What is Socialism?

[BansheeOne]

While going through the Cancel Culture thread I stumbled over an old post of mine where I characterized a left-on-left incident as based upon "pet positions of class- vs. race-struggle". So another pointed question: could today's woke intersectionalists be described as biological socialists, and thus heirs to National Socialism vis-a-vis orthodox Marxism? 😁

[rmgill]

Biological Lysenkoists at leat. 

[Steven P Allen]

There is a case to be made for generational transmission of perspective.  We're on, what? the 4th generation of haplessness here in the US, anyway.

[Murph]

This:  He likes to eat....

[BansheeOne]

On 2/8/2023 at 1:24 PM, BansheeOne said:

While going through the Cancel Culture thread I stumbled over an old post of mine where I characterized a left-on-left incident as based upon "pet positions of class- vs. race-struggle". So another pointed question: could today's woke intersectionalists be described as biological socialists, and thus heirs to National Socialism vis-a-vis orthodox Marxism? 😁

I was obviously mostly joking when I typed this, but recent developments make it a rather bitter joke at this point.

Quote

"Absolutely Appalling"

A New Wave of Anti-Semitism Sweeps Across Germany

Hamas' terror and Israel's counterattacks have unleashed levels of anti-Semitism not seen in years in Germany. Jews are living in fear and now wonder if they should leave the country. The political response so far appears to be doing little to change the situation.

By Jörg Diehl, Deike Diening, Maik Großekathöfer, Tobias Rapp und Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt

27.10.2023, 17.58 Uhr

Ivar Buterfas-Frankenthal, a 90-year-old with a wild mane and alert eyes, is one of the last living Holocaust survivors. He is sitting in his living room in Bendestorf, a community in the state of Lower Saxony, and talking about the anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred in Germany recent days. "We Jews are once again easy targets for all the idiots walking our streets," he says.

[...]

He has told his story in public precisely 1,563 times, most recently in Hesse last week. But something was new: For the first time, he had police protection, he says. Two officers in black accompanied him as he spoke to high school students in a movie theater in the college town of Marburg. And in nearby Giessen, two patrol cars were parked on campus as he told of Nazi atrocities in the lecture hall.

Buterfas-Frankenthal finds it "absolutely appalling" that police officers must now provide him with protection when he speaks about the Holocaust and the importance of not forgetting what happened.

[...]

Even before the new war in the Middle East, anti-Semitism had risen noticeably in Germany. In 2023, for the first time in years, the authors of Germany's "Mitte" study, which probes the German population for anti-democratic and xenophobic attitudes, found a dramatic increase in openly anti-Semitic positions. Some 11.8 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that "the influence of Jews is still too great today."

It was clear red flag.

Gasoline on the Fire of Anti-Semitism

"What was long considered unspeakable has become permissible again," says Bielefeld conflict researcher Andreas Zick, who coordinates the study. He says this is partially linked to the rise of the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and others subscribing to the exclusionary "völkisch" identity of nationality based on blood. Furthermore, during the coronavirus pandemic, anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives seemed to spread as rapidly as the virus. There were myths of powerful people in the background, such as George Soros or the Rothschilds, who supposedly wanted to use the vaccine to exert broad control. Some protesters even wore yellow stars with the words "unvaccinated." Felix Klein, the government's federal commissioner for Jewish life in Germany, described the pandemic as an "accelerant for anti-Semitism" in Germany.

These days, hatred of Israel and Jews among young people from immigrant communities and radical Muslims in particular is becoming increasingly obvious. From October 7 until the middle of this week, police had counted 1,254 politically motivated crimes, which they ascribed to the category of "foreign ideologies" – secular ideologies imported to Germany from outside the country – in addition to 172 categorized as "religious ideology."

A new variant of anti-Semitism is rearing its head on the left, cloaked in the guise of solidarity with the Palestinians. It has a new quality and goes beyond the hostility to Israel that anti-imperialists on the left have harbored for decades. Meron Mendel has coined the term "woke anti-Semitism" to describe it.

Mendel, the director of the Anne Frank Education Center, which raises awareness about the consequences of discrimination and prejudice, and also a historian and father of three, is currently on a book tour. It has taken him across Germany, to places like Hohenems, Freiburg, Schorndorf and Heidenheim. His book, out in German, is called "Talking about Israel." As of October 7, it has taken on a whole new urgency.

Mendel, 47, who grew up on a kibbutz, is now no longer just the academic observer and chronicler. In a phone conversation, he describes lying in bed at night being haunted by the images of massacre victims.

A few days ago, he says, he did a reading at a "left-leaning immigrant club" in Bavaria, and Palestinians also sat in the audience. He says he was surprised: "Their thoughts were exclusively with the victims of the Israeli counterattacks in Gaza." He, on the other hand, still finds himself preoccupied by the "civilizational abyss" that opened up during the Hamas attacks.

"How can men who are fathers torture and murder children?" he asks.

For many years, Mendel criticized the government of Israel, campaigning against the occupation and in favor of an independent Palestinian state. But now he is shocked by the "complete lack of empathy" among those who, as he says, focus exclusively on Palestinian matters. "They completely ignore the lives of Jews," he says.

[...]

In the worldview of young activists, in particular, an exaggerated form of anti-racism has become a central pillar of their thinking. Fed by postcolonial discourses and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, they divide the world into black and white, privileged and disadvantaged, perpetrators and victims. In their eyes, the Israelis are privileged and the Palestinians disadvantaged. Apparently, even the most brutal massacres can be disregarded with the help of that thinking.

And that, it seems, can set the stage for scenes like the one that unfolded in front of Germany's Foreign Ministry this week, where a group of activists dressed in hipster clothing gathered on the streets, chanting: "Free Palestine from German Guilt."

Terms like the "cult of guilt" had previously only been heard in Germany from the extreme right wing. Extremists have been claiming for decades that German elites bow to Israel and the world because of the Nazi crimes. But now, it appears that some on the left are also longing for Germany to be freed from its problematic history.

[...]

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/absolutely-appalling-a-new-wave-of-anti-semitism-sweeps-across-germany-a-50e18e6a-03ae-4ea5-99ec-6d0c8753558a