How socialist groups survive when manufacturing disappears — and why they cannot adapt

This afternoon, walking past the SLV in a wide-ranging, although not lengthy, shopping trip, I saw something that was both extremely familiar and at the same time shocking.

This was the exceedingly familiar pro-Palestine messages:

1. “FREE, FREE, FREE PALESTINE”
2. “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE”

but written in chalk on the ledges at the western exit from the SLV.

The resemblance of the writing to graffiti — although I was extremely familiar with the use of graffiti by anarchist groups at various universities around Melbourne — genuinely surprised me. I assumed that pro-Palestine groups would always use posters as a means of communication.

The unfortunate consequence was that I became obsessed with the familiar slogans at once, and could not do anything except switch between Trotskyist dogmatism and its antithesis in books like Robert Spencer’s The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle Eastern Peace Process. Both groups seemed to show the common mainstream arguments as completely wrong, and I have not read a rigorous refutation of the most controversial arguments of either by mainstream analysts.

Examples are the refusal to accept Jewish refugees and that

“Thus, by the 1920s, the Zionists had been marginalized on all sides. The majority of the world's Jews clearly showed their desire to emigrate to Western countries. And thousands of Jews who remained in Eastern Europe fought for a better life, winning solidarity from many of their Gentile brothers and sisters.”

as noted by Lance Selfa, the role of jihad in the conflict as noted by Spencer, and the “Jewish nakba” noted by Spencer but much more by Joan Peters.

However, a conversation today with my brother tonight about the graffiti said something that is really disturbing. This is that socialist organisations deprived by globalisation of what should be their financial and membership base — militant workers in labour-intensive manufacturing — have turned to anti-Zionist Muslim migrants. What my brother noted is that every single socialist parliamentary candidate joins pro-Palestine rallies wherever and whenever they are held. Yet, these rallies are tightly linked with Islamist groups who would outlaw any radically democratic secular party and execute its leaders. Worse still, they are ultimately linked with hyper-capitalist petromonarchies like Qaṭar, whom by all logic socialist groups.should.condemn much more strongly than Israel, given that the philosophy behind these pre-Enlightenment states is precisely the opposite of The Communist Manifesto. The worst thing is that this deep intetwining, which dates back at least to Lenin’s attempted alliance with Ibn Sa^cud, makes it.impossible for socialist groups to do anything to update a wordview minimally fifty-three years outdated.