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On 10.06.2014 01:32, Michael Smith via Marxism wrote:
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On Mon, June 9, 2014 6:25 pm, Joseph Catron wrote:
If anyone knows Die Linke, please tell 'em I said they suck.
They seem to be more or less the German equivalent of the
Working Families Party.
This remark and the remark it's responding to reveal a profound
ignorance of the realities of German politics.
The history of Germany has led to an incredible sensitivity about any
hint of anti-semitism within Germany. This expresses itself politically
in a fundamental tenet of the official ideology of the German bourgeois
state: "unconditional solidarity with Israel as the state of the Jewish
people". Any attempt to call this into question is followed by vicious
attacks on those who raise the question of solidarity with the
Palestinian people. An example of this was a vicious campaign against
Sahra Wagenknecht and a number of other deputies of DIE LINKE who
refused to join the standing ovation for Peres after his war-mongering
speech in the Bundestag.
This creates great difficulties for those of us who support the
Palestinians and also means that the leaders of the party DIE LINKE ends
up trying to avoid provoking any accusations of anti-semitism. This is
very frustrating - but understandable. The sensitivity of the issue can
be seen that the BDS campaign has made no headway at all in Germany -
the comparison is always drawn with the Nazis' "Kauf nicht bei dem
Juden" (Don't buy from the Jew) campaign. Again this is very frustrating
- but understandable. And if the armchair critics had experienced the
attacks on deputies of DIE LINKE who participated in the flotilla to
Gaza, who were accused of providing support to terrorists, they might
not be quite so ready with their insults.
DIE LINKE, for all its faults and weaknesses, is the only consistently
anti-war and anti-austerity force in the German Bundestag - even if we
do have an ultra-reformist realo wing (by no means dominant) which is
trying to find a way to be accepted as a potential partner for
government. However, it's also relevant this realo wing (which is also
the most pro-Zionist element in the party) is experiencing an
existential crisis at the moment because they were unable to get their
representative elected a vice-chairperson of the party - instead a
well-known peace campaigner identified with the far-left of the party
was elected after a hard-fought contest.
Einde O'Callaghan
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