Herzl and Trotsky…We have to go behind the Neo-leftist lies about both.
(THIS IS THE PENULTIMATE IN A SERIES OF ARTICLES FOR ISRAPUNDIT)
When I personally think of the future of the Jewish state of Israel and the massive problems which it faces, the two names which always come into my mind are Theodor Herzl and Leon Trotsky. Yes I do understand many are surprised that I think of Trotsky but please accept that I do not drag his name in as some kind of polemical ploy. The politics of these two giants really are intertwined in very many ways. Herzl was the man who was able to see the possibility of the Holocaust at the very beginning of the century and it took people like Trotsky a long time to understand the validity of his views. But on the other hand the living experience of Trotsky over event-filled years is richer than that of Herzl. That is not just because Herzl died young. It is rather more because Herzl had a more limited view of political action and Trotsky when he worked through the political issues involved with Zionism became less dogmatic and far more effective.
It is very important to study that period. These last two articles of a series concerned with the leftist degeneration will indeed show there is a close connection between Herzl and Trotsky, and even their differences will help us to understand what Israel must do today to survive.
There are a number of factors to keep in mind in discussing Theodor Herzl:
• The existence of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred as a large entity in the world, something which has existed for 2000 years plus.
• That Zionism is nothing more than the expression of the Jewish national liberation struggle. Judaism was not only a very old religion but also a national liberation theory and movement.
So therefore when a man like Herzl came along and started to campaign to give living reality to that then he was bound to come under a lot of hostility. Many of the attacks on Herzl are motivated by that hostility. There is a thin line between the hostility of many of these critics of Herzl and Israel, and anti-Semitism.
This is an example of this hostile criticism of Herzl which comes from a website called “geocities”:
“Later in his letter, Braham considered that Herzl’s “scheme to buy the land at excessive prices and in secrecy” was “the classic ploy of property developers and businesses whose stock in trade is to pay what appears to be a handsome price for a piece of land without disclosing its true potential. My conclusion is that Herzl was a coloniser, certainly; there is no doubt he intended to create a state over the heads of the indigenous population - but by stealth rather than force of arms.”(33)
(http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/senate/7854/transfer03.html)
There is much more around this theme in this article by geocities. They play on the idea of Jews moving to Palestine and that these Jewish people for their own safety may need to have Arabs moved, and this is not something which applies only to Jews and Arabs, it is a universal phenomenon and Leon Trotsky also was aware of it.
But all of these critics of Zionism in their one-sided and superficial approach leave out vital issues:
• The area of land for a Jewish Homeland was likely to be tiny in comparision with the rest of the nations of the world, and especially in comparision with Arab lands.
• In fact according to the Masada website it turned out to be 600 to one in the Arabs favour. They produce a map showing Israel as a tiny speck amidst vast Arab lands
• They leave out especially why Jews were moving to Palestine. This was the Jewish Homeland. This was where Jews in their exile always looked to, long before Arabs colonised the area.
• They leave out the urgency of the Jewish Homeland. With the growth of Fascism the Jewish Homeland was not only a national liberation aim but a survival aim
And so these quite awful groups like Geocities, echoed by the even more dreadful Israeli “New Historians” like Morris and Segev, are really sailing very close indeed to anti-Semitism. To talk about Herzl as a colonist and not talk about Jew hatred is really a very big lie indeed.
I do not think one should get too tied up in trying to answer groups such as “geocities”. Only one of many, I am afraid!
They approach Herzl and Zionism from their own particular anti-Jewish angle. They simply do not allow that the Jewish people can have a national liberation struggle of their own. Sometimes they appear like academics, but then academics are notorious for taking some little item or aspect of a subject and not seeing the big picture. It is really a kind of nit-picking. It is indeed a method which is profoundly NON academic and non Scientific.
Herzl represents in fact the very best of the Jewish tradition. On a human level this was a man who was obviously a successful man and was part of the professional classes of Europe. But he was beginning to recognize that millions of Jewish people could be in serious danger. He was a great man because he took a decision not to sit on the sidelines.
His Diaries which Shlomo Avineri covers best have lots of dreaming, and some things which are really only passing thoughts jotted down. But all national liberation struggles have this kind of thing. Why should the Jewish struggle be any different to others, say for arguments sake, the Irish national struggle. Plenty of strange ideas there!
But with Herzl what needs to be emphasised is his selfless struggle to save the Jews, and that he was warning about the danger of the Holocaust long before everybody else. It is amazing how people like Morris and Geocities can discuss Herzl and ignore all of that.
The other thing about Herzl which is ignored is that he was an intellectual who was drawn more and more to the masses of impoverished Jews, the poorest of the poor, who lived in Eastern Europe in terrible conditions.
And so that is in complete opposition to the lies of those who say that Zionism was a movement of big business etc. It was the very opposite!
But there was an essential aspect to these millions of Jewish poor in Eastern Europe and in the Russian Pale which the present enemies of Israel ignore. There was contained deep in their hearts the longing to return to Zion.
Why do the Israel-haters do this? They do it because they are very dishonest people indeed. They are indoctrinated in a certain theory, dogma of anti-Zionism if you like, and they make all facts and living reality fit in with that dogma.
In the years following 1967 there was raised in the world by the Arab and Islamists publicists that there was a “Palestine” and a “Palestinian” people. This was promoted by Vanessa Redgrave and by groups such as the “Trotskyist” Workers Revolutionary Party, by the various Stalinist Communist Parties tied to Moscow, and by the whole of the “left” that this was the national liberation struggle par excellence. Poor Arab Palestinian children were continually photographed. The image of the armed “Guerilla” fighting against huge odds was also shown endlessly.
But all of that, and the emphasis on the refugees and refugee camps, was all part of hiding that the Jewish struggle for a Homeland was the real national liberation struggle, thousands of years old, as opposed to a post-1967 publicity campaign.
How they managed to pull of what was a huge hoax, a massive confidence trick is not easy to answer because there are many actual answers. I would say that they were helped in this by the kind of stupid leadership which developed in the leadership of the Israeli state itself. Many were Arabists and multiculturalists in the worst sense. They denied that what they were facing was Islamist Jihad against the just-born Jewish state. And they were forever apologising to Islamofascist Jihadists – never a wise policy.
But there were many other reasons. The Jihadists conducted a very successful campaign of deception.
But one of the main reasons stands out. This was the role of the “Left” in organizing behind this Jew hating Jihadist Arab movement against Israel. The “Left” managed to keep hidden from workers and young people, students etc, that the Palestinian Arab movement had very close links to the Nazis in the 30s and 40s. It is very recently that the full implications of the involvement of the Palestinian Arab Hajj Amin el Husseini has become known, but still not widely enough known.
Why did the “Left” do this? This is a very good question and the answer lies in that their betrayal over Israel coincided with an intense personal and political crisis of the Left in general. The biggest single reason for this is the incredibly huge political damage on the left that was administered by Stalinism. If you doubt me just acquaint yourself with what went on inside the Popular Front during the Spanish Civil War.
And yet another factor in this has been schools of professorship which grew up in the universities which turned its back on the study of history, which has reached a point in Ilan Pappe, the notorious Jewish Israel hater who says that history is totally subjective.
In opposition to all of those I do think that the life and struggles of Herzl as a key part of this history need to be well known.
In this the wonderful work of Avineri is vital reading. His study of Herzl’s diaries is one of the things which I would class as essential reading for a new cadre of Jewish leaders. Avineri is a Jewish patriot and he appreciates Herzl. Rightly so! He also has a special feel for the PATHOS in the situation of the Jews and in the struggles of Herzl which is very important.
So a reading of Avineri brings much more truth than the lies of Geocities and the new historian movement who are better classed as not new historians but old liars.
Still times move on and even Avineri needs to be transcended. As far as I can judge he is out of the Israeli Establishment having served as a Government Minister. Consequently his analysis of Herzl, while still totally valid, has to be rethought given the challenges which have grown up around Israel.
Although Herzl did his utmost to further the aims of the Zionist masses in their struggle for a Homeland, he did it in a certain way which has implications for today. Also it was very unfortunate that Herzl died at such a young age which was a huge blow to the Jewish movement.
The 1903 Congress was covered by Leon Trotsky in his role as a young reporter for a Left wing paper. We have already looked at how Herzl was 30 years ahead of Trotsky at that time in his estimation of the dangers to the Jewish people from world anti-Semitism. On every point at that date Herzl was correct and Trotsky was wrong. This is a huge issue for people today who may be of a leftist inclination. All they will hear from the present fascist Left leaders are lies and denuciation of Herzl, the Geocities being just one example. The lies can get some life because they are not challenged.
So we see at this vital point in history, the turn of the century, Trotsky very wrong, Herzl very correct and very sharp politically. For me that is a qualitative point or moment of truth and should not be let go of.
But history and life is full of all kinds of twists and turns. Trotsky lived on to participate in huge events, and the story of his political thinking on this issue of the Jewish national liberation struggle did not end in 1903. It may hold vital knowledge for the future.
Trotsky came as time went on to see the Jewish struggle for a Homeland as being Zionism, and as something absolutely authentic. He held on to doubts if it could be successful within capitalist break-up and crisis. I think he had in mind the growth of what he called “reactionary Mohammedanism”, really what we call Islamofascism, in this regard. But I know he had in mind the growth of mass Fascist Parties which no matter what some people think were always a tool of the bourgeois class. All historical examples of Fascism have shown that conclusively. Fascism was what dominated Trotsky’s thinking and practice throughout the 30s. So although Herzl had died soon after the Sixth Congress the issues which he correctly raised obviously did not die with him.
That the Jewish struggle is a true national liberation struggle is shown by the sheer gusto that the Jewish people have pitched in to develop Israel. It has produced a nation of inspired people who have contributed in every field of human endeavour at the highest level. There is thus proven something very positive about this movement.
The other side may be correct as well. In this era of complete crisis in humanity can this small outpost survive inside the confines of capitalism. Israel must survive but the dangers to it are real.
Trotsky’s changing thought over 40 years or so is an absolute education in these matters. Totally hidden by the enemies of Israel, especially on the “Left” of today!
In the next and last article I will examine in detail this serious thinking of this man Trotsky, and it will become very obvious that his ideas on the issue of Zionism are in total contradiction to the Fascist and Palestinian Arab Jihadist Left of today. Remember that this material has been hidden by those who call themselves “Trotskyist”, people like Vanessa Redgrave. The reason why is very obvious indeed.
I’m not in favour of discussions lauding Trotsky. It’s pretty clear he was a pure totalitarian and would have people executed out of hand. It’s an embarrassment to have him associated with anything positive.
Comment by greenmamba
— December 29, 2006 @ 11:44 am
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I have nothing against communism or socialism as long as everyone who engages in either of them are doing so on a voluntarily basis and can participate or cease at any time on their own discretion or desire.
When charity and certain good works become mandatory they lose virtue and cease being good.
There are many things which began with a benevolent effort in mind and in some cases initially brought relief and benefits. However, as they grew and prospered their power and wealth increased drawing those baser sort of individuals who were attracted to both. Over time the moderates are overcome by the more ruthless and radical factions which are more demanding and controlling, but all in the name of a noble cause. Eventually these become more oppressive than all that they superceded.
Mandatory charity, required perfection, and the imposition of absolute “solutions” to all problems are harbingers of tyranny.
Comment by RandyTexas
— December 29, 2006 @ 1:36 pm
geocities is a hosting site. It is not a creator of content. A geocities blog or www site is similar to having a Netscape site or a blogger blog.
Comment by M. Simon
— December 30, 2006 @ 5:02 pm
Read your Hayek. Fascism is inherent in the left.
Comment by M. Simon
— December 30, 2006 @ 5:11 pm
Anybody who still believes in “the crisis of capitalism” has not studied economics for the last 50 years.
As long as capitalism is capable of creating wealth there will be no crisis. Even Marx knew that. Marx’s error was in believeing that the situation in his day was the best possible (in the capitalist countries) and little or no further improvement was on the horizon.
Marxists who don’t know Marx really irk me. In fact Marx said he was no Marxist. Fancy that. Marx actually said that if the creation of capital was the goal then capitalism was the way to go and it would be hard painful work. His theory on the transition to socialism was based on the idea that in a fully developed capitalist system profits would decline. Evidently, contra Marx, we are still in the capital building phase.
Comment by M. Simon
— December 30, 2006 @ 5:26 pm
Simon,
Again, you are absolutely right. The system and philosophies that the left is in love with is fascism. Communism is their utopian dream but realizing it dose not work when translated from an imaginative fantasy to a working reality, they settle for socialism/fascism. People confuse fascism with Nazism and while Nazism was fascist, fasism can mutate invarious ways forming divers strains, but many of the same consequinces will by nature eventually follow.
Consider the following article excerpt in regards to fascism(socialism) and communism:
The whole article is a very worthy read filled with information you don’t see in the main-stream.
Note: Both Russia and China are currently practicing not communism, not democracy, but fascism.
Comment by RandyTexas
— December 30, 2006 @ 11:47 pm
Randy,
Thanks!!!
My comments were inspired by your original comment and Felix’s tripe. It is really hard to believe that people still follow that stuff after over 100 years of failure, both major and minor.
Simon
Comment by M. Simon
— December 31, 2006 @ 2:10 am
The series of articles I have written is concerned with how the left has degenerated to a position where it is now a very big danger in very many ways to the future of Israel and to the avoidance of great danger which the Jewish people are in. That is my starting point.
I emphasise I am not an “ist” of any kind. I broke from the present neo-Left because it was supporting the “Palestinians” and I began to recognise what a myth has been spun since about 1968 on that score.
There really is a difference of approach or method between myself and the former 3 commentators. I do not say this good, that evil etc.
I want to trace the issue historically in all its detail.
In the course of that I have come upon research that suggests that Trotsky was very much concerned with Fascism and he was becoming increasingly alarmed about the fate of the Jewish people under that threat.
THAT ASPECT OF TROTSKY HAS BEEN CAREFULLY AND DELIBERATELY HIDDEN BY THE PRESENT TROTSKYISTS LIKE REDGRAVE.
What should I be expected to do? Ignore this and hand the situation over to the Neolefts who seek to destroy Israel through lies.
Comment by Felix Quigley
— December 31, 2006 @ 6:11 am
Greenmamba
I feel you are very wrong in your attitude to this question.
If I could mention just one name - Rachel Corrie - then this name poses a big problem for Israel and for Jewish people.
How can young people like her with vaguely studentish and leftish attitudes be picked up by the hardened Jew-haters of the ISM, her head then filled with a kind of dogma, and used as she was/is against Israel.
What is it about this present “Left” which has them at the service of this “Palestinian” myth.
How to explain it, you can only do so if you are prepared to place this whole left experience under the microscope.
What struck me in the Trotsky issue was how he was blinded by dogma in 1903 when he wrote that article about Zionism and attacked Herzl. And with that how Herzl was able to see at that early stage the growing dangers to the Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire break-up.
But it did not stop there. There was also a content to the method of Trotsky and as time went on and he made new experiences, especially in the way that Stalin used the existing anti-Semitism in the Russian population in about 1926 to destroy Trotsky and to expel him.
Was Trotsky “totalitarian” or did he believe in a dictatorship.
If he did he had a strange way of showing it. His thinking and writing on Fascism, and especially on the Fascism he was seeing in front of his euyes as the 30s went on, are a struggle for ideas and for clarity on how the Nazi fascism could be defeated.
In our own time the Tudeh Party in Iran (which was the Stalinist Communist Party) had the chance to fight for power, as it had the support of millions of workers and students. It did not do this. It sunk its lot in behind Khomeini and the Mullahs.
But you see there was a revolution in Iran, but it was a counter revolution. And the consequences of taking THAT road are there today and pose a big threat to Israel.
I would say this is sharply posed in the Israel of today. I think there are two possible roads. Under Olmert and that kind of leadership there will be massacre, wipe-out of millions of Jews. That is almost certain given the correlation of forces stacked against Israel. That is one road. The other road is essentially what we discuss on Israpundit.
You have a really wrong attitude to this discussion. You propose taking somebody like Trotsky, who one way or another is mixed in to the Jewish experience, and say you feel embarrassed by having him lauded on this site.
Why so! If he held a correct position on certain matters why should we not know about it. And lauded is the wrong term, I am evaluating, good and bad.
All ideas on the past are on the table and this is the unique thing about the best of the Jewish nation, it is its intellectuality. That is why the Jewish people may just win. This quality goes back a long time, certainly to the struggle against the Roman dictators, and is also mixed in with the Jewish critique of Christianity and of Islam.
Some time before he was murdered Trotsky met in Mexico with a Russian lady, a Zionist from Russia, who had travelled from Palestine, and there ensued a long discussion. Are you aware of this meeting? If you are not do you think we should know about it. If Trotsky was taking a position towards Zionism which is at variance with today’s “left” should we know about it and does that matter? I think it matters hugely!
Comment by Felix Quigley
— December 31, 2006 @ 9:22 am
Randy and M Simon
You throw too many things around which are really not on my topic.
My point is this.
In 1903 Theodor Herzl was very prescient in being able to see the great dangers to the Jews of Eastern Europe, as the signs of the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were just becoming apparent.
Marx’s dogmatic attitude to religion had a lot to do with the Bolshevik’s opposition to Judaism and so not seeing the great richness of that tradition.
But as time went on Trotsky began to revise his position on these vital questions (I mean vital for Jews today and for those of us who support the Jewish struggle)
And as the 30s went on Trotsky became sympathetic to Zionism. Does that mean nothing to you since you attack me but ignore that? Is that credible that it means nothing!
Especially when some of the worst enemies of Israel today claim the name “Trotskyist” and work assiduously to hide this important history.
So what is the point of broadening out into a discussion on communism and socialism where the discussion is on generalities. And where you can throw out allegations that Putin’s Russia is Fascist (”Note: Both Russia and China are currently practicing not communism, not democracy, but fascism.”)
That requires a book to answer. I am talking about the position of Herzl and the position of Trotsky over a period which is quite specific, from 1903 until 1940.
But what you Randy seem to be saying that Trotsky’s fight against the widely recognised fascism in his day, of Hitler and Mussolini, and its reflection also in Spain, is of no account, because in your view TROTSKY ALSO WAS A FASCIST.
I think if you insist on that assertion you need to define how you define Fascism and how Trotsky understood the phenomenon, and how others also view Fascism. I cannot see how anybody can now avoid defining this word and subject given the history of the Jews and the situation today in the Arab world and in Iran.
Comment by Felix Quigley
— December 31, 2006 @ 9:44 am
Felix, et al,
On this topic I would refer everyone to the fascinating article above written by Churchill in 1920.
In the article Churchill divides the Jewish people of his day into three groups, and the three groups he divides into two categories(generally speaking: “good Jews and bad Jews”
These three groups are Nationalist Jews whose loyalties lie with their adopted nations, whom Churchill praises, Zionist Jews who seek a homeland, whom he also praises, and lastly, Communist Jews whom he sees as a threat to the Jewish people and others.
Obviously Churchill did not see Jewish people as a threat, on the contrary, but communisim, which he saw as a corrupting force that might draw in many Jewish people and destroy them and effect other nations negatively.
This is an informative and interesting article due to the time when it was written even if certain points imperfectly conceptualized.
I would suggest all read it for a historical reference regardless of your leftist or rightist tendencies.
Comment by RandyTexas
— December 31, 2006 @ 11:33 am
Felix:
I know with some certainty that Trotsky was the kind of person who would summarily order the execution of people that annoyed him in any way. In this respect he was no better than Saddam Hussein. I cannot see any good coming from analyzing his philosophies. It would be the equivalent of saying that Hitler made the trains run on time.
Comment by greenmamba
— December 31, 2006 @ 4:06 pm
Greenmamba
Here I do not intend to enter into a defence of Leon Trotsky in any way whatsoever because that would be against the spirit in which I wrote the articles. I explained that quite carefully.
I have examined as far as sources allowed me, using research already done which is in turn well sourced, the position of Trotsky in 1903, and then tracing his position through the ensuing decades in which the most historic events took place.
This is an historical method and it is on that method that I am opposing you.
You have nothing to say about any of these historical events and what the position of the combatants was. You approach things from assertion, called sometimes “argument by assertion” which can slip very easily into bias and prejudice.
It is just a bad method to have adopted on a vital website like Israpundit.
You may be wrong about Leon Trotsky. You may be correct. It is just that using your method the rest of us will never know and will never learn anything.
But the problem remains: Today there are “Trotskyists” like Redgrave who attack Zionism, but the man himself was sypathetic to Zionism in the interview in Mexico with the Zionist lady I mentioned above.
There is thus a lie being broadcast. People like Redgrave have hidden this history.
That is my point and all Zionists should be trying to get this history out in the open and debated.
Comment by Felix Quigley
— January 1, 2007 @ 6:40 am
Randy
It would seem that Ted in the editors chair has a bit of a problem, opposites which cannot come together. That is really my position towards Churchill.
I am on the opposite side to Churchill. He was a leader of his own British capitalist and Imperial class and if you ask any Irish nationalist (Bob Briscoe for example if he were alive) then you would find the same reservations about Churchill.
Churchill would have agreed to the carrying out of James Connolly from his cell in Mountjoy Prison, strapped to his chair because of his wounds in the 1916 Rising, and shot by the British like a dog.
The same struggle that Jewish patriots were fighting in later years against the same British Mandate.
This issue is off the topic to the issues I raised about the contradiction between Trotsky in the 1930s and the “Trotskyists” of today.
That is what my article was about.
It is an issue in its own right which should be taken on board without all this flak being thrown up by you and M Simon.
But having said that even what Churchill writes here in this article you refer to I am against.
The bold type is mine in the above.
Are we in the struggle, our struggle against Islamist and medieval reaction, today to join with Churchill in attacking the French Revolution!
I just do not think my research into how Trotsky was so wrong in 1903 and Herzl was so correct should be confused.
Nor how Trotsky changed his mind as events taught him bitter lessons.
Nor the danger of dogma in political thinking.
Churchill led against Hitler. That should not make him a model for us except in certain narrow areas of steadfastness etc. I can counter with how come the Brits and the US would not bomb the railway lines leading to the concentration camps so saving the lives of millions of Jew.
Comment by Felix Quigley
— January 1, 2007 @ 7:23 am
First of all Felix, I have some reservations about Churchill also. He was far from a perfect man, nonetheless, there are certain aspects about the man to be admired.
As far as Churchill’s1920 article ZIONISM versus BOLSHEVISM, I made no contention that he was accurate in all of his statements, eluded to the fact that he may not be, and referred to his as an historical reference to the issue during the time.
As for the emphasis you place on Churchill’s use of the term “international Jews,” it seems obvious in context to the rest of the article that by international he is referring to Jews who are communist. Remember that this is 1920, things were not as pc then and words carried different connotations than they do now. There are internationalist today who are French, German, American, Jewish, etc., it means no more than it means and Churchill was slandering no one but dividing the different philosophies common at the time into groups. The distictions he makes are based on ideologies, I have no problem with that.
You state:
I do not see the discussion going off topic as you do because I do not see the contradiction in the same light as you. You seem to wish to separate Trotsky from today’s neo-left in order to possibly rescue Marxist ideas.
This is what inspired me to write the article which I did in order to address the issue and show that it was Marxist ideology that by nature evolved into what the neo-left espouses.
I would add that this would have happened as a natural course regardless of Trotsky’s own personal views of the Jewish people or philosophical transitions he went through.
There is no point is trying to vindicate this ideology or people who embrace it because this line of thinking is destined to become oppressive and anti-Semitic, even if initial motives, ideas, and intentions were well intended.
Comment by RandyTexas
— January 1, 2007 @ 9:33 am
Felix:
I take your point, sort of, but feel that the Trotskyite Redgraves simply need to be denounced for their association with this b-t-rd. It tells me what sort of person they are.
Anyway we’re on the same side so I’m not going to argue any longer.
Comment by greenmamba
— January 1, 2007 @ 11:34 am
Randy
Sorry I have read this a little late. Your position for being inspired is then false. I did not set out to rescue Trotsky. I do not think he needs recuing. I have read his writings in particular of the growth of Fascism in the 30s and how it could be defeated. That perhaps is his greatest achievement and with that his explanation of the phenomenon known as Stalinism. I doubt if you have studied this material. But that material has not been surpassed. Of course Churchill and chums did defeat Hitler, but 60 million deaths and the Holocaust later.
No you miss the point of my articles entirely.
I raised this historical material: 1. because it was there, it was readily available on the net and 2. the material has been carefully hidden by a whole swathe of people, not least the present “Trotskyists”.
It showed that Trotsky was as the 30s went on becoming very close to Zionism.
But he remained a revolutionary socialist. In that case he was a revolutionary socialist Zionist.
If that is true and I still have to unfortunately publish the last article then it has got huge implications. Is it indeed possible to be a Zionist and to be a revolutionary socialist.
You misread me entirely.
I am not trying to separate Trotsky from the George Gallowoys and Vanessa Redgraves of today.
The research shows that Trotsky himself had done this. And they have hidden the research.
It is of earth shattering importance in our Zionist terms because the main prop of Arab Islam is today the Left and those who even call themselves Trotskyists.
Becuse you are working on a strictly anti-Communist agenda you do not see that.
You have a serious hangup about Communism, and you are mild in comparision with the illustrious M Simon, so much so that anti-communism has become like a dogma.
This has prevented you from seeing the importance of this research for Jewish people today.
Comment by Felix Quigley
— January 3, 2007 @ 7:32 am
Greenmamba
Yes we are definitely on the same side because the Jewish people are definitely up against it big time in the Middle East today.
Is this material irrelevant. No I do not think so because in many ways we are right back to the 30s and we need to learn. All knowledge must become available.
Comment by Felix Quigley
— January 3, 2007 @ 7:36 am
Felix, I will be brief.
My contention is not over Trotsky’s feelings about Zionism. I argue that regardless of his intentions or the benevolence of his vision the ideology which he promoted will in practice develop over time into what we see today in neo-leftist circles.
It is an idealism which fails to account fully and completely for the effects of human nature and power. You may secede in separating Trotsky’s feelings from the neo-left but not the long term fruits of his philosophies which over time by their natural course will devolve into the end product, which is a controlled and oppressive society.
Comment by RandyTexas
— January 3, 2007 @ 10:52 am