More Reactionary Slander (was RE: Russian Israelis)

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Sun Mar 24 22:33:31 PST 2002


Yes, the early Zionists were secular
>and founded a secular state. And yes, the religious were late in getting
>involved in Zionism and the founding of the state. But don't you, in
>effect,
>concede a religious component when you use the word "völkisch"? By using it
>you are making an implicit analogy to another racial nationalism, Nazism,
>which had a partly secularized relationship to Christianity, just as
>Zionism
>has a secularized relationship to Judaism.

Yes, and? Since it's secularized, and expressly so, it's not the Jewish religion that is the issue, any more than Nazism put Christianity at issue. Btw I do not think that Zionism is a kind of Nazism, althogh _some_ Zionists are practically no better than Nazis. Sharon for example.

Since Christianity is more
>universalistic than Judaism, the racial element in Nazism is more of an
>intrusion, just as the secularism is an intrusion into Zionism.

I don't follow thsi. The "intrusion" is the core of the thing in both cases. Zionism is nationalized Judaism without signifcant religious elements. Nazism is racialized nationalism, not a form of Christianity. The Nazis despised Christians.

But the
>inheritance of a sense of peoplehood from Judaism to Zionism seems pretty
>obvious.

There's a historical connection, obviously. If they had been no Jewish religion, there would have been no Jewish people for Herzl et al to attempt to make into a nation.

I haven't followed the discussion up to now closely enough to be
>sure that the person you respond to meant his/her statement in the way I'm
>understanding it, but surely the roots of Zionism in a mythological
>tradition are not unimportant.

I'd never deny that.

jks

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