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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
A close look at ATTAC largely refutes such guilt by association. It is a large, loose, extremely heterogeneous group, numbering at last count more than 100 constituent organizations. It's a kind of meta-NGO, uniting under one lumpy roof environmentalists, antiwar activists, trade unionists, human rights workers, Trotskyists, communists and those in social justice movements. There is no prevailing ideology or creed; its members are also active in big NGOs like Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Physicians for Social Responsibility; member organizations include everything from the youth wings of Socialist and Green parties to church groups, the revolutionary Socialists, and Free Palestine movements. The group was founded in 1998 as a French protest movement against currency speculation, with the aim of instituting a tax on international capital flows (hence the acronym, from Action pour une Taxe Tobin d'Aide aux Citoyens). It found its organizational élan with the first World Trade Organization protests and became established as a major actor on the anti-globalization scene. ATTAC now has branches in 38 countries, unified behind a sweeping rejection of U.S.-led global capitalism.
There is a loud anti-imperialist component in ATTAC, too, made up of young Trotskyists and die-hard revolutionaries who cut their teeth on resistance to NATO militarization in the 1970s (think Pershing missiles in Germany and the Larzac antinuclear protests in France). Today's resurgent anti-Zionism dovetails with a long tradition of Third World-ism in France (where ATTAC members are known as "altermondialists") and with communist German backing, both east and west, for groups resisting U.S. hegemony from Cuba to Nicaragua to Guatemala. Over the past two years, the violence in the Middle East and Iraq has only crystallized the theme of weak against strong, reactivating old resentments against America and a deeply held attachment to the Palestinian cause. The more radical have evolved a new theoretical justification for anti-Zionism that sees the Jewish state as an inherently racist construct, a postcolonial historical aberration. The result, says Aurélie Filippetti, a Green municipal council member in Paris who has been one of the strongest internal critics of her party's increasingly anti-Zionist stance: "Suddenly, for the European left, the Palestinian cause became the new Vietnam."
For all the demonization, ATTAC members look remarkably like lefties anywhere else. Last month's Berlin march to mark the anniversary of the Iraq invasion featured aging peaceniks, babies in strollers, African communists, solemn Palestinian elders, even a banner reading "Free Mumia." Apart from a bloody Statue of Liberty brandished by ATTAC Berlin, and scattered chants of "George Bush, terrorist," the scene could have been in Berkeley or New York. The same fissures, in fact, have troubled and in some cases split American progressives, with groups like the far-left ANSWER tarring peace marches with equally virulent anti-Israel rhetoric.
The vast mass of ATTAC members abhor racist speech of any kind, and swift action has been taken to curb excesses within the ranks. Since the charges became public, Wahl says, the group has scrutinized its codes and practices, and clamped down on hate speech or association with those who espouse it. ATTAC does not permit questioning of the right of the state of Israel to exist, supports a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, and "absolutely rejects" suicide bombings. It is evident the group has engaged in a serious process of self-examination and scrupulously confronted those instances in which criticism of Israel has slipped across the line. Its offending poster of Uncle Sam is dead, the proposed Israeli boycott rejected to avoid any suggestion that it reprised Hitler's "Kauf nicht beim Juden" (Do not buy from Jews) slogan. Instances in 2002 at which neo-Nazis infiltrated marches have been analyzed to avoid repeats.
Wahl says the problem is that within ATTAC, the Middle East issue has been taken up by a militant Trotskyite faction whose radically pro-Palestinian views "tend to take a fast-and-loose approach" with terms such as "fascist," "Nazi" and the like. "They talk about massacres in refugee camps which resemble the [Nazi liquidation of the] Warsaw ghetto," Wahl says. "It's wrong, it's false, I don't like it -- but its not anti-Semitism." Similarly, Wahl argues that ATTAC's condemnation of speculative, stateless capital is not a subliminal attack on world Jewry, even though the Nazis instrumentalized those same themes to distinguish between the "good capital" of the worker and the "evil capital" of the supposedly parasitic Jew.
In a position paper developed to rebut the attacks, Wahl notes that there is no more potent weapon than the charge of anti-Semitism, especially in Germany. Being labeled anti-Semitic is offensive to many ATTAC members, from Wahl to Barbara Fuchs, an east German art historian who worked with survivors of the Ravensbruck camp to preserve their memories. The attempts by nationalists and racists to hijack a movement that resists global economic restructuring do not make the movement itself anti-Semitic, Wahl argues. Any form of communication can be misappropriated, he says, quoting the philosopher Theodor Adorno. On the other hand, "it cannot be that as a group we are barred from acting because of these reproaches," Fuchs said. "We must always keep in mind that this fear is there, for Jews, and we respect it, but it can't be an excuse for doing nothing, for not engaging in social justice for the Palestinians as we would for anyone else."
Thus it is ultimately up to the board -- largely older, more seasoned activists -- to attempt to ensure that criticism of Israel does not overstep the bounds. It is not easy to identify that line, nor to maintain oversight over a welter of speech floating over the Web and the streets from hundreds of disparate groups. In recent weeks, ATTAC's German "War and Globalization" e-mail list has begun censoring postings that question Israel's right to exist, prompting angry exchanges over how much critique is permissible, and how willing the base is to be dictated to from above.
