Islamaphobia, Mulims and the Holocaust

This is a short video on how,  Albania ended the war with more Jewish people than it began it with, a forgotten story. Against what contemporary racist say, getting over excited by the Mufti of Jerusalem or whatever, the colonial and racist oppression of the Muslims in Europe at that time made them likely to do more than their white neighbours to help Jewish refugees.

One Algerian community in Paris save 1700 Jewish children from deportation and murder by hiding them in a mosque built by the French government, just after the first world war.  They gave them Muslim names and helped them out of the country.  A leaflet circulated amongst the people read:

“Yesterday at dawn, the Jews of Paris were arrested. The old, the women, and the children. In exile like ourselves, workers like ourselves. They are our brothers. Their children are like our own children. The one who encounters one of his children must give that child shelter and protection for as long as misfortune-or sorrow-lasts. Oh, man of my country, your heart is generous.”

As I come towards the end of my project writing Hurr this story of a people, willing to give up all the comfort of life to do what they perceive to be right has helped get me on track.

“Religion” and “Race”

One of the young people I work with was saying that she had to deal with some anti-semitic remarks about Jews being a “race” of people. I hope this helps clear stuff up, although as usual my job is to make things more complicated.

> > Basically, there is no such thing as a race of people in any kind of scientific or anthropological sense, other than the human race. This goes someway to explaining why http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-10/WUiS-GSRD-071098.php although the account isn’t perfect. A much better account can be found in “a very short intoduction to racism” by Ali Rattisani which is on amazon for a few quid.
> >
> > So, there is no biological category such as “race”. It does however have a social reality. Take someone from the middle east for example, as an “Arab” you are more likely to be searched at airports, as an Asian, or whatever, we are both more likely to be stop and searched by police or end up in low payed jobs. It wouldn’t help our case if someone from the EDL was telling you to “go back home” or whatever, and you said that genetically race does not exist, because it has a social existence.
> >
> > Think about this with respect to Jewish people and you will see why you are right, but maybe not for all the right reasons. Hitler and the Nazis treated the Jews as a race and so do, to a lesser extent, the Zionists. In both cases they would look at an illeterate Jewish peasent from Poland, a Jewish business man from Hamburg and a Jewish writer from Vienna and just see Jews; not men or women, rich or poor, gay or straight but just Jews. In the one case they would use that as justification to kill them, on the other for them all to move to one country. Basically, I will always remember something Eugene, who you met, said to me. He was brought up in a very secular family, his dad only took him to synagogue twice a year. He said he never felt as Jewish as he did in the camp. Racism creates races, nothing else. In the same way, I would say the most Muslim I ever felt was when I have been made the object of racist discourse and action.

9/11 1973 , or, why philosophy is more useful than you think.

Now that most of the fuss and hysteria has dissipated, I thought I would fling in my two pence worth.

For people who identify as being from “A muslim background”, or “muslim” in a political way 9/11 can be a complicated and painful experience.  Otherwise sensible people can get lost in “countering” the “extremist” narrative of people like Anjum Choudhray, whose comic book sidekicks have been making noise during todays two minutes silence.  Sunny Hundal, flanked by a whole flank of Guardian reading “moderates” have decided that they will deploy a flash mob as a counter demonstration to Islam4UK, or the Anjum Choudhray Clown Company (Weddings, stag dos and bar mitzvahs a speciality), as they are also known.

Clearly, Choudhray’s actions are ridiculous.  The problem with the “moderate” response is that it basically apes the logic of dear old Anjum.  Basically things go like this; The people in charge demand a minute’s silence for something, Choudhray (along with his eight supporters) claim they will do the opposite, and the moderates turn up to do the opposite of that.  Each party reacting exactly to the last one, belying their complete lack of imagination. 

This is the method of reactionaries.  They have absolutely no idea how to change the direction of discourse or the course of events.  Let me give you an example.  Lets say I am in a car with my friend.  My man is probably a bit of a poor navigator, and won’t listen to advice, so we have ended up taking a wrong turning.  Now, when my friend tells me that the next left turn is the one, should I say “no. The next right turn is the one”? Probably not, as the journey has gone completely wrong.  Instead I should get him to stop, turn round and go a completely different way. 

In philosophy this distinction, being made up of two kinds of, if you like “disagreeing with”, “denying” or, more properly, negating an idea, is sometimes called the difference between a determinate and indeterminate negation.  It comes into philosophy via Hegel and Marx, but has its roots in Kant.  The contemporary theorist Slavoj Zizek has put together a brilliant example which illustrates the difference between these two kinds of negation, which will be clear for any fan of cheesy horror films.  Imagine that you are trapped in a creaky house and one of your cheesy teen horror companions (a young Johnny Depp if you like) is in a bad way.  You’re worrying so you ask another friend (Maybe her out of friends) ; “Is he dead?”  According to the rules of horror films your friend could negate the being dead of your friend in one of two ways.  She might say “She is not dead”.  In which case, everything is all right and you have been saved by the indeterminate negation.  This is indeterminate because her out of friends hasn’t “determined”, if you like, something specific about poor old Johnny, it’s just that he isn’t dead.  On the other hand whatever she’s called from friends could say something much more terrifying; “he is undead”.  At which point you run away to face a bloody death, cheered up by the knowledge that you visceraly understand the, sometimes complicated looking, philosophical notion of determinate negation. 

With the “fundamentalist” jokers of “Muslims against Crusaders”, exactly the same thing goes on.  Their answer to the idea that they should stay silent to commemorate a certain massacre and no other, is that they simply will not stay silent to commemorate a certain massacre and no other. They say “he is not dead”.  The challenge is to say that “he is undead”, to negate this ridiculous idea that we should bond patriotically through a shared moment of Diana-grief for those poor people who were killed in the attacks of 9/11/2001.  Otherwise we will end up like Anjum, a stupid toddler who doesn’t know what’s good for him screaming “no” every time Mummy and Daddy say “yes”.

The determinate negation does not just deny a predicate, it asserts another one.  We assert that another 9/11 took place, more than thirty years ago in Latin America.  We remember the hope of the poor and oppressed people of the world at the election of the popular and democratic government of Allende, who promised to share the wealth of his country with the poorest people of that society.  We will not stay silent for this day and no other.  We will not stay silent at all.  We will remember this day with the music and poetry that burst out of the chests of a generation of Chileans who got a grip and realized they could change the world. 
This generation of Chileans who were massacred by the American backed fascist General Augusto Pinochet, were murdered in their tens of thousands, given up to the two great criminal enterprises that have ravaged the Americas for five hundred years; the Vatican and Imperialism. 
Victor Jarras, legendary singer songwriter and political agitator was one of many to “disappear” to a bloody death at the hands of Pinochet’s secret police.  But Jarras’ voice did not die with him.  One of his most famous songs was called “El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido” (The People United will never be defeated), and its refrain can be heard on demonstration and strikes all over the world: the people of Iran adopted a Persian translation of it as a revolutionary song that os still sung by patriots and progressives.  Jarras was not a muslim, so the people who adopted it were clearly not reasoning along the lines shared by “moderates” and “fundamentalists” that always begin “well, as a Muslim…”.  They were thinking in the most universal terms; if you fight for freedom and equality, against tyranny and servitude you are our brothers and sisters.

“Venceremos”; again this has gone round the world and been adopted by, amongst others the leftists of Turkey and Kurdistan.

 

Everyday, working people are killed in our country because they’re bosses cannot be bothered to put in proper protection, or provide proper conditions to work in.  More people have been killed by the British police than in terror attacks.  Thirty two thousand (mostly brown and all poor) children die of starvation and easily preventable diseases every day.  Eternity is not long enough to give them their silence.   Their memorial is not made of stone and it is not quiet. 
The determinate negation of the idea that the people who were murdered for political reasons in the twin towers, as Americans, are somehow more worthy of remembrance than any other, has three parts.  First, whether by Bin Laden, Bush or Pinochet these people were all martyred by tyrants.  Second, that to respect the dead is not to have an isolated, individual moment of self absorbed silence, but to fight to avenge and redeem.  I am not sure what the third part is, not that its for me to decide.  It’s the vision of a new world that is carried in the hearts of people who resist the current order.

What I do know is that we must begin with remembering September 11th 1973.  The revolutionaries of Chile, their revolution, is not dead.  It is undead. 

 

 

Solidarity Fundraiser for the Jenin Freedom Theatre

PLSE FWD ONTO YOUR CONTACTSDear Colleagues,
INVITATION: FROM MANCHESTER TOO PALESTINE WITH LOVE                        AN EVENING OF MUSIC AND SPOKEN WORD PERFORMANCEVENUE: CONTACT THEATRE, MANCHESTER,TIME: 19:00- 23:30 PM
We welcome a donation of £5 from those attending this event. All monies raised will go directly to Freedom Theatre, Palestine.
My name is Madani Younis and I am the Artistic Director of www.freedomstudios.co.uk a theatre company based in Bradford, West Yorkshire.At the Decibel Festival this year in Manchester Rawand Arqawi from Freedom Theatre http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/ , Jenin, Palestine will be giving a talk in response to the theme of “Art in a time of conflict” .You may have heard of Freedom Theatre – its artistic director was recently assassinatedhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/apr/07/juliano-mer-khamis-theatre-palestine-west-bank  and the company are continuously harassed by the Israeli authorities.When I heard that Rawand was coming to Manchester I felt this to be an opportune moment  to show a sign of support and solidarity in their struggle from one group of artists to another.  With the support of Contact Theatre and Manchester based  artists we have put together an evening of some of the most exciting emerging and established voices in music and spoken word  performance. These artists have agreed to share their art to support the work of Freedom Theatre in Palestine.  All monies raised will go directly to Freedom Theatre and the necessary work they are doing in Palestine.We hope that you too can support this event by attending and showing your support for Freedom Theatre, Palestine.I sincerely hope that by sharing our art with others here in the UK we can help make a difference to fellow artists in Palestine.We would really love to see you at the Contact Theatre in Manchester on Friday 16th September 2011.Please pass this message onto friends, colleagues and artists.In solidarity,
Madani Younis
ARTISTIC DIRECTORFREEDOM STUDIOS
www.freedomstudios.co.u

No Justice No Peace: The Riot is the Rhyme of the Unheared, Let us Begin to Listen.

Five people are dead, more than one thousand in jail and Reuters report that Gaddafi has recognized the Tottenham rioters as the legitimate government of Britain. What the hell is going on?

At the eye of this storm lies the body of Mark Duggan, murdered by the metropolitan police. In the past the cops have been careful to leave what they presumably fell is a “respectful” length of time between political and racial murders, at least so the last can drop out of memory, but the point blank shooting of this young man has come up straight between the beating to death of Ian Tomlinson, so that nicety even, seems of another time.

The events in Tottenham seem to have escalated very quickly. A crowd of residents assembled outside the police station to protest his death, when a number of police officers fell on one young protester (some reports said a sixteen year old girl) beating and arresting her.

The rightwing press and the middle classes are as ever hoping to present this as an unpredictable carnival of the so-called underclass. There only contact with council estates and the poor being through the Hogarthian moralism of Shameless, they chalk up the three days of violence and looting to bad parenting and a lack of “respect”, noticeably absenting themselves from any comparison between this narrative and the Bullingdon escapades of certain current front bench yahoos.

This explanation will not do. Firstly, let’s say people who are poor and Black or Asian (or white in Salford) just like a good ruck. Fine. Then why riot now? The problem with this account is that it does not account for why the riots took place when and how they did. The fact of the matter is that the prime causal factor of all this rioting has been the shooting of Mark Duggan and this should not be forgotten. His poor family, have since been put through, not only his murder, but the continuing defamation of his name in the national press. First he was shooting at police (turns out he wasn’t according to their own sources), then he was on his way to kill someone (no evidence) then his uncle is supposed to have been a gangster (so what?). I am sure, I am not the only one who notices the ridiculous dance follows the same footfalls as that of de Menezes. First he had jumped over the turnstyle (but he hadn’t) then he was wearing a suspiciously padded jacket (only it was denim). In that case it turned out that a combination of murderous incompetence and the racist inability to tell two Brown people apart had lead to the mans life being taken, so forgive me if I jump to conclusions on this one.

The petrol that was lit by the spark of Duggan’s death need not have been allowed to stand out side. The Lawrence inquiry specifically called for an end to stop and search, as the sharpest edge of Police racism. This power has effectively been reintroduced under the terrorism act. It is not coincidental that no serious disturbance occurred in West Yorkshire; after the Bradford Riots of 2001 the WY Police have been very wary about certain aspects of community relations, and a lack of obviously racist stop and search methods, I am sure, contributed to the peace of this area.

Indeed, if we look at all the different areas where the riots happened we see that they seem to be as a result of quite disparate social phenomena. In Tottenham the whole of the rioting seems to have had a very anti Police dimension, and this seems to have been replicated in a lot of predominantly African Caribbean neighborhoods in London. In the texts and tweets that flew about, a real class hatred towards the police is apparent; “See a brother Salut, see a fed shoot” (sic) . Two things need pointing about this. First that in the immediate rioting around London the idea of looting seemed connected to fighting the police, and the farther one gets from the eye of this storm, the less this seems to be the case. Secondly, that no cops got killed. Contrary to the racist and anti working class (never has the word “chav” been thrown around with more bile or frequency) stereotypes that have paralyzed the bourgeois press, this is not a mob of “feral”, “wild” children intent on death and theft. They are poor young men and women sick of being targeted by police, benefits cuts, no prospects. They have no other language.

The fact that mainstream politics has absolutely no answer to the problems of these young people was made apparent in the most allegedly “non political” events of the past few days. The reports from Salford, for instance, suggest that most of the unrest was down to looting, rather than anything else. Karl Marx’s much maligned view of religion, not only as the opium of the people, but as the language through which (lacking anyother) express their discontent is reborn through its perspicuity; a generation brought up o with Fiddy as their prophet and AirMax 95s as their Black Stone will surely express their anger and discontent in precisely these terms.

What is essentially a literal act of redistribution of wealth takes here a particularly neo-Thatcherite, even “Big Society” form. There is no Left, no trade union, hell not even a reformist social democratic party that speaks to young disenfranchised workers, so poor people ape the actions of their masters; I am denied the good things of life, so I will take them by myself, for myself.

The ultimate cause of these riots is the lack of any progressive political route for young working class people. There is nothing wrong with anger, even hatred, but it needs direction. This passage a’lacte that we witnessed will ulitmately make things worse for those people and communities caught up with it. Without a plan anger gives you an ulcer; without outward facing discipline it is nothing but masturbatory self harm.

This lack of political direction is even more apparent in the racist chants of so-called “community defense” groups who grew up in South East London, for instance. These people who betrayed the influence of the EDL did much more than any leftist group to influence the turn of events. As the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow, better off sections of the working and lower middle classes may well slowly come to see where their interests lie, but without a plan from left and progressive people to win them over, time and again the post-Fascists of the EDL milieu will come off tops. After all the Daily Mail does their Chav-hating and paki-bashing for them, we need our own propaganda.

As Martin Luther King said; “A riot is the language of the unheard”. I think he is exactly right. We heard the infantile self obsession that passes for politics reflected on the streets this week. If you want something, damn anyone that stands in your way and take it, for yourself. There’s no such thing as a tax raise on the richest two percent, so fighting for a better life just sounds like taking a pair of shoes or a bigger TV. The idea that one might not want to spend every evening gentuflecting before the cold LED throb of a TV of whatever size was missing entirely from a lot of the disturbances, but then again, people do not come onto the streets with ideas fully formed. I imagine, in the early spring, Egyptians would have thought that enough of a payraise for a new telly would have been a good result. Not true any longer.

So in the midst of the competitive condemnation and calls for various prison door keys, there is a message from the storm in our streets. (A recent poll of Guardian readers found that 60% of these San Pellegrino drinkers supported the maximum sentence for someone convicted of stealing a bottle of water from Lidel). The thing is the racism, poverty, lack of jobs, cuts to benefits and overtly political policing that caused this resentment are still there. A critical, disciplined and intelligent movement must find a way to build amongst our communities, or we will not be in a position to provide any shape to peoples anger.

A storm is coming, prepare its path; take the old and rotten to the sea shore and get ready to build again.

Or drown.

Anti Fascist Fundraiser

The BBC News; Embarassing Old Couple

There’s a certain kind of old couple, maybe friends of the family.  One of them (depending on gender and proclivity) will crack on to you and/or your girl/boy friend whilst the other complains loudly about the fact that their partner doesn’t clean up, get pissed, enjoy sex or, under certain specific conditions, wear the old uniform anymore.  Picture them.  For some reason they seem to be presenting the breakfast news programme on BBC 1.

Although the specific people change the symbolic economy is reproduced exactly.  A middle aged man with small eyes will be feigning slight bemusement at Felicity Q. Tedious (who may be from Desperate Housewives, Hollyoaks or might have played the Nazi relative in The King’s Speech) and her pompous anecdote.  A woman will be sat next to him.  Severe haircut, bigger eyes.   The conversation will go something like this:

Small eyed man: Holyoaks isn’t afraid to show the scrapes H&M models can get into on their days off, or the devastating effect the public school fagging system and generations of inbreeding can have on a young mans confidence, or whatever. 

Creepy woman: Hey Granddad.  Stop embarrassing me in front of this slightly younger person.  I still groove.

Small eyed man: Felicity, when did you first understand how important you are?

An inordinate amount of time is spent trying to convince us that these people, whoever bourgeois inanities that fronts the latest teen emo sensation, whichever Apprentice finalist, or whatever temple prostitute the massenkultur priests have sent that morning, are real people with like, real emotions and feelings in a bid to make us hate them, and the conditions we live in, a little less. 

Thing is, that kind of strategy doesn’t work.  Look at the limit case.  I saw an interview with one of Hitler’s secretaries, where she quite honestly described him as a dog lover who liked to share cakes with small children.  But this doesn’t make him less of a vile racist.

The creepy breakfast couple love a bit of Prince Phillip.  During his birthday interviews, cantankerous old Phil was consistently referred to as “colourful” (sic.).  Apparently judging the content of someone’s character on the colour of their skin is some sort of personal idiosyncrasy. 

Then they jump into action.  Man looks stern.  It kicks off.  Maybe it’s snowing too much. Sterner look, clench jaw.  The grit, it’s running out. 

As for Freud’s obsessionals, the skittish pseudo-activity that constitutes mainstream news is an attempt to disguise the fact that nothing is actually happening.  Every day life is pretty repetitive, boring and stupid, at least under late capitalism.  The creepy old couple, flirt, terrify and prostrate themselves so that we keep watching them.  They know that when the guests leave they’ll be alone; with half a Marks’s Indian Snack Tray, a few dregs of booze and the hollow flicker of a TV set.