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#15113213
wat0n wrote:
Is @ckaihatsu now seriously denying the racist and fascist nature of Ba'athism like he denies Marx's antisemitism? :lol:



I mentioned before that, according to the source material you provided, Marx was *describing* the oppressed social status of Jews during his time, using unkind terms. For Marx / anyone to be antisemitic he would have to describe Jews as an ethnicity in roundly perjorative terms.

For any countries, like Syria, Iran, and Turkey, to deny the Kurds nationhood is *oppressive*, but it's not fascist.

The United States denies the black-identity movement its own national territory, but that alone doesn't make the U.S. fascist.


wat0n wrote:
I bet the Kurds from Iraq who were gassed by Saddam Hussein and the Kurds from Syria who got their citizenship taken and faced persecution for merely speaking Kurdish would be interested to learn more details.



Okay, go ahead and let them know.
#15113216
anasawad wrote:
Their ideology is called Socialist Nationalism, i.e. Fascism. They were even supported by literally NAZI Germany during their early rise.



Source, please.


Rich wrote:
The Soviet Union was extremely fascist. It was extremely Socialist. But it was not nationalist. It was mobilised not around a Nationalist cause but around the Marxist Religion and its Communist Party Church and its Marxist Priesthood.



Fascists are pro-capitalist, while socialists are *anti-capitalist*.

The Stalinist USSR *was* nationalist because its workers were not in control of its national production -- it used bureaucratic elitism, or state planning.

Marxism isn't a religion -- it's a science:


Historical materialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism


---


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show
Image
By wat0n
#15113218
ckaihatsu wrote:I mentioned before that, according to the source material you provided, Marx was *describing* the oppressed social status of Jews during his time, using unkind terms. For Marx / anyone to be antisemitic he would have to describe Jews as an ethnicity in roundly perjorative terms.


He did in fact do that.

ckaihatsu wrote:For any countries, like Syria, Iran, and Turkey, to deny the Kurds nationhood is *oppressive*, but it's not fascist.

The United States denies the black-identity movement its own national territory, but that alone doesn't make the U.S. fascist.


You forgot about the ideology behind Assad's and Hussein's policy towards the Kurds and other non-Arabs in general. If instead of Arabic they were Aryan, they would be Nazis and rightly so.

The US and other Western societies do not forbid minorities from speaking their own languages and naming their kids as they wish, they don't go ahead and gas their communities and they also don't have a totalitarian regime to that effect.
#15113220
@ckaihatsu
On 1 April 1941, a day after General Erwin Rommel began his Tunisian offensive, the 1941 Iraqi coup d'état overthrew the pro-British Iraq regime.

Dr. Fritz Grobba served intermittently as the German ambassador in Iraq from 1932 to 1941, supporting anti-Jewish and fascist movements in the Arab world. Intellectuals and army officers were invited to Germany as guests of the Nazi party, and antisemitic material was published in the newspapers. The German embassy purchased the newspaper al-Alam al-Arabi ("The Arab World") which published anti-Jewish, anti-English, and pro-Nazi propaganda, including a serialized translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf in Arabic.

While Germany was not openly allied with the Baathist government in Iraq like Italy was during the Anglo-Iraqi war,[54] it provided air support. On 1–2 June 1941, immediately after the collapse of the pro-Fascist Rashid Ali government in Iraq, the Mufti and others inspired a pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad known as the Farhud. The estimates of Jewish victims vary from less than 110 to over 600 killed, and from 240 to 2000 wounded. Gilbert Achcar says that historian Bernard Lewis cites the numbers (officially 600 killed and 240 injured, with unofficial sources being "much higher") as the number of Jewish victims, without citing a single reference.[55] Edwin Black concludes that the exact numbers will never be known, pointing out the improbability of the initial estimate in the official reports of 110 fatalities that included both Arabs and Jews (including 28 women), as opposed to the claims of Jewish sources that as many as 600 Jews were killed. Similarly, the estimates of Jewish homes destroyed range from 99 to over 900 houses. Though these figures are debated in the secondary literature, it is generally agreed that over 580 Jewish businesses were looted. The Iraqi-Arab Futuwwa youth group—modeled after the Hitler Youth—were widely credited with the Farhud. The Futuwwa were commanded by Iraqi minister of education Saib Shawkat, who also praised Hitler for eradicating Jews.

In June 1941, Wehrmacht High Command Directive No. 32 and the "Instructions for Special Staff F" designated Special Staff F as the Wehrmacht's central agency for all issues that affected the Arab world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations ... ooperation

And they'll tell you it's Arab nationalism mixed with socialism, call themselves socialist nationalists, and call for a united state for the Arabs. i.e. an Ethnostate.
#15113228
anasawad wrote:Hezbollah and the FPM (Aoun's party) are the ones in control for the most part with most corruption being by them, so they hold more blame than the others.

Since the neo-liberal class has abandoned social programs in Lebanon, Hezbollah is the only organization taking care of the masses of Lebanese people and their basic services.

It would seem that you, JohnRawls, and Israel would like to see all social services dissappear from Lebanon.

You guys are questionning why an organization is picking up garbage, and taking care of the poor and displaced, rather than letting the market and the IDF decide who lives and who dies (of being bitten by rats).

Interesting how the people who want to enslave the world first need the rats to start the process.
#15113232
@QatzelOk
Since the neo-liberal class has abandoned social programs in Lebanon, Hezbollah is the only organization taking care of the masses of Lebanese people and their basic services.

And we used to fund those programs until we left Hezbollah and now all those programs are falling apart with the exception of our own in our territories.

Also, the Maronite and Orthodox churches have social welfare programs.

It would seem that you, JohnRawls, and Israel would like to see all social services dissappear from Lebanon.

Not how financing these services count as wanting to see it disappear, but I guess it's all part of the whole new western lefty logic twist eh.

You guys are questioning why an organization is picking up garbage, and taking care of the poor and displaced, rather than letting the market and the IDF decide who lives and who dies (of being bitten by rats).

Dude, you and others here need to spend a 20 or so minutes on google and look up the structure in Lebanon before making these judgments.
Also, another 30 minutes on pre-colonial history of the region of Syria and the ruling class in Syria.
#15113237
anasawad wrote:Dude, you and others here need to spend a 20 or so minutes on google and look up the structure in Lebanon before making these judgments.
Also, another 30 minutes on pre-colonial history of the region of Syria and the ruling class in Syria.

You're underestimating the amount or a priori knowledge some posters have here on the board, and you're doing this because these posters don't agree with your demonization of all things non-empire.

When a society is destroyed by foreign multinationals, it is the various religious groups who pick up the trash. It seems that the foreign multinationals ("us") simply want most Lebanese to drop dead so more profit can be extracted.

Do you really think that the 1% who own foreign multinationals care any more about your nation or mine? They just play the "special nations" game to get what they want.

Note how George Washington had the Five Nations Confederacy "destroyed" as soon as they weren't of any use to him. This is how the Empire pays back its protitutes.
#15113242
@QatzelOk
You're underestimating the amount or a priori knowledge some posters have here on the board, and you're doing this because these posters don't agree with your demonization of all things non-empire.

We fought against imperialism, and you are supporting imperialism.
The clerics' regime in Iran is imperialist. The Baath party is Imperialist.
You're not anti-empire or anti-imperialism, you're anti-west only.

When a society is destroyed by foreign multinationals, it is the various religious groups who pick up the trash. It seems that the foreign multinationals ("us") simply want most Lebanese to drop dead so more profit can be extracted.

We know, and Hezbollah is part of those foreign powers since it no longer has its old local element, rather primarily led by the interests and orders of the Iranian regime.
And just like we kicked the Israelis, the PLO, and the Syrians out, we'll kick them out as well.

Do you really think that the 1% who own foreign multinationals care any more about your nation or mine? They just play the "special nations" game to get what they want.

Sure, but you can't be against the imperialism of multinational interest and business groups all while supporting the imperialism of others.
All imperialism is bad, it shouldn't be hard to get.
#15113249
ckaihatsu wrote:Tribes are based on heredity, while nations are based on bureaucracy.


There's always an ''old boy network'' with bureaucracy, various cliques, mafias, clans, and so forth. That is, a vestigial remnant of tribalism with an extended kinship group of some kind in which members tend to help each other out in various ways.

Conversely there is an element of formalism and ritual in tribal groups as well in which favors are granted or withdrawn and problems worked out in which everyone is reminded of their place in the larger whole.
#15113258
anasawad wrote:
@ckaihatsu

It's a mixture of Arab nationalism and socialism, and they call themselves socialist nationalists.


unity:
All the minorities that suffered ethnic cleansing by the Baath party in Syria and Iraq want a word.

Freedom:
The 10s of thousands of political prisons in Sednaya and Tadmor prisons, as well as the 100s of thousands persecuted and killed in Iraq by the Baath regime want a word.

Socialism:
House Makhlouf, House Assad, and their relatives, sitting on their billions of dollars of corruption money, approve of this propaganda message.


Regarding the presence of the left streak in the Baath party, all of them were purged out during the internal conflicts of the 60s as the right wing military leaders took power of the party.


Read up on the history of the middle east.
It was never united for it to be divided and conquered. Unions were forced on it by colonial powers and maintained by Arab nationalists and Supremacists.

Also, that's not what zionism is.


Pan arabism has sought to ethnic cleanse non-Arab minorities from the region, and has succeeded in most places.
Also, being former colonies is irrelevant to some being Arab supremacists.


Clearly then you haven't heard of the genocides committed in the middle east in the name of Arab Supremacy and an Arab ethnostate.




The capital of Hezbollah was in Baalbek before the Doha agreement.
The foundation of Hezbollah started in Baalbek.
Baalbek tribes have been close allies to Iran for decades through the Iranian tribes as we share common blood (My family, for example, are duel citizens of Lebanon and Iran and much of my family used to live in Iran until very recently)
The first cracks started when Nasrallah decided to ally with the Syrian regime, and the full break up began with the Syrian war as the tribes sided with the rebels while Nasrallah and the clerics sided with the regime.

Also, we financed most of the institutions, not Iran, which is why it almost entirely went bankrupt and started cutting down activity and shutting down once we left.



It was neither, the conflict started around the beginning of the cold war, with some conflicts going back to the mid 19th century (1800s)


Read my posts to @annatar1914 . I made the point.


Pro-Hezbollah protests are barely noticeable. The protestors were shouting Hezbollah is a terrorist and called for all the ruling class to be hanged including Nasrallah.





Nope. Tribes in the region vary widely in governing systems, and not all are based on heredity.
Even blood connection is not that common within tribes since most of them are the result of 100s and 1000s of years of constant merging between smaller tribes and clans to make up bigger and bigger ones.



Okay, I'm going to go by the following statement:


https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/06/assa-j16.html


The bitter legacy of Syria's Hafez al-Assad

By Jean Shaoul and Chris Marsden

16 June 2000

Spoiler: show
The political career of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, whose death June 10 ended a 30-year reign, illustrates the organic incapacity of the Arab bourgeoisie to realise the aspirations of the Arab masses for freedom from foreign domination, democracy and social justice.

Assad was often described as a “strongman”, a fitting term when applied to the ruthless methods he employed to suppress opposition to his rule. But, as is so often the case, Assad's strong measures were the recourse of a weak regime.

Assad spent his 30 years in power carrying out a tortuous balancing act. Domestically, he was compelled to manoeuvre between various social interests and factions—religious, clan, geographical—sometimes by means of diplomacy, at other times using the methods of palace intrigue, political purge or the hangman's noose. Externally, he was obliged to seek the protection of more powerful sponsors. For the first 20 years of his rule, during the Cold War, he was a client of the Soviet Union. After the break-up of the USSR, he inexorably gravitated toward the US-Israeli axis.

This lack of genuine independence was expressed in Assad's twists and turns in foreign policy and the glaring contradiction between his words—bristling with anti-Zionist bravado—and his deeds. Despite being one of the Arab leaders of the so-called “Steadfastness Front” against Israel, Assad's record of treachery toward the Palestinian people stands out among his counterparts in the region, who, as a group, were hardly known for their courage in the face of the traditional enemies of the Arab masses.

In the Western press, Assad's characteristic indecision and even paralysis—except when it came to putting down internal opposition—has been generally interpreted as the modus operandi of a master tactician. In fact, these features reflected the fatally compromised position of the Arab national bourgeoisie—a social class whose misfortune is to have arisen in the epoch of imperialism, when the path to national consolidation undertaken in previous centuries by England, France, the US, etc., was no longer open to countries with a late capitalist development.

Weak, divided, tied by innumerable threads to pre-capitalist clan groupings and big landholders on the one hand, and economically dependent on Western finance on the other, the Arab bourgeois leaders as a breed—from Egypt's Mubarak, to Jordan's King Hussein, to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, to Syria's Assad—built bloated military and intelligence apparatuses, not for the purpose of liberating territories once belonging to the Palestinians, but rather for fending off Israeli expansionism and repressing their own populations.

Because Syria lacked the massive oil deposits of its neighbour to the east, Assad was less able than the Iraqi Ba'athists to develop the rudiments of a modern industrial economy and welfare state. Even less than Saddam Hussein could Assad point to social progress as a justification for his reliance on the police, the military and the secret services.

Assad's early career
Assad was born in 1930, when Syria was still a French protectorate. He was a member of the small Alawite Shi'ite community in a country of predominantly Sunni Muslims. The Alawite clans were viewed by France as potential tools in the old divide-and-rule strategy of colonial government, and were given privileged treatment. Assad became the first to leave his village to go to secondary school in Latakia, where he was soon caught up in the political maelstrom that eventually drove the French out of Syria in 1946.

The newly independent Syria, dominated by big land-owning families, became a byword for political instability, with successive governments deposed through military coups. Political life was dominated by Arab nationalism, the Stalinism of the Syrian Communist Party (which adapted itself to bourgeois nationalism), and Islamic fundamentalism. At the age of 16, Assad joined the newly founded Arab Ba'ath Socialist party, whose name means Arab Renaissance. It espoused secular pan-Arab nationalism, dressed up in socialist phraseology.

Assad joined the Air Force and was rapidly promoted. He was sent for training to the Soviet Union, and was later posted to Egypt during the abortive attempt to unite Egypt and Syria (in the form of the United Arab Republic) at the end of the 1950s. In 1963, the Ba'ath party seized power in Damascus and Assad became commander of the Air Force. In 1966, a radical left-wing group inside the Ba'ath Party overthrew the faction that had toppled the government three years earlier. At the age of 35, Assad was appointed minister of defence.

Despite his initial relations with the left wing of the party, Assad's rise to power was bound up with a right-wing reaction to the initial radicalism of Ba'athism, in the aftermath of the disastrous defeat of the Arab forces in the 1967 war with Israel. The Syrian armed forces, whose ranks had been thinned by constant coups and infighting, were no match for the military power of the Israelis. Despite holding out the longest, they lost the Golan Heights. This defeat strengthened conservative forces within the Ba'ath party and the military, for which Assad became the spokesman.

The incident which propelled these conflicts within Syria's Ba'ath Party forward, and for which Assad became notorious, followed from the September 1970 decision by Syria to send tanks into Jordan to support the Palestinians, who formed the majority of Jordan's population, against King Hussein.

Assad's foreign policy and the Palestinians
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was a radical national movement which won popular support after the Arab regimes were discredited in the 1967 debacle. King Hussein launched an attack on PLO forces in Jordan because of their declared policy of deposing his and other monarchies in the Middle East.

Jordan's government was quickly supported by both Israel and the US, which dispatched the sixth fleet to the eastern Mediterranean. Syria and Iraq both backed the Palestinians, and Syria sent a tank brigade into Jordan. However Minister of Defence Assad opposed Syrian military support for the Palestinians, for fear that Syria would be drawn into an all-out war with Israel. He refused to provide air cover to the Syrian tanks when they came under Jordanian attack, forcing the brigade to withdraw. This left the Palestinians isolated, and thousands were massacred by Hussein's forces in pogroms that became known as “Black September”.

Assad's abandonment of the Palestinians in Jordan set a precedent that was to be repeated in subsequent acts of treachery, including his collusion in the Lebanese falangists' massacre of Palestinians at Beirut's Tel al Zaatar camp in 1976.

Only weeks after Black September, in November of 1970, Assad led a military coup and seized power in Damascus. He consolidated his position by bringing members of his Alawite clan into key positions, particularly in the armed forces, security services and government bureaucracy. Assad's staying power, now credited by Western leaders with bringing 30 years of political stability to Syria, was largely secured through the ample use of 15 different security services and rigid state control of the media and all forms of communication.

Assad portrayed himself as a defender and friend of the Palestinian people. But his support for the Palestinians was always subordinated to considerations of Syria's national interests, which were identified with the maintenance of his own regime. He repeatedly chose to safeguard Syria from Israeli and US wrath and abandon the Palestinians to their fate. His “support” for the Palestinian cause was, more precisely, an attempt to dominate the Palestinian masses and utilise them as pawns in his diplomatic manoeuvres abroad and power politics at home. As early as 1966, when Arafat first tried to throw off Syrian control, Assad had him and a number of his key supporters locked up in Mezze prison for 55 days.

In 1973 Syria waged an unsuccessful war against Israel alongside Egypt in an attempt to regain control of the Golan Heights, after which Egyptian President Anwar Sadat began to make open overtures to the US and Israel. Two years later, civil war broke out in Lebanon between fascist Christian falangists, who were supported by Israel, and the impoverished Shiite and Druze communities and Palestinian refugees, who together made up a majority of the population. Assad believed that another all-out war with Israel had to be prevented at all costs.

When it looked as though Lebanon was in danger of being split into two, Syria, with the backing of the Arab League, took up arms in a de facto alliance with Israel and intervened to prevent the rout of the falangists, allowing them to besiege the Palestinian camps of Karantina and Tel al Zaatar, killing 2,000 refugees.

In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon when their proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, were unable to curb the Palestinians. Arafat and Assad agreed to pool their forces to meet the Israeli attack. But after the Israeli air force destroyed the Syrians' Sam missile systems and 40 of their jet fighters in one day, putting an end to any prospect of further support from Moscow, Assad agreed to a truce without so much as consulting Arafat. This truce has been in effect ever since.

Syria's truce paved the way for Israel to lay siege to Beirut, during which an estimated 18,000 people were killed and 30,000 injured. The Israelis demanded the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon as the price for lifting the siege, and then stood by while their falangist allies massacred the Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.

Notwithstanding Assad's pan-Arab rhetoric, his relations with the other Ba'athist regime, in neighbouring Iraq, were always strained, and they deteriorated rapidly after Tel al Zaatar. Syria and Iraq were divided by party schisms and conflicting interests in the region, including control over the Euphrates' waters, control over oil pipelines and other economic issues. When the Iranian Islamic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini declared war on Iraq in 1980, Syria supported Iran.

Internal repression
If Tel al Zaatar epitomised Assad's duplicity toward the Palestinians, his murderous assault in 1982 on his own citizens in the town of Hama summed up his ruthlessness in crushing internal dissent. The Hama massacre took place under conditions of deepening economic crisis, increasing social inequality and rising popular discontent.

From 1977 on Assad was faced with growing opposition led by the Muslim Brotherhood and other mainly Sunni groups. In June 1979 there was an attempt to overthrow him, when the Muslim Brotherhood murdered 50 Alawite cadets at the military academy in Aleppo. A year later Assad was targeted in a grenade attack. In revenge, his brother Rifaat, head of Syria's security forces, gunned down more than 250 religious opponents in their prison cells.

In February 1982 a Muslim Brotherhood revolt broke out in Hama. Ba'ath Party officials were killed and appeals were broadcast from the mosques for a national insurrection. Assad's retribution was ruthless. The military levelled half of the city, slaughtering an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 people.

It is estimated that between 1982 and 1992 thousands were arrested for political dissent and 10,000 were executed. Amnesty International noted in its most recent report that thousands of political prisoners remained incarcerated, without having had the benefit of a trial, while many more were in exile.

Assad's moves toward peace with the US and Israel
Despite Assad's troubled relations with the major capitalist powers and Israel, he pioneered his country's initial rapprochement with the West. In May 1973, he restored diplomatic relations with Britain, and in 1974 with the US and Germany. Nevertheless, because of his support for various terrorist groups and his backing of Iran in the 1980s, Washington branded Syria a pariah state.

In his dealings with the Western powers, Assad relied on the military and political support of the USSR. However, Soviet credit, aid and military hardware were always miserly compared to the lavish support the US gave to Israel. Moreover, Assad's political machinations took their toll on the Syrian economy. The Gulf States cut off aid because of his support for Iran, and the West imposed trade restrictions.

In 1989 Moscow cut off arms supplies to Syria, and the crisis that was to lead two years later to the collapse of the USSR assumed increasingly open forms. Assad responded by largely abandoning the pretence of opposing the imperialist powers. He threw his lot in with the US and sent troops to join the Western coalition against his old rival Iraq in the 1990-91Gulf War.

While only a few thousand troops were deployed as a reserve force in Saudi Arabia, the presence of soldiers from an Arab nationalist country was a major propaganda coup for the US. Following his support for the bombing of Iraq, Assad supplied information about hostages and planned terrorist attacks on Western targets. He evicted some of the West's most wanted terrorists from Damascus, such as Carlos “the Jackal”. More recently, Assad gave way to US pressure and expelled Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish Workers Party, thereby paving the way for his trial as a terrorist in Turkey.

In return for Syria's role in the Gulf War, the West turned a blind eye to Assad's despatch of troops further into Lebanon and the installation of a pro-Syrian government in Beirut in 1991, effectively making the country a satellite of Damascus.

That same year, Assad agreed to attend bilateral talks in Madrid on a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, despite having long spoken against separate agreements with Israel. To date, Syria has not been able to reach a final settlement with Israel, in part because the resulting internal economic and social tensions could blow the fragile Syrian state apart. Not long ago Assad said he faced assassination if he negotiated a deal on terms unfavourable to Syria.

Assad's legacy
The praise extended to Assad after his death by world leaders reflects their appreciation of his role in suppressing the revolutionary aspirations of the Arab masses. He is mourned in Washington, London and Paris because his sudden departure is one more destabilising factor in a region pregnant with explosive contradictions.

Today, the Syrian economy is in dire straits. Oil production is down to 400,000 barrels per day, and there is little prospect of an increase. Syria no longer has the cash to maintain the state apparatus and public services that provided work and wages for wide layers of the population. The turn to privatisation and integration into the world economy threatens the wealth and privileged position of Assad's narrow political base. With one of the highest birth rates in the world, and more than half the population under 25, income per head is declining.

Assad's legacy is a bitter one, but it is by no means unique. Despite different origins and histories, he ended up treading essentially the same road as King Hussein of Jordan and his long-time foe, Arafat.

Under various banners, the Arab bourgeoisie has sought to advance itself as the “natural leader” of the movement of the oppressed Arab masses against imperialist domination. In the case of Pan-Arabism and Ba'athism, it sought to combine the project of building an “Arab nation” with pledges to construct an egalitarian regime, akin to socialism. It was aided in this task by the Stalinist parties, which subordinated the independent interests of the working class to the bourgeoisie and its nationalist program.

The history of Syria and the entire Middle East has demonstrated, in the negative, the correctness of the Marxist theory of Permanent Revolution, as elaborated by Leon Trotsky. In countries with a belated capitalist development—even those possessing vast oil wealth—the native bourgeoisie is organically incapable of leading the workers and oppressed masses in overcoming the legacy of feudal backwardness and colonial subjugation. Its interests are fundamentally linked with and subordinate to those of the imperialist powers—economically, politically and militarily. Above all, it is concerned with suppressing the internal political threat to its rule posed by the working class.

The liberation of the Arab masses and the achievement of democracy and social equality require a new perspective and a new leadership, the basis for which is being laid by economic conditions now emerging in the Middle East which will ultimately strengthen the social position of the working class, and help Arab and Jewish workers overcome the destructive legacy of Zionist oppression and national-religious enmity.

The working class, Arab, Jewish and Iranian, must establish its political independence from its capitalist rulers. It must transcend the narrow framework of nationalism and set itself the task of uniting all of the oppressed masses of the Middle East in a socialist federation. This is the only viable strategy for overcoming Zionism, ending the national oppression of the Palestinian masses, and securing the social interests of all working people in the region. It must be fought for as an integral part of a world-wide struggle for socialism, alongside workers in the US and the other imperialist countries.

Copyright © 1998-2020 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved
#15113262
ckaihatsu wrote:
I mentioned before that, according to the source material you provided, Marx was *describing* the oppressed social status of Jews during his time, using unkind terms. For Marx / anyone to be antisemitic he would have to describe Jews as an ethnicity in roundly perjorative terms.



wat0n wrote:
He did in fact do that.



Okay, then *where is it*?


wat0n wrote:
You forgot about the ideology behind Assad's and Hussein's policy towards the Kurds and other non-Arabs in general. If instead of Arabic they were Aryan, they would be Nazis and rightly so.

The US and other Western societies do not forbid minorities from speaking their own languages and naming their kids as they wish, they don't go ahead and gas their communities and they also don't have a totalitarian regime to that effect.



(See the WSWS article that I just posted, please.)
By wat0n
#15113263
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, then *where is it*?


Since when have Jews been a social class? Does Marx's analysis even apply to Hasidic European Jews?

ckaihatsu wrote:(See the WSWS article that I just posted, please.)


Which one?
#15113265
anasawad wrote:
@ckaihatsu



On 1 April 1941, a day after General Erwin Rommel began his Tunisian offensive, the 1941 Iraqi coup d'état overthrew the pro-British Iraq regime.

Dr. Fritz Grobba served intermittently as the German ambassador in Iraq from 1932 to 1941, supporting anti-Jewish and fascist movements in the Arab world. Intellectuals and army officers were invited to Germany as guests of the Nazi party, and antisemitic material was published in the newspapers. The German embassy purchased the newspaper al-Alam al-Arabi ("The Arab World") which published anti-Jewish, anti-English, and pro-Nazi propaganda, including a serialized translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf in Arabic.

While Germany was not openly allied with the Baathist government in Iraq like Italy was during the Anglo-Iraqi war,[54] it provided air support. On 1–2 June 1941, immediately after the collapse of the pro-Fascist Rashid Ali government in Iraq, the Mufti and others inspired a pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad known as the Farhud. The estimates of Jewish victims vary from less than 110 to over 600 killed, and from 240 to 2000 wounded. Gilbert Achcar says that historian Bernard Lewis cites the numbers (officially 600 killed and 240 injured, with unofficial sources being "much higher") as the number of Jewish victims, without citing a single reference.[55] Edwin Black concludes that the exact numbers will never be known, pointing out the improbability of the initial estimate in the official reports of 110 fatalities that included both Arabs and Jews (including 28 women), as opposed to the claims of Jewish sources that as many as 600 Jews were killed. Similarly, the estimates of Jewish homes destroyed range from 99 to over 900 houses. Though these figures are debated in the secondary literature, it is generally agreed that over 580 Jewish businesses were looted. The Iraqi-Arab Futuwwa youth group—modeled after the Hitler Youth—were widely credited with the Farhud. The Futuwwa were commanded by Iraqi minister of education Saib Shawkat, who also praised Hitler for eradicating Jews.

In June 1941, Wehrmacht High Command Directive No. 32 and the "Instructions for Special Staff F" designated Special Staff F as the Wehrmacht's central agency for all issues that affected the Arab world.


anasawad wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations ... ooperation

And they'll tell you it's Arab nationalism mixed with socialism, call themselves socialist nationalists, and call for a united state for the Arabs. i.e. an Ethnostate.



Okay, noted, but here's from the WSWS article, regarding the postwar political *mechanics* of the region:



Under various banners, the Arab bourgeoisie has sought to advance itself as the “natural leader” of the movement of the oppressed Arab masses against imperialist domination. In the case of Pan-Arabism and Ba'athism, it sought to combine the project of building an “Arab nation” with pledges to construct an egalitarian regime, akin to socialism. It was aided in this task by the Stalinist parties, which subordinated the independent interests of the working class to the bourgeoisie and its nationalist program.

The history of Syria and the entire Middle East has demonstrated, in the negative, the correctness of the Marxist theory of Permanent Revolution, as elaborated by Leon Trotsky. In countries with a belated capitalist development—even those possessing vast oil wealth—the native bourgeoisie is organically incapable of leading the workers and oppressed masses in overcoming the legacy of feudal backwardness and colonial subjugation. Its interests are fundamentally linked with and subordinate to those of the imperialist powers—economically, politically and militarily. Above all, it is concerned with suppressing the internal political threat to its rule posed by the working class.



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/06/assa-j16.html
#15113268
ckaihatsu wrote:
Tribes are based on heredity, while nations are based on bureaucracy.



annatar1914 wrote:
There's always an ''old boy network'' with bureaucracy, various cliques, mafias, clans, and so forth. That is, a vestigial remnant of tribalism with an extended kinship group of some kind in which members tend to help each other out in various ways.

Conversely there is an element of formalism and ritual in tribal groups as well in which favors are granted or withdrawn and problems worked out in which everyone is reminded of their place in the larger whole.



Okay, since I'm not *apologizing* for either of these types of ruling-class organization, I have no political comment here.
#15113269
ckaihatsu wrote:
I mentioned before that, according to the source material you provided, Marx was *describing* the oppressed social status of Jews during his time, using unkind terms. For Marx / anyone to be antisemitic he would have to describe Jews as an ethnicity in roundly perjorative terms.



wat0n wrote:
He did in fact do that.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, then *where is it*?



wat0n wrote:
Since when have Jews been a social class? Does Marx's analysis even apply to Hasidic European Jews?



Either back up your characterization of Marx with some supporting evidence, or else *forfeit* your contention.


---


wat0n wrote:
Which one?



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/06/assa-j16.html
By wat0n
#15113271
ckaihatsu wrote:Either back up your characterization of Marx with some supporting evidence, or else *forfeit* your contention.


The Jews living in the shtetls are a great counterargument. Poor, very backwards, very religious, rural, not well integrated within the emerging capitalist economy and so on.

ckaihatsu wrote:https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/06/assa-j16.html


How does it support your claims regarding Assad's regime fascism? If anything it supports mine a lot more. Thanks.
#15113276
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, since I'm not *apologizing* for either of these types of ruling-class organization, I have no political comment here.


I'm not inferring that you were, no problem. For that matter neither am I necessarily, I just think that this is the reality of the situation.
#15113278
https://www.marxists.org/subject/marxmyths/hal-draper/article.htm

Characterization of Marx as Anti-Semitic seem to extend no further than a later historical development in which the commonly used terms of the time are in retrospect considered derogatory than of anything in the content of his writing suggesting an anti-semitic position.
#15113282
ckaihatsu wrote:
Either back up your characterization of Marx with some supporting evidence, or else *forfeit* your contention.



wat0n wrote:
The Jews living in the shtetls are a great counterargument. Poor, very backwards, very religious, rural, not well integrated within the emerging capitalist economy and so on.



Okay -- you made your decision. You'd rather go off on a tangent.


---


wat0n wrote:
You forgot about the ideology behind Assad's and Hussein's policy towards the Kurds and other non-Arabs in general. If instead of Arabic they were Aryan, they would be Nazis and rightly so.

The US and other Western societies do not forbid minorities from speaking their own languages and naming their kids as they wish, they don't go ahead and gas their communities and they also don't have a totalitarian regime to that effect.



ckaihatsu wrote:
(See the WSWS article that I just posted, please.)



wat0n wrote:
How does it support your claims regarding Assad's regime fascism? If anything it supports mine a lot more. Thanks.



I'm pro-oppressed-minority, so I'm pro-Kurdish-nationalism.

I only defend Assad *geopolitically*, as the elected leader of Syria, as with Maduro for Venezuela. They should not be subject to geopolitical interference, as from the Western countries / NATO. Any concerns about either can be dealt with *internally*, by each country's own people.

You're *alluding* to several arguments, but you're not actually *making* any further arguments.

Here's about your false contention about chemical gassing:



On 4 January 2015, the OPCW stated that destruction was completed,[6] though since then previously undeclared traces of compounds in a Syrian government military research site have been reported.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPCW_Fact ... n_in_Syria



And here's some clarification on Jordan's treatment of the Kurds, and on Syria's treatment of the Kurds:



Kurds in Jordan refers to people born in or residing in Jordan who are of Kurdish origin. The Kurdish population in Jordan is approximately 30,000 and they mainly live in the cities of Amman, Irbid, Salt and Zarqa. The approximately 100 years old community are almost completely integrated into the Jordanian society. Because of the integration of the Kurdish community, they do not have a granted seat in the Parliament of Jordan.[1]

Kurds have been living in Jordan since 1173 with the establishment of Saladin's Ayyubid dynasty.[1] Kurds in the military of the Ottoman Empire later settled in Salt.[4] Kurds fled to Jordan as a result of the Kurdish massacres in Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s,[5] more Kurds arrived to Jordan from Palestine during the Nakba and the 1967 Palestinian exodus[3] and later Kurdish refugees arrived to Jordan from Iraq after the Gulf War.[6] There are also many Iranian Kurds in Jordan as refugees as a result of the Islamic revolution of Iran.[7][8]

The former Jordanian Prime Minister Saad Jumaa was of Kurdish origin.[9]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds_in_Jordan




The Kurdish population of Syria is that country's largest ethnic minority,[7] estimated at between 7% and 16% of the country's population.[1][8][9][1][10][11][7] In 2019, the New York Times estimated the proportion of Kurds in Syria between 5 and 10%.[12]

The northeastern Kurdish-inhabited region covers the greater part of Hasakah Governorate. The main cities in this region are Qamishli and Al-Hasakah. Other regions with significant Kurdish populations are Kobanî (officially known as Ayn al-Arab) in the north and Afrin in the northwest, along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Human rights organizations have accused the Syrian government of routinely discriminating and harassing the Syrian Kurds.[13][14] Many Kurds seek political autonomy for the Kurdish-inhabited areas of Syria, similar to Iraqi Kurdistan in Iraq, or outright independence as part of Kurdistan. In the context of the Syrian Civil War, Kurds have established a self-governing region,[15][16][17] in northeastern Syria.[18]



Mistreatment by Syrian government

See also: Human rights in Syria

International and Kurdish human rights organizations have accused the Syrian government of discriminating against the Kurdish minority.[100][101][102] Amnesty International also reported that Kurdish human rights activists are mistreated and persecuted.[103]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds_in_Syria
By wat0n
#15113286
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay -- you made your decision. You'd rather go off on a tangent.


No, it's not a tangent. I find it hard to believe Marx was unaware of the existence of the shtetls.

ckaihatsu wrote:I'm pro-oppressed-minority, so I'm pro-Kurdish-nationalism.

I only defend Assad *geopolitically*, as the elected leader of Syria, as with Maduro for Venezuela. They should not be subject to geopolitical interference, as from the Western countries / NATO. Any concerns about either can be dealt with *internally*, by each country's own people.

You're *alluding* to several arguments, but you're not actually *making* any further arguments.

Here's about your false contention about chemical gassing:

And here's some clarification on Jordan's treatment of the Kurds, and on Syria's treatment of the Kurds:


I'm not sure about what part of my arguments is false. Did Saddam Hussein gas Iraq's Kurds? Did Syria allow Kurds to use their language freely and recognize their citizenship claims before the Civil War? Does Syria even do that now?

If you want to stand with fascists because of geopolitical convenience that's your right. But then don't be surprised if people point that out.
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