Re: [Marxism] Dunkirk, the War and the Amnesia of the Empire

[John Edmundson via Marxism]

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David wrote:

"Yes...there were Indian Muslim troops at Dunkirk. 4 companies to be exact.
That equals approx 1,000 to 1,600 troops...out of 400,000 or, about 1/4 of
1% of the total."

Technically, if 4 companies is correct it would have been more like about
4-600, because a British (or British Indian) company was only about 150
strong. But Khan's point is still a valid one. She really only uses Nolan's
film as a topical way to raise the issue of the "invisibility" of Britain's
colonial/Empire troops. As a New Zealander, I'm very aware of the role of
NZ troops', including the Maori Battalion's, role in the war, fighting at
El Alamein, Monte Cassino etc. I'm well aware of Australia's involvement
too, in the Desert War and later in the Pacific. I'm aware of the Canadian
Army's role in Normandy on D-Day and beyond. I've even seen reference to
the South African troops at Tobruk etc. But what do these British
Commonwealth/Empire countries all have in common? That's the point Khan
wanted to make and I think it's valid. Of course, film makers can't
incorporate all minorities into every film they make and watching Dunkirk,
I was just relieved to see the French being depicted as other than cowards
or irrelevant. Without knowing the specifics of which French units were
involved in holding the line while the Brits were evacuated, I couldn't
comment on David's suggestion that French colonial troops could plausibly
have been depicted in the film.

But the point remains that the role that Britain's non-white Imperial
possessions played and the price they paid, is not part of the mainstream
narrative of Britain's experience of WW2 and if the release of a big budget
movie by a celebrity director like Christopher Nolan presents an
opportunity for someone to make that point in the NY Times, then I say good
on Yasmin Khan for getting herself published there.

Cheers,
John

On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 9:00 AM, DW via Marxism 
wrote:

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>
> The reviewer in criticizing C. Nolan, for his film 'Dunkirk' made a rather
> interesting omission. In deriding Nolan over his lack of people of color
> (save for one of the two scenes of *French* troops in the film). What the
> reviewer fails to draw on are any...facts. Yes...there were Indian Muslim
> troops at Dunkirk. 4 companies to be exact. That equals approx 1,000 to
> 1,600 troops...out of 400,000 or, about 1/4 of 1% of the total. I have no
> doubt that Nolan wanted to enforce the collective amnesia of Britain over
> the role of the Colonial Troops of which, the review noted, were over
> 2,000,000. But there were not 2,000,000 at Dunkirk OR in the whole British
> Army...most of these were recruited after Dunkirk.
>
> There were then two scenes that *should* of included the various South
> Asian and African participants that WOULD of made sense: the crews of
> various ships which is noted to have been over 50% and were not shown, and
> the scene of the one the British soldiers who makes it to French lines
> guarding the rear at Dunkirk, they could of shown the double-digit % of
> French African troops. That would of made sense. But on the beaches? I
> don't think so it was necessarily deliberate based on what I know about the
> composition of the British soldiers seeking to escape capture.
>
> David
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[Marxism] Spain: Debate erupts in Podemos after first deal to join a PSOE government

[Stuart Munckton via Marxism]

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In the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha, Podemos has joined a
PSOE government for the first time, sparking debate, Dick Nichols writes.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/spain-debate-erupts-podemos-after-first-deal-join-psoe-government

-- 

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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Law]: Hobbs on Hill, 'Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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-- Forwarded message --
From: H-Net Staff 
Date: Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 12:00 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Law]: Hobbs on Hill, 'Beyond the Rope: The Impact
of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory'
To: h-rev...@h-net.msu.edu


Karlos Hill.  Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black
Culture and Memory.  New York  Cambridge University Press, 2016.  136
pp.  $24.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-107-62037-7.

Reviewed by Tameka Bradley Hobbs (Florida Memorial University)
Published on H-Law (August, 2017)
Commissioned by Michael J. Pfeifer

Our common understanding of lynching violence in the United States
tends to be limited in scope. When people visualize lynching, they
generally think about the rope and faggot, black male bodies swinging
from trees, with white mobs looking on. There has been an increasing
amount of literature over the past several years that helps to
illuminate and bring to center those who have typically been
overlooked in the dialogue around lynching, including female victims
and Mexican lynching victims in the western United States. Hill's new
work_ Beyond the Rope_ continues this necessary expansion of the
history of lynching by analyzing the ways in which black people
participated in, responded to, wrote about, and remember lynching. If
lynching has traditionally been presented through the "white gaze,"
_Beyond the Rope_ intentionally and effectively takes up the topic of
lynching from the perspective of the "black gaze."

Black vigilantism might seem oxymoronic, but African American
lynchers were responsible for the execution of 148 black people
between 1882 and 1930. The 54 black-on-black lynchings that took
place in the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas are the focus of Hill's
interest in the first chapter of his book, where he draws important
distinctions between the motives of black lynchers and those of their
white counterparts. While whites often argued that the courts did not
act quickly enough, African Americans believed that the criminal
justice system failed to respond vigorously, if it responded at all,
in cases where blacks were victimized by other blacks. In Hill's
construction, black vigilantes exercised community justice in a more
authentic way than whites who blamed lynching on a dysfunctional
criminal justice system. "[W]hites lynched," Hill writes, "because
they fundamentally disagreed with _how_ the legal system adjudicated
crimes, whereas black vigilantes lynched because they believed the
criminal justice system _ignored_ criminal activity committed against
blacks" (p. 30; emphasis in the original). However, Hill points out
that with the increasing racialization of lynching by the end of the
1880s--as reflected in the increasing proportion of black people
dying at the hands of white lynch mobs--black leaders in particular
began to denounce black participation in lynching as a potential
encouragement to white vigilantes. Hill's detailed investigation of
black vigilantism is an important but often overlooked niche within
the lynching record in the United States.

In his second chapter, entitled "Resisting Lynching," Hill analyzes
the ways that black journalists and writers crafted stories of
lynching to serve various purposes, dependent upon the audience and
the goals. Hill describes these as victimization narratives, "which
stressed what _white lynchers did_ to black lynch victims," and
consoling narratives, which "emphasized what _black lynch victims
did_ in response to white lynch mob violence" (p. 68; emphasis in
original). In the attempted lynching of Steve Green and the actually
lynching of Henry Lowery in the early 1920s, both from Arkansas,
advocates for the black men--like antilynching advocate Ida B. Wells,
Edward H. Wright, an African American attorney in Chicago, and the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP)--rejected the traditional "black beast" narrative popularized
in the white press. Instead, they maintained that Green and Lowery
were victims of vigilante violence and the corruption of due process
in the criminal justice system. Hill recounts how black communities
in Arkansas and Illinois took direct action to protect potential
lynch victims, while recasting the narratives of these incidents as
examples of white aggression and black death.

Hill continues his exploration of the victimization and consoling
narratives by analyzing Ida B. Wells's _Mob Rule in New Orleans
_(1900), Sutton Griggs Jr.'s _The Hindered Hand; Or The Reign of the
Repressionist _(1905); and Richard Wright's collection of short
stories, _Uncle Tom's Children _(1938). These writers use the power
of 

[Marxism] New on Redline blog

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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below is a list of some of the stuff we've out up on the blog recently.

Jacinda - Labour's most pleasant leader:  https://rdln.wordpress.com/
2017/08/02/jacinda-labours-most-pleasant-leader/

Yet more bad news for Labour:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/more-bad-news-for-labour/

On the 45th anniversary of his murder: remembering Palestinian
revolutionary intellectual Ghassan Kanafani:  https://rdln.wordpress.com/
2017/07/31/remembering-ghassan-kanafani-april-8-1936-july-8-1972/

'The Young Karl Marx' - movie review:  https://rdln.wordpress.com/
2017/07/26/movie-review-the-young-karl-marx/

Marx versus the Keynesians and the austerians: https://rdln.
wordpress.com/2017/07/29/marx-versus-the-keynesians-and-the-austerians/

Important workers' victory in the Caribbean - Guadeloupe banana workers win
struggle: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/
victory-in-guadeloupe-banana-workers-strike/

The 'fire next time' - 50th anniversary of Detroit ghetto rebellion:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/the-fire-next-time-
remembering-the-detroit-1967-rebellion/

France after Macron's victory - only the collective strength of the working
class can bring change: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/
france-only-the-collecive-strength-of-the-working-class-can-bring-change/

Happy reading,
Phil F
for the Redline blog collective
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Democracy is dying – and it’s startling how few people are worried | Paul Mason | Opinion | The Guardian

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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"This repertoire of autocratic rule is of course not new; what makes it
novel is its concerted and combined use by elected rulers – Putin, Erdoğan,
Orbán, Trump, Maduro, Duterte in the Philippines and Modi in India – who
are quite clearly engaged in a rapid, purposive and common project to
hollow out democracy".

 I have a lot of time for Mason and follow his twitter account avidly.  But
I note his list of dictators includes Maduro along side the likes of Orban
and Duterte. what this shows is how successful the "velvet revolution"
tactic has been In Venezuela.

I am inclined to read the present conjuncture as one where the decay of the
Neoliberal Centre is such that we are in the midst of the struggle to
create a new centre.  Corbynism would give us, or attempt to give us, a
quasi-Keynesian Centre. And, to be frank, I would settle for that in a
heart beat.  But of course I am not saying that the ruling class would
accept it as well. Nor do I believe for one minute that the capitalist
class can simply be legislated into civility and decency. A Corbyn
government will be a crisis government.

For me Venezuela represents a more likely path.  My reading of it is that
the events in Venezuela are about doubling down on the old neoliberal
centre. Pinochet played a vanguard role in creating the neoliberal centre
that spread around the world. The opposition in Venezuela could do the same
and herald in an era of quite vicious reaction.

comradely

Gary


On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 10:12 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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[Marxism] Fwd: Navalny and the Left

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://seansrussiablog.org/2017/08/02/navalny-and-the-left/
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Re: [Marxism] Dunkirk, the War and the Amnesia of the Empire

[DW via Marxism]

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The reviewer in criticizing C. Nolan, for his film 'Dunkirk' made a rather
interesting omission. In deriding Nolan over his lack of people of color
(save for one of the two scenes of *French* troops in the film). What the
reviewer fails to draw on are any...facts. Yes...there were Indian Muslim
troops at Dunkirk. 4 companies to be exact. That equals approx 1,000 to
1,600 troops...out of 400,000 or, about 1/4 of 1% of the total. I have no
doubt that Nolan wanted to enforce the collective amnesia of Britain over
the role of the Colonial Troops of which, the review noted, were over
2,000,000. But there were not 2,000,000 at Dunkirk OR in the whole British
Army...most of these were recruited after Dunkirk.

There were then two scenes that *should* of included the various South
Asian and African participants that WOULD of made sense: the crews of
various ships which is noted to have been over 50% and were not shown, and
the scene of the one the British soldiers who makes it to French lines
guarding the rear at Dunkirk, they could of shown the double-digit % of
French African troops. That would of made sense. But on the beaches? I
don't think so it was necessarily deliberate based on what I know about the
composition of the British soldiers seeking to escape capture.

David
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[Marxism] Fwd: 5 millionth hit for the Unrepentant Marxist blog | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://louisproyect.org/2017/08/02/5-millionth-hit-for-the-unrepentant-marxist-blog/
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[Marxism] Dunkirk, the War and the Amnesia of the Empire

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Op-Ed, August 2 2017
Dunkirk, the War and the Amnesia of the Empire
By YASMIN KHAN

OXFORD, England — Two and a half million soldiers drawn from Britain’s 
empire in South Asia fought in World War II. But they are missing from 
many British commemorations and accounts of the war — an absence 
reinforced by Christopher Nolan’s new film “Dunkirk,” which does not 
feature any of the Indian soldiers who were present at the battle.


The Indian soldiers at Dunkirk were mainly Muslims from areas of British 
India that later became Pakistan. They were part of the Royal India Army 
Service Corps — transport companies that sailed from Bombay to 
Marseille. The men brought with them hundreds of mules, requested by the 
Allies in France because of the shortage of other means of transport. 
They played a significant role, ferrying equipment and supplies.


The Germans captured one Indian company and held the men as prisoners of 
war. Others were evacuated and made it to Britain. Paddy Ashdown, a 
British politician, has spoken of his father’s being court-martialed for 
refusing orders to abandon the Indian troops under his command.


World War II is memorialized everywhere in Britain. The catchy wartime 
slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On” appears on greeting cards, coffee mugs, 
doormats. Towns still organize Christmas fairs with a World War II 
theme. Balls and parties that involve dressing up in 1940s styles are 
common on university campuses.


Yet Britain’s fixation with the war doesn’t do justice to the complexity 
of the subject. The focus on Britain “standing alone” sometimes risks 
diminishing how the war brought pain in many places, right across the 
globe. The war, especially when viewed from the East, was about two 
empires locking horns rather than a nation taking on fascism. Above all, 
the narrative of a plucky island nation beating back the Germans omits 
the imperial dimension of the war. Many people living in the colonies 
were caught up in a vicious conflict beyond their control.


Britain was always dependent on the colonies — in India, Southeast Asia, 
Africa and the Caribbean — for men, materials and support, but never 
more so than in World War II. Some five million from the empire joined 
the military services. Britain didn’t fight World War II — the British 
Empire did.


This has real significance for British South Asians. Baroness Warsi, a 
former Conservative Cabinet minister, said both of her grandfathers 
fought for Britain in World War II, a connection that 20 years later 
inspired her father to move from Pakistan to Yorkshire.


But others are unaware that their grandfathers or great-grandfathers 
were involved in two world wars. Generations of British schoolchildren, 
including me, sat through history lessons about World War II and never 
heard about the connection to Asia. British South Asians have only 
tentatively started to see their own place in this “British” story.


There are signs of change. Many historians, including Christopher Bayly, 
Tim Harper, David Olusoga, David Killingray and Srinath Raghavan, have 
written books about colonial soldiers and the war. The Imperial War 
Museum London is constructing new World War II galleries to reflect a 
more global story. Some schoolteachers make imaginative efforts to 
diversify their approaches to World War II histories in the classroom. 
Universities usually teach an even more complex and international 
picture. But the core idea that the British war was an imperial war 
still falls on deaf ears.


Perhaps this is because it is not a rosy, heroic tale of the empire 
coming to the rescue of the motherland. Young men in Asia and Africa 
often joined the army under duress. The war was fought for freedom, but 
Indian political demands were brushed aside in the 1940s, with 
nationalists enduring heavy-handed policing and imprisonment.


The British state bungled food supply in its empire. In Britain, wartime 
food shortages caused hardship and great inconvenience; in India, they 
caused mass starvation. At least three million Bengalis died in a 
catastrophic famine in 1943, a famine that is almost never discussed. 
The famine’s causes were a byproduct of the war, but as Madhusree 
Mukerjee has proved in her book “Churchill’s Secret War,” the imperial 
state also failed to deliver relief. Many soldiers signed up as 
volunteers to fill their belly.


A simple multicultural twist to war commemoration tells just part of the 
story. Histories of the imperial role in the war are convincing only if 
they tell an accurate tale, which is one both of great bravery and 
heroism but also of exploitation, uncertainty and 

[Marxism] Fwd: Montclair State removes courses from adjunct whose tweet became controversial

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Why haven't leftist professors figured out that FB and Twitter are being 
monitored carefully by an organized rightwing movement that is bent on 
punishing them?


https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/02/montclair-state-removes-courses-adjunct-whose-tweet-became-controversial
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[Marxism] Fwd: How the Government Segregated America - The Chronicle of Higher Education

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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http://www.chronicle.com/article/How-the-Government-Segregated/240738
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[Marxism] Fwd: Bus seats mistaken for burqas by members of anti-immigrant group | World news | The Guardian

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/02/bus-seats-mistaken-burqas-anti-immigrant-group-norwegian
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[Marxism] Fwd: Trump: Bannon Is Wrong, I’m Not Raising Taxes on the Rich

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Trump's populism had about as much substance as Obama's campaign 
speeches in 2007.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-bannon-is-wrong-im-not-raising-taxes-on-the-rich
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[Marxism] Fwd: Venezuela elections: resurgent chavismo and “unrecognised” democracy | Investig’Action

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http://www.investigaction.net/en/venezuela-elections-resurgent-chavismo-and-unrecognised-democracy/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Democracy is dying – and it’s startling how few people are worried | Paul Mason | Opinion | The Guardian

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/31/democracy-dying-people-worried-putin-erdogan-trump-world
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