Crypto-fascism within the left

Why is that? Because I speak my mind and point out things about the history of Anarchism some people don't like?

I never said that. All racism is bad and needs to be combated but there is a hell of a difference between "Haha Lassalle is Jewish" and saying Jews need to be exterminated.

Never said it was OK.

That seems how things are going. Very unfortunate.

Actually Bakunin and Marx were on the same page when it came to ascribing capitalism to Jews and describing Jews as being an inherent active part of international capitalism. Which was a dominant contemporary believe among socialists and communists of many different tendencies.

Something that is indefensible is indefensible. But do not pretend Marx wasn't a racist and anti-semite. His anti-Slavic opinions were well documented. And there is even some evidence to be found that him and Engels were sexist. A lot of early socialist and Marxists were. And hey...guess what...so were Bakunin and Poudhon.

I have also never read Bakunin say he wanted to exterminate the Jews. Mighty interested in being proven wrong though....

As for Proudhon. Seems fairly obvious:

December 26, 1847: Jews. Write an article against this race that poisons everything by sticking its nose into everything without ever mixing with any other people. Demand its expulsion from France with the exception of those individuals married to French women. Abolish synagogues and not admit them to any employment. Finally, pursue the abolition of this religion. It’s not without cause that the Christians called them deicide. The Jew is the enemy of humankind. They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated. By steel or by fire or by expulsion the Jew must disappear.


But you know what....rather than defending Proudhon or denying it...he was at that time called out by other leading Anarchists.

Your behavior is inflammatory. You frequently misrepresent arguments and provide hyperbolic answers, many of which are not logically consistent with other things you say. You have and consistently push extreme, divisive viewpoints in your posts, which often read as caricatures of frequently-expressed opinions by persons on the mid-to-far left. It is readily apparent that you don't have a comprehensive understanding of the material that you're working with, and your behavior is consistently inconsistent with that of the kind of person who you're claiming to be. Not to mention that you're a new account doing all of this, which makes the behavior both more eccentric and more suspect.

In the future, you should try to take a longer time easing into your more ridiculous statements and try not to draw gobs of attention to yourself by making threads like this one. Fly under the radar or be identified and destroyed. Good luck!

Neither antisemitism nor anti-homosexuality are inherently fascist. They are just part of the reactionary rainbow. Likewise when communists agree with these things we're just seeing reactionary culture shining through. Communist are not supermen and are just as likely to be a party to the reactionary cultural practices of their locale as anyone else. We may have some tools that help us extricate ourselves but that doesn't mean we are always able to.

Really the crypto-fascists among communists today are those ultra-leftists who support islamism in Syria and Libya and outright fascists in Kiev.

I'm more concerned when leftists in 2014 exhibit racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, etc.

Most of these leftists are in places closer to Marx's time (socially) than our own. Things are a little different when there are actual fucking warlords around.

That said I am not happy about it either. I'm a transgirl and I would be killed by some of my own allies on this planet. However I don't use my own personal fear to cloud my judgment or to analyze a certain situation. My trans nature is irrelevant to my Marxism (excepting that Marxism is the only way to cast down the patriarchy).

There are definitely reactionary trends within the Left, but whether they are fascististic is another question all together. It's the same reason that CasaPound glorifies Che Guevara and holds praise for Hugo Chavez - this tacit solidarity between Fascists and the Left against neoliberalism and globalization. It's where we are going wrong. I have said it in another thread; we must struggle based on premises now in existence, rather than conditions which have previously existed.

Firstly, what does this have to do with moralism? Secondly, it's just not true. Myself being neither metaphysical materialist, nor a materialist in a sense of theory of political praxis (I find both positions either irrational or impossible depending of what conclusions a person makes from them), and being what marxists call an idealist (not that the term, like anything marxists say, has any sense) - I personally don't like the fact, but it is still a fact that both Proudhon and Bakunin were materialist in both of the mentioned meanings.

https://anarchistplatform.wordpress....-and-idealism/

Concerning moralism, it's interesting that the OP mentions people not knowing why capitalism is bad, and you yourself later talk about something being bad and that is should be opposed. Something being bad is an ethical position. Saying that something should be abolished is also. Every imperative is a moral position, and ultimatelly based on some form of deontological, consquentialist or virtue ethics.

I will mention that it is preciselly the marxists that don't know why capitalism is bad, being that Marx gave a totally nonsensical analysis of capitalism, an analysis in many ways doesn't concur and is contingently incompatible with the original theory of socialism as the idea of the emancipation of the working people and establishment of workers' control over production as it's foundation.

Also, it is no surprise at all that various forms of authoritarianism have been the feature of various marxist movements being that Marx himself was an authoritarian and espoused no "moralistic" principles upon which one could reject authoritarianism. Note that statements like "homophobia is bad" or "patriarchy should be abolished" are in themselves moralistic statements, and everyone making them while posturing rejection of "moralism" is simply inconsistent.

Concerning the OP itself, IMO if there is any crypto-"fascism" on the left that is to be rejected it is the leninistic right-wing revision of marxim, which made Marx' relatively benign authoritarianism into a harsher and violent form. Already rationally incompatible with socialism, it also effects the mentioned contingency of the marxian theory making it totally opposed to socialism, as was seen in practice by it's perpetration and participation in the destruction of the only two instances in the history where people have actually succeeded in lighting the spark of revolution by abolishing oppression and exploitation in their midst, I am referring of course to anarchist Ukraine and Spain, leninists have been fanatical in their opposition to libertarian socialism as much as fascists.

Actually, probably the two ethnic groups of Slavs he regarded as most fucked up were the Russians and Croats.
But the basis for that wasn't any kind of a racialized ideology; instead, it had to do with what we would now call geopolitics. The latter with ban Jelačić were crucial in crushing the 1848 uprising in the Habsburg Monarchy, with him marching on Budapest (connected to the ruling class in Croatia tying its own interests to that of the continued survival of the Monarchy itself, based on crushing any democratic aspirations). The Russian autocracy he constantly viewed as the greatest threat for revolutionary development on the continent.

But, for example, he did have only the nicest words for Poles. That's hardly a characteristic of an anti-Slavic racist.

To clarify. I don't intend to defend the formulations put forward, especially that of the "non-historic peoples", but at the same time I don't think it's that simple as being anti-slavic really implies. However, I'm not interested in stupid discussions about who was more of a racist, Bakunin or Marx. It's all bunk - that kind of a discussion, I mean.

Get the fuck out with your ahistorical views on fascism. Or "fascism".

I think crypto-fascism on the left is in decline, at least in the Western World. Classical marxism died with the Soviet Union.

Now structuralist, autonomist and post-Marxist influences permeate the left, and these influences are in large part a direct reaction to the shortcomings of classical Marxist theory.

And classical Marxist theory, in my opinion, can be interpreted in ways that could be considered crypto-fascist, especially when considered with the totalitarian history of classical Marxism in practice.

That is the point I was trying to illustrate to QV. Dismissing ideology on the basis of inherent and quite prevalent prejudice of the ones establishing is requires proof that the ideology itself is aimed at this prejudice or solving it.

This is really Chomskyite mythology about Leninism. This one dimensional explanation of the degeneration of the Russian revolution is insufficient in explaining it -- the highly complex issue of the Russian revolution vs. this simple (I'd say simplistic) explanation should be an indication for critical reassessment of this critique. Leninism is not contrary to self-emancipation of workers, and Leninism certainly isn't 'authoritarian' in the sense that anarchists use. Bolshevik practice is another issue. Generally, the anarchist critique of Leninism is presuming the practice of the Soviet Union originated from Leninism, sometimes even without consulting Lenin's texts.

I mean, you can't read the Civil War era letters of Lenin and not see a bit of his bloodthirst. Lenin was an ubercomplex figure, and one of the great men of the twentieth century, but I see no liberating potential in a theorist who believed that harsh discipline and violence was necessary for the creation of a "New Socialist Humanity."

I'm not going to quote any specific users, but I see a big increase in the "great-man" theory of history, whether it be Lenin or Stalin, or even non-Soviet leaders like Mao, and even someone I admire that was Marxist-Leninist like Che Guevara. Stalin was a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, and Lenin was far from perfect ( as was Che).

Remember, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Bradley, Clark, Patton, Churchill, Montgomery, Brooke, Wavell, Stalin, Zhukov, Budenny, etc., didn't win the war against fascism; foot soldiers, pilots, tank captains, partisans- in short the proletariat drafted/taking part in this war - won the victory over fascism.

It's just my ordinary, Rust Belt, factory worker opinion that the idolization and non-critical analysis of these leaders (capitalist or state-socialist), is the germination aid when it comes to national socialism, national syndicalism, national Bolshevism, Zionism, etc.

And this is coming from someone not completely adverse to socialism in comparison to anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism.

How so? There's a difference between Anti-judaism and antisemitism. You know, antisemitism isn't just one of many forms of racism, it's far more than that. Antisemitism has been the reaction to the rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Anti-judaist stereotypes have been used to "explain" the abstract processes that came with capitalism, as for example accumulation of capital, compound interest and other capitalist functions. For every abstract phenomena that came with capitalism, there was one mysterious group of people, that pulls the strings: The jews.
So anti-semitism isn't just plain and stupid racism. It's a image of humanity, a (false) way to describe capitalist phenomenas.
The thing is, that over the time antisemites have stopped using the term "jew" explicetly in every sentence of their rubbish-texts. They're now using far broader terms like "they", "the capitalists", "the zionists", "the illuminati". However, one just needs to examine their theories superficially to find references to jews, people of jewish origin, or jewish sounding names.
We have the exact same problem in the left movement, maybe not as bad as within the right, but it's there. Our "jews" are the bankers, managers and CEOs. We give them attributes, like greediness, absence of emotions, hideosity and so on. We reduce their materialist class interest to some shitty human nature moralist stuff. We don't use the term jew explicitly, but this false criticism can function as a hotbed for real, primary antisemitism. That's the reason why on every fucking anti-globalization/occupy/Anti-WEF protest, one can easily observe antisemitic banners and right wingers infiltrating the protests. That phenomena is usually referred to as structural antisemitism.

I'll just quote myself, because I can't really express myself good in english, lol.

Bakunin was a life-long antisemite, even while he was on friendly terms with Marx.

You are as disingenuous as ever. Antisemitism was common among the conservatives and the monarchists and their ilk, but not among the Republicans and the Socialists. It was extremely rare in French socialist circles. French socialists and republicans have been the primary proponents of full equality for the Jews since the late 18th century, in fact.

As far as Proudhon goes, his genocidal hatred of the Jews was some Final Solution level stuff, such murderous antisemitism wasn't common in even the most reactionary circles until the rise of the NSDAP.

Are you freaking kidding me? They were freaking notorious anti-semites.

Charles Fourier, Prosper, Blanqui, Toussenil all described and denounced Jews in terms of anti-capitalism but also social, ethnic and racial terms. O and lets not forget Malon and Jaures. Merrick and Tridon of course can't be ignored either. Some of them even calling for violence against Jews or...simply cheering the Dreyfus affair which the French socialists distanced themselves from because the saving of one Jew would be exploited by the Jewish elite to whitewash their blame even though the state used on Jew for the guilt of all Jews. The first was more important. Among the socialists signing that statement were people who had taken anti-semitic positions or written anti-semitic literature.

And while I won't dispute the one entry Proudhon made was indefensible and really seriously fucked up...anti-semitism was extremely widespread (as was racism and sexism) among socialists of all tendencies and Jews were widely seen as religiously and ethnically linked to capitalism and denounced for it.

I'm more of a Marxist than an anarchist, but I've heard that Marx, although Jewish, used antisemitic language himself (which I'm not justifying, just adding a semi-known fact that is semi-relevant).

Ironically, most of those people claim to be Marxists.