Archive for the ‘European Left’ Category
Roger Garaudy, Holocaust Denier, Gets Unearthed.
US Islamist site, Garaudy “died persecuted and isolated—all because he rejected the Zionist version of history.”
Like the Loch Ness Monster, though less beguiling, Roger Garaudy has been rediscovered. Roger Garaudy: Why This French Intellectual Remains Unknown. Hint: He Was Muslim headlines a recent piece in the US Muslim Skeptic. The writer, one Bheria, asks, “Who was this Roger Garaudy? Who was this individual that received one of the most prestigious awards in the Muslim world; and that too for his “Service to Islam”; and then also having shared this honor with the renowned Ahmed Deedat? (And how do you even pronounce his name?).”
Garaudy died in 2012. He was 98 years old. The US author laments, “He basically died persecuted and isolated—all because he rejected the Zionist version of history.”
Roger Garaudy is pretty well known, and not just because he was one of “France’s leading intellectuals from the last century.” He was (successively), a Communist (he joined the French Party in 1933), a Resistance Fighter, leading Stalinist Communist (he appeared for the French Communist Party (PCF) during the Kravchenko libel Trial in 1949, to stand with the USSR against the charge that it held concentration camps, as one of the witnesses of its ‘morality’, témoins de moralité), an ‘Official Philosopher’ of the PCF from the 50s to 60s, Marxist-Humanist (first during the Party’s opening to these ideas, to which a number of its intellectuals were attracted, such as the – serious – philosopher Lucien Sève), some-time Atheist, Christian-Marxist (Protestant, from youth he had an association with La Réforme in France, then Catholic) , Ecologist, and finally, in 1982, a convert to Islam.
One of Garaudy’s legacies is the Calahorra Tower in Spain. This museum, which he founded, celebrates the Arab colonisation of the Iberian peninsula, and suggests that the invasion under the Umayyad Caliphate and Muslim rule over their new subjects led to a “time of brilliant cultural, artistic and scientific achievement” between the 9th and 13th century”.
A more famous reason why Garaudy is remembered is this, which Behria cites:
Already in 1982 his miltant anti-Zionism led him to compare Zionism to Nazism.
In the 1990s he published The Founding Myths Of Israeli Politics, which argued, among a number of other controversial claims, that Hitler had ordered the deportation and not the extermination of the Jews and that typhus, not gas chambers, was responsible for the deaths of Jews in Nazi concentration camps.
After an outcry in the press, Garaudy was prosecuted under France’s tough laws against inciting racial hatred and denying crimes against humanity, to be found guilty in 1998.
He appealed against the judgement at every possible level but lost each time, with the final verdict from the European Court of Human Rights declaring that he had received a fair trial.
Garaudy died in Chennevières, in the Marne valley east of Paris, at the age of 98.
The Muslim ‘sceptic’ comments, “Yet another example of the sheer hypocrisy of freedom of expression—an un-Islamic liberal concept.”
I have little idea of who the chap who has rediscovered Garaudy is. He writes stuff like, “Holy Incest in Zoroastrianism” and Salman Rushdie: Neo-Orientalism and Western Hypocrisy He looks like an Islamic version of political confusionism, mixing appeals to the fight against ‘colonisation’ with this, ” The 19th Century Jewish Critique of Modern Liberal Western Degeneracy.” On second thoughts, he is a genuine fascist….”You can’t reject Western degeneracy selectively because you like this person’s poetry or that person’s painting. In order to be coherent you have to be “radical.””
The one-time humanist turned anti-Semite is not exactly forgotten in the Muslim world: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praises Holocaust-denier Roger Garaudy as brave and tireless. (2019)
Garaudy’s development does raise the question of what kind of ‘Marxist humanism’ he ever believed in.
During the early sixties, stated no less a figure than Perry Anderson, “the values of humanism were extolled from the balconies of the French Politbureau by its major ideologue Roger Garaudy, while in the USSR Kruschev’s new party programme for the CPSU proclaimed ‘Everything for Man’.” (Arguments within English Marxism. 1980) The case of Garaudy, the erudite one-time New Leftist wrote, “was well known”, comparable to John Lewis in the UK”. Another writer, perhaps more familiar with French politics, once wrote of him as “formerly witch-hunter general, now dispenser of extreme unction, in quick succession champion of Stalin and defender of the Khrushchevite faith” (Gregory Elliott, Althusser – The Detour of Theory. 1987, hat tip, MHW))
Lewis, a former Ipswich Unitarian Minister who became a leading philosopher in the Communist Party of Great Britain, wrote in 1961 that “Stalin’s work tends to be undervalued today.” “The great creative statesman, however much he may have blundered in later years” expressed, the Soviet leader said, “the definitive objective of developing real freedom in the best sense of the term.” (Socialism and the Individual). He was in this respect a supporter of official ‘humanism’.
The French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser attacked this form of ‘humanism’ in Pour Marx (1965). He claimed that, Marx broke with an approach “based history and politics on an essence of man.” and an ideology, “(socialist) personal humanism”. His targets included the (unnamed) Lucien Sève and Garaudy. Whatever the piece’s merits, it is hard to make sense today of Althusser’s talk of “the transition to communism, the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the withering-away of the State apparatus, presupposing the creation of new forms of political, economic and cultural organisation”. He was referring to the 1960s USSR and Eastern Bloc…
A more explicit clash took place with John Lewis in the pages of the CPGB journal Marxism Today much later, in 1972. This battle, generally considered to be substitute for the earlier attack on the PCF’s theorists, greatly exercised E.P.Thompson in The Poverty of Theory (1978). The labour historian and long term socialist humanist he declared that the École Normale supérieure teacher was part of a “general police action within ideology” an “the attempt to reconstruct Stalinism at the level of theory”, when he asserted that it was not “man”, human beings in the abstract, but concrete class struggles by the masses that “made history”.
In appealing to the authority of ‘Marxism-Leninism’ Althusser was on shaky ground at the time, a floor that has collapsed for good since. He claimed that “The “Stalin deviation” was a deviation above all because it implied that the road to communism lay not so much through class struggle as through the development of the productive forces. That is why it can be characterized in terms of humanism and economism. But it is precisely Stalin’s humanism and his economism which Khrushchev did not touch, which he did not rectify.” (Louis Althusser Essays in Self-Criticism. 1976.) And further, as Gregory Elliott has shown in Althusser: The Detour of Theory (2014) the theorist failed even to begin to deal with the history of Bolshevism, the shape of Marxist-Leninist ideology in the crystalised in the USSR state, the totalitarian crushing of class struggle and human rights, and its inability to develop the productive forces beyond the capacities of a ramshackle semi-militarised command economy.
But what, to his credit, Althusser and other structuralist ‘anti-humanists’ did was simple. They had little to say on ethics, less on the material reality of human rights created in the successive democratic revolutions of the last centuries. What they did was to question the idea that calling yourself a ‘humanist’ and criticising, a picture of the young Marx’s writings in which he ‘alienation’ of human beings caught up in externalised was both a hallmark of capitalism and a explanatory tool for historical change. Althusser may have been unfunny when he said of Lewis’s worldview that in it “man is a little lay god”. Yet he may well have had in mind the Khrushchev Soviet humanism which the British Communist had backed, one that is a cruel mockery of slogans that made human beings the centre of that society.
Humanism has a long and noble history. E.P.Thompson’s fight, begun under the banner in the 1950s, was against Stalinist Marxism, and the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet Tanks in 1956 and the Soviet Glacis in Eastern Europe. Today the word can be a deeply felt rallying cry against injustice, certainly better and more unifying than anything that ‘god’ believers can offer. But as social and political theory? It is an ethical and political objective. There are too many humanisms to pin the word down to one approach to explaining the world, or to one form of politics.
Post-PCF Garaudy did not find an enduring home on the left. After expulsion from the Communists in 1970 for disagreements over the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the May student movement, he branched out. In his writings he advocated new political blocs and ways of organising on the left and the “non-alienated” socialism of “man as a creator” The Turning Point of Socialism (1970). Seeing what few would glimpse today the communist still had some hopes in the socialist camp, “As the Chinese Revolution has shown it is possible to proceed directly from an agrarian-feudal society to socialism without any intermediate capitalist phase.” Yet he plunged further into the sea of a new faith and “self-management” in The Alternative Future: A Vision of Christian Marxism (1976). The book looked to China as “radical alternative to that prevailing in western and Soviet Civilisation…”there are cities without banks, without advertising without drugs and alcohol, without private cars..”
Stability was to come after conversion to Islam he wrote, Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne (The Founding Myths of Modern Israel), 1996. “In his book, Garaudy rejected many of the premises of the Jewish claim to a homeland in the Levant and to the legitimacy of the state of Israel as “myths,” e.g., the “theological myths” of the Bible; the twentieth century “myth of Zionist anti-Fascism”; the “myth of justice at Nuremberg” the “myth of the six million,” and the “myth of the land without people for a people without a land.” These and other myths, Garaudy’s book argued, had been used by world Zionists in a conspiracy to dispossess the Palestinians of their homeland.”
You can read Garaudy’s book on the site, Radio Islam, alongside articles by other people on subjects such as The Jews behind Islamophobia and Jewish Manipulation of World Leaders.
Forward to the Arabic edition of Garaudy’s The Founding Myths of Modern Israel (Shoah denial site, The Journal for Historical Review)
After the war, the legend of the Nazi Holocaust and its promotion, particularly in the US, attracted Reed’s attention. Reed’s approach in discussing this myth in practice was based primarily on demographic data and what they pointed to. Such data, Reed felt, do not lie. He cited the statistics of the League of Nations on the number of Jews in the world in 1938, the last annual report of this global organization before World War II. Then he compared those data with the figures found in the first post-war population statistics published in 1947 by the United Nations — the organization that replaced the League of Nations. The comparison revealed that the number of Jews in the world after the war of 1939-1945 was the same as it had been before the war — just under eleven million persons.
French Left Populists, La France insoumise, Publicly Debate Macron Ministers; Talk of Mélenchon’s Successor Grows.
Impressive Sign of Self-Confidence: Adrien Quatennens (MP,La France insoumise) publicly debates Minister of Olivia Grégoire, Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises (La République en Marche) .
On Saturday several government ministers responded to an invitation to debate from La France insoumise (LFI): Marlène Schippa, Olivia Grégoire, Clément Beaune. Rachida Dati, former minister, was also asked to come.
At the end of the August holidays La France insoumise held its ‘summer days’ event. As one would have expected figures from other parties in the NUPES alliance were present. But whoever they were their attendance was sidelined by the visit of figures from the cabinet of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, who was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron, and the former Home Secretary (2007 – 2009), under Nicolas Sarkozy’s hard right Presidency, Rachida Dati (looking around she got offered a T-Shirt reading ‘Taxez les riches’ by LFI Euro MP Manon Aubry).
Le Monde reported, “After a legislative campaign centered around demonising the LFI’s MPs, Nupes and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, three ministers from the Élisabeth Borne government made the trip to the summer rally and debates of the “insoumises” , Marlène Schiappa (social economy and solidarity), Clément Beaune (transport), Olivia Grégoire (SME, trade and tourism). “We have points of agreement, in particular on the fight to be waged against the far right and its ideas” , concluded Marlène Schiappa at the end of her debate on secularism with the deputy of Seine-Saint-Denis Alexis Corbière.
A further Le Monde report noted, “Beyond the spectacle, a substantive debate took place on the supply-side (that is (orthodox and liberal) economic policies, practiced by the government, to which LFI opposes demand-side (that is Keynesian) policies based on an increase in the minimum wage, price freezes and tax. on “superprofits”. Olivia Grégoire delighted in lecturing the “insoumises” on one of their ideological inspirations “Read Marx again! He says the best way to raise wages is to create jobs.” She did not get a good reception for that remark…..
In his concluding peroration Jean Luc Melenchon announced that the autumn would see a “bataille générale” as the left will act in the National Assembly and protest in the streets against the French government’s failures to deal with the cost of living crisis (even without the energy bills that will wreak havoc in the UK):
Meanwhile the thorny question of who will follow Jean Luc Mélenchon (71 years old), who is no longer a Deputy in the National Assembly where the new alliance of the left, the NUPES, has focused people’s attention, to take the leadership of La France insoumise has been brought to the fore.
The question of the succession of Jean-Luc Mélenchon is again on the table, when he announced that he was withdrawing from LFI to take care of his La Boétie foundation. Among activists, Adrien Quatennens(Note, see lead picture on post) has strong support but “JLM” has refused to decide. (Europe 1. 27.8.22)
Cost of Living Action: Campaign to Link Protests.
“At the beginning of the last decade, we saw how quickly civil unrest can spiral out of control when authorities push local communities to breaking point. In 2011, riots broke out in London and throughout the country after Mark Duggan was killed by the Metropolitan police. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If this injustice continues, if extortionate food prices, energy bills and rents continue to rise, I fear something like that could happen again unless those in power do the right thing.” James (Guardian).
Cost of Living Action launches to tie together waves of protests. Morning Star.
Cost of Living Action includes Fuel Poverty Action, Just Stop Oil, London Renters’ Union (LRU), Global Justice Now and the Social Housing Action Campaign and is supported by Labour MPs Nadia Whittome and John McDonnell.
Ms Whittome said: “The growing mass movement around the cost-of-living crisis — from striking workers to protests to action against rip off energy bills — is an inspiration.
“We are facing an unprecedented attack on the living standards of working-class people, and the response will need to be co-ordinated.
“By providing a neutral platform for all campaigns to promote protests and local meetings, I hope that this project can play a role in bringing people together.”
LRU activist Ygerne Price-Davies said: “We are witnessing the development of a mass movement against corporate greed, corrupt politicians and climate apocalypse.
“To move to the next stage, we need to build democratic local groups in every town, city and neighbourhood.
“That is why we are joining forces to call for united local assemblies in September and beyond.
“Through these meetings and the alliances forged, we can help to organise a huge movement around this crisis.”
Everything is going up – except our pay. It’s time to organise.
Everything is going up: our food costs, our bills, our rent, our mortgage and debt payments. The wealth of billionaires, the profits of big businesses and the CO2 we pump into the atmosphere are going up too. The only thing that isn’t is our pay.
Workers are leading the fightback against the crisis, and community campaigns are springing up. Coalitions like Enough is Enough and the People’s Assembly have called national protests and rallies. Campaigns like Don’t Pay are calling national days of action against rip off energy bills.
We are a network of activists, organisations and grassroots campaigns. In the months of August and September, we are calling for local assemblies across the country to unite and amplify the movement against the Cost of Living Crisis.
This website is a neutral resource for anyone who wants to get involved in the movement against the Cost of Living Crisis, or who wants to advertise a local meeting bringing together workers, campaigners and networks in their area.
1. Support strikes
Workers and unions are leading the fightback against real terms pay cuts and falling living standards. In local organising assemblies, we need to organise solidarity with strikes: attending picket lines, helping with ballot campaigns, raising money, and linking workplace disputes to the wider community. There are major national disputes being run by several major unions, and you can see what’s going on in your area by checking out Strike Map.2. Build protests
All across the country, protests are being planned. On Saturday 5th November, there will be a major national demonstration, organised by the People’s Assembly. We want to use local assemblies to build, organise and unite protests, locally and nationally.3. Promote non-payment campaigns
In 2023, energy bills will rise to as much as £5,000. BP, Shell and EON have all announced record-breaking profits while millions of people will be choosing between heating and eating. Millions more will be simply unable to pay when bills go up again on October 1st. Don’t Pay is the national campaign calling for a boycott of energy bills, and local assemblies can discuss and promote it.4. Solidarity and mutual aid
In a time of immigration raids, bailiffs and mass impoverishment, we need to look after each other. From crowds blocking border force and police vans, to community food banks, to community unions taking the fight to landlords and debt collection agencies. Local assemblies can provide a space to link up these efforts and share resources.
Our aim is to amplify all of the campaigns around the Cost of Living crisis, and to call for united local assemblies to organise the emerging movement. As well as the organisations that have initiated Cost of Living Action, and our events map, we are fully committed to working co-operatively with initiatives like Enough is Enough and Don’t Pay.
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This should not be forgotten:
Comrade Nadia Witthome, like John McDonnell, is committed to the internationalist left:
This is interesting:
Tendance Coatesy 