomous Antifa movement” in Germany but the question is whether it furthers an emancipating political culture and practice beyond or based on its interesting theoretical output. Looking at the political culture in Germany generally and its parallels with that of the German radical left more particularly (especially that of Climate Camp 2008 in Hamburg and the autonomous movement), this is highly questionable. Therefore, an inter-activist dialogue about this issue is absolutely vital.

Terminal 119: The neo-nazis burn synagogues – The Anti-Nazis are put on trial! Extract:

The arson attack on the synagogue of Chania (Crete) a few days ago reminds us that anti-Semitic, intolerant and far-right violence is present.[1] Apart from this, it confirms that, despite rumors easily adopted and spread by some about how “marginal” and “limited in terms of numbers” the voices that carry the fascist discourse in Greece are, the fascist threat is direct. We insist on the term “direct”, not because the fascists are close to winning the elections, but because they are capable of taking action “from below” and directly threatening the safety and even the very life of those targeted by the racial hatred as well as those who dare to mount a defence against the far-right and para-state tradition in this country.

At Not Bored: Jules Bonnot de la Bande: The Protocols Stripped Bare by its Historians Even. Extract:

Pierre-Andre Taguieff has recently published an article entitled “Who fabricated the most celebrated of the anti-Jewish texts?”[4] In it, he expounds upon a “new hypothesis” about the origins of the Protocols that was recently advanced by the historian Cesare De Michelis and supported by his colleague Michael Hagemeister. According to them, it was at the cost of “certain improbabilities in the historical reconstruction” that Rollin and Cohn “happened to explain the origin of the fake in a political-police conspiracy at the heart of the imperial court and to orient the historiography of the Protocols towards the customs of properly conspiratorial [sic] thinking, privileging intrigues and the imputation of secret aims to the actors.” The Czar’s political police “had nothing to do with the fabrication of the fake.” Instead, it is fitting to attribute the Protocols to “anti-Semitic and reactionary writers” who had “the purpose of discrediting the Zionist movement, which was beginning to take on importance.” Fabrication by the police, which one believed to have been well established, is thus reduced by Taguieff to the rank of “hypothesis.” The partisans of this “new hypothesis” have, moreover, responded to all possible objections. What about the French manuscript of the Protocols?[5] It has never been found. Thus, it never existed. What about the references in it to then-current political and economic events? A deception intended to lead the reader astray along a fake trail, the Parisian trail. What about the testimony of Princess Radziwill and the Count of Chayla? Disinformation, pure and simple. Only evil spirits will note that such suppositions are reminiscent of “the customs of properly conspiratorial thinking, privileging intrigues and the imputation of secret aims to the actors,” which Taguieff believes he detects in Rollin and Cohn.

From @ndy: Karen Eliot & The AntifaSwingers : ‘Dresden Neustadt 2010 – Blockade Song’

The MOST successful Antifa song of all time, now with English subtitles

See also : Dresden – Germany: Nazi-march stopped, UK Indymedia, February 15, 2010 | Who’s who in the “national anarchist” zoo?

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