Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 23:32:02 -0400 From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki) Subject: M-G: COCKROACH! #82 COCKROACH! #82 A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS. It is time that the poor and working class people have a voice on the Internet. Contributions can be sent to <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Subscribtions are free at <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Now on line! Check out the Home of COCKROACH! http://www.algonet.se/~malecki ------------------------------------------------------ 1. Hitler's willing executioners. 2. Re: Putting People Outside of History ------------------------------------------------------- Hitler's willing executioners. Andy wrote: > Then why didn't fascism in Italy lead to mass murder? Andy, It did! In Africa...Futhermore I agree with Tony's arguements against you on this. In fact now I understand why you defend the fascists rights to free speech! Your theory and practice are connected. It is the classical liberal mystification of fascism you are presenting here as some sort of "Marxist" course in suicide. The point is that National Socialism in Germany drew Nationalism through a modern capitalist/imperialist instrument to its conclusion in order to defend its interests in the last round of inter-imperialist rivilry which led to a redevision of the spoils.. If the Jews were used as the human material for Hitler's plans it was hardly based on any kind of mythical or mystification of just about everybody hating jews. But in the position that jews as a specific people and class held during this period. Mainly as tradesman, small and large business men, and the role that this played against the poor and working class. Fundementally Hitler's program of race hate and extermination was linked to a very small group of fanatic Nazis's. But it found a grey area in the mass because of the Jews class position in society as being the family who owned a local business or apartment house who people owed money too. In the case of the Gypsies, it was more on the base of them being thought of as outside of mainstream society and the myths of them being a pack of thieves. Just as in Afrika with the Italians extermination of Somalians and Etritreans because of the classical Italian colonialist role saw these peoples as "inferior" and needed to be ruled. By the way the ideas proved in Africa by the Italians to exterminate Africans by loading them in to trucks and gassing then to death was used by Hitler before modern capitalist society in the form of the predessor of (Bayer Aspirin?) discovered Cyclon B as a superior method to wipe jews out. Going back in history we had other forms of "genocide" based on class relations. How about the American Indian. It was ideologically posed as the Heathens but in reality was the question of expansion and living room! Just as in India today we have sterilization as and organised form of Genocide against the lower elements of caste society.. But this also has to do with living space and not some fucking liberal mystification.. Today with fascism on the rise, fascist ideology at least in Europe is propaganda in the form of how foreign nationals (mostly those with dark skins) are being subsidized by "our" tax money. In fact it is the Nazis vanguard that is taking the inability of the capitalist/imperialist system to work out a system which provides for all . That poor and working class people can be draw into this stuff hardly proves you liberal and mystifying theory. In reality it only proves that the Leninist Vanguard was lacking that could have shown another way out. In fact much of the discussion about the victory of fascism and its consequences is being taken up by you in a very utopian-non class related- petty bougeois liberal campaign which tries to blame everything on the backwardness of the masses and them being influenced by all kinds of garbage (to a certain extent true). But you completely leave out the most vital historical factor of who leads what where. In this case fascism being the storm troopers as a last defense of a system which Lenin called the higest stage of capitalism and which is directly counterposed by the vanguard of the proletariat and its party who fight for a superior system. I won't get in to the point about Stalinist betrayal. But this in fact was the fundemental cause for the victory of fascism and in fact the COMINTERN which derived out of the Russian Revolution and destroyed by Stalin was the only real fundemental ideological force that could have changed the course of history. Your total denial of who leads what where is the fundemental problem with your entire line. It is the line of the petty bougeois intelligencia who need to find a moral justification for there own existence.. In fact throwing up this educated garbage as theory fundementally shows that Andy does not want to be part of the class struggle and take sides, but wants to declare fascism as some sort of fucking act of god along with his cohorts like Goldhagen who write mountains of material which is for consumption and confusion. I think it was Tony who said something about Fascism has to be met today and stomped out because it is in fact the gathering of those elements who in fact are the last line of defense against the decaying and rotting capitalist/imperialist system. But unless we can organize a Communist International which is the vanguard of Proletarian state power and a planned economy in a transitional period to the communist society, we will always be seeing somebody or specific group or groups of people that will be used as holacaust victims. Warm regards Bob Malecki ------------------------------------------------------- Re: Putting People Outside of History James Heartfield wrote: I don't want to be contentious for the sake of it, but Andrew Austin does have a point that is being lost here. The holocaust was an historically unique event that defined the twentieth century in a way no other did. Jim, Everytime a person takes a piss it is "unique"! But this has nothing to do with what is going on here.What Andy is doing is putting this stuff on a pedistal completely outside of any kind of historical or class and political perspective. Rather then seeing the fascist take over and following events in any kind of marxist perspective he is using liberal bougeois morality connected to the reverse version of the Nazi"The big lie" and turn it into a Zionist "The Big Myth"that the Zionists use in order to make sending Jews to be exterminated "unique". In fact there is no difference between a Nazi concentration camp and all its horrors and the bombing of Dresden. Both were imperialist solutions and the victims were just as dead. In fact nothing could be futher then the truth. All this shit about the entire German people willing taking part in the holicaust is one of the biggest falsification and propaganda numbers in history. In fact it was the Jewish leaders in many of the ghettoes that "willing" sent off their own people to the gas chambers! Not to mention the whole historical struggle leadsing up to the fact that the Nazi's took power and completely destroyed the organisations and parties of the working class long before this shit even started. In fact this was the pretext and main reason that the holicaust could take place at all.Another aspect of this is American "Nazi" propaganda directed against the "Japs" who were just vermin to be exterminated in one way or another..So who are you people twanging guitars for. Imperialism/capitalism as a system means extermination in the final analisis in one form or the other.. Now Louis and Robert are right to think that there is a lot of mystification there. Even the word 'holocaust' is a misnomer, meaning 'whole burnt offering' which means to say a sacrifice to God! But loaded as the terminology is, the holocaust is not the same as slavery or the persecution of the native Americans, nor is Zionism the same as Fascism. Those things are to be condemned in their own right, but the holocaust is different. How? Andrew says that it is because racism their operates without an economic motive. But racism often runs against simple economic motivations. In Britain the official campaign for tighter immigration laws in the sixties was foolish from an economic perspective. But that did not mean that it was a free-floating ideology. At first anti-immigrant feeling was a spontaneous mood arising out of competition for jobs and other resources. But very quickly it was manipulated by the British establishment hoping to shore up identification with the nation. Form an employers perspective it was a bind. But from the point of view of ideological domination of the British working class it was a powerful tool for the ruling class. The above is just garbage.In fact rascism works the way it works today just because we are still in most cases seeing it in a structure of bougeois structures and economics. Fascism is the next step when bougeois democratic structures connected to economic structures which are no longer viable in turning a buck or controling the masses. As soon as we go beyond the facade of bougeois democracy we find that all of the age old rascist and imperialist ideologies lead to a blood bath and extermination of other peoples. Some along lines of nationalism, others rascism and others religion. In England we have Ireland where the opposing sides unleashed want to exterminate the other side because of religion. In the former Yugoslavia with the demise of the deformed workers state and no institutions or revolution or bougeois democracy to replace it we see and saw nationalism unleashed doing its own mini version of the holicaust. The dropping of the bombs on Nagasaki and Heroshima were in fact and American version of the holicaust directed at the "yellow" japs...Who are you people trying to kid here. Hitler's racial laws were also a tool for dividing the working class along racial lines. But consensus was not the Fascists' method - they used terror. Anti-semitism did build on existing divisions in German society (in that sense Goldhagen, and Andrew are right). The division between Jews and Gentiles, though was not a simple inheritance from medieval christianity. Those primitive ideas had taken on a new content because of the massive dislocation of Jews from Eastern Europe around the turn of the century. Germany wasn't the only country that experienced an influx of East European Jews. That is not to say that 'immigration caused anti-semitism'. Rather the economics of a divided labour market were a focus for reactionary sentiments. Oh really! Well if this is the case then Godena's arguements about the American Indians have the same law of "displaced" and "influx" of people's apply. However in the opposite sense where the Indians got wiped out! It all comes down to in the final analisis of who has got the most guns and power. Custer was the fucking Hitler on a horse of the west! His program was extermination of the Indians.Just as the bombing of Nagasaki and heroshima was a program of indiscriminant slaughter. The only difference was there were no bodies to take a picture of by the victorious powers. And then their is another side of this stuff. How would Hitler and his Japanese Allies wrote history if they had won. None of that in itself 'explains' the holocaust, which Andrew is right to say, in itself defies any economic motivation. Race laws, even concentration camps can be understood in terms of the special forms of domination employed by the German state. But with the holocaust, the whole trajectory of anti-semitism has indeed spun out of control. Notwithstanding Louis Proyect's plausible objections, I still think that Arno Meyer gets the closest. Race laws and fascism get you to the point where Jews are denied all personality and rights, imprisoned in camps. But only the impending collapse of the third reich, its isolation from the imperialist bloc explains this descent into depravity. This is also a big lie. Who says that this stuff went with economic loss! In fact economics is connected to living reality and ideology. It is not just a question of bucks. In fact normal people certainly did not make any "profits" on the "holicaust". But those running the operation certainly did! Both in the form of profits in producing the camps and gas and all he rest not to mention the entire military industrial complex and not in the least the systematic confiscation of everything the jews owned including the gold in their teeth, there hair etc.. War has always been the extension of economics and capitalist profits and here you are saying this law does not apply! Bullshit. The present solutions to the "influx" problem of foreign nationals and immigrants today is a very costly project. In fact the minorities in Europe are or could be the new victims of the next holicaust to solve the problem or same problems that they had in the thirties. In other words a cheaper solution to the welfare state would be to exterminate them. The only difference is that in the 30ties the jews had a little economic clout because of their historical position. The next time around it won't be pictures of the "crystal" night we will be seeing. But the Brown shirts going into minority neigborhoods burning and killing and in the final analisis loading them on trains or what ever to be sent off for disposal. Sort of getting rid of the axcess labor and costs that fifty years of relative imperialist "peace" which as caused the peoble to have more offspring to be fed and clothed then is healthy for the system in terminal crisis of shrinking markets and over production capabilities. The holocaust is unique, it carried through the 'logic' of racial supremacy (commonplace and unexceptional in the West) to its irrational and inhuman conclusion. Other colonial powers had engaged in massacres and taken lives in their millions. But despite the occasional outcry (as at Amritsar), the relative isolation of these atrocities outside Europe meant that white supremacy was essentially intact as the dominant ideology right up to start of the Second World War. The holocaust put an end to all that. Germany, the most highly cultured of European nations, was exposed as having participated in a racial extermination on European soil on a scale and with a depravity that inverted the myth of race superiority. The Slavic barbarians of the USSR had saved civilisation from the cultured German ruling class. The allies - cynically at first - distanced themselves from race laws as part of their campaign against Germany in the war. This is just trying to cover up the barbarious other historical campaigns that have taken place in history going back to the Spanish Conquistadors! Germany could have gone and entirely different way. Because this time in history we had the great October Revolution in back of us. But the COMINTERN under the leadership of Stalin blew it with his Zig Zag politics connected to building socialism in one country. You and all the rest like Andy are in fact denying the concious factor and helping to build the liberal anti-communist and anti German myth. This also can be seen in the light of the present situation internationally of growing Inter-Imperialist rivilry and I believe that Andy and the crowd he defends feel this in there bones! Thus all of a sudden the Holicaust stuff has suddenly become so fucking important and profound. You people are creating or trying to create pro American Imperialist propaganda by taking this shit up again. It is no coincidence that these days the questions coming up of what happened with the "Nazi" gold and the Holicaust are suddenly appearing all over the place. Inter-imperialist rivilry is causing this stuff. Partially because the main Imperialist combatants are fundementally the same as they were in pre-second world war history. In fact the whole Lady Di thing is also a British version of imperialist preparation for things to come. What really would have in interesting would have been if Di's jetset boyfriend had been a German and not a rich Arab who's father owns have of London.. The impact of the holocaust can be felt throughout the rest of the century. From that point the imperial powers found that white supremacy was a compromised ideology. Official anti-racism dates from then. (That's not to say that they abandoned racism, on the contrary it continued to be a powerful tool, but it also became a much more problematic one). It is difficult to imagine how much has changed since the holocaust, because we ourselves are so much a product of it. But read the most enlightened thinkers pre-1945 and you will find them endorsing anti-semitism, eugenics, racism in a manner that seems quite extraordinary, because their is not a hint of embarrassment attached to the often expressed idea 'I am a racist'. This is exactly the kind of thinking that puts the holicaust on the pedistal. In fact it was and is only one particular expression of imperialism/capitalism gone berserk. The trenches in world war 1 was another historical version of the holicaust and the bankruptcy of this system. And probably more gas was used in the trenches then during the "holicaust" durinf the second world war. The only real difference between the holicaust in Germany and the Indian massacres in America were two distinct historical periods. Germany as and expression of the death throes of the imperial/capitalist system. And in America the death throes of and earler fuedal, hunter tribal society by the on coming bougeois revolution and expansion.. Just as the birth of Socialist society through the dictatorship of the Proletariat will also be a bloody event. Because we are working in the context of great historical contradictions based on both mysticism, left overs from fuedal society the church, and not in the least imperialist society and all of its incredible rascist and bougeois ideology based on a previous historic period and its own hysterical creations of "truth".. There is an industry now created to discover evidence of racist and anti-semitic ideas amongst our best-loved heroes from the past. Churchill was a racist according to historian Andrew ('Dog bites man') Roberts. Sweden had a eugenic policy. GB Shaw, the Webbs and DH Lawrence all wanted to exterminate the masses. Scientists of all political stripes thoght that eugenics was a wholly laudable science. Of course it is an absurdity. The real revelation would be finding somebody who did not hold some kind of race prejudice. The error is to take our post- holocaust sensibilites and imagine that we would find them reflected in people pre-holocaust. The point is that Andy and his friends are doing exactly just that. Putting the holicaust on a pedistal. It comes back to his recent revelations on how to fight "fascism" today which he OPPOSES smashing FASCISM IN ALL ITS FORMS IMMEDIATELY AND WITHOUT MERCY. BECAUSE THEY ARE OPENLY and clearly the the point guards of the only solution imperialism in its death THROES has shown us recently IN HISTORY. He in fact with his activity on this list against opposing the fascists and putting Nazism and the holicaust on a fucking pedistal become either unconciously or conciously the liberal defenders of the future REAL nazis! There is no real difference between the program of let say the National Front or Carl E. Hagens party in Norway which presently has 25% of the vote in the uppcoming elections. It is imperialism/capitalism and its advanced guard preparing for a new showdown.. I think it is a mistake to say that Israel's race policy is akin to Fascism because Israel is not an imperial power like Germany. I am saying that the category 'Fascism' ought not be detached from the real conditions that gave rise to it historically and applied to any reactionary regime or movement that formally fits the bill. If anything Israel's policy in the region has been made possible by US support. As the American government has shown they have no hesitation in massacring Arabs by their hundred of thousands when they feel it serves US interests. But even the Gulf massacre was done in the context of a war, however unevenly balanced. This last by Jim is just absurd. And he is falling into the liberal spiders nest of Andy and his cohorts. On and emotional level I suggest that Jim take a look at the pictures coming from the middle East and how the supposed Islamic fanatics are being treated. Blindfolded, back bunded on their knees in the sun. Viscious terror and torture of a Kind "Nazi" way in order to get information from these people under the cover of defending the Zionist state. Many of these people are certainly being indiscriminately arrested and tortured. On the other side we have Islamic fundementalism gone berserk with indiscriminate murder through suicide bomb patrols not to mention what would happen if a Israeli were to be captured alive. The point is that both Imperialism/capitalism which certainly the Israeli state is even if small in relationship to America or Germany expresses one form of the future holicaust unleashed if they get their way. Just as religion in the form of Islamic fundementalism based on Imperialist/capitalist economic relations in the form of oil can also very well lead to a new holicaust if they get the upper hand. Only by having a clear class perspective in relationship to a revolutionary leadership which sees Imperialism/capitalism in its death throes as the bottom line for all modern holicausts in what ever form they might take to exterminate peoples or groups of peoples is the way forward. The present trend on this list is counter-productive and as Godena says extermely dangerous because it is a tendency to capitulate to a certain version of pro-imperialist propaganda which puts the Holicaust in Germany on a pedistal. It also as the situation is today the frantic expression of our liberals gone berserk and jumping on the anti-German imperialism bandwagon in favor of their own imperialism. using the holicaust in order to prepare the masses for a new holicaust to save the world in the form of anti German propaganda is and outrageous skandal on any Marxist list. And that Hinrich has jumped on this bandwagon (perhaps out of liberal German guilt) is particully disgusting. The future head quarters of the Communist International should have its rightful place in Berlin. Because it was the German working class who without a revolutionary leadership and betrayed by the Stalinists and the Social Democrats who were the only force that could have stopped the holicaust despite which form it might have taken in the last historical epok. Just as it will only be the proletariat which can stop future holicausts despite the form they might take. Trotsky gave lesson after lesson after lesson (Russia, Italy, Spain,Germany) in the last historical crisis which led to the victory of Fascism and the 2nd world war. And it appears that our liberals on this list have learned nothing! In fact deguised in fake "Marxist" terms this debate is a liberal cover to defend America and the Zionists before a new imperialist showdown.. Warm regards Bob Malecki ------------------------------------------------------- Check Out My HomePage where you can, Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara, Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball! And Now the International Communist League Page! Just push on the "Spartacist" Button. Or Get The Latest Issue of, COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people. NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Stratfacts, Bob Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Stratfacts Radio audiences in the United States. 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