[lbo-talk] MPug Rats Out Yoshie To Cooper

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Wed May 3 08:25:53 PDT 2006


On 5/4/06, Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
> Yosh --
>
> > Well, "Jews" is not a dirty word, so I believe that it should be
> > treated the same as "Blacks," "whites," "Asians," "Latinos,"
> > "Americans," etc. A claim that "the Jews" have disproportionate power
> > is an odious anti-Semitic stereotype, but a claim that establishment
> > Jews have power over ordinary Jews (mainly the power to cow them, by
> > saying "Are you a self-hating Jew?" "Do you hate Israel?" etc.) in
> > their communities to manufacture a semblance of consensus to serve
> > imperialism, just as establishment Cubans, establishment Blacks,
> > establishment whatever do, isn't.
>
> You don't have to sell me on this. I merely pointed out how your wording
> would be and has been taken by those who want to change the subject and
> slime you in the process.

The thing is that any conceivable term ("official 'Jewish leaders,'" "Jewish elite," "upper-crust Jews," etc.) used instead of "establishment Jews" to criticize their class-specific politics would tick off those who are ticked off by my Darfur pieces. They willfully ignore the class marker and conflate "establishment Jews" with all Jews -- despite the fact that later in the piece I say, "Some say America is addicted to oil, but America is even more addicted to war (or economic sanctions when war is not in the cards). "Leaders" of almost all groups in America -- Republicans or Democrats, Christians or Jews or Muslims (many of whom rooted for the war in Afghanistan in the Carter-Reagan era and the war on Yugoslavia in the Clinton era), whatever -- come up with their own pet wars to promote, sooner or later," indicating that there is a general problem of use of ethnic/religious identity politics for imperialism, of which the "Save Darfur" campaign is but the latest example.

A Jewish man by the name of David Kelsey posted a blog entry <http://jewschool.com/?p=10451> at Jewschool questioning the wisdom of Jews rather than Blacks and/or Muslims taking leadership of the "Save Darfur" campaign. Much of the discussion that followed is quite good, but, predictably, one person pipes up: "What a disgusting and shameful post, David Kelsey. Your arguments epitomize the case of someone who has internalized anti-Jewishness" (at <http://jewschool.com/?p=10451>). So, the choice boils down to either ignore the problem or raise it knowing that there will be some who would slime you.

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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