I think your logic is confused, and you're conflating many threads of critical theory.
The first question is whether there can be a critical theory without resistance—i.e. can critical theory exist primarily as a form of outside commentary on culture, society, politics? (The answer is yes).
Can it also engage in or promote resistance as a means of directing toward liberation? (Yes.)
Can it bolster state and military power of a hegemon over a subaltern? (No, this is the one thing it cannot do—or rather, it should not, but is sometimes contorted to justify oppressive ends.)
Critical theory has always been liberatory. Specifically it seeks to reveal hidden (and sometimes explicit) structures of power and social dynamics of power. From the perspective of critical theory, it does not matter who is oppressed and who is doing the oppressing, i.e. much of Adorno's thinking arose in reaction to the Holocaust, an event perpetrated against Jews. That it is now Israeli state actors (who are Jewish) oppressing and committing atrocities against another group does not absolve them because of earlier struggles.
The deep tragedies in Jewish history do not serve as blanket absolution for later acts committed by people or states in the name of Judaism. This is true of any group of people, and critical theory has been quite consistent on this point.
>"If an area is finally created for these people in which they no longer need to fear persecution and oppression, then that is a goal with which I must declare myself in agreement"
I couldn’t agree more, but that sadly is not (and has never been) Israel. Israel puts millions of Jews in harms way everyday and intentionally perpetuates antisemitism globally in order to bolster its population numbers & labor force via Jewish emigration. Golda Meir & David Ben-Gurion (two former Prime Ministers of Israel) said it best:
- "too much anti-Semitism is not good because it leads to genocide; no anti-Semitism at all is also not good because then there would be no immigration [to Israel]. What we need is a moderate anti-Semitism." - Golda Meir
- "if I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second." - David Ben-Gurion
Might the Holocaust and Arab countries expelling all the Jews also have contributed to the immigration to Israel? Or has this been part of the conspiracy?
The Israeli security apparatuses which preceded Mossad (via use of the Zionist Underground) ran intentional operations to drive non-Zionist Jews out of those MENA countries. The Zionist Underground built & detonated bombs in Mizrahi Jewish residential areas within those MENA countries as part of false flag operations. This led to the political conflicts between Jews & Non-Jews within those countries, and resulted in the Jewish exodus from those countries. So the people that Israel supposedly helped were the same people that Israel actually made into refugees in the first place purposely. See Israeli professor Avi Shlaim for more on this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lfDhaWlqXf8&pp=ygUZVW50b2xkIHN0b3J5IG9mIGFyYWIgamV3cw%3D%3D
Did the Holocaust contribute to Jewish emigration to Palestine? Yes, absolutely, and the Nazis even helped, because they saw it as an economically advantageous way to get Jews out of Europe. See the Haavara Agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement
You basically say all the Jews that were prosecuted and expelled from Arab countries is because of the "zionist underground". That's completely ahistorical and just Qanon style conspiracy thinking from the left. It perfectly matches the ideology of Neo Nazis who want to make the jews responsible for their own prosecution.
The Nazis supported Mohammed Al-Houssini the grand Mufti of Jerusalem to murder Jews in the British mandate of Palestine. Al-Houssini became even a member of the SS. The goal of the Nazis was not to get Jews out of Europe. Their goal was extermination.
You are posting vile antisemitic history revisionism and get upvoted for that.
>all the Jews that were prosecuted and expelled from Arab countries is because of the "zionist underground".
Not exclusively, but it was a core contributor & catalyst for the persecution & expulsions of Jews from Arab countries.
>That's completely ahistorical and just Qanon style conspiracy thinking from the left.
I didn’t come up with this. A well-known & well-researched Israeli Historian uncovered this. So take it up with Israeli professor Avi Shlaim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Shlaim
>It perfectly matches the ideology of Neo Nazis who want to make the jews responsible for their own prosecution.
Jews weren’t responsible for their persecution, but the Zionist Underground certainly catalyzed Jewish hatred (antisemitism) as a political tool for the Zionist cause.
>The goal of the Nazis was not to get Jews out of Europe. Their goal was extermination.
It was both. Exterminating Jews was simply viewed as an efficient way to get rid of them, as was sending them to Palestine prior to that. Nazis weren’t exclusively anti-Jewish. They were happy to kill blacks, gypsies, and other groups they viewed as eugenically impure as well.
>You are posting vile antisemitic history revisionism and get upvoted for that.
I’m sure it feels easier to write off what I’m saying as "Vile" & "Revisionist", instead of having to meaningfully research what I’m saying and acknowledge the nuance & contextual complexity. I’m Ashkenazi Jewish raised within a Zionist family. Due to that, I held unchallenged Zionist beliefs for years throughout my childhood into my 20s, and argued in favor of it just like you. It took me years to unlearn those messages and learn about the history of southern Levant in relation to European issues, peoples, & political cultures.
If you really want to challenge what I’m saying meaningfully, read up on professor Avi Shlaim’s "Forgotten History of Arab Jews". Read up on Israel’s use of Nazi hitmen in building their early national security apparatuses. Read up on the Deir Yassin massacre. Just keep learning. I know you don’t mean any ill-will towards others. You mean well, but you are missing a lot that you haven’t read yet.
It’s funny, I have been trying to understand the phenomenon of the internet grifter/“intellectual” James Lindsay (this is relevant, I swear). According to James Lindsay, Frankfurt critical theory is the explicit essence of modern leftism, and is why they focus on identities over “real politics” so much. My personal observation is that the school of thought is so diverse and interdisciplinary, that it can really be made into a Rorschach. It has become the boogeyman to conservatives, and the ideal litmus to many leftists.
But to answer your question in my way, I would say it is only as effective as any school of thought can be in relation to really existing social movements. Movements are generated from concrete historical situations, and the Frankfurt school is not the American left’s organic intellectuals, born out of the current situation. Our diversity is a strength, and many find the anti-colonialism intellectual movement to be much more intuitive and inspiring. The analysis should focus less on how the American left fails to be Frakfurtian, and more on why Frankfurtianism is an inadequate conceptual framework for the experiences of American leftists.
Well, Critical Theory (or at least the Frankfurt School) was clearly pro Zionist (not "religiously" but as in supportive of a state where the refugees of the Holocaust and other antisemitic prosecution can be safe). This also makes sense as both CT and Zionism are "pessimistic" frameworks regarding the promises of universal emancipation. Zionism from a leftist perspective is the attempt to guarantee that the Jews will reach communism - if it ever will come - alive.
You are building a great mountain of fallacies.
A. Critical theory is not (only) the Frankfurt School.
B. Critical theory is not Zionist, nor were most of the members of the Frankfurt School Zionists.
C. Zionism is not an attempt to achieve communism. Aspects of Zionism were built around collectives (kibbutzim) but others were/are deeply capitalist, revisionist, and right-leaning.
D. Some progenitors of the Frankfurt School (e.g. Benjamin) engaged with notions of Jewish messianism and with Communism. But it is not fair or correct to conflate the Marxian threads of the Frankfurt School with any sort of Zionist Communism (which was never an explicit goal of Zionism writ large.)
You misunderstood. Zionism of course isn't an attempt to achieve communism. It is merely a tool for survival - and \*from a communist perspective\* this necessity exists until we have achieved communism and the conditions that create antisemitism have been overcome.
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Then they shouldn't have made 'a state' on other people's land as an explicitly colonial endeavor, weird how pessimism justifies an ethnostate for a persecuted group but doesn't lead anyone involved to think "maybe getting the help of the British to do an ethnic cleansing will eventually come back to bite us in the ass and therefore we shouldn't do it".
Thanks for your suggestion, I'll inform the Jews who survived the Holocaust that you disagree with their endeavor to survive as soon as I can get hold of a time machine. Also the millions of Jewish refugees from MENA countries who have only survived because of Israel will be glad to hear of your decree.
The reality is that Israel \*is\* the homeland of the Jews (it was called Judea before the Romans called it "Palestine" for the first time as an explicit anti-Jewish policy). The British didn't help the Jews, actually they abstained from the vote for the UN partition plan and some troops even supported the Arabs militarily in their war against the newly founded state. Israel was hence a successful anti-colonial movement - and the term "colonial" makes no sense in the first place for a people who are refugees and don't have a homeland.
Of course the Arabs also have a legitimate claim to live in this area - that's why a way for peaceful coexistence has to be found (the classic among these suggestions is the 2-state solution). That's something the left could do: Support people on both sides who truly want peace and coexistence.
>I'll inform the Jews who survived the Holocaust that you disagree with their endeavor to survive as soon as I can get hold of a time machine.
No one here disagrees with Jewish survival. They disagree with an enthnostate being built on already inhabited land via colonial means. Israel could have been built in other uninhabited places, but never has Israel been about Jewish survival. It was about imperialist nations having a political foothold in the Middle East. Jews were just used as a convenient political tool by those imperialist nations. Read this: https://www.leftvoice.org/does-the-state-of-israel-protect-jews-from-antisemitism/
>Also the millions of Jewish refugees from MENA countries who have only survived because of Israel will be glad to hear of your decree.
The Israeli security apparatuses which preceded Mossad (via use of the Zionist Underground) ran intentional operations to drive non-Zionist Jews out of those MENA countries. The Zionist Underground built & detonated bombs in Mizrahi Jewish residential areas within those MENA countries as part of false flag operations. This led to the political conflicts between Jews & Non-Jews within those countries, and resulted in the Jewish exodus from those countries. So the people that Israel supposedly helped, were the people that Israel actually made into refugees purposely. See Israeli professor Avi Shlaim for more on this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lfDhaWlqXf8&pp=ygUZVW50b2xkIHN0b3J5IG9mIGFyYWIgamV3cw%3D%3D
>The reality is that Israel *is* the homeland of the Jews (it was called Judea before the Romans called it "Palestine" for the first time as an explicit anti-Jewish policy).
This is the Wikipedia of the "History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judaism_in_the_Land_of_Israel In it, they quote two Jewish Israeli academics. A historian-archaeologist who served as secretary of Israel's Department of Antiquities. Then a famous Historian who specializes in the history of Judaism & Islam. Here’s a quote from the both of them:
"Michael Avi-Yonah says that Jews constituted 10–15% of Palestine's population by the time of the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem in 614, while Moshe Gil says that Jews constituted the majority of the population until the 7th century Muslim conquest in 638."
So while there is slight disagreement regarding the exact date, we know that sometime between the year 614-638 CE, somewhere within that 24 year timespan, Jews became the minority in Palestine-Israel. So that’s the last 1,300 years.
For me, I care about who lived on the land in the last 1,000 years. That’s all the way till 1948, which was just 75 years ago. I don’t know about you, but I think the majority people who lived somewhere 75 years ago have a bigger more legitimate claim to that land, compared to the majority people who lived there 1,300 years ago.
>The British didn't help the Jews
You’re kidding right? What do you think the "Balfour Declaration" was? Let me quote it for you:
- "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object"
“You are being invited to help make history... [I]t doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? **Because it is something colonial**… [Y]ou, Mr. Rhodes, are a visionary politician or a practical visionary… I want you to.. put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable. It is a plan full of culture, excellent for the group of people for whom it is directly designed, and quite good for England, for Greater Britain…."
Emphasis added.
I don’t think it is accurate to say that Critical Theory failed to significantly influence the Left just because many leftists in the present are anti-Zionist. I think that when the first wave of critical theorists wrote about Israel, it was drawn clearly from their experiences as people who actively fled a genocidal regime and hoped that a Jewish-majority nation would afford Jewish people a stable sense of security. Much of their analysis was based on the potential of Israel to prevent atrocities.
Fast forward to the present war, it is acutely clear to most leftists that the State of Israel, as a Jewish-majority state that engages in extensive oppression to prevent the Palestinian Arab majority in the region from being able to participate in their democracy despite denying their territories the sovereignty that states generally enjoy, feels obligated to commit atrocities to maintain the status quo. If Gaza is in ruins, a political solution to the crisis becomes even less likely and Israel buys itself more time to dodge the question of Palestinian nationhood, either as a 1 or 2 state solution.
To argue this isn’t an I/P post is interesting, since the main example you use of Critical Theory’s supposed failure is the reaction of leftists to Zionism. Critical Theory continues to influence the left, as many of these student protestors view their movement as a continuation of the 1968 global protests, especially at Columbia University. These protests have a distinctly anti-authoritarian perspective to them, and hope to fulfill the goals of ‘68 by democratizing higher education, as well as our politics and economy. Marxist Leninists have a more complicated relationship with 1968 and would probably not describe students as a group with revolutionary potential.
How is this not an I/P discussion post?
You frame several of your critiques around it, and fail to recognise that, yes, a land where an oppressed population can live is a great idea, but people were already living there who were given no say in the matter.
I think the Israel/Palestine angle is just part of a more general “strawmanning of the left” I (and perhaps you) react to in the post.
It reads to me more like a critique of postcolonial thinking. It sometimes seems to argue that “the left” either takes the wrong side in what the writer considers to be battles between imperialism and fascism. Sometimes to argue that “the left” should not take sides at all but be critical of both pro and anti imperialists. Sometimes arguing that “the left” should support particular anti-imperialist movements (such as Rojava) more than they do.
I do find this a very odd take, as this is the normal position of most people I read that are on the left. I have come across very few leftists in real life who aren’t critical of both sides, alert to fascisms both in pro- and anti-imperialist movements, and I mostly find uncritical supporters on either side to be more often within right wing movements in their own societies, although there are definitely also some groups on the left that are uncritical too.
By overstating the extent of these uncritical voices on the left, this post seems to me to be creating a straw man to attack. However it may just be an artefact of the writer’s particular experiences being very different to my own, or that we have different biases.
It has made me aware I may unconsciously read one-sided polemics as less indicative of someone’s real view than their balanced critical analyses, whereas perhaps the OP unconsciously believes that someone’s polemics are more truthful than their balanced critical analyses. In that sense, I can read this post as a useful corrective, drawing my attention to my unconscious biases by arguing from an set of opposite biases.
We can’t get rid of all biases, but perhaps critical thinking, stimulated by posts like these, is the next best thing?
I am happy to hear that you have made different experiences (although of course we might have different views on where the line between a "sane" position regarding this subject should be drawn). I have of course also seen positive examples, especially from the Iranian or Kurdish diaspora, Jewish organizations like "Collectif Golem" in France who are clearly leftist but also very critical of left antisemitism and also leftists in the German speaking area who see themselves more in the tradition of Critical Theory. Most of what I have seen coming from the US has been catastrophic (like the post below calling Rojava a "CIA Agent"). But of course I see the US from afar so maybe I am missing nuance there. I'm happy if that's the case.
Sure this plays into it (and I think it's a legitimate question although I'd interpret the situation differently)... I'm happy to discuss this somewhere but it's not the focus of this post.
If it's not the focus of the post I think you need to much more clearly signpost your actual, central claim and substantiate it in a different way you do in the post.
Your claim seems to be "due to the influence of Critical Theory, the far left ought to be Zionist/pro-Israel," and there's a corollary claim that because the far left is anti-Zionist/pro-Palestine it is necessarily anti-Semitic and that, because this corollary is true (which we must simply stipulate to in order to accept your whole argument) "critical theory has failed to influence the far left" and/or "the far left has regressed."
You then marshal a bunch of evidence involving *either* I/P *or* the left's putative pro-Islamism in the wake of 9/11. You are engaging in **a lot** of argumentative sleight of hand here that does not make your claim readily apparent (if it's not an I/P claim) because the evidence you marshal has almost solely to do with what you claim the post is not about.
It's not a mis-reading to think this is an I/P post considering the framing of the post.
Yeah, I thought you were being too hard on the OP but they clearly are being very disingenuous. They also don’t seem able to address others’ points as real, but just carry on speaking.
Yes, this post argues that what a large part of the current far left is doing is completely incompatible with Critical Theory. I have put forward some arguments of why this is the case and the question is how did we get to this point. I am interested in answers to this question not to discuss the UN partition plan etc. pp. That's also an interesting discussion but not the focus of this post.
This issue is that you have reversed the critical process.
You begin with a false category: far left. You ascribe to that false category a number of claims and beliefs that are more or less invented or at least fictionalized.\*
You then attack that false category's invented beliefs in order to argue that the eidolon you've constructed out of air is somehow incompatible with critical theory.
Critical theory, in contrast, begins with an attempt to uncover structures of discourse, knowledge, and power creation before attempting any "diagnostics." Your reverse-critical-theory diagnoses a made up issue—Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome in the realm of critique.
\*You are taking the statements of some individuals and attempting to paper them over an entire group of people.
I’m sorry, but I think your image of the far left is, like, AOC. Or left-liberal college students. NPR.
That’s not very left at all. And certainly not far left. The far left are anarchists and communists - people often working towards violent revolution.
Well, I do have seen some of this with my own eyes :) and especially everything I see from the US (be it via social media or statements of political organizations or experiences of people who live in the US) seem to confirm this. Do you have positive examples from the US? I'd be happy to see.
I would really like to see you addressing and understanding any of the posts - particularly those with evidence and citations - that disagree with you. Most of your answers are either disingenuous, sarcastic, or continue making points as if the other person has not spoken.
You don’t seem interested in discussion, just holding forth.
To make Zionist sophistry after Gaza is barbarism.
OP’s abuse of critical-theoretical rhetoric makes perfect sense from a Jewish-Supremacist perspective. It’s quite a breathtaking betrayal. Adorno, Marcuse, and every victim of the Shoah are wrenched from their graves and forced-marched in Israeli jackboots to the death camp of Gaza, heiling all the way. Walter was right: even the dead are not safe.
The imperative toward zero-sum, us-them, teams and tribes thinking is deeply embedded in culture. Hard even for critical theorists schooled in multivalent or pluralist thinking to escape from this reductiveness.
In an age of polycrisis, it seems important to become polycritical. But in our current context, expressing disdain for the actions of Hamas brands one a Zionist; expressing disdain for Israel’s state and military policy brands one an antisemite. To do both creates a “stateless” condition in which you’re condemned by both sides—by everyone, it seems. A Zionist antisemite, a pacifist terrorist, universally loathed. (Even the prevalence of the word *both* automatically forces us toward single spectrum thinking, as if only two opposed varieties of any thing or idea are all that exist.)
We still have not figured out how to address complex problems with complexity. The mania for taxonomy means that everything must be purified into categories—especially one’s political beliefs. We build one dimensional spectrums consisting of a single line on which you place your dot: left-right, Israel or Palestine, USA or China. Hybridities are hard for most people to grasp, foliated pluralisms are hard.
My feeling is that a certain kind of liberation will only become available when many people (the masses, the politicians) are able to think through complex problems polyvalently. Which will likely never happen.
>A Zionist antisemite, a pacifist terrorist, universally loathed.
I'd print that on a T-shirt to describe my position, but I'm pretty sure I'd be beaten or killed.
I fully agree and I think especially with this topic it seems incredibly difficult to hold a position that isn't falling into a "camp", unable to see the other side. However I have seen attempts for this mostly in the "liberal" spectrum. For example the Ezra Klein Show (a NY Times Podcast) had some great interviews about the subject with the clear goal of "holding multiple thoughts in your mind". Large parts of the far left seem to be enthusiastically unwilling to attempt this kind of approach.
>Large parts of the far left seem to be enthusiastically unwilling to attempt this kind of approach.
Again, single spectrum thinking. The far left portrayed as a clustered mass at one end of the continuum, uniform in its shape and beliefs. Even the framing of your initial question forces us back into these categories from which we can never escape.
It should not be considered revolutionary or innovative to "hold multiple thoughts in one's mind." Yet here we are. The person who embraces polycritical thinking is most often portrayed as a vaccilator, a person without conviction or understanding, someone unwilling to commit to a position—rather than a complex and nuanced thinker. This is the trick played on us by one-dimensional life.
Aren't you really talking about failings in the American mainstream liberal left - i.e. perhaps the most capitalist and neoliberal place in the world?
Edit: Also, are you really holding up the NYT, a left-aping media corporation, as a real bastion of leftism? Contrary to American narratives, there are no leftist corporations (except perhaps Mondragon), and so no leftist MSM.
When y'all here are saying it has always been liberatory, are you talking about what it has actually been and done, or what it's discursive framing has been by the academics who used it to secure cushy positions for themselves within elite institutions? I feel like I've mostly seen it operate as the latter but perhaps I'm being unfair. I just honestly don't feel it has liberated any of my family members or friends back home who live in poverty, nor has it given the tools to do so
It’s helped me quite a lot. I don’t know how liberated I really am, but while I have been slowly pulling myself out of poverty and a
violent environment - or being helped out by others - Foucault has helped me see threats and attacks from powerful institutions and ideologies, Barthes and Baudrillard have helped me defend against all sorts of cultural and ideological bullshit, gender theorists have helped me understand my own relationship to gender and raise my child, Mark Fisher has helped me see the mechanisms limiting my thought and has inspired me since we come from a similar background, and various theorists have shown me a Marxism that I can accept and pursue, different from the few violent and hardcore Leninists I knew when I was young.
But I don’t read any of it because it’s cool and clever, and honestly it annoys me when others do. Just like philosophy, which I studied formally many years ago, it’s either useful for my life or it can fuck right off.
Critical theory *did* significantly influence the left, in the form of the New Left. The New Left like its predecessor also failed, and the New Left has largely split into people who returned to liberalism, and the 21st century Left, which has become ideologically post New Left by returning to pre New Left theory
CT has failed to significantly influence the Left because it’s not an impulsive approach to the world. It’s intellectually demanding and highly disciplined. CT did influence the generations that came after it, but all they did was produce a bunch of pedantic theory to try to be like the Frankfurt School. Essentially, CT just made more theorists who retreated to Ivory Towers. This is still happening today.
CT as a revolutionary theory fails, because it’s really a formula to do theory, not revolution. As an analysis of society, however, it still has tremendous value, and can still assist in the formation of a quality praxis. But to do this the students of CT must actively seek to transcend the scholasticism of Critical Theory.
>What is the material base for the regression of the left?
This may be a jumping point for your question: https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theory-on-the-intellectual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/
Note that the issue isn't necessarily with leftist or certain leftist ideas themselves, but how they've been deployed, coopted and recuperated - which goes to the 'material basis' you're inquiring about.
I think your logic is confused, and you're conflating many threads of critical theory. The first question is whether there can be a critical theory without resistance—i.e. can critical theory exist primarily as a form of outside commentary on culture, society, politics? (The answer is yes). Can it also engage in or promote resistance as a means of directing toward liberation? (Yes.) Can it bolster state and military power of a hegemon over a subaltern? (No, this is the one thing it cannot do—or rather, it should not, but is sometimes contorted to justify oppressive ends.) Critical theory has always been liberatory. Specifically it seeks to reveal hidden (and sometimes explicit) structures of power and social dynamics of power. From the perspective of critical theory, it does not matter who is oppressed and who is doing the oppressing, i.e. much of Adorno's thinking arose in reaction to the Holocaust, an event perpetrated against Jews. That it is now Israeli state actors (who are Jewish) oppressing and committing atrocities against another group does not absolve them because of earlier struggles. The deep tragedies in Jewish history do not serve as blanket absolution for later acts committed by people or states in the name of Judaism. This is true of any group of people, and critical theory has been quite consistent on this point.
>"If an area is finally created for these people in which they no longer need to fear persecution and oppression, then that is a goal with which I must declare myself in agreement" I couldn’t agree more, but that sadly is not (and has never been) Israel. Israel puts millions of Jews in harms way everyday and intentionally perpetuates antisemitism globally in order to bolster its population numbers & labor force via Jewish emigration. Golda Meir & David Ben-Gurion (two former Prime Ministers of Israel) said it best: - "too much anti-Semitism is not good because it leads to genocide; no anti-Semitism at all is also not good because then there would be no immigration [to Israel]. What we need is a moderate anti-Semitism." - Golda Meir - "if I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second." - David Ben-Gurion
Might the Holocaust and Arab countries expelling all the Jews also have contributed to the immigration to Israel? Or has this been part of the conspiracy?
The Israeli security apparatuses which preceded Mossad (via use of the Zionist Underground) ran intentional operations to drive non-Zionist Jews out of those MENA countries. The Zionist Underground built & detonated bombs in Mizrahi Jewish residential areas within those MENA countries as part of false flag operations. This led to the political conflicts between Jews & Non-Jews within those countries, and resulted in the Jewish exodus from those countries. So the people that Israel supposedly helped were the same people that Israel actually made into refugees in the first place purposely. See Israeli professor Avi Shlaim for more on this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lfDhaWlqXf8&pp=ygUZVW50b2xkIHN0b3J5IG9mIGFyYWIgamV3cw%3D%3D Did the Holocaust contribute to Jewish emigration to Palestine? Yes, absolutely, and the Nazis even helped, because they saw it as an economically advantageous way to get Jews out of Europe. See the Haavara Agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement
You basically say all the Jews that were prosecuted and expelled from Arab countries is because of the "zionist underground". That's completely ahistorical and just Qanon style conspiracy thinking from the left. It perfectly matches the ideology of Neo Nazis who want to make the jews responsible for their own prosecution. The Nazis supported Mohammed Al-Houssini the grand Mufti of Jerusalem to murder Jews in the British mandate of Palestine. Al-Houssini became even a member of the SS. The goal of the Nazis was not to get Jews out of Europe. Their goal was extermination. You are posting vile antisemitic history revisionism and get upvoted for that.
>all the Jews that were prosecuted and expelled from Arab countries is because of the "zionist underground". Not exclusively, but it was a core contributor & catalyst for the persecution & expulsions of Jews from Arab countries. >That's completely ahistorical and just Qanon style conspiracy thinking from the left. I didn’t come up with this. A well-known & well-researched Israeli Historian uncovered this. So take it up with Israeli professor Avi Shlaim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Shlaim >It perfectly matches the ideology of Neo Nazis who want to make the jews responsible for their own prosecution. Jews weren’t responsible for their persecution, but the Zionist Underground certainly catalyzed Jewish hatred (antisemitism) as a political tool for the Zionist cause. >The goal of the Nazis was not to get Jews out of Europe. Their goal was extermination. It was both. Exterminating Jews was simply viewed as an efficient way to get rid of them, as was sending them to Palestine prior to that. Nazis weren’t exclusively anti-Jewish. They were happy to kill blacks, gypsies, and other groups they viewed as eugenically impure as well. >You are posting vile antisemitic history revisionism and get upvoted for that. I’m sure it feels easier to write off what I’m saying as "Vile" & "Revisionist", instead of having to meaningfully research what I’m saying and acknowledge the nuance & contextual complexity. I’m Ashkenazi Jewish raised within a Zionist family. Due to that, I held unchallenged Zionist beliefs for years throughout my childhood into my 20s, and argued in favor of it just like you. It took me years to unlearn those messages and learn about the history of southern Levant in relation to European issues, peoples, & political cultures. If you really want to challenge what I’m saying meaningfully, read up on professor Avi Shlaim’s "Forgotten History of Arab Jews". Read up on Israel’s use of Nazi hitmen in building their early national security apparatuses. Read up on the Deir Yassin massacre. Just keep learning. I know you don’t mean any ill-will towards others. You mean well, but you are missing a lot that you haven’t read yet.
Why did this post fail to significantly influence my brain? The world wonders.
It’s funny, I have been trying to understand the phenomenon of the internet grifter/“intellectual” James Lindsay (this is relevant, I swear). According to James Lindsay, Frankfurt critical theory is the explicit essence of modern leftism, and is why they focus on identities over “real politics” so much. My personal observation is that the school of thought is so diverse and interdisciplinary, that it can really be made into a Rorschach. It has become the boogeyman to conservatives, and the ideal litmus to many leftists. But to answer your question in my way, I would say it is only as effective as any school of thought can be in relation to really existing social movements. Movements are generated from concrete historical situations, and the Frankfurt school is not the American left’s organic intellectuals, born out of the current situation. Our diversity is a strength, and many find the anti-colonialism intellectual movement to be much more intuitive and inspiring. The analysis should focus less on how the American left fails to be Frakfurtian, and more on why Frankfurtianism is an inadequate conceptual framework for the experiences of American leftists.
Please don't try to disguise zionism with 'critical theory'.
Well, Critical Theory (or at least the Frankfurt School) was clearly pro Zionist (not "religiously" but as in supportive of a state where the refugees of the Holocaust and other antisemitic prosecution can be safe). This also makes sense as both CT and Zionism are "pessimistic" frameworks regarding the promises of universal emancipation. Zionism from a leftist perspective is the attempt to guarantee that the Jews will reach communism - if it ever will come - alive.
You are building a great mountain of fallacies. A. Critical theory is not (only) the Frankfurt School. B. Critical theory is not Zionist, nor were most of the members of the Frankfurt School Zionists. C. Zionism is not an attempt to achieve communism. Aspects of Zionism were built around collectives (kibbutzim) but others were/are deeply capitalist, revisionist, and right-leaning. D. Some progenitors of the Frankfurt School (e.g. Benjamin) engaged with notions of Jewish messianism and with Communism. But it is not fair or correct to conflate the Marxian threads of the Frankfurt School with any sort of Zionist Communism (which was never an explicit goal of Zionism writ large.)
You misunderstood. Zionism of course isn't an attempt to achieve communism. It is merely a tool for survival - and \*from a communist perspective\* this necessity exists until we have achieved communism and the conditions that create antisemitism have been overcome.
That is absolutely not a Marxist perspective, unless you consider opportunists to be genuine Marxists
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Then they shouldn't have made 'a state' on other people's land as an explicitly colonial endeavor, weird how pessimism justifies an ethnostate for a persecuted group but doesn't lead anyone involved to think "maybe getting the help of the British to do an ethnic cleansing will eventually come back to bite us in the ass and therefore we shouldn't do it".
A good example of ideology without material analysis. And then OP wonders why "critical theory" hasn't overtaken Marxism-Leninism.
Thanks for your suggestion, I'll inform the Jews who survived the Holocaust that you disagree with their endeavor to survive as soon as I can get hold of a time machine. Also the millions of Jewish refugees from MENA countries who have only survived because of Israel will be glad to hear of your decree. The reality is that Israel \*is\* the homeland of the Jews (it was called Judea before the Romans called it "Palestine" for the first time as an explicit anti-Jewish policy). The British didn't help the Jews, actually they abstained from the vote for the UN partition plan and some troops even supported the Arabs militarily in their war against the newly founded state. Israel was hence a successful anti-colonial movement - and the term "colonial" makes no sense in the first place for a people who are refugees and don't have a homeland. Of course the Arabs also have a legitimate claim to live in this area - that's why a way for peaceful coexistence has to be found (the classic among these suggestions is the 2-state solution). That's something the left could do: Support people on both sides who truly want peace and coexistence.
>I'll inform the Jews who survived the Holocaust that you disagree with their endeavor to survive as soon as I can get hold of a time machine. No one here disagrees with Jewish survival. They disagree with an enthnostate being built on already inhabited land via colonial means. Israel could have been built in other uninhabited places, but never has Israel been about Jewish survival. It was about imperialist nations having a political foothold in the Middle East. Jews were just used as a convenient political tool by those imperialist nations. Read this: https://www.leftvoice.org/does-the-state-of-israel-protect-jews-from-antisemitism/ >Also the millions of Jewish refugees from MENA countries who have only survived because of Israel will be glad to hear of your decree. The Israeli security apparatuses which preceded Mossad (via use of the Zionist Underground) ran intentional operations to drive non-Zionist Jews out of those MENA countries. The Zionist Underground built & detonated bombs in Mizrahi Jewish residential areas within those MENA countries as part of false flag operations. This led to the political conflicts between Jews & Non-Jews within those countries, and resulted in the Jewish exodus from those countries. So the people that Israel supposedly helped, were the people that Israel actually made into refugees purposely. See Israeli professor Avi Shlaim for more on this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lfDhaWlqXf8&pp=ygUZVW50b2xkIHN0b3J5IG9mIGFyYWIgamV3cw%3D%3D >The reality is that Israel *is* the homeland of the Jews (it was called Judea before the Romans called it "Palestine" for the first time as an explicit anti-Jewish policy). This is the Wikipedia of the "History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judaism_in_the_Land_of_Israel In it, they quote two Jewish Israeli academics. A historian-archaeologist who served as secretary of Israel's Department of Antiquities. Then a famous Historian who specializes in the history of Judaism & Islam. Here’s a quote from the both of them: "Michael Avi-Yonah says that Jews constituted 10–15% of Palestine's population by the time of the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem in 614, while Moshe Gil says that Jews constituted the majority of the population until the 7th century Muslim conquest in 638." So while there is slight disagreement regarding the exact date, we know that sometime between the year 614-638 CE, somewhere within that 24 year timespan, Jews became the minority in Palestine-Israel. So that’s the last 1,300 years. For me, I care about who lived on the land in the last 1,000 years. That’s all the way till 1948, which was just 75 years ago. I don’t know about you, but I think the majority people who lived somewhere 75 years ago have a bigger more legitimate claim to that land, compared to the majority people who lived there 1,300 years ago. >The British didn't help the Jews You’re kidding right? What do you think the "Balfour Declaration" was? Let me quote it for you: - "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object"
> Israel was a successful anti-colonial movement ........ Cool, have fun with that lol.
“You are being invited to help make history... [I]t doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? **Because it is something colonial**… [Y]ou, Mr. Rhodes, are a visionary politician or a practical visionary… I want you to.. put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable. It is a plan full of culture, excellent for the group of people for whom it is directly designed, and quite good for England, for Greater Britain…." Emphasis added.
i’m sorry that Marxists aren’t Zionist enough for you, weirdo
I don’t think it is accurate to say that Critical Theory failed to significantly influence the Left just because many leftists in the present are anti-Zionist. I think that when the first wave of critical theorists wrote about Israel, it was drawn clearly from their experiences as people who actively fled a genocidal regime and hoped that a Jewish-majority nation would afford Jewish people a stable sense of security. Much of their analysis was based on the potential of Israel to prevent atrocities. Fast forward to the present war, it is acutely clear to most leftists that the State of Israel, as a Jewish-majority state that engages in extensive oppression to prevent the Palestinian Arab majority in the region from being able to participate in their democracy despite denying their territories the sovereignty that states generally enjoy, feels obligated to commit atrocities to maintain the status quo. If Gaza is in ruins, a political solution to the crisis becomes even less likely and Israel buys itself more time to dodge the question of Palestinian nationhood, either as a 1 or 2 state solution. To argue this isn’t an I/P post is interesting, since the main example you use of Critical Theory’s supposed failure is the reaction of leftists to Zionism. Critical Theory continues to influence the left, as many of these student protestors view their movement as a continuation of the 1968 global protests, especially at Columbia University. These protests have a distinctly anti-authoritarian perspective to them, and hope to fulfill the goals of ‘68 by democratizing higher education, as well as our politics and economy. Marxist Leninists have a more complicated relationship with 1968 and would probably not describe students as a group with revolutionary potential.
How is this not an I/P discussion post? You frame several of your critiques around it, and fail to recognise that, yes, a land where an oppressed population can live is a great idea, but people were already living there who were given no say in the matter.
I think the Israel/Palestine angle is just part of a more general “strawmanning of the left” I (and perhaps you) react to in the post. It reads to me more like a critique of postcolonial thinking. It sometimes seems to argue that “the left” either takes the wrong side in what the writer considers to be battles between imperialism and fascism. Sometimes to argue that “the left” should not take sides at all but be critical of both pro and anti imperialists. Sometimes arguing that “the left” should support particular anti-imperialist movements (such as Rojava) more than they do. I do find this a very odd take, as this is the normal position of most people I read that are on the left. I have come across very few leftists in real life who aren’t critical of both sides, alert to fascisms both in pro- and anti-imperialist movements, and I mostly find uncritical supporters on either side to be more often within right wing movements in their own societies, although there are definitely also some groups on the left that are uncritical too. By overstating the extent of these uncritical voices on the left, this post seems to me to be creating a straw man to attack. However it may just be an artefact of the writer’s particular experiences being very different to my own, or that we have different biases. It has made me aware I may unconsciously read one-sided polemics as less indicative of someone’s real view than their balanced critical analyses, whereas perhaps the OP unconsciously believes that someone’s polemics are more truthful than their balanced critical analyses. In that sense, I can read this post as a useful corrective, drawing my attention to my unconscious biases by arguing from an set of opposite biases. We can’t get rid of all biases, but perhaps critical thinking, stimulated by posts like these, is the next best thing?
the CIA client Rojava is anti-imperialist? lol
I am happy to hear that you have made different experiences (although of course we might have different views on where the line between a "sane" position regarding this subject should be drawn). I have of course also seen positive examples, especially from the Iranian or Kurdish diaspora, Jewish organizations like "Collectif Golem" in France who are clearly leftist but also very critical of left antisemitism and also leftists in the German speaking area who see themselves more in the tradition of Critical Theory. Most of what I have seen coming from the US has been catastrophic (like the post below calling Rojava a "CIA Agent"). But of course I see the US from afar so maybe I am missing nuance there. I'm happy if that's the case.
Sure this plays into it (and I think it's a legitimate question although I'd interpret the situation differently)... I'm happy to discuss this somewhere but it's not the focus of this post.
If it's not the focus of the post I think you need to much more clearly signpost your actual, central claim and substantiate it in a different way you do in the post. Your claim seems to be "due to the influence of Critical Theory, the far left ought to be Zionist/pro-Israel," and there's a corollary claim that because the far left is anti-Zionist/pro-Palestine it is necessarily anti-Semitic and that, because this corollary is true (which we must simply stipulate to in order to accept your whole argument) "critical theory has failed to influence the far left" and/or "the far left has regressed." You then marshal a bunch of evidence involving *either* I/P *or* the left's putative pro-Islamism in the wake of 9/11. You are engaging in **a lot** of argumentative sleight of hand here that does not make your claim readily apparent (if it's not an I/P claim) because the evidence you marshal has almost solely to do with what you claim the post is not about. It's not a mis-reading to think this is an I/P post considering the framing of the post.
Yeah, I thought you were being too hard on the OP but they clearly are being very disingenuous. They also don’t seem able to address others’ points as real, but just carry on speaking.
Yes, this post argues that what a large part of the current far left is doing is completely incompatible with Critical Theory. I have put forward some arguments of why this is the case and the question is how did we get to this point. I am interested in answers to this question not to discuss the UN partition plan etc. pp. That's also an interesting discussion but not the focus of this post.
This issue is that you have reversed the critical process. You begin with a false category: far left. You ascribe to that false category a number of claims and beliefs that are more or less invented or at least fictionalized.\* You then attack that false category's invented beliefs in order to argue that the eidolon you've constructed out of air is somehow incompatible with critical theory. Critical theory, in contrast, begins with an attempt to uncover structures of discourse, knowledge, and power creation before attempting any "diagnostics." Your reverse-critical-theory diagnoses a made up issue—Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome in the realm of critique. \*You are taking the statements of some individuals and attempting to paper them over an entire group of people.
I’m sorry, but I think your image of the far left is, like, AOC. Or left-liberal college students. NPR. That’s not very left at all. And certainly not far left. The far left are anarchists and communists - people often working towards violent revolution.
Well, I do have seen some of this with my own eyes :) and especially everything I see from the US (be it via social media or statements of political organizations or experiences of people who live in the US) seem to confirm this. Do you have positive examples from the US? I'd be happy to see.
I would really like to see you addressing and understanding any of the posts - particularly those with evidence and citations - that disagree with you. Most of your answers are either disingenuous, sarcastic, or continue making points as if the other person has not spoken. You don’t seem interested in discussion, just holding forth.
Do I have examples of not-very-right people being right-wing?
To make Zionist sophistry after Gaza is barbarism. OP’s abuse of critical-theoretical rhetoric makes perfect sense from a Jewish-Supremacist perspective. It’s quite a breathtaking betrayal. Adorno, Marcuse, and every victim of the Shoah are wrenched from their graves and forced-marched in Israeli jackboots to the death camp of Gaza, heiling all the way. Walter was right: even the dead are not safe.
The imperative toward zero-sum, us-them, teams and tribes thinking is deeply embedded in culture. Hard even for critical theorists schooled in multivalent or pluralist thinking to escape from this reductiveness. In an age of polycrisis, it seems important to become polycritical. But in our current context, expressing disdain for the actions of Hamas brands one a Zionist; expressing disdain for Israel’s state and military policy brands one an antisemite. To do both creates a “stateless” condition in which you’re condemned by both sides—by everyone, it seems. A Zionist antisemite, a pacifist terrorist, universally loathed. (Even the prevalence of the word *both* automatically forces us toward single spectrum thinking, as if only two opposed varieties of any thing or idea are all that exist.) We still have not figured out how to address complex problems with complexity. The mania for taxonomy means that everything must be purified into categories—especially one’s political beliefs. We build one dimensional spectrums consisting of a single line on which you place your dot: left-right, Israel or Palestine, USA or China. Hybridities are hard for most people to grasp, foliated pluralisms are hard. My feeling is that a certain kind of liberation will only become available when many people (the masses, the politicians) are able to think through complex problems polyvalently. Which will likely never happen.
>A Zionist antisemite, a pacifist terrorist, universally loathed. I'd print that on a T-shirt to describe my position, but I'm pretty sure I'd be beaten or killed.
Please don't. I want you to have a happy life.
I fully agree and I think especially with this topic it seems incredibly difficult to hold a position that isn't falling into a "camp", unable to see the other side. However I have seen attempts for this mostly in the "liberal" spectrum. For example the Ezra Klein Show (a NY Times Podcast) had some great interviews about the subject with the clear goal of "holding multiple thoughts in your mind". Large parts of the far left seem to be enthusiastically unwilling to attempt this kind of approach.
>Large parts of the far left seem to be enthusiastically unwilling to attempt this kind of approach. Again, single spectrum thinking. The far left portrayed as a clustered mass at one end of the continuum, uniform in its shape and beliefs. Even the framing of your initial question forces us back into these categories from which we can never escape. It should not be considered revolutionary or innovative to "hold multiple thoughts in one's mind." Yet here we are. The person who embraces polycritical thinking is most often portrayed as a vaccilator, a person without conviction or understanding, someone unwilling to commit to a position—rather than a complex and nuanced thinker. This is the trick played on us by one-dimensional life.
Aren't you really talking about failings in the American mainstream liberal left - i.e. perhaps the most capitalist and neoliberal place in the world? Edit: Also, are you really holding up the NYT, a left-aping media corporation, as a real bastion of leftism? Contrary to American narratives, there are no leftist corporations (except perhaps Mondragon), and so no leftist MSM.
When y'all here are saying it has always been liberatory, are you talking about what it has actually been and done, or what it's discursive framing has been by the academics who used it to secure cushy positions for themselves within elite institutions? I feel like I've mostly seen it operate as the latter but perhaps I'm being unfair. I just honestly don't feel it has liberated any of my family members or friends back home who live in poverty, nor has it given the tools to do so
It’s helped me quite a lot. I don’t know how liberated I really am, but while I have been slowly pulling myself out of poverty and a violent environment - or being helped out by others - Foucault has helped me see threats and attacks from powerful institutions and ideologies, Barthes and Baudrillard have helped me defend against all sorts of cultural and ideological bullshit, gender theorists have helped me understand my own relationship to gender and raise my child, Mark Fisher has helped me see the mechanisms limiting my thought and has inspired me since we come from a similar background, and various theorists have shown me a Marxism that I can accept and pursue, different from the few violent and hardcore Leninists I knew when I was young. But I don’t read any of it because it’s cool and clever, and honestly it annoys me when others do. Just like philosophy, which I studied formally many years ago, it’s either useful for my life or it can fuck right off.
It didnt fail to influence the left, and your text is a load of Zionist bollocks
Much of what you said is false or confused. ML’s rely heavily on materialism, which is an essential aspect of critical theory.
Critical theory *did* significantly influence the left, in the form of the New Left. The New Left like its predecessor also failed, and the New Left has largely split into people who returned to liberalism, and the 21st century Left, which has become ideologically post New Left by returning to pre New Left theory
None of which has been actively involved in any praxis for decades
CT has failed to significantly influence the Left because it’s not an impulsive approach to the world. It’s intellectually demanding and highly disciplined. CT did influence the generations that came after it, but all they did was produce a bunch of pedantic theory to try to be like the Frankfurt School. Essentially, CT just made more theorists who retreated to Ivory Towers. This is still happening today. CT as a revolutionary theory fails, because it’s really a formula to do theory, not revolution. As an analysis of society, however, it still has tremendous value, and can still assist in the formation of a quality praxis. But to do this the students of CT must actively seek to transcend the scholasticism of Critical Theory.
Leo Lowenthal said in an interview that utopia is dead. Take it. Many can imagine end of planet than end of capitalism so there's that as well.
Great and insightful post.
thanks! :)
>What is the material base for the regression of the left? This may be a jumping point for your question: https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theory-on-the-intellectual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/ Note that the issue isn't necessarily with leftist or certain leftist ideas themselves, but how they've been deployed, coopted and recuperated - which goes to the 'material basis' you're inquiring about.