Palestine and the Meaning of Global Antifascism

martinarboleda

Dec 6

What is particularly harrowing about the current situation in Gaza not only has to do with the multiplication of war crimes and with the moral and ideological bankruptcy of a Western liberal order that seeks to obfuscate, by all means – media blackouts, censorship, stigmatization, blackmail, etc. – what is already patently clear for most. The resonances with the darkest side of 20th century fascism, in particular, are a clear warning sign. In the words of Israeli intellectual Daniel Blatman: "As a historian whose field is the Holocaust and Nazism, it's hard for me to say this, but there are neo-Nazi ministers in the [Israeli] government today. You don't see that anywhere else – not in Hungary, not in Poland – ministers who, ideologically, are pure racists." Also, a recent essay by Alberto Toscano draws worrying parallels between the Israeli government and fascism in its specifically Nazi variant: virulent racism with biologicist overtones; political operations driven by a totalitarian mentality; contempt for weakness and lust for violence; homophobia and anti-intellectualism.

How to position ourselves in this situation? Or more specifically, what are the consequences that arise from the act of taking a stance? In recent weeks, the war between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front has been discussed as a relevant precedent for understanding the situation in Gaza, and Frantz Fanon as an important interpreter of the Algerian struggle for decolonization and national liberation. However, it is in the foreword that Jean Paul Sartre wrote for the 1963 French edition of The Wretched of the Earth where the ethical question of taking a stance (one of the most recurrent themes in the existentialist philosophy of the time) is powerfully posed. In this text, Sartre indicts the reader for his veiled complicity with colonial violence. In an accusatory tone whose stylistic construction is clearly designed to create discomfort, the author states that not taking sides and simply remaining silent is equivalent to siding with the aggressor. I often find it difficult to write in the first person. However, under the current circumstances I cannot bear to remain silent. I am also not clear about the register in which I should write these lines; what is clear, however, is that it is imperative for me to raise my voice against the genocidal violence and systematic dehumanization to which the Palestinian people are being subjected to.