----- Original Message -----

From: Israel Shamir

To: readers

Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 8:58 PM

Subject: [shamireaders] White Nationalists - a possible ally?, by Joh Domingo

 

Should the friends of Palestine cooperate with staunchly anti-Zionist European and American Nationalist forces? The very question is a recipe for trouble. The Jews consider the Nationalists their worst enemies, while others are afraid that these contacts will be perceived as ‘antisemitism’ and cause the Jews in the movement to slam the door. In case of danger, the Jewish friends of Palestine immediately raise the spectre of White racism on behalf of Blacks and Muslim immigrants: “they [Nationalists] are against Muslims, Jews and Blacks”, goes the line – even if the White Nationalists actually court Black Nationalists. 

 

Is this fear of Nationalism justified? Should the Blacks and the Muslim immigrants acquiesce with their role of Human Shield for the Jews? Now, we bring in a strong and clear new voice, Joh Domingo (HIS BIO BELOW), an African friend of Palestine with a long experience of anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa . He calls to distinguish between racism and nationalism. 

 

His line is stark: "The important thing to remember about White Nationalists (a.k.a. Supremacists) is that they are isolationist, not international Cabalists that want to rule the world. Certainly there are scoundrels amongst them, but since when is that a crime? Who does not have their scoundrels? 

 

If we are concerned that Americans are duped into believing the lies of the judeo-cons, then White Supremacist are an improvement on the average American Joe who go along with the slaughter in Iraq and Palestine. Let’s first stop the theft, and dispossession, and slaughter of the non-Judeopean people, then we can "re-educate" White Supremacist - or not. Until then, they are allies because they are not my enemy”.

 

White Nationalists - a possible ally?

By Joh Domingo

 

Today we talk about things unthinkable a few years ago. Tomorrow we will do things unthinkable today. Struggle is theatre, and the Palestinian struggle has become the Broadway of the liberation movement. This struggle has moved from the seedy halls to become a smash hit because they have the benefit of the greatest publicity machine of all time, the Jewish dominated Mass Media of the United States . All that remains is the final act, with its incredible finale.

 

Common wisdom has it that Israel was conceived as a response to Racism, and has morphed into the Racist monster we see today. For many liberals, to oppose Zionism is to oppose Racism; is to oppose anti-Semitism. But they fail to see the intricate relationship between Nationalism and Racism. While Nationalism can be both a positive and negative natural force, Racism is a totally negative construct feeding on negative ethnocentric sentiments and involves acts of dispossession and the subjugation of others. Racism is a denial of the valid opposing claims of others and requires the absence of a nationalist consciousness in opposition to it. It can survive for centuries, providing those oppressed by Racism accept the frame of reference provided by the Racist. Absent this condition, Racism falters against the resistance provided by a countervailing nationalist consciousness. For this reason; true Racist always has to ensure that the distinction between Racism and Nationalism is obscured. An individual asserting that he as good as any is piddling compared to a homogeneous group asserting their PRIDE in their cultural heritage. Asserting your pride in your cultural heritage does not carry with it a need that others be ashamed of theirs.

 

Antisemitism can mean many things: from acute hatred of Jews, to objection to Jewish cultural domination, to mild mockery of Jewish values. But what is nationalism, if not the mocking of those that mock you, thereby building up the antibodies to protect you from the scourge of Racism? Examined in this light, the cry of “antisemitism” can be seen to be the ultimate racist tool, designed to ensure the domination of a racist discourse.

 

Why Zionism is Racism but antisemitism is not.

 

Because of the deliberate skewing of the discourse as cover for Racist domination, we are led to believe that someone championing the virtues of his ethnic background is the same as someone promoting the idea of the racial domination of others. Hence, anyone providing context that presents his race in a positive light, as opposed to a competing culture, is equated with the worst Racist Supremacist doctrines of the Apartheid and Nazi regimes. At the same time, a Racist Oppressor can be presented as an enlightened humanist if he hides his nationalism while denouncing the thoughts of competing nationalists. Yitzhak Rabin, a racist supremacist if there ever was one, who presided over the deaths and torture of tens of thousands, is presented as a saint next to David Duke, the ex-Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who struggles to maintain his livelihood and culture in his own land. While it is true that the KKK are rogues, and have proven that they are capable of sliding into Racist atrocities of a Rabin given the opportunity; a comparison fails the equivalency test. Rabin is lauded and presented as champion of enlightenment, while the ex-Grand Wizard struggles to even find voice amongst his own kind and is completely marginalized in his own country.

 

Even the worse Racist in South Africa never tried to squeeze the life out of African Society. Apartheid was monstrous, but it was never Ethnocide. It is a triumph of Zionist propaganda that they have managed to convince us that they are merely as bad as Jim Crows America. It is a triumph that they have managed to limit us to comparing Zionism with Apartheid. Such a comparison is an insult - to Apartheid. I don't make this statement lightly, Desmond Tutu and Mandela; Alistair Sparks and Ronnie Kasrils have said similar things. http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0416.html

 

The dominant Racist Supremacists always speak of “self-determination” and “preserving the culture” of their opponents. They speak of “peace” and “living side by side in harmony”, but their multiculturalism is nothing but cover for the suppression of a competing force. Subconsciously accepting that their own nationalism was a powerful force in subjugating their opponents, they seek to deprive them of the same weapon by appealing to the outrage of the oppressed. They champion the rights of the oppressed in words, while remaining ever vigilant against the expression of a competing nationalism. Such expressions of opposition, is “bad” nationalism, while their openly Racist supremacy is considered “accidental”, “inevitable” and “self-preservation”. Always, the dominant supremacist maintains that his nationalism is a product of historical circumstance while the nationalism of the dominated is the product of wrong thinking and evidence of their backwardness, bigotry and hatred.

 

Such is the dialectic enforced by the strong. Having achieved their position by virtue of their nationalism, they relegate it to its basest level and deny access to it to their opponents. Having misused it to their own ends, they now denounce their strongest converts, and proclaim it an evil, to be opposed by all right thinking people, and especially to be denied its utilization by their opponents.

 

But resistance is at its core the application of pressure. We know that when the bleating gets loudest, the pressure is being applied correctly. Nationalism has time and time again proven itself to be a particularly effective form of pressure on a dominant Racist Regime.

 

Zionism is dispossession; dispossession is an integral part of Racism. Nationalism without dispossession is a legitimate countervailing force against other competing nationalism. Antisemitism of White Nationalists (called White Supremacy by their adversaries) is a reaction to Jewish racist assertion in White societies. As such, it is a mild form of nationalism. From a White-Nationalist point of view, it can be seen to be a moral imperative and necessary to combat the Jewish war against their values and heritage. They do, after all, compete to occupy the same space.

 

Let me tell you how frustrating it was dealing with White liberals in South Africa who championed racial equality but denied their own racism. In the end, it was better to ignore white liberals altogether and adopt racist attitudes toward them. Only then was the struggle able to escalate, proving clearly that they had been a ballast all along. White Afrikaner supremacists were indispensable allies once they decided to cross over. They had no qualms about smuggling weapons, stealing weapons from Military armory's and generally engaging in sabotage. Today, these Afrikaners still live in South Africa and support a vibrant opposition party. In the end, the liberals left South Africa once privilege ended, the Afrikaners remained. As a Black Man who has resisted White Supremacy for most of my life, I am now sympathetic to White Nationalists. It was a White Nationalist who in the end handed Mandela the keys to the Presidential suite, without conditions.

 

It is valid for Palestine , too. It is not necessary that the Palestinian struggle be conducted on a lily-white sheet. David Duke was the grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. They hanged black people from tree trunks. What they did was however small change compared to what the Ku Klux Knesset does on a daily basis. Today the White Nationalists are downtrodden and discriminated-against people in America . Yet, their ideas have a resonance with many Americans, especially on the Palestine issue. Don't underestimate the ideological pull of these hillbillies with library cards. The can make a big difference where it counts the most – with the average WASP. From what I remember, WASP's are still a majority in the States.

 

What does not have a place in the Palestinian struggle, is an ideological agenda. Zionists are not particular about who supports them, so why should Palestinians be reliant on a bogus ideological cleanliness? It makes little difference whether the Palestinians enjoy the support of ADL-affected communities. These communities provide nothing of value to the Palestinian struggle. In fact they provide material assistance to the enemy. Yet the friends of Palestine pretend to cringe at the mere thought of occupying political space with deluded nationalists. They may be even supremacists, but they provide another avenue by which the enemy can be engaged. Engaging the enemy on every conceivable front is what struggle is all about. Ideology is secondary.

 

The White groups on the right are not all the same, and they not all subscribe to the same philosophies. I am convinced that the brush is applied far too widely and liberally. I have corresponded with a few, and I find them to be courteous and intelligent. Quite the opposite of the rabid racist bigot. They always concede a point well made and are content to rest on genuine differences of opinion. Joe Sobran is a great guy and always takes the time and effort to respond comprehensively and interestingly. I also find some of their prose about the Middle East and Palestine , to be the most passionate around. Most genuinely admire the Palestinians for doing what they failed to do - resist, adapt and survive against a vile and vicious hate campaign. There is a genuine solidarity with the Palestinians amongst disaffected white people. As genuine as yours or mine is. It does not serve any purpose to question their motives, they are quite clear about them: they support the Palestinians because the Palestinians are engaged in direct action against a common enemy. The fact that you or I are opposed to White Supremacy is quite irrelevant. It is not White Racist Supremacist oppressing Palestinians. If I were a Palestinian, the White Nationalists would be my legitimate ally. After all, those White Nationalists write great prose and have the ability to influence far more people where it counts.

 

On the other hand, I have found anti-Zionist Jewish people (with some notable exclusions) on my correspondence list to be extremely annoying because of their penchant to obscure obvious circumstances while compiling dirges in a vain attempt to throw people off the scent. Instead of acknowledging patent realities regarding Jewish individuals at the heart of influence in the US administration, and then putting your views regarding it, a ridiculous attempt is made to smear the content of an article like that of Mr. Shamir’s as latent Nazism. Whether we are incorrect and flirt with an anti-Semite canard is a tenth order issue for both Israeli Jews and Palestinians. I have taken the trouble to read Shamir’s body of work and can vouch that they are inspirational. He is an extremely talented writer and uses words to great effect. His vision of a future Palestine/Israel is a refreshing departure from the rutted, stilted and ideologically driven drivel that passes for discourse on this issue. I would even go so far as to defend his use of anti-Semitic imagery, it is a valid posture buster and certainly more effective than an AK47. Like all of us, his ideas can be considerably cleansed of incorrect thoughts. But that is his greatest gift - his ability to communicate at every level and bust through - despite incorrect thoughts. Cleansing is not always desirable and would place his writing beyond the reach of all but the most pure amongst us. Purists always fail when they ultimately discover what Shamir instinctively knows, that none of us are pure. But we can at least be honest with ourselves. You cannot help the Palestinians until you can free Israeli Jews from the stultifying Boot of Diaspora Jewry. You cannot lead from behind. Shamir might just be the vanguard of an Israeli liberation movement, its liberation from racist Jewry.

 

Explaining its political Application.

 

All people have strange and wonderful traditions. It is the therapy of the times to subsume oneself and experience a diversity of cultural traditions. Nationalism, properly defined, is the celebration of one’s own kind and the mocking of another. It is a common human characteristic and is hardwired to our DNA. One does not acquire nationalism, it comes with the package and it was vital to the early survival of human communities. We would not have been here if it were not for nationalism. In some situations, it still has a valid and vital function.

 

However it is chemically triggered, it is clear that its occurrence is proportional to the level of threat to our own culture and identity. Remove that threat and over time the ethnocentric trigger is deactivated and replaced by other “in-group” triggers. Any historical analysis of Jewish nationalism, whatever slant one wished to put on it, reveals a steady flow of the activation of triggers and counter-triggers as Jewish communities wrestled with the twin demons of Supremacy and antisemitism. That one feeds off the other has been the observation of many historians. If Jews think that they were superior, chosen by God, many people also think that they are superior. For many, the only defence to such an attitude is to mock those that think this way, and to celebrate their own superiority. It is primordial; it is instinctive; and it works.

 

In organized political terms, it is called Group Consciousness. Stokely Carmichael was one of the first proponents of this approach. He developed it as a result of observing the sorry state Black people had been reduced to by centuries of slavery, dispossession and ridicule. It came to be known as “Black Consciousness” and was a culmination and synthesis of the ideas of many earlier Black thinkers in Africa , the United States and The West Indies. It was given an expression by Malcolm X who, in an earlier his trip to Africa began to urge that the Black struggle be conducted using any means necessary. The most practical demonstration of its effectiveness was in the early 1970’s when a young Black Medical Student called Steven Biko, then a black representative on the executive of the mostly White National Union of South African Students, unreservedly adopted its principles. In a sudden turnaround, he led the Black Student caucus in a walkout of NUSAS to found the South African Students Organization (SASO) and the corresponding Black Peoples Convention (BPC). He unilaterally cut off ALL political contact with White South Africans from the Liberation Struggle, arguing that White activists carried too much political baggage and were hindering, rather than advancing, the liberation of the Black People in South Africa . By holding up positive white cultural attributes as a desirable yardstick for Black People to emulate, they were in fact emasculating legitimate Black anti-Racist expression. He began to mock White people generally and agitate for a defiant Black anti-Racist discourse. The results were astonishing. Within 14 months, (after 90 years of failing to achieve any significant uprising by the Black indigenous population), South Africa was in flames and ungovernable. By 1976, Biko was dead, murdered by the South African Regime, but South Africa was never to be the same again. There were no “ISMS” in his campaign. It was pure affirmation. The goal was to make it possible to decide the future, not to create a utopian society. Dark was no longer “evil”, and white “good”. In fact, the opposite was the case. White people were devils.

 

Naturally, Steve did not really believe this, but it is what he taught. There were no complicated speeches given and philosophical treatise written. The medium of communication was song, and dance, and poetry. It electrified the people. They sang the songs on the trains, at work, everywhere. The white man did not understand the words that said “watch out, I am going to kill you.” The “Toyi Toyi” (the enduring image of Black South African protest marches) terrified the young White conscripts and they wet their pants. It was a national joke. They laughed even amidst the tragedy of slain friends and comrades. Young White friends were asked to leave public meetings. It was pure nationalism. Black Activists were roundly condemned for their Racism, even by other Blacks: “is this the way to fight Racism” it was asked; “by being racist yourself?”

 

But it was not Racism; it was nationalism. The most effective weapon there is against Racism; which is the dispossession of your property, your liberty and your identity. When Apartheid crumbled, the trigger lapsed as suddenly as it had appeared. The need to destroy another’s identity to regain yours vanished. You already had it.

 

There is definitely a problem when you can celebrate your cultural particularity only in the absence of other cultural identities. When affirmation can only come at the expense of forcing another to disavow theirs or the parts you take offence to. Mocking another culture is the essence of Nationalism. Cultural hegemony is the essence of colonialism. Calling an Individual a “Nazi” for his instinctive reaction to a nationalist trigger is ignorance about the true nature of Racism, and the cure for it, which is cultural affirmation, “consciousness” or “nationalism”.

Joh Domingo is a South African born Muslim with roots in the full spectrum of the varied racial mix that makes up the South African milieu. His background traverses the divide between his traditional African tribal kin and the rich cultural influences of colonial East Asia . His maternal grandfather was the sibling of a Methodist Scottish priest, and was a Methodist priest himself. His paternal grandfather was an indentured Indian sugar cane worker from Madras , India who provides him his religious background. He married a South African born Chinese/African Christian and has two adult Daughters and a teenaged son.

Joh cut his political teeth during the upheaval of 1970’s South African revolution. He was the inaugural President of the Black Students Society at the University of the Witwatersrand , in 1974 and held that post until 1977. During this period he also served as editor in chief of the society’s magazine "By Ministerial Consent" (a reference to the Government permission required for a Black Person to attend a White University in Apartheid South Africa. ). He was a member of both the South African Students Organisation and the Black Peoples Convention. His studies were cut short in 1977 after his consent to attend university and his Scholarship were withdrawn. In 1980 he married his childhood sweetheart and in 1985 they left South Africa after being granted permission to migrate to Australia . Joh is a Building Contractor in Brisbane , Australia . He still believes that the "Black Consciousness" Soweto Uprising of 1976 was the defining moment in the demise of the Apartheid System, paving the way for the broader based African National Congress, which had been rendered moribund by ideological battles, to re-energize itself and exert its more experienced political leadership. There is little doubt in his mind that political change begins at the grassroots level. His email johd7894@hotmail.com

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