Dr Who? Dr Dawkins!

SC@473,
I think Gee's probably talking about the UK anti-war movement, and specifically the Stop The War Coalition, which does include both Muslims and Leninists, as well as many Jews (including Jewish Leninists and even Jewish Muslims, though I haven't encountered a Muslim Leninist yet) - and I'm sure anarchists, though none in prominent roles to my knowledge; and the "Respect" party led by George Galloway (which has recently split). I'm sure some of the Muslims involved have some pretty revolting views, including anti-semitism, and as I've said, I have come across it in STWC meetings. The most hardline Islamic fundies, though, would have nothing to do with STWC or Respect - indeed, Galloway has been threatened by them at open political meetings, for encouraging Muslims to vote. So Gee's concerns on this matter are not wholly unwarranted, although they are exaggerated, and in my view put forward in a bad faith attempt to rule any criticism of Judaism or Israel out of order.

Re a term for AIPAC and cronies - I can't see what's wrong with "Zionist lobby". Zionism is an identifiable political belief, "Zionist" is a term chosen and used by Zionists themselves so it can hardly be considered anti-semitic, and it respects the fact that many Jews are not Zionists, while many Zionists are not Jews. Is there some terminological issue in the US that I'm not aware of?

Further to 501, anarchists certainly take part in the anti-war marches, which are often co-organised by STWC, CND and the MAB (Muslim Association of Britain). Some march under the classic black or black-and-red flags, but the most original are CIRCA (Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army) who dress as circus clowns and go in for stunts such as dusting police riot shields with feather dusters.

Richard Silverstein describes himself as a zionist (or I think he does - his site's down), but is politically in the same boat as J Street, not AIPAC.

amk - It would still seem to me a reasonable shorthand. J Street doesn't seem to use the Zionist label, although as two-statists they would be entitled to.

Further, a few J Street links are self-described Zionists.

Lee,

I think Nick was correct here (#424)

With regard to Dawkins comment on "the Jewish lobby" and US foreign policy, I would certainly not have used those words, and consider you have reasonable grounds for objecting to them. You would have done better to be honest about the reasons for your dislike of Dawkins and his book from your first comment.

And I think this comment of yours was particularly non thoughtful, I think you are just spinning things :

There are those fearful people--and Henry appears to be one of them--for whom any criticism of Israeli policy smacks of anti-semitism.

I think it's quite clear what Henry's hot button is (to use your own expression), and there's no need to misrepresent what he said.

So let's disregard for a while Henry's comments about the God delusion, the dog illusion, the talmund, etc... and look at the "hot button", which, in my view, is his comment #436;

During the period in which the war was most heated, the rise in antisemitic attacks -- physical attacks on people and Jewish property -- increased. And then in plops Dawkins with his odd comments about Jews, at the same time that Jewish students on university campuses were being advised to conceal their religious identitues in case they were attacked -- while their teachers launched into hysterical tirades against Israel, and otherwise moderate Left-wing opinion formers now think it's okay to crack jokes about Jews controlling the world or whatever.

Thankfully it's died down now. For the moment. As someone said, antisemitism sleeps but lightly. So, no, I don't think I'm being paranoid. People really are out to get me.

So, is Henry being paranoïd ?

Negentropyeater @507

The false accusation that jews are christ killers, and the resulting 2000 years of persecution from christianity alone would be a good reason for Henry to be wary of further persecution.

But if he saw the God Delusion as stoking this anti-semitism, he should have made this clear from the start.

However, his view that we are nazis out to get him suggests he is paranoid.

Here in Germany, it would also get him in trouble.

As I said, Gee was completely wrong IMHO with the GD, what's clear is that his hot button (antisemitism) got pressed with Dawkins' remarks about a mythical US jew lobby, and he used this to attack him of demagogy.

I don't think he sees us as Nazis trying to get him, but he is super sensitive (too much I don't know) to remarks made by coleagues who tend to activate antisemitic behaviours.

I think atheists are quite capable of denouncing the inepsies of judaïsm without being accused of activating antisemitic behaviour. But this is not something that Dawkins has been particularly skillful in doing lately.

Nick Gotts @ #501 and 503,

But Leninists are not on the extreme Left. It's long been a pet peeve of mine, this idea that Communists represent the far Left, and thus we can see how the far Left ultimately meets up with the far Right and other such nonsense. Extreme statists can never be considered extreme Left. Kropotkin didn't call them "authoritarian socialists" for nothing :).

Thanks for the information about CIRCA! - I hadn't heard of them.

SC,

There's a book by two British anarchists, Christie and Meltzer, the title of which escapes me, which suggests a two-axis map of political belief systems, with the left/right being economic collectivism/anticollectivism, and the up/down being authoritarian/libertarian. They placed all communists to the extreme left, but with Leninists at top and anarchist communists at bottom (or vice versa). Actually, of course, you need more than two dimensions - there's the green/grey dimension, and a lot of things that don't fit well on continuous scales at all. Anyhow, I'm afraid you're not going to be able to impose your "pet peeve" on common usage (in the forseeable future), according to which Leninists are extreme left, and anarchists just don't figure except as cartoon characters holding bombs with fizzing fuses! I'm sure it's Leninists Gee had in mind.

As I creakily enter the new day - I don't drink coffee, so it can be a slow process - I'll just clarify that I was responding primarily to Gee's imprecise and misleading use of "extreme Left" in this context and his paranoid claims about some sort of "alliance," not at all suggesting that there's no antisemitism in broadly left-wing coalitions there. Your information about the STWC is much appreciated (by me, at least - what Gee'll make of it I can only imagine).

Anyhow, I'm afraid you're not going to be able to impose your "pet peeve" on common usage (in the forseeable future), according to which Leninists are extreme left,

I never seek to impose - only to persuade :). It will take time, but I'm not giving in to an erroneous characterization.

and anarchists just don't figure except as cartoon characters holding bombs with fizzing fuses!

Grrr. By the way, not long ago on my blog I wrote a bit about the long history of anarchist antifascism, specifically Carlo Tresca and Luigi Fabbri. Anarchists were on the front lines of the struggle against fascism in the '20s and '30s. This is not to say that there have been no antisemites in the anarchist movement - Bakunin is a prime example (although he was also rabidly anti-German; though neither is that surprising for a 19th-century Russian, I attribute both in some part to his profound hostility to Marx).

a two-axis map of political belief systems, with the left/right being economic collectivism/anticollectivism

For the record, Kropotkin was an enemy of economic collectivism as understood by Marxists. It was partially in reaction to these ideas that he and others developed anarchist communism. But anarchism is a complex and varied movement...

And I'll now conclude my little rant. I fear I'm starting to sound like one of the Flame Warriors!

Indeed I am:

http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/issues.htm

I hope that Gee was simply having a very bad day yesterday, otherwise I suspect some sort of nervous breakdown. I'm still baffled how Ichthyic's sarcasm about jackboots and Owlmirror's innocent link could make a smart and cultured guy completely lose it.

I hope that Gee was simply having a very bad day yesterday, otherwise I suspect some sort of nervous breakdown. I'm still baffled how Ichthyic's sarcasm about jackboots and Owlmirror's innocent link could make a smart and cultured guy completely lose it.

I know. Once I got over my initial shock at reading #415, I became rather concerned about him. As I read his later posts, that concern grew. I, too, am hoping it was an anomalous event brought on by a specific trigger or series of triggers, and not indicative of a larger problem.

SC,

Proudhon, and indeed (bizarrely) Marx himself, were also anti-semitic. I'm sure you're much better read in anarchism than I am, but surely Kropotkin's development of anarchist communism was the culmination of a movement towards economic collectivism within anarchism, and a large proportion of anarchists would still accept, if pressed, the anarchist communist label?

Incidentally, unless you're at least 40, I was an anarchist before you were born - and although I haven't remained one (I guess like most people, I've become more conservative with age ;-), still have a great deal of respect for anarchist views and arguments.

And I think this comment of yours was particularly non thoughtful, I think you are just spinning things:

There are those fearful people--and Henry appears to be one of them--for whom any criticism of Israeli policy smacks of anti-semitism.

I think it's quite clear what Henry's hot button is (to use your own expression), and there's no need to misrepresent what he said.

Maybe it is a misrepresentation. I don't know the man and maybe he has an agenda that wasn't apparent at first blush. But in the context of a discussion where Henry jumped quickly to embrace anti-semite accusations (such as his 'untermensch' accusation), he certainly seems fearful, and is clearly sensitive to criticism of Israel. If Dawkins clumsily made a Jews = Israel connection, so too did Henry. It's a not-uncommon pathology.

Isn't it interesting how this became an intelligent discussion between adults once Henry went away?

Nick,

I'm aware of Proudhon's antisemitism, but since I've been working on an analysis of Bakunin's "God and the State" I have him on the brain at the moment. Also, though I didn't do a great job of it, what I really wanted to emphasize that while individual anarchists may have been antisemites, antisemitism as an ideology is completely foreign to anarchism as philosophy or practice.

surely Kropotkin's development of anarchist communism was the culmination of a movement towards economic collectivism within anarchism, and a large proportion of anarchists would still accept, if pressed, the anarchist communist label?

I would accept it even without being pressed! When I brought up Kropotkin's criticism of collectivism, I had in mind specifically Marxist collectivization schemes, which I think are what come to most people's minds when they hear "economic collectivism," and about which Kropotkin wrote presciently in The Conquest of Bread. There are substantive differences between anarcho-collectivism and anarcho-communism (as well as real disputes within anarchism concerning the labor movement, political action, environmentalism, human rights, national liberation movements, etc. - I lean toward an "anarchism without adjectives," coalition-building, creative-synthesis sort of approach myself); but my primary purpose in that post was to try to distinguish all forms of anarchism from Marxism-Leninism.

Incidentally, unless you're at least 40, I was an anarchist before you were born - and...still have a great deal of respect for anarchist views and arguments.

I'm not! Thanks for making me feel young! Sorry if I gave the impression that I thought you were hostile to anarchism. I never did.

although I haven't remained one (I guess like most people, I've become more conservative with age :(

There. Fixed that :). (I've actually become more radical as I've aged. I don't know of any empirical studies about this. I suspect you're right in general, but that the idea of a movement towards greater conservatism has also been unduly played up. I may be wrong, though.)

Isn't it interesting how this became an intelligent discussion between adults once Henry went away?

Yes - reminds me of the aftermath of Brenda's drive-by on the "Sorry, Vox,..." thread.

I suspect you're right in general, but that the idea of a movement towards greater conservatism has also been unduly played up. - SC

I think there are some studies, but I'm not sure - difficult to design I would think. By the way, I didn't mean to imply that because I once was an anarchist (in fact until my early 30s) and now am not, that in any way implied I was wrong then and right now!

There is a news item in the recent Nature on the genetics of anarchy, but sadly it's only about bees...

We seem to have chased Henry Gee off.

SC, you forgot to include a link to your blog.

I think Mr. Gee realized that he was digging himself deeper and deeper into a big hole, and wisely decided to stop digging.

He posted about it, slightly obliquely, over at his own blog, and focused on the issue of "Anonymous Commenters: Threat or Menace?"

Oh, and he took the opportunity to take yet another slam at Dawkins by way of the wording: "famous former scientist" (emphasis mine).

He really does have some long-simmering seething pique for RD, it would appear.

I wonder if his problem is that Dawkins is, quite simply, much too Aryan. Could that be it? Do those "piercing blue eyes which, despite their prominence, seem to be devoid of humanity" just squick Gee out?

Perhaps he realised how thin-on-the-ground his points and key premise (god being outside science) were considering this is a blog frequented by science-types. Or maybe one of his friends read what he was writing and had a word to him off-blog.

It did get a little bit crazy with the antisemitism claims, all begun because he didn't like me referring to him as belonging to the British upper class; something he felt was ridiculous considering his Jewish heritage.

Which might just have been valid if I'd known of it beforehand. I'd never heard of him before he showed up to comment on Dawkins.

dawkinism is a lie, that only those without any whistful desire to have therebe more mystery in the universe would believe in...doctor who is fiction...richard dawkins is in docor who...thererore dawkins is fiction....in a multitude of realities, all events that dint happen have, therefore by the nature of there not being a god, one exists somehwere, and by the nature of the typical god, one is therefore everywhere...therefore there is a god, simply because a lot of people like think there isn't....or something like that. :) science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of god without sailing its own soul up the river (do you prove something exists or doesnt exist as a scientist? what about all the elements taht were predicted then found to not exist or inded to exist?) Stick to leaving God to philosophers and making faster nicer cups of tea to scientists I say..........and your average full on atheist is as mental as nay given religious nut. (including sadly RTD at times, can you have an evangelical atheist?)

Wilbynism is a lie

Wilbynism is indistinguishable from blathering while on drugs. I think it's long past time for Wilby to sleep it off.