>Instead (from a safe Pacific Rim distance) I propose we bash New York City
>on this list. It is the center of American Zionism, . . .
>
>Really? How is it the center of zionism?
>Cuz there's lots of jews there?
Hmm, Max, are you inferring (none too subtly) that this is an anti-Semitic point of view? If so, do you have evidence? If not, then what we have here is nothing but cheap slander, logically no different than that of famous Jew-baiters such as Jules Schleichter and Karl Lueger. The direction may be different but the intent is the same - to silence criticism, yesterday critics of Germany, today critics of zionism and Israel. It is why "discussion" of the Middle East within US political life is in the wretched state it is. I mean, on what other subject can one still seriously discuss with self-described "liberals" the pros and cons of apartheid and, in the case of Iraq, genocide?
But my tongue-in-cheek blurb was not intended to launch a discussion of the Middle East. So, seriously, let me spell out its intent:
1) It did not seriously propose to "bash" any particular metropolitan area either in the US or anywhere else. I think the point was made - stop bashing the South. For the record, we have the same problem in California with Texas-bashing. And I do mean that, if you move here from Texas, you better change your licence plates ASAP before somebody screams at you to "go back to Texas", as happened to a friend of mind a couple of months ago.
2) It did seriously propose that NYC is the center of American (note, not Israeli) Zionism and the center of much else in American life. The intent was to hit two topics with one stone: The distribution of overall social power between the metropolitan areas in the US, and the question of the nature of the Democratic Party and American leftists relation to it. It is this latter question that got me on this list in the first place. Because the Palestinian uprising coincided with the US electoral cycle, and this with the vicious attack on Nader, the extreme volatility of the Democratic Partys' relation to American Zionism (the latters' preferred political vehicle) on the one hand, and to American "leftism" on the other, was placed in bold relief as a key point of structural instability of this party.
3) NYC is still the leading, and in many areas of American life still the hegemonic, metropole of the US. This despite obvious "power-sharing" arrangements that have evolved since WW2 (as well as before, especially with the Midwest). This, and not its Jewish population, is what makes NYC the center of quite a few things, American Zionism and the Democratic Party, of interest here, among them. Yes, NYC, the birthplace of Tammany Hall, is the center of the national Democratic Party. Contrary to what was posted earlier on this list, the Clintons, Gore and Carter are not a 'moderate' version of the Souths' growing national political influence; rather, they are, in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson, political immigrants to NYC and therefore reflect the continuing power of NYC both within the Democratic Party at the national level and with the US as a whole. The geopolitical coincidence of an officially sanctioned racist political ideology and movement (Zionism) with the dominant conservative wing of the Democratic Party also coincides - as the reference to Luis Valdez suggests - with the figure of NYC as the culturally conservative pole of American life. Despite the well known diversity of its many immigrant communities, NYC is still dominated by the heavily eurocentric ethos of its ruling class and middling social supporters (as our Pacific coast ruling class still gazes lovingly at its own colonial mother in the Northeast of the USA, for it was the Yankees and not the South that first colonized this coast).
Look at the New York Times: the only "serious" nonfinancial metro newspaper with national distribution, at the same time one of the most conservative nonfinancial newspapers of nationally recognized stature. Surely, plenty of similiar evidence could be assembled to substantiate the characterization I make here - enough to fill a book, I'm sure.
4) American Zionism and the Democratic Party: Here is the issue Max ducked altogether. "American Zionism" refers to a political movement and ideology indigenous to the US. It is not at all congruent with either American Jews or the state of Israel, despite its ideological claim to be functioning on their behalf - a claim which does present a problem, though, for American Jews who chose to identify themselves as such. Instead, while some waste time tracking neo-Nazi fringe nuts who will never get anywhere, it goes generally unacknowledged that American Zionism is - and I want to emphasize this - the most effective and leading form of officially sanctioned racism in the US today. It is politically correct racism and bigotry. And, unlike its parochial cousins of former years in the Southern US or in South Africa, American Zionism has an international dimension that synchronizes well with the minimally territorial, network-nodal style of the Washington Imperium, geared as it is to the domination of markets, not land. (In this context, Israel as a territorial issue is an anachronistic legacy of British Imperialism, while it actual small territorial size allows it to be well integrated tout court into the US network, and this is borne out by the significantly higher standard of living enjoyed by Israelis, compared to their Mediterranean neighbors in the vicinity). And, as before, imperialism in whatever form requires racist ideology to both cover and justify the inequality generated by exploitation, today of the capitalist variety.
So, while liberals squawk about "old Confederate" Ashcroft, the "liberal" US Senator, Barbara Boxer justifies shooting Palestinian kids in the head, as she did before the elections (on KPFA no less) while campaigning "within the left" against Nader. American Zionism treated us all, of course, to this "blame the victim" line here in the US, while nary a peep was heard about the brutal and atrocious Israeli missile assaults on PA installations. On the contrary, Congress applauded and awarded, by a large margin, racist apartheid a resolution in its favor. Lets some revanchist Southern KKK sympathizers exercise that kind of political clout! While there are legitimate reasons for concern about Ashcroft, one of them will not be whether he wants to launch helicopter gunship assaults against African-American owned structures, or whether rock throwing African-American kids should be coolly and methodically shot in the head - that is, shooting them outside the bounds of the officially sanctioned regime of police murder that Clinton and his Democrats have done so much to promote nationwide. It really makes you wonder what "lesser evil" it is we are really supposed to to be concerned about.
Which brings us, finally, to the issue of American Zionism and the Democratic party. It is no coincidence that this political movement is solidly entrenched on the right wing of a party that has promoted such a viciously racist police and prison policy. They wholeheartedly support this policy for the same reason they like to kill Arabs. It is no coincidence that this entrenchment of American Zionism with the Democratic Party really took hold in the wake of the 1967 war, and that this became conjoined to the appearance of the "neocoservative" movement on the pages of Commentary, New Republic and other publications in reaction to "the Sixties". The ideological congruence between neoconservatism and Clintons' "New Democrats" is no accident, either, the latter is simply neoconservatism - note, NOT "neoliberalism" - come from the political woods triumphant. And they have come home to occupy the roost once held by by Thurmonds' Dixiecrats, before these "upper crust" segregationists left after 1948 (the "lower crust" left with Wallace in the 1960s). From there they and their allies were able to capture the national Democratic Party in a way parallel to the capture of the antebellum Party by the slavocracy. With their capture of the national Democratic Party through the agency of Clinton, Gore and the DLC, American Zionism and its allies - Clinton and Gore are ardent zionists, of course - put an end to the era of the Democratic Party as a party of liberal reform, the only such period in its national history. The New Deal is a different matter, for another discussion. But the Democratic Party was now able to return to its traditional structure as a racist, conservative party, albeit with the recently acquired legacy of a gaggle of impotent liberal fools who don't know what kind of party they are in.
Of course, American Zionism is hardly the sole explanation for the neoconservatism of the national Democratic Party. But it is a vitally important thread in this story, ignored far too often. The sooner we rip this thread up, the better off we'll be.
Oh and Netanyahu fled before our threatened protests of his speaking tour of the Bay Area last November. Did the NYC left do the same? These guy aren't so brave without their IDF.
-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA /***********************************************************************
"Sure I was young and impulsive once--I wore every conceivable pin.
Even went to Socialist meetings and learned all those old union hymns.
Ah, but I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in. So Love Me, Love Me, Love Me--I'm A Liberal."
-Phil Ochs
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