US Politics on Sidechat | I think OP here both doesn’t understand what criticism of Israel actually is and evidently likely doesn’t also understand the underlying principles of leftism. But I think the historical ties of leftism and Zionism is something important to talk about.

Sidechat

Download

Join communities on Sidechat Download

US Politics 3w

I think OP here both doesn’t understand what criticism of Israel actually is and evidently likely doesn’t also understand the underlying principles of leftism. But I think the historical ties of leftism and Zionism is something important to talk about.

This post is unavailable

Anonymous 3w

Let me get this out of the way that this is not an anti-leftism critique. I myself am a leftist. But I’m also pretty well researched on the history of Zionism and I think we often falsely view it as a solely right-wing ideology. That’s very much a modern thing in my opinion. The most staunchly expansionist groups in Israel tend to be very far right and often are religious fundamentalists. But historically the dominant form of Zionism was Labor Zionism.

Anonymous

OP 3w

The origins of the agricultural moshavim and kibbutzim which are so common in Israel are agricultural cooperatives set up by labor Zionists. From Israel’s formation until 1977, the country was dominated by Labor Zionists.

Anonymous

OP 3w

That’s to say there wasn’t non-labor Zionism. The main competing ideology of Labor Zionism was Revisionist Zionism, a more expansionist and right-leaning ideology. They were the ones advocating for a settlement of Jordan in the early years. That’s the ancestor of the modern far-right Israeli groups. But it wasn’t the dominant form of Zionism at the time.

Anonymous

OP 3w

And there were labor groups in Israel who weren’t Zionist also. Israel’s Maki political party has its origin in an anti-Zionist coalition of Jews and Arabs. This was the only political party prior to recent decades which actually politically represented Israel’s Arab citizens.

Anonymous

OP 3w

I think it can be weird for us to view Zionism as something which was leftist. But I think it makes sense if you view it in the context at the time. Labor Zionism was a distinctly nationalistic form of leftism. It was leftist principles, but only about Jews and at the expense of Arabs.

Anonymous

OP 3w

Gonna get into my own opinions here but this is what can happen when leftism is heavily nationalist, and focuses on the wellbeing of only one nation or group of people, rather than making its concern the wellbeing of all people regardless of national origin, ethnicity, or religion.

Anonymous

OP 3w

And it’s important to talk about how leftism can be corrupted by a nationalist goal. Communist Albania, the Soviet Union, China, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, and I don’t like throwing it in here but also Cambodia have examples of how leftist ideology can dramatically harm foreign or minority populations when they aren’t considered under the umbrella of “people who matter”

Anonymous

OP 3w

And we have to keep this in mind because leftism tends to be something inherently populist. And populism also tends to be nationalistic and isolationist. But when we turn leftism inwards so that “only our people matter” than can allow exploitation to be externalized to other people groups, creating imperialism and colonialism from a supposedly leftist entity. Liftinf up the working class can’t just be for one group of people. It has to be for everyone.