by Felix Quigley
It is completely impossible to silence Trotskyism in this period because – just as in 1933 – only the policies and political programme of Leon Trotsky, the great Russian Revolutionary Socialist leader, could have saved the lives of 6 millions of Jews who were to perish at the hands of the Fascist Nazis. So therefore the recent horrific attack on Leon Trotsky by Sultan Knish just cannot stand.
Sultan Knish (which is a pseudonym) writes on his blog the following:
[begin quote here]
The only snag in the road is the usual blind spot the Democrats have when it comes to Republicans, the sheer blinding hatred and rage that prevents them from thinking straight. Because the Democratic strategy is meant to beat Bush on the 3rd try and is poorly adapted to running against McCain. McCain was never Bush’s VP, though the Democrats will do their best to emphasize a close relationship that never existed. McCain has very different politics and ideas than Bush does. There is a general dissatisfaction with the Republican party but there is also plenty of dissatisfaction with the Democratic party that this drawn out primary is only continuing to emphasize.
McCain is not the clunky gray robot that Bush Sr was and while the economic attacks will do their best to raise the ghost of Keating, Obama has managed to create his own scandals in a fairly short term in politics that are far more alive than Keating, such as Rezko, making it all too easy to exchange scandal for scandal.
With “Change” as the defining mantra, all that’s left is for McCain to see if experience can trump phony optimism. It hasn’t with Democratic voters but it likely will with the American voter.
[end quote here]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
Article entitled “Economy. The Democrats Electoral Plan”.
Sultan Knish is also writing for Israpundit (Editor Ted Belman) and he has just placed an article there, warning of Rice joining forces with McCain in the election, called “Fight a Rice VP spot now”.
The position of 4international is totally opposed to this political line. We on 4international have learned our lesson from Yugoslavia and it is of supreme indifference to Jews and Serbs who wins the US election. It is the system of Imperialism which is paramount, these presidents are all carrying out the requirements of that system. Editor Ted Belman of Israpundit now has at least two, three including himself, who are taking sides in this election. This is precisely the wrong message to be sending to Israel and to Jewish people today. On the one hand Belman pays lip service to the need for Jews and for Israel to be independent and on the other he is encouraging its reliance on a branch of American Imperialism. There is thus being created the sorry spectacle of Jews fighting over which particular Imperialist President would be best for Israel. You cannot win like that.
Sultan Knish writes above that “McCain has very different politics and ideas than Bush does.” But he does not articulate in what way McCain is different to Bush or in what way any of these US politicians are different, and in what way they are different in relation to the destruction of Yugoslavia, or to the issues facing Israel. You are left with the distinct impression in reading these that they are Republicans first – and supporters of Israel – second.
This is the great crisis in the ranks of those who are supporting Israel. They are all finding it quite impossible to make a break from American Imperialism.
Gerald A Honigman is quite an interesting writer, an excellent stylist, always well worth reading, always level headed, has rarely got any illusions in what faces Israel from the forces of US Imperialism (he does not use our terminology but the meaning is still the same). This from Honigman is interesting also on the same thread:
[begin quote here]
The demands of any such 22nd Arab state must not come at the expense of the security of the sole, miniscule state of the Jews in a land in which they have 4,000 years of history.
Most Americans–non-Jews as well as Jews–oppose such lop-sided, anti-Israel American pressure.
Israel must resist Washington’s current unreasonable demands for it to act insanely–at least until America’s own upcoming Presidential election–and hope that more reasonable voices will once again gain ascendancy.
Copyright by Gerald A. Honigman (honigman6@msn.com)
Copyright © MichNews.com. All Rights Reserved.
[end quote here]
Honigman in his writing usually makes the fatal mistake of attacking the US State Department more or less solely, but this focus on the State Department usually in such writers fulfils the purpose of excusing the US Imperialist State as a whole. He does it earlier in this comment too but you can see in the above extract that Honigman is leaving Jews with the hope that something better will come along, that perhaps a different leadership (perhaps he means McCain) will do better by Israel.
The problems which all of these writers construct for themselves, and for their Jewish readers, is that they do not accept the system that they live in as one of Capitalism and of Imperialism. It is terribly basic, and a little tedious to have to raise it, almost like going back to primary school politics, but it is true. Not accepting that, they also are blind to the changing nature of Imperialism, a system changing every day, in explosive periods like the present, changing very rapidly.
Here on 4international we are making out a case for the policies and programme of Imperialism, and Imperialist powers like Britain, France, Germany and the US, to be Fascist in a definite sense. Leon Trotsky explained Fascism as a system of class rule based on the power of the mob (the enraged petty bourgeoisie and the lumpen proletariat). What we have learned from Yugoslavia is that that has its corollary in international affairs today. The international rules of the game, of states living with and even of fighting each other, have been dispensed with by Imperialism. That IS Yugoslavia in a nutshell. The same also applies to Israel where a Fascist and Antisemitic entity, the “Palestinian” state, is raised as a reward for Terror against Jews.
It matters not in the slightest for Jews, or for that matter for American ordinary people, who is the next President.
As we said here, dealing with this very issue of the US election, a few days ago:
[start quote here]
These are my criticisms:
Obama is a Fascist type of politician. But he is not alone. Israpundit has spent acres of print over the past 2 months in attacking and exposing Obama. I am not saying do not do this. But they have missed the main item on Obama, and that is his similarity to these people:
George Bush Snr
George Bush Jnr
Clinton the man
Clinton the woman
Carter
Reagan
And all other US Presidents that I have read about.
[end quote here]
https://4international.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/the-sultan-knish-is-a-pro-imperialist/#more-189
There is one other thing though which is most striking about Israpundit, about Knish, about Honigman, about Belman, and that is their total paralysis when it comes to developing an independent practice, a paralysis which is fatal and leads to an abject pessimism.
In the same article I had posed a challenge to Knish. What did he propose actually in practice doing? My challenge to Knish first, second his reply:
[begin quote here]
Issue facing Jews is this:
We say that Jews must act to stop this. A: get rid of the Olmert Government, B: Put in power a revolutionary type patriotic Jewish government (you can drop the revolutionary and just stick with patriotic but in practice it will be hard to separate the two)But it must be on a definite programme. To not give away Judea and Samaria. To protect Jews inside and outside from antisemitism.
Sultan Knish tell us here how concretely that can be done. By concretely I mean specific and down to earth proposals for action, or practice.
On those two issues only at this point
Get rid of Olmert
Put in power a patriotic govt on a specific programme.
So you see I am throwing a challenge to you Sultan Knish. I have switched from your extreme prejudice and obvious ignorance on Leon Trotsky to asking what you as a Jewish person is going to propose to do.
What we do, not what we say, is primary.
How to save the Jews from a new Holocaust? History is repeating itself. We are back in 1933 again.
[end quote here]
This was the answer from Knish:
[begin quote here]
I have very little interest in debating people whose ideology is covered in Jewish blood…
[end quote here]
And essentially he didn’t!!! Indeed I doubt if he will! It is actually a quite horrific reply from Knish because it is a horrific slur on the memory of Leon Trotsky, which is also a deliberate lie, part of the Big Lie method so disastrous for the Jewish people. The ideology of Trotskyism is not covered in Jewish blood. We refute that slur and that lie totally. We will deal with all of this in more detail at another time and indeed we have already clarified the principled position of Trotsky to all religion, and of course to Judaism, even from the earliest stages of workers power in Russia.
https://4international.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/myers-nedava-and-trotsky/#more-104
So it is a lie, and in the treatment of the issue and his answer to my enquiry, it is an evasion of the central issue which Jewish people today face. How can Israel survive and how can the Jews as a nation survive?
It is here that the great lessons of the period 1933 to 1945 have to be urgently drawn. This was the period of the menace to the Jews of Nazism, of Fascism, and it is in discussing this that opinions will sharply divide. It is clear that Knish does not even get to the starting blocks in this necessary discussion. The man is filled with bias. He is a communist hater. That is his starting point and he cannot budge from that.
So Knish cannot face up to this reality:
1. Judaism is a religion and philosophy of life. In the period from 1933 to 1945 it proved completely incapable of defending the Jewish people. In fact as a religion, not a revolutionary theory and practice of the modern period, it should not be asked to. It should not be asked to face up to the modern phenomenon and threat of Fascism, a product of the historical decay and death agony of Capitalism, the menace of our modern epoch, a menace which flows directly out of Capitalism and Imperialism in this specific period. We on 4international respect Judaism, we do not ask Judaism to do that which it is not able or created to do.
2. On the other hand in order to understand this modern phenomenon of Fascism you have to base your understanding on the theoretical and practical struggle of Leon Trotsky, and this struggle of Leon Trotsky combined also a struggle against the treacherous programme and practice of Stalin, later to become known as Stalinism. This represents in no way hero worship: what an abysmal thought! It is just that Leon Trotsky alone represented the political current to challenge and to fight against Stalinism, which was indeed the gravedigger of the revolution.
3. In concrete terms to save the Jews in the period from 1933 to 1945 it was necessary to take on board not Judaism, but the revolutionary theory and practice as placed before the whole world by Leon Trotsky.
4. Again in concrete terms this incorporated a call by Leon Trotsky to Jews to at all costs get out of Europe and in Palestine create their Jewish state, that is, the Israel to be.
5. Except that Trotsky insisted that this Jewish state should be made free from antisemitism (which we intend to explore on this site) the future Jewish leaders of Israel, who founded Israel, like Ben Gurion, definitely and most unfortunately did not do.
All of that is history. It is written down and sourced to the high heavens. Nobody can deny it. But it has been denied and distorted by many people, especially by the Imperialists, by the Stalinists who murdered Trotsky, and by the Fascist, Antisemitic Fake “Lefts” of today. Strangely enough in the above attack on Trotsky it is clear that Knish is also part of that mob, part of that dreadful distortion. Promoter in fact of the Big Lie.
But it cannot hold and will not hold. Israel is threatened with annihilation from a combination of enemies, from Imperialism, from the antisemitism of the Fascist Fake “Left”, and from the Islamofascists. It is vital that Jewish patriots come forward now to discuss seriously the way forward. We as a Trotskyist movement will not be silenced. That is impossible!
4international 
For someone to want to silence you, they have to care whether you exist or not. Overdramatic claims about refusing to be silenced suggests you’re simply playacting at socialist radicalism.
But we know Trotskyism won’t be silenced. Every time we see another we see another WWP rally, complete with Hizbollah flags and hate for Israel, we know they won’t be silenced.
http://www.ringospictures.com/index.php?page=20060812
I notice that your quote of me included only the first line of my reply and ignored everything else. Such dishonesty is fairly predictable.
As to the charge of Communist hater, I proudly accede. I hate Communists. I hate Nazis. There is very little practical difference between the two, except that the Communists were smart enough to exploit Jews as an oppressed minority, until their usefulness was done, and they were then sent off to the firing squad.
It wasn’t Stalinism that killed Trotsky. It was Communism and a real Communist state in the end only has one place for the Jew. The same place that a Fascist state does. The prison cell or the grave.
Keeping a Jewish state alive does not depend on a man who threw away his Jewish name and turned on his own people, only to discover that to his “comrades”, he was just another dirty Jew.
It needs Jewish national consciousness. It requires a national awareness in the heart of every participating son and daughter of Israel of identity and to transform that identity into action. Socialism is a political system and is irrelevant. Identity defines politics rather than politics defining identity. A true Jewish state can have any economic or political system, so long as its identity is Jewish. A state without a Jewish identity can have any economic or political system and still not be Jewish.
Neither Libertarianism, Capitalism, Socialism, Trotskyism, Monarchism or any number of approaches can keep Israel alive without a national Jewish consciousness.
Well too bad that it will not be silenced. Everyone in the free world was so hoping!
Oh well, back go the freedom lovers to the drawing board.
Trotsky: yawn
“But we know Trotskyism won’t be silenced. Every time we see another [sic!] we see another WWP rally [sic!], complete with Hizbollah flags and hate for Israel, we know they won’t be silenced.”
Except that the WWP, just like the WSWS, is actually Reactionary and Stalinist, definitely NOT Trotskyist at all.The WWP totally abandoned Trotskyism in favor of Stalinism when it supported the use of Soviet troops to destroy the Hungarian workers’ uprising against the Stalinist bureaucracy in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovaki in 1968.
Sultan Knish, you are either woefully ignorant of Leon Trotsky’s true historical pro-Jewish position or you are deliberately twisting the facts and obfuscating the issue because of your blind, reactionary, bourgeois pro-US Imperialist right-wing politics, when you lump all fake “Left” wing organizations – many with ties to the US and British Imperialist establishments – (e.g., Marko Attila Hoare’s WRP and the SWP) – to the GENUINE Left, pro-Israel, pro-Jewish position of Leon Trotsky.
But that first line was really quite enough which was
“I have very little interest in debating people whose ideology is covered in Jewish blood…”
That is a horrific accusation and it cannot be answered without dealing with the issue historically, but is seems apparent that Sultan has little knowledge of history, I doubt if he has ever read or answered a single text by Leon Trotsky, one of the greatest and most prolific political writers the world has ever seen.
As long as that accusation above stands on the table then the necessary debate on the issues facing Jews today cannot even get off the greound. THAT IS OBVIOUS. In that sense people like Sultan Kirsh, because of the prejudices which are knocking about in their brains, become a major liability to the whole future existence of the Jewish nation.
You cannot have it both ways. There is vital need for political debate in order for Jews to see the way forward. You then have people like Sultan Kirsh knocking the debate on the head before it even gets off the ground, in fact blocking the debate quite consciously.
Sultan Kirsh I challenge you to say what was the political position of Leon Trotsky towards a. fascism and b. the Jews, in the 1930s.
The reason I challenge you is that I already know the answer having taken the trouble to go to the original sources and find out for myself what actually was Trotsky’s position. BUT YOU QUITE CLEARLY DO NOT KNOW AND PERHAPS DO NOT WISH TO KNOW.
Trotsky was the main writer and political personality who was fighting Fascism in the 1930s. His analyses of Fascism were extensive and remain relevant now in our time as Fascism, especially the Fascism of the US State Department, raises its head again. Because US Imperialism, along with the British and German, actually just rewrote all the rules of international law in defeating Yugoslavia.
And he was also calling urgently for all Jews to escape from Europe, to make their way to Palestine, and to there set up A JEWISH STATE which would be a space free from antisemitism.
That of course has been hidden. By the Imperialists. By the Stalinists. By the fake Lefts of today who are antisemites and even support Islamofascism (SWP in Britain, WSWS, WRP etc etc)
The point is they can only continue their antisemitism by distorting what Trotsky stood for. You Sultan Kirsh are actually assisting them, or they you, depending how you look at it.
Barb…you seem to be a real middle class boring type yourself, the type I personally find really boring, a pompous person filled with YOUR own self importance, the type who does not see the struggle of Leon Trotsky to create a new leadership for the working class as inspirational. I have seen many like you on the dead end and cynical Harrys Place website.
But in the real world to both Barb and Kirsh the real and missing ingredient in the situation in Israel today is leadership.
I asked Kirsh before for something concrete in relation to the way forward in Israel and he has been unable to provide it. The best he has done is to have McCain elected! What bankruptcy!
But we on 4international are not politically bankrupt and we will be elaborating in the most concrete manner exactly what is required in Israel.
We in fact on 4international may turn out to be seen as the truest Zionists of the lot. A new era for Zionism is dawning.