The Marxists and the Lobby
By
Israel Shamir
When an author and an editor of a left-wing magazine repeats
word-perfect the last speech of Ashcroft at ADL New York, it
can’t but cause some eyebrow twitching. That is the case with
recent condemnation of ‘antisemitism’ by Nat Weinstein (http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/sum_03/sum_03_08.html)
on pages of The Socialist Viewpoint, a high-quality magazine
consistently supporting democracy in Palestine and end to the
Jewish apartheid state.
What is worse, Weinstein’s style and rhetoric are those of
Ashcroft and of Abe Foxman, as well. Weinstein writes:
“Buchanan’s insinuations of a Jewish conspiracy in the service
of Israel echo a similar claim that lay at the heart of Adolph
Hitler’s brand of fascism.” However, an open Jewish ‘conspiracy’
of supporting Israel is a hard fact, and it is expressed by
almost every Jewish newspaper by slogan ‘Jews stand steadfast
behind Israel’. This slogan is not an empty word: recent survey
shows 86% of the US Jews support Israel. In a recent discussion
on the Web, Jeff Blankfort, a consistent antizionist, made a
sober conclusion: “the distinction that we are always careful to
make between being Jewish and being Zionist is essentially
deceptive and that while all Jews are not Zionists, the
organized Jewish communities throughout the world, despite
whatever differences they may have, are totally behind the
Zionist project. To pretend that these organizations do not
speak for the overall Jewish community, one, that without any
doubt, supports Israel as a Jewish state, is illusory.”
Weinstein creates ‘guilt by association’ as he calls explicit
words of Buchanan ‘insinuations echoing Adolf Hitler’. However,
‘guilt by association’ is a double-edged weapon, as he himself
echoes Abe Foxman, Ashcroft and Bush. That is why let us deal
with the question properly.
Weinstein writes: “claim that the “Jewish Lobby”—a small group
of pro-Zionist Jews—could dictate foreign or domestic policy to
the hard-nosed, quintessentially-pragmatic American capitalist
class, is absurd. In fact, those that make such a charge are
either simple-minded fools or unmitigated anti-Semitic
scoundrels.”
It is an arrogant statement, for this opinion is universally
shared by billions of people outside of the US, and by many
Americans as well, with one correction: the Jewish Lobby is not
a ‘small group of pro-Zionist Jews’ but an extremely powerful
group of billionaires, media lords, and their supporters in the
left and the right, from the New York Times to the Nation, from
Wolfowitz of Pentagon to Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun. (This subject
is covered in Fiesta of St Fermin, by Israel Shamir).
‘Hard-nosed American capitalists’ are indeed
“quintessentially-pragmatic”, and they understand what is good
for them personally. That is why even the dedicated antisemite
Henry Ford preferred to scrap his book when he had met with the
irresistible force of Jewish boycott. That is why the American
parliamentarians are united in their support of Israel, as it
was recently confirmed by the Senate vote 89 to 4 against Syria.
The Iraqi war was a disaster from the point of view of American
capitalism: as it was predicted, it brought them no oil, no
weaponry orders, no new friends; but the capitalists are not
idealists Weinstein presupposes: they know that their stand
against Israel would ruin them personally, and they disregard
‘the general interest of capitalist class’.
Indeed, Buchanan and La Rouche (censured by Weinstein) represent
the true interests of the American capitalists (or ‘the middle
class’ in usual terms) when they fight the Jewish Lobby. They
aren’t natural allies for the Left, but not less unlikely than
Foxman and Ashcroft. Weinstein tries to adhere the label of
racist, Nazi and fascist to La Rouche; but the label does not
stick. Instead of expressing his approval, Weinstein is visibly
upset that La Rouche is not a racist: “Rather than demonizing
African Americans, La Rouche lays claim to the heritage of
Martin Luther King and … established a relationship with the
Black nationalist Nation of Islam.”
Weinstein is hard to please: La Rouche ‘uses anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist’ slogans, so he’s got to be a fascist (!). La
Rouche ‘does not attack Jews, communists and striking workers’,
so he is a crypto-fascist. La Rouche ‘learned from Trotsky’, so
he is a perverted fascist.
It reminded me a short piece by Hanoch Levine, our best
playwright:
“The Military Governor’s Standing Orders for soldiers in
Occupied territories:
A nervous pedestrian is a suspected Arab terrorist.
A calm pedestrian is a suspected cold-blooded Arab terrorist.
A looking upwards pedestrian is a suspected religious Arab
terrorist.
A looking downwards pedestrian is a suspected shy Arab
terrorist.
A pedestrian whose eyes are shut is a suspected sleeping Arab
terrorist.
A stay-at-home person is a suspected sick Arab terrorist.
The above-mentioned suspects should be arrested, and after a
warning shot, taken to the morgue”
Indeed, Weinstein does not produce a single proof of La Rouche’s
‘fascism’, or his similarity to Hitler and Mussolini. His true
objection to La Rouche and Buchanan is based on one thing,
namely on their anti-Jewish rhetoric. He comes clear in
following lines:
‘The fascists will say that it was the Jews who were the
masterminds behind American imperialism’s 55-year-long role of
creating, financing and arming the Zionist state of Israel.
That’s why those who profess opposition to Zionism are either
foolish or anti-Semitic when they charge the so-called “Jewish
lobby” with dictating American foreign policy.’
But we, the friends of Palestine, Jeff Blankfort, Michael
Neumann, Elias Davidsson, Stan Heller, Norm Finkelstein, David
Hirst, Mazin Qumsiyeh and many, many others (surely not racist
antisemites) are not more foolish than Weinstein. We are just
honest folk and we say what we think is true. For us, it is more
important to stop today the Israeli-American aggression in the
Middle East than to worry for ‘the Jews’ and their position
tomorrow, for truth and sincerity is the best defence against
forthcoming ‘fascists’.
II
Indeed, should the Marxists, including The Socialist Viewpoint,
support and protect ‘the Jews’ from the left? The Marxist view
of the Jews was formed by Karl Marx, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky and
Abram Leon. It is founded on rejection of the concept of ‘the
Jewish nation’. Lenin said : ‘this Zionist idea is absolutely
false and essentially reactionary’. He quoted approvingly: “The
modern Jew is a product of the unnatural selection to which his
forebears were subjected for nearly eighteen centuries." Abram
Leon completed this view with his vision of ‘people-class’. For
him, the Jews were the original capitalists of pre-capitalist
society; people who preferred to fulfil antisocial function of
money-lenders and tax-collectors. Naturally, such a
‘people-class’ does not deserve our support.
But even if Weinstein considers ‘the Jews’ being a separate
nation, it is still no reason to protect them. Lenin called for
‘revolutionary war against contra-revolutionary nations’ , and
wrote in 1919: “If we fight [the US President] Wilson, and
Wilson turns a small nation into his tool, we should explicitly
fight this tool” . Equally, Leon Trotsky denied any connection
to the Jews and rejected appeals of the Jews.
Marxists are against RACIST antisemitism, but thankfully this
plague is eradicated. Racist antisemitism should not be confused
– not only with anti-Zionism, as Weinstein correctly notes, but
with non-racist rejection of ‘the Jews’ elsewhere, as well. The
Jewish Question of Marx and of Leon provides an example of such
non-racist rejection.
Every Marxist knows of Marx’s negative view of the Jews. ‘Their
God is money’, he wrote. Naturally, he was not a racist and
believed that a person of Jewish origin (like he was) can break
with the Jews. Usually such a break was formalised by baptism;
Spinoza’s break was formalised by nidui, the curse of the Jews,
after the philosopher rejected Jewish world-view.
Would Weinstein defend Jews against Marx and Spinoza? But
anti-Jewish idiom of Buchanan and La Rouche is equally
non-racist. Both have numerous persons of Jewish origin on their
staff and among their friends. But these people (like Trotsky,
Marx or Spinoza) do not belong to Jewry. Moreover, they speak up
against ‘the Jews’, thus encouraging other people of Jewish
origin to break with this remnant of medieval past.
In similar way, Prince of Orleans took a name of Phillip Egalite
and rejected his ties with aristocracy. If Weinstein thinks that
Foxman, Friedman and Sulzberger made an anti-Jewish approach
popular in the US, he should call upon the American Marxists to
embrace these policies and lead them in ideological non-racist
direction. For otherwise his attempts to protect them will
backfire. The Americans will say that Jews from Foxman to
Weinstein speak in one voice and then, the dangerous racist
antisemitism can come back - on the ruins of the Marxist Left.
Moreover, Weinstein’s fight against antisemitism objectively
works against the declared goals of the Left. The US Jews made
their covenant with the American ruling class. They are an
integral part of the American elite, the Brahmins to the WASP
Kshatriya warrior caste. The Left, and in particular the Marxist
Left, strives to overthrow the ruling classes and create the
society of equality. There is no way to achieve it without a
concerted anti-Jewish effort. If the Brahmins will be separated
from the Kshatriya, Jews from the WASPs, the dawn of equality
will draw closer. ‘Sow discord among your enemies’, - this is
the first rule in the Chinese manual, The Art of War. Instead of
proclaiming unity of the Jews with the rest of the ruling
classes, the Left should promote strife among them. The sad
developments in Palestine, the quagmire of the Iraqi War provide
an opportunity for the Left. From this point of view, Lyndon La
Rouche the Democrat and Buchanan the Republican should be
supported in their fight against the Jewish Lobby.
1. July/August 2003 • Vol 3, No. 7 • Zionism, Anti-Semitism and
Fascism By Nat Weinstein
2. in his polemics with the Bund
3. Collapse of the II International (1915)
4. Speech at 8th congress of the Russian Communist Party.
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