Michael Neumann, a son of Franz, frequent Counterpunch contributor, in an e-mail exchange with The Jewish Tribal Review, a neo-Nazi rag.
And, an illustration of the Cockburn principle, from Karl Radek on the Comintern, from 1922, on the possibility of a, "United Front, " with the British Labour Party, "It is easier and pleasanter to smash things, but, if we have not the power to do so, and if the method is necessary, we must make use of it...in the firm trust that this method will do harm to Social Democracy, not to us...and in the conviction that we shall crush them in our embrace..."
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/journal/index.php?journal_id=10&article_id=35
>From 'Judas' to 'Jewish Capital': Antisemitic Forms of Thought in the
German Communist Party (KPD) in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933 - Olaf
Kistenmacher
On the occasion of an event initiated by the KPD, Wofür starb
Schlageter? Kommunismus, Faschismus und die politische Entscheidung
der Studenten [Why did Schlageter die? Communism, fascism and the
students' political decision] in Berlin in the summer of 1923, Ruth
Fischer, who was the head of the party's Zentrale [Central], in an
attempt to win over to the KPD the nationalist students who had
gathered there, used this argument:
"You cry out against Jewish capital [Judenkapital(2)], gentlemen? Whoever condemns Jewish capital, gentlemen, is already engaged in the class struggle, even though he doesn't realize it. You are against Jewish capital and want to eliminate the stock manipulators. Rightly so. Trample the Jewish capitalists under foot, hang them from the street-lamps, stamp them out. But what do you want to do with the large capitalists, the Klöckner, Stinnes...?"(3)
The council communist Franz Pfemfert reported this as an eyewitness in his journal Die Aktion [The Action], and the social-democratic daily newspaper Vorwärts [Forward] cited his report in August 1923 without contradiction. Researchers in the field consider Fischer's remark a notorious example of antisemitism(4) in the KPD of the Weimar Republic, and it is examined in almost all publications on the topic. The agitation campaign was embedded in the so-called Schlageter phase, as the party leadership sought to forge common political strategies and goals with right wing, nationalist and populist politicians.
At this time, Karl Radek who was the representative of the Russian Communist Party in Germany held his speech before the Expanded Executive of the Comintern in honour of the fascist Albert Leo Schlageter, who had been executed by the French military in the Ruhrkampf and whose name had become in a few weeks a symbol of the revival of German national honour. During this phase, the Rote Fahne [Red Flag], the daily newpaper of the German communist party, went so far as to publish contributions by völkisch nationalists like Count Ernst of Reventlow. -- Michael Pugliese