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Well I am finally ready to announce the results of the poll among Marxmail
subscribers. Again, the question posed was:
At 16:28 07-08-15 +0200, Jeff via Marxism wrote:
>
> Time for a
>reality check. Let's take a poll. Out of all the prominent Marxist
>activists and scholars on this list, please tell us how many times YOU
>have written for a publication of or appeared on a broadcast by a
>far-right hate group (let's say one which has been so identified by the
>SPLC for instance). HOW MANY TIMES? If the answer is zero, don't send in
>a reply in order to avoid swamping the list server.
Well there was pretty much a lack of positive responses; people for whom the
answer would be "zero" were not expected to respond (but Michael Kardjis did
anyway, perhaps because he didn't read the fine print or maybe to emphasize the
fact). The only other response was from Joe Catron who couldn't say for sure
because he's too busy to track where his articles are reposted. He said I
should check Google which I did (detailed below), but from which I believe the
answer for him is, again, zero.
I suppose I should have differentiated between intentional appearances where
someone sent their material to (or knowingly agreed to appear in) far-right
media, and cases where their material was reposted without their permission.
But the answer in both cases is probably zero for all list members. Material
reposted without permission might not have been noticed, but I assume most
prolific writers Google their own names at least occasionally (but if you do
that daily, then you really have a problem ;-)
Of course the reason this issue came up is that there are some individuals and
groups associated with the defense of Palestine -- or more correctly the
anti-Israel movement -- who don't seem to have a problem associating themselves
with the far-right. This isn't new except that one of them, Alison Weir,
protested that she was being shunned by most of the Palestine solidarity
movement, which led to statements by Jewish Voice for Peace and the US Campaign
to End the Israeli Occupation explaining their unwillingness to work with her
(and the two organizations she leads), citing among other evidence her repeated
appearances and articles in the far-right (including white supremacist) media.
An open appeal which happens to be authored by one member of this list
denounced that accusation as "guilt by association" and defended her appearance
in far-right media as being normal and a valid attempt to reach ordinary
working folks among those media's readership/listenership. But of course we
aren't talking about right-wing mass media (such as the FOX TV network) but
far-right "fringe" outlets typified by the radio show of Clay Douglas on which
Weir appeared repeatedly:
http://www.freeamerican.com/
So the difference I see between Palestinian solidarity activists on this list
(as well as most who are not on this list but therefore didn't participate in
the poll) and someone like Alison Weir, is that we would NEVER want to be
associated with such filth (nor appear in their media except perhaps to trash
it) whereas Weir apparently has no problem with such an association. With such
a stark difference between us and her, I'm afraid I DO consider the simple
matter of "association" in this regard as indicating probable guilt. And
considering the further evidence cited by the Jewish Voice for Peace and the US
Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation in their statements, I would consider
the matter settled beyond doubt:
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=4510
https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jewish-voice-for-peace-statement-on-our-relationship-with-alison-weir/
It is nothing new that a large section of the far right opposes Israel; this is
partially due to their antisemitism and tendency to conflate an ethnicity with
a nation-state. What is somewhat newer (last decade or so) is for those same
racists to shed crocodile tears for the Palestinians (despite their own history
of racism against Arabs and other people of color) in that pursuit. The height
of that duplicity is when they figured out they could rebrand their
antisemitism as "anti-zionism", and take advantage of our proper defense of
anti-zionism as not being antisemitic (countering the Zionist charge). Of
course their infiltration of our ranks unfortunately creates a sliver of truth
to the Zionist charge, but that is only because we haven't sufficiently
differentiated ourselves from them. That differentiation is the point of the
statements by Jewish Voice for Peace and the US Campaign to End the Israeli
Occupation with regard to Alison Weir, and attempts to defend her against thes
e valid charges are contrary to the interests of Palestine and the solidarity
movement.
- Jeff
P.S. Joseph Catron claims to not have kept track of his writings and suggested
I do my own Google search to find if his material has appeared in publications
of the far right. I did a quick search and believe the answer is "no," but will
mention any questionable results in that regard. He did appear in Press TV
which I would call right-wing, but not far-right in the above sense, with a
viewership which isn't primarily far-right. And he did have a photo which
appeared (perhaps without his permission or knowledge) on the website of The
Tower, a right-wing (in fact Zionist) magazine, though among Zionists it might
not even be viewed as particularly right wing. So even though he didn't seem to
appreciate the poll, I would still have to list his entry as "zero" for his
number of appearances in far right media.
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