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Incredible that in all these ‘left’ conversations on ‘Black antisemitism’ Moishe Postone is frequently cited yet never properly referred to as a zionist who believed all calls for “abolition of israel” come from the infiltration of Soviet antisemitism into Palestinian liberation
Postone: “The idea that every nation other than the Jews should be allowed self-determination does come back to the Soviet Union. One has only to read Stalin on the nationalities question.”
That’s an unambiguous endorsement of Zionism. He connects this historically to his embittered attitude towards the 2nd Intifada. So this position is anti-Palestinian , pro-israel, and pro-imperialist in a clear way—the condemnation of all militant resistance to colonialism.
Postone continues:
“today in the Middle East there are roughly as many Jews as there are Palestinians. Any strategy based on analogies to situations like Algeria or South Africa simply won’t work, on demographic as well as political and historical grounds.”
“today in the Middle East there are roughly as many Jews as there are Palestinians. Any strategy based on analogies to situations like Algeria or South Africa simply won’t work, on demographic as well as political and historical grounds.”
What are these “political and historical grounds” he ofc doesn’t specify. And regardless this line of argument isn’t different from contemporary amerikan rationalizations of manifest destiny. “It already happened, get over it”
Postone: “To subsume the conflict under the rubric of colonialism misrecognizes the situation.”
He describes leftists who use colonialism as framework to understand zionism “those who have subsumed progressive politics under the national struggle”
He describes leftists who use colonialism as framework to understand zionism “those who have subsumed progressive politics under the national struggle”
He goes on to link his analysis of antisemitism being an intangible and universal explanation (“The Jews did it”) for systemic capitalist crisis and condemns the left’s anti-US imperialism critique as similarly antisemitic:
”On the German right a century ago, the global domination of capital used to be considered that of the Jews and Britain. Now the Left sees it as the domination of Israel and the United States. The thought pattern is the same.“
He deliberately minimizes the danger of racism internal to the left, in particular anti-Black racism:
“Racism is rarely a danger for the left. The left has to be careful not to be racist, but it isn’t an ongoing danger because racism doesn’t have the apparent emancipatory dimension of anti-semitism.“
This alleged uniquely pseudoemancipatory antisemitism is crux of his argument. It is also central to philosemitism as a modern State racism. Postone ofc doesn’t mention this aspect, and in his vein those who cite him don’t engage with Philosemitism as a State racial regime either
Source for quotes from Postone https://donotlink.it/BYxVA
