Variousness 25

21May10

From Res0nance’s Sunday papers:

* Interesting article from Mute about Casa Pound, an Italian populist right wing movement sharing many characteristics with it’s autonomous left movement counter-parts. Also has an illuminating, if brief, genealogy of the Italian far right post-Mussolini. Although not delving into Casa Pound’s analysis too much, the article highlights the similarity between certain far right positions and some of those who would call themselves anti-capitalist.

* Yet another online academic library, this time housed at Bedeutung magazine, a infrequently published magazine discussing art, philosophy and culture. Lots of Zizek, Adorno and Agamben articles.

* John Holloway responds to criticisms of his book ‘Changing the World Without Taking Power’. A strong, passionate yet humble article discussing how to begin rethinking about the concept of revolution today. His analysis rest on the fragility, rather than endurance, of Capital. He interprets Marxs’ Capital, along with Kurz, as a negative theory of crisis rather than a positive theory of social change. Well worth reading.

* The continued rise of discrimination against Muslims continues in Europe. The Belgian parliament votes for a banning of the Burka. Indicatively this isn’t even attempted to be justified by appeals to gender equality, but rather to security.

On the Crisis of Capital…

The great scandal of global capital is that it is choking itself up on the pyramids of accumulated abstract wealth. Yet, when looking at social conditions, when listening to the ever more urgent demand for greater labour flexibility, it seems as if the global crisis is really just a consequence of a scarcity of capital.

Werner Bonefeld, Against War and the Preconditions of War.

Written before the invasion of Iraq. Still true now.

From Contentious Centrist:

@ Sign and Sight: The origins of left- wing antisemitism

Stefan Frank interviews the writer and politician Fiamma Nirenstein (homepage) about left-wing anti-Semitism which, she believes, started during the 7 Day War. “The people saw that the Jews were no longer the Jews as they imagined them: a poor minority despised by society who hid themselves away in their houses and synagogues, praying, and who needed permission from non-Jews to do everything. Suddenly the Jews were strong enough to defend themselves against Egypt, Syria and Jordan and even to conquer territory – in a war which should have sealed their fate.”

More on the same subject, by Nick Cohen reviewing Pascal Bruckner:

The hatred of Israel in Europe is the best example Bruckner produces. Hardly anyone mentions that the Arab and Iranian dictatorships find anti-Semitism as useful a method for distracting their subject people from examining their worthless regimes as the tsars and the Nazis did.

For Europeans, criticism of sagging Arab nationalist states and resurgent theocracy would mean accepting the existence of alternative sources of sin outside the West and confronting the racial prejudices in Europe’s Muslim minorities. Better to blame Israel as a source of danger to Europe for its failure to behave as true penitent.

Bewildered outsiders look on a continent where Holocaust commemoration is a civic religion and wonder how guilt for an anti-Semitic past can coexist with rising anti-Semitism and the singling out for perpetual attack of the world’s only Jewish state. Bruckner’s convincing answer is that because Israel stands up to its enemies it is in European eyes the root cause of the rage against it. Europe copes with the guilt of the Holocaust by transferring it to Israel, which involves the recycling of the revolting trope that Jews are now Nazis.

Also:

David Harvey and the enigma of capital.

Dave Broder reviews the Anarchist Federation’s Against Nationalism.

Germany’s Worst School Names.

Speaking Truth To Power In Palestine.

Review of Benny Morris’ book ‘One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict’.

Dieudonne on Press TV.

The Mcveigh tapes.

The Judgement in Dave Osler vs Johanna Kaschke. (Here’s Comrade Osler:  Schwarzwälderkirschtorte: the verdict; Johanna Kaschke: the strange case of the Tory ’suspected of links to leftwing extremists’.)

Silvia Federici “Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint”.

The trouble with “anti-capitalism” (from Spiked and therefore to be read with a large pinch of salt, but quite a good analysis of some of the problems of consumption-oriented and moralistic “anti-capitalism”.

Lots more from Modernity.

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