It looks to me like the position of the US SWP. They have a pro-Israel anti-BDS position that states that anti-Zionism is essentially pro-Hamas Islamopfascism. It seems that is what Kristin is arguing, particularly on the most recent anti-Muslim, great replacement-like post.
Loving in the Pacific, where our army did joint exercises with the Indonesian military, I was well aware of the East Timor issue. I never saw it framed by the East Timorese as a religious dispute. Comradely, John "All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks." Sarah Moore Grimke, abolitionist (1792-1873) On Wed, 12 Aug 2026, 16:23 Anthony Teso via groups.io, <anthony.p.teso= [email protected]> wrote: > Re: Zionism, the "Judeo-Christian tradition," and what a class analysis > actually looks like > > Kristin says she would love to hear the problem approached through class > analysis. I'll take that at face value and try to supply one, because I > think the exercise shows why her framing forecloses the thing she says she > wants. > > Start with the premise: "Zionism is an internecine debate between Jews. > Any non-Jew with a strong position on Zionism is immediately suspect." > > Consider what this rules out. It rules out Palestinians. On this premise, > the people whose villages were depopulated in 1948, whose land was > transferred to state and quasi-state ownership under the Absentees' > Property Law, and who live under military administration in the West Bank > or under blockade in Gaza hold no legitimate standing on the question of > the state that does these things to them. Their position is at best > suspect. That is not a class analysis. It is the substitution of ancestry > for social position—the precise inversion of what historical materialism > asks us to do. > > It also, incidentally, disqualifies Kristin. If only Jews may hold a > strong position on Zionism, then the strong positions she has advanced > across this thread are self-indicting by her own rule. Rules of this kind > always turn out to have an exemption clause for their author. > > A materialist asks different questions. Who owns the land, and by what > legal and coercive process did ownership change hands? Who is permitted to > sell it, lease it, and work it? Which state apparatus enforces that > arrangement, and which imperial power underwrites the apparatus? What is > the class structure of the population inside the Green Line and of the > population outside it? None of these questions is answered by consulting > anyone's grandmother. > > And when you do ask them, you find that the labor question sits at the > center of the story. The "conquest of labor" and "conquest of land" > campaigns of the Second Aliyah, the Histadrut's function as a labor > federation that organized Jewish workers partly by excluding Arab ones from > the Jewish sector, and the Jewish National Fund's inalienability > covenants—this is a class history. It is the history of a labor movement > constituted as an instrument of colonization, which is exactly why it > produced a workers' movement that could not become the basis of a common > struggle with the Arab working class. Ber Borochov tried to square that > circle theoretically. Hal Draper spent decades explaining why it could not > be squared. Whatever else you say about *Zionism, Israel, and the Arabs*, > it is not a book about who is or isn't Jewish. It is a book about land, > labor, and state power. > > On the "Western, Judeo-Christian tradition": this is presented as two > thousand years of continuous development. It is nothing of the kind, and > the history is not obscure. The compound term "Judeo-Christian," in its > current sense, is an American coinage of the late 1930s and 1940s—assembled > as an anti-fascist ecumenical formula and then repurposed in the Cold War > as a civilizational marker against communism. The two millennia it > retroactively claims contain the expulsions from England in 1290 and Spain > in 1492, the ghetto, the pale, the blood libel, Dreyfus, and the pogrom. > Presenting that record as a shared tradition of free inquiry is not a > historical claim at all. It is an ideological artifact of the > mid-twentieth-century United States, being offered here as though it were a > fact about the longue durée. A Marxist ought to be interested in when and > why such formulas are manufactured and in whose service. > > On Islam. Kristin cites Erdoğan's line that there is no moderate or > immoderate Islam and treats it as authoritative: when someone tells you who > they are, listen. But Erdoğan is not "someone." He is a bourgeois head of > state with a material interest in monopolizing the definition of the faith > he governs in the name of—an interest in denying that any Islam exists > other than the one he authorizes. Accepting his account at face value is > not listening; it is granting a politician the essentialist claim he needs. > We would not accept Netanyahu as the authoritative interpreter of Judaism > or the Christian right as the authoritative interpreter of Christianity. > The method has to be consistent, or it isn't a method. > > There is no "Mohammedan side." There is Egyptian capital and the Egyptian > working class; there are the Gulf monarchies and the South Asian migrant > workers they hold in debt bondage; there is the Iranian state and the > Iranian bus drivers and teachers it imprisons; there are the Islamist > formations that have made their careers crushing the left, in Iran in 1979 > most spectacularly. To speak of a single side is to accept the > self-description of reactionaries who very much want their subjects to > believe there is one. > > Which brings me to what Kristin's opening actually does. It offers a > binary: on Zionism you are either a Nazi or a Jew-hater. This is a false > alternative, and the third-camp tradition exists precisely as its > refutation. > > That position is opposition to the Zionist state project as a project of > dispossession and simultaneous opposition to the Arab bourgeois regimes and > to the Islamist formations that claim to oppose it—because those regimes > have never been the vehicle of Palestinian liberation and have repeatedly > been its jailers. Neither Tel Aviv nor Tehran, Cairo, Riyadh, or Doha. The > agency lies with Palestinian workers and with Israeli-Jewish workers, whose > emancipation is not available separately, and with no state or clerical > apparatus above them. > > That position is neither of Kristin's two options. Its existence is > sufficient to dispose of the premise the thread began with. > > Last point, on the exchange with William. He objects to class > essentialism; Kristin answers that class essentialism is what Marxism is > and that he wants the liberal list. Jonna already supplied the refutation, > and it comes from Marx. The Kugelmann letter argues that the English > working class cannot emancipate itself while it stands with its own ruling > class against Ireland — not out of sympathy, but as a condition of its own > struggle. The demand to fight national and racial oppression is not an > import into Marxism from liberalism. It is the position Marx arrived at in > working out why the English proletariat was politically paralyzed. > > Racism is not a departure from class analysis. It is a class question, and > treating it as an ornament is the economism Marx himself spent the 1860s > arguing against. > -- > Tony > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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