#like i get where the sentiment of asking the UN for accountability for Israel comes but a) that's not how the UN works

[daeluin]

i really don't wanna go all ☝🏾🤓 well acktually on tumblr of all places but i am begging you all... pick up a book. wikipedia is free. the ICC (the International Criminal Court) doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the UN. yes they're both in Hague. No, they're wildly different international organizations. You're thinking of the ICJ (the International Court of Justice), which is also in Hague. and no, the ICJ doesn't have jurisdiction to deal with these affairs

[socialismwithasmile]

Just another ISO presentation

This is in the context of a multi-org anti-semitism/islamophobia solidarity event.

Hello,

I am here on behalf of the ISO. We decided to put this event together in response to the skyrocketing number of cases of both anti-Semitic and islamophobic violence that are sweeping the country. This has included A Sikh man shot in Kent Washington, a Muslim boy hung outside Seattle, four mosques burned and more than 140 bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers… 

With all of that horrific shit going on it seems reasonable to ask: where is this coming from?

An easy answer seems to be the Trump Administration. Among them are those known for their islamophobic and anti-Semitic and even fascistic beliefs. Advisor to the President, Steve Bannon for example is alleged to have said that he “doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats’ and that he didn’t want [his] girls going to school with Jews” and then there is Senior Advisor Steven Miller who in university was not only personal friends with Richard Spencer but worked with notorious islamophobe David Horowitz’s Organization to design a so-called “Islamofascism Awareness Week” to be used at campuses nationwide.

With these openly racist faces in the White House the white-nationalist and neo-Nazi scum that inhabits American far right has taken note of this change in tone by prominent members of the US government and they have been crawling out of the gutters, emboldened to commit a new wave of violence.

As a recent article in Jacobin Magazine put it:

“Although the alt-right remains on the fringes in the United States, it has come within proximity to real power and is trying to position itself as court philosopher. Figures like [the neo-Nazi] Richard Spencer see themselves as the Trump movement’s organic intellectuals, guiding the president’s followers, whom they characterize as a directionless ‘body without a head’”.

It would be easy to say that these are simply new and bad actors in American politics but the roots of these problems go back a long way and are deeply embedded in the US political system.

Islamophobia has long played a dual role in the US political machine, especially since 9/11, on the one hand it functions as a tool to dehumanize Muslims abroad and justify their slaughter by US troops in Iraq, Libya , Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and further abroad while on the other hand it divides working class Americans against each other here at home allowing for a particularly perverse kind of nationalism to take root.  Take for example George Bush’s comments from 2006 when he remarked:

“Since the horror of 9/11, we’ve learned a great deal about the enemy. And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations…. This struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilization.”

This kind of rhetoric calls to memory the words of Marxist writer and psychologist Frantz Fanon who described how in order to justify their oppression colonial overlords depict their subjects as “impervious to ethics, representing not only the absence of values but also the negation of values”

This dual form of racism is no stranger to American Jews either. In the 20s and 30s according to the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations: “A typical Jewish worker… could easily belong to a Jewish labor union and/or a mutual aid organization… send their child to a socialist… after-school program and summer camp, live in cooperative housing, attend lectures by Yiddish and socialist speakers and vote for the Socialist Party.” However, decades of anti-Semitism and McCarthyism teamed up to paint these liberatory ideas, so popular among the Jewish community, as somehow “foreign” and “un-american” and those spreading them as merely “agents of a global judeo-bolshevik conspiracy”

On top of that this idea of conspiracy doubles as a foil against critques of the capitalist system as a whole. Any systemic problems with capitalism can be easily scapegoated against Jews leaving the American ruling class off the hook for their crimes while Jews get shafted and attacked by fellow members of the working class.

While the Jewish Labor movement might no longer be a target of the mainstream political establishment, racist islamophobic ideas have since 9/11 enjoyed broad cross-the-aisle political consensus in our government. Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton for example, when asked in a presidential debate about national security went on a long rant about how American Muslims need to be on the “front lines” of the fight against “terror” and after the Pulse nightclub shooting she called for a return to the spirit of 9/12. Ironically, we might have achieved just the tenor of racist paranoia that reigned supreme after 9/11 under the Trump government.

        On the policy substance while republicans might have been behind the more heinous acts of islamophobic legislation it was the democrats who organized a congressional sit-in with the goal of forcing Republicans into voting on a so called “no-fly, no-buy” gun control measure. A ban that just like Trump’s immigration order would have overwhelmingly been targeted at Muslims, many of them innocent and unrelated to terrorist groups. On top of this, while he was president Obama continued to attack and imprison innocent Muslim civilians.

Along with this consensus against so called “Political Islam” has been a consensus on neo-liberal policies that have overwhelmingly enriched the 1% at the expense of ordinary working class people. These economic policies and the fallout of the global economic recession from 2008 have caused a sustained downturn in standards of living which has led to the very political polarization that has contributed to the rise of Trump and his brand of racist populism. The thing we of course realize as Socialists, is that the problem isn’t caused by Jews running the Banks or by Evil ‘Jihadis’ swarming our shores in the guise of refugees to kill our children, but in the way that these concerns have very strategically been used to turn us against each other and our own self interests. Take for example the story of Peter a former member of the Southern Poverty Law center recognized hate group: the III% organization.

Peter might have continued to share the racist views of his compatriots if it wasn’t for an encounter with a Muslim neighbor of his, through which they became close friends. This rocked Peter’s world and he shortly afterwards dropped out of the III% militia. In the statement, he drafted after leaving he said that:

        “I came to understand that … the III% Movement … had been subtly maneuvered into shifting our attention and efforts towards ensuring that… Muslims were kept in check, and that groups like Black Lives Matter were resisted. It didn’t make any sense anymore. Those people want the same things we do. Better quality of life. Less government intrusion. More justice and accountability. The only difference is the way we were going about getting those things. We should be uniting the working class and poor people across the country, not dividing along racial and religious lines. That is precisely what the rich want. They want more division. More strife in the working class.”

        The general sentiment of his comments ring shockingly true. Islamophobia, more than just a tool of imperialist aggression has, just like anti-Semitism been used to turn people who benefit from unity against each other. Ultimately the same people that have inflicted the economic damage that drove Peter to stand up against the US government in the first place are the ones now carrying out imperial invasions of Muslim countries and perpetuating Islamophobic stereotypes while neo-Nazis and anti-Semites blame the whole thing on a “Jewish conspiracy”. Only through unity and solidarity with each other’s struggles can we possibly hope to overcome this dark time. We must follow in the footsteps of people like Muslim activist Tarek El-Messidi who, when he saw that a local Jewish Burial ground had been attacked raised 80,000 dollars of donations from his local Muslim community to help repair the damage.  Or in the footsteps of the president of Temple Bnai Israel in Victoria Texas who gave the keys of their synagogue to the local Muslim community so that they would have a place to pray after their mosque was set on fire. Whether you are Jewish, Muslim, or none of the above, we must all hold to the truth of the classic slogan, an injury to one is an injury to all.