Cthulhu's Mirages #458652 - Marx's "antisemitism"

As we pirates attempt to rescue reason from the clutches of Cthulhu's minions who are of course driven by the mirages of Cthulhu, we sometimes find interesting true things along the way. There is room for a series about these things, exposing some of the more interesting treasures buried under chowder, myth and Cephalopoda scat.

Today the topic is "Marx was anti-semitic", it sounds bad to any socialist ear and to anyone with a basic understanding of mid 20th Century history, but to especially those not familiar with the many works of Karl Marx, Das Capital is well known, but his life and works are, shall we say less known to many. Less still is an 1844 work called "On the Jewish Question". At that time some were questioning whether European Jewish people could be really free in Europe and Russia, and still be, well... Jewish. Marx thought it a pertinent question and offered his opinion on this very question. The upshot of which was yes, Jewish people can indeed be free and Jewish in Europe, and there should be no need for them to abandon their religious consciousness in order to achieve that freedom. This may sound terrible to some, but I find it tricky to imagine them being Jewish at least without developing some sort of cognitive dissonance, the same way some in an oppressed class identify with the ideology of their oppressors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question
The claim gets a little silly when we look further, as Marx himself was ethnically Jewish, his maternal grandfather a rabbi, and his father's family having rabbis through the century before his birth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx 
It seems strange that anyone might accuse, in anything other than jest, Marx of antisemitism, given Marx's personal history and expressed opinions.

Marx made a study of, and extensively wrote on alienation in capitalist society and he like many of his time was a fan of the aims of the French Revolution, as he grew up in a French-German border town. He could not, however, ignore that capitalism was showing signs that it was incapable of meeting the high expectations placed upon it. And in just 50 years, it was already showing signs of developing similar issues to those it was intended to resolve. Including the entrenchment of wealth and power, and the crushing power exerted on working people, who frankly if it were left to them would not be likely to build mansions and castles from the fruits of their labor. Even today, it is fair to ask if Amazon workers would prefer to use the value they create to send their boss by rocket to the moon as Mr. Bezos uses the portion of that value which he claims to do just that.

Marx pointed out that the alienation of minorities was a way of scapegoating to serve those that those who held political and economic power and to maintain their status. Such behavior appears to have bothered Marx, in part because he was "sent out" of his home town in which he had the job he desired as a student - that of professor, and was put on a train to Parish. His terrible crime was community organizing in a region with a lot conservative and wealthy people who seemed likely to have been concerned that they might be required to engage in fair dealing with employees, the terrible specter of labor rights, occupational health and safety, or the curtailing of child labor.

A further discussion of the life and work of Karl Marx can be found here, with Richard Wolff - Economics Professor Emeritus at MIT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU-AkeOyiOQ

In the conversation that brought up the Marx antisemitism claim, another claim was made "socialism collapses quickly". We can be sure that that one would give our Norwegian friends quite the chuckle, after all, they came up with the hashtag #shitholeUSA and they have enjoyed a socialist politic for the best part of a century. And in Germany, the only reason the word "Socialist" appeared in the NAZI party name, was because the German public would never have given Hitler's party the time of day without it. None the less, Hitler and his following turned out to be a terrible fraud and worse but is generally identified as a fascist phenomenon, not simply for the jackboots, militarism, varied misanthropies, and empire building by conquest, but for the unity of public and private sector interests. Hyperinflation and a collapsing economy brought about by the extraction of war reparations led to desperation in German populace, this means populist style rhetoric even when fake was very appealing. World Bank Policy and IMF loans have by similar means caused great distress in many countries in the last 50 years, and these nations have had issues with radicalization. And now, the 1% is essentially applying similar pressure on industrialized nations, causing great inequality, social/political tribalism, and a mass migration of red hats manufactured in low wage China, to make nests in North America on those who hunt squirrels accused of ruining the economy as the billionaires laugh all the way to the too-big-to-jail banks as they point in random directions shouting "squirrel" any red hats with an AR15 poking the sky they see.
David Pakman's Debunked: "Socialism has never worked"  is a useful place to start. And can be found  here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k79wCaFgU40
Norway's socialism goes back almost a century, and collective labor organization operated successfully for 300 years in Aztec society prior to the arrival of Columbus in the New World.

As always, praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for she is noodly, and play nice ok. Ramen.

Sometimes in depth conversation is just not going to happen.

After David Cameron made a speech, in February, in which he offered deference to millions of peaceful Muslims, before making the point that UK resident Muslims should accept “British” values, pointing to tolerance and acceptance of non-belief, other belief, and of UK culture, like to encompass rights for women and LGBT people, no doubt many social media debates happened.

Deference to an audience that may feel threatened by criticisms of certain ideas associated with a broader superset of ideas in which they may be emotionally invested is appropriate, if for no other reason than not be heavily criticised in turn for making sweeping generalisations encompassing many who already agree that such a subset of ideas are worthy of criticism. Not doing so, some say, would lead to Cameron being called racist, but in any case would be counter productive.

One conversation I participated in went as well as any drunken brawl in a bar in that part of town where the police never go.

In early July, After a friend shared an article about Cameron's speech from the Telegraph. A mutual acquaintance (Q) made the statement that they would rather Islamic values than British “imperialistic” values. Apparently “values” of other groups means different things to different people and is subject to selection bias, which was evident in Q's remark.

To make a counter point I replied with an uncommented link to a Patheos page containing passages from the Tahir by Ayatollah Komeini. A description is bad enough, but to be truly disgusted you really have to read it. Caution – keep a barf bag handy.

The response that came back was disturbingly angry. And included an accusation of racism among “white atheists”. Q's response fit criticisms of leftists bowing to Islam for the sake of multiculturalism in to comments made by Pat Condell. I doubt Pat's critiques are representative of the left generally., but it would be a cheap-shot to use Pat's comment's as a retort. He does make the point that tolerance of the intolerant positions of Islam is inappropriate, and since the three of us all have gay friends the four major schools of though present a huge problem for people we care about. See Wiki.

A little stunned by the angry reply, I chose to point out how nice it was to have a reasoned discussion without name calling and ad hominem and left it at that. But, there were some big holes in Q's response.

Islam, of course, is not a race and history tells it is not indigenous to Iran, Nor is it entirely a necessary part of being Iranian, as Iranian atheists do exist as well as other faith groups including Ba'hai, and are vocal in social media. While the Tahir appeared in the context of Iran's Islamic Revolution. It is important to note many Iranians, who are mostly ethnically Persian, reject passages in the Tahir referenced above. Now a racist would saying thing about Persian physiognomy and cognition however that would be pointless, as the science suggest that there is little variation across ethnic groups, and indeed there is more variation within ethic groups.

People are good, not because of their religion, but often in spite of it, as Iranians themselves have shown by rejecting both the Tahir and the Hijab.

What's this about the hijab? Check out My Stealthy Freedom on facebook. Iranian women are photographing themselves without the head scarf required by the mullahs. Apparently, the regime is losing the culture war in Iran, Younger Iranians do not support their government, and many even despised the current regime. The old guard of the Islamic revolution is on borrowed time as it is being replaced by political and social progressives.

I highly recommend Bread and Roses, on Youtube. The show is hosted by Mariam Namazie from the UK based Council of Ex-Muslims. The will hope fully be aired on bootleg satellite TV so that it is available to Iranians looking for more information to help them understand what else is going on other than what the mullahs are saying.

You can have peace, over conservatism's cold dead corpse.

Ohio Weather: Cloudy with a chance of spagetti sauce.

Is Linda Harvey's anti gay agenda
leaving the FSM off color?

According to Monsenior Captain Ridi Culous of the Fundamentalist Pastafarian Church based in Colorado, Ohio is in grave danger of a massive flood - of spaghetti sauce.

Culous says, "Linda Harvey for the Flying Spaghetti Monster's sake (Sauce be upon him), must stop talking before the state is flooded with spaghetti sauce. The Severe weather in northern Ohio last month was just a warning."

Harvey's anti gay slurs and bullying right down to claiming that gays are not legal persons are so stomach churningly offensive that the Fly Spaghetti Monster is on verge of tossing salad and sauce.

Lately she has been on a bender fighting to prevent dying man from knowing that after he dies, his partner may when he dies join him in the family. Harvey's justification for this is that both men could each marry a women. Says Culous "Well Linda, the Flying Spaghetti Monster(SBUH) has news for you, you too can marry a woman, just get on with it and stop making other people and flying spaghetti monsters nauseous with your despicable nonsense, we just don't need that much spaghetti sauce."

"We understand the last great flood happened when the Flying Spaghetti Monster(SBUH) puked up a serving of noodle soup resulting from Noah's homophobic tirades. By the time Noah drunkenly banished his youngest son for seeing him drunk ass naked, the Flying Spaghetti Monster had been dry retching for weeks. The Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't have the stomach to be at peace with homophobic bigotry. Just look at Russia, it is so homophobic, last year the FSM(SBUH) coughed up a meatball. People were hospitalized by broken glass shattered by the sonic boom before it landed in a lake.

When asked why the media reported a meteorite and not a meatball, Culous claimed "The media do not want to know the truth of the Flying Spaghetti Monster so they deny him. It is a kind of religious discrimination. After 5000 years, we Pastafarians have learned to live with it."

See Also
   Truth Wins Out
   The Guardian - raining meatball