Americas
Europe
Africa & Middle East
Indian subcontinent
Asia Pacific
News
Analysis
Economy
Environment
Oppression
The Basics
Science &
Culture
Marxist Theory
History
Publications
Links
Workers Power Global, Vienna:21 Septembere 2003
Over the last years a small obscure group of Zionists has become known in the left milieu in Germany and Austria – the so-called “Antinationals” or “Anti-Germans” who are grouped around journals like “Bahamas” and “societies to support democratisation in Iraq” like “Wadi e.V.”.
Their trademark is unconditional support for Israel and its policy of oppression against the Palestine people which they combine with support for the US imperialist war policy. For example one of them – Wadi e.V. – published a press statement after the US conquest of Baghdad on 10 April called “Joy over the liberation of Baghdad” which ended:
"Many Iraqis but also British and US soldiers have lost their lives or have been wounded in their mission to liberate the country from the horrors of dictatorship. We owe them a debt of gratitude."
Worse, they add to this a series of hysterical accusations against the radical left because of its opposition to Zionism and imperialist war. Recently their internet attacks have become increasingly violent, accusing the ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt (Austrian section of the LFI) and some other groups like the “Anti-imperialist Committee” of being
1) “Anti-Semites”,
2) supporters of a genocide against the Jews and
3) supporters of Islamic fundamentalism.
There is nothing special about such groups in itself. The overwhelming majority of the ruling class and the bourgeois media shars these views – albeit given the popular opposition against the US war crusade and Israel’s manifest policy of oppression is not very popular in the working class and youth this is reflected in some critical comments in the media.
What is special about the Antinationals is that they come from the left and still claim to be left-wing. They pretend to be most concerned about the “German Herrenmenschen mentality” and the danger of a new rising fascism. At the same time they focus their whole energy not on fighting the Nazis – they are rarely visible at any anti-fascist mobilisations – but on fighting the radical left! While most of their struggle against the left remains in the realm of the internet they also try to physically attack the radical left wherever they feel strong enough. Recently they twice brutally attacked left wing meetings in Berlin which were held in solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada .
While they have some following among students and petit-bourgeois intellectuals in Germany they are numerically an insignificant sect in Austria. But they have nevertheless some influence since they are well rooted in the progressive intelligencia and have good contacts with the left-liberal media. This again gives them a hearing in the top echelons of reformist forces like the Communist Party. They have allied themselves with the pro-imperialist Iraqi forces like the Kurdish landlords Barzani and Talabani or the Iraqi Communist Party (which has joined the government council set up by the US colonial adoministration).
In the recent past they have sharpened their slanderous campaign against the left and for the first time the “Antinationals” and the Iraqi Communist Party campaigned for the expulsion of the Anti-imperialists from the annual “Volksstimme-Fete” (which is similar to the annual LO Fete or L’Humanité Fete in France). While they did not succeed because the Antiimperialists waged a counter-campaign, the CP leadership did forbid the showing of the Iraqi flag (claiming that this would reflect political support for Saddam Hussein!)
Some of them have also started to publish in Britain. For example the journalist Karl Pfeifer regularly writes reports in the British anti-fascist magazine “Searchlight”. He is one of the leading hacks against the anti-imperialist left, regularly publishing slanderous articles against us. He calls for solidarity with the Israeli soldiers fighting the Palestinians. His biography is telling: he went to Palestine and between 1946 and 1950 became a volunteer in the Zionist elite militia Palmach – which was a special force of Hagana - and then the Israel army. He was involved in the war of expulsion and genocide against the Palestinian people in 1948 and never regretted his participation in this crime. What he fought for with a gun at that time he is fighting for with the pen today: the rule and expansion of the Zionist Apartheid regime in Palestine.
The British left should dissociate itself from such people like Karl Pfeifer who are waging war against the anti-imperialist left.
The emergence and the prominence of the Antinationals is a clear sign of the political and moral degeneration of sections of the petty-bourgeois left after 1989-91 and particular after the imperialist offensive since September 11. They have degenerated into agents of imperialism and Zionism and act as a kind of fifth column in the left. Part of the anti-imperialist struggle is to oppose their slander and their attempts to exclude and physically attack us. For us in the ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt it is clear that we defend all anti-imperialists against the Antinationals slander and against any physical attacks by any means necessary.
|
Site search
|
Austria: one million on strike but leaders sell out
4 June 2003
Austria: SP… gains ground in the election campaign
6-10-2002
Austria: new elections as far right implodes
29-9-2002
Austria: anti-capitalists take the streets of Salzburg
22-9-2002