> Ignorance is no crime. I am ignorant of many things. Pointing this
> out is not an insult. If I had called Michael "stupid" or something
> along those lines, that would indeed be insulting. But I said that
> Michael is unfamiliar with the debates of the German left in the past
> 30 years, and that he also couldn't possibly be expected to.
I plead guilty as charged to the ignorance, and I don't feel insulted. So we can get that out of the way.
> > These "tendencies" are even stronger in Germany than here in the
> > US, as far as I can tell, with my schoolboy German. Would New
> > Angel disagree?
>
> No, I wouldn't disagree. I would disagree with the reasons you gave
> for this development. You stated it had something to do with an
> instinctive, unexamined guilt complex.
Again, fair enough. Broad-brush pop-psychology is silly though occasionally irresistible.
> > One of the forces tending to emancipate American lefties from their
> > anti-anti-Semitic
>
> See, this is where we disagree. I think communists have a
> responsibility to be anti-anti-Semitic, as anti-Semitism is a
> constitutive element of the spontaneous consciousness in capitalist
> societies.
It is indeed where we disagree. I'm not entirely sure what that last phrase -- "constitutive element" etc. -- means, but if I understand it correctly, you seem to be asserting that capitalist society will *always* engender anti-Semitism.
Now this is the kind of sweeping dogmatic statement of historical law that we Lefties seem to be very fond of making, and making, as often as not, without adducing any evidence or even any deductive reasoning. Why does capitalism always produce anti-Semitism? Can't capitalism do without anti-Semitism? If not, why not?
I would suggest that our experience here in the US, anyway, suggests that it can. Anti-Semitism here is a very inconsequential, hole-and-corner affair, and certainly not a "constitutive element" of anything, as far as I can see.
But in much Left and Pwog consciousness anti-Semitism is kept embalmed in a glass case, like Lenin's mummy, and made the object of ritual denunciations and expressions of horror. Phrases like AN's "constitutive element" proclamation are part of this liturgy of anathema around the Unholy of Unholies.
--
Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org