From Notes Towards an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism by Javier Sethness
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) was a complex and protean figure. As described here in a celebratory post from 2013, Goldman was a champion of anarcha-feminism, anarcho-syndicalism, and prison abolition. She courageously opposed U.S. participation in the First World War and suffered deportation to the nascent Soviet Union in retaliation, and then went on to publicly critique the Bolshevik takeover of the Russian Revolution. Later, she would agitate and raise funds for the anarchist CNT-FAI during the Spanish Revolution. She was a supporter of queer and trans* liberation who served the public both as a nurse in New York’s Lower East Side and as longtime editor of Mother Earth.
That being said, Goldman was not clearly a social anarchist, a category that includes collectivist anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, and anarcho-communists. In Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets (2011), author Kathy Ferguson describes how her fellow biographer Martha Solomon perceptively regards Goldman as someone who was “torn between the mandates of individualist anarchism […] and of communist anarchism […].” Solomon refers to “Goldman’s synthesis of Proudhon, Bakunin, Stirner, and Nietzsche as ‘compelling her into confusing inconsistencies.’”1 This is so, considering that anarcha-individualism is irredeemably a dead-end. Actually linking herself directly to Stirner, the narcissistic author of The Ego and Its Own (1844), Goldman “called herself an egoist in an [1893] interview with Nelly Bly” (see here). Likewise, her life partner Alexander Berkman (1870–1936), who was imprisoned for 14 years for attempting to assassinate Carnegie Steel’s notorious union-busting manager Henry Clay Frick, “called himself an egoist when arrested for his attentat.”2 In parallel, Shae Ross traces the influences of Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) on Goldman’s individualist anarchism in a 2022 article.
Indeed, to Solomon’s point, Goldman’s individualist-anarchist sympathies arguably corrupted her revolutionary vision by fatally mixing it with nihilistic, narcissistic, and authoritarian sentiments. In the case of Emma G, this conundrum was crystallized above all in her outrageous commitments to eugenics and the proto-fascist philosopher Nietzsche.
Goldman’s Eugenics
Making common cause with fellow nurse Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), founder of Planned Parenthood, Goldman emphasized the importance of women’s access to contraceptives (criminalized at the time) as a means of curbing fertility rates and thus destabilizing patriarchal control. She did so, while also underlining the imperative of decreasing the number of proletarians (and lumpenproletarians) prone to poverty, labor exploitation, military conscription, criminality, disability, and mental and physical illness. Describing herself as a “race-builder” in a 1913 article for Mother Earth, Goldman went on to stress her preference for “quality […] instead of quantity” of live births, and to announce what she saw as the need to do away with an ostensibly “superfluous human mass.”3
In “Marriage and Love” (1914), Goldman openly declares: “Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery.” This bold statement, which may reflect Goldman’s challenges while working as a nurse, paradoxically combines neo-Malthusianism, anarcha-feminism, social Darwinism, and eugenics. Although such a political constellation may appear puzzling at first glance, her biographer Clare Hemmings explains how Goldman believed that, the greater the degree of illness, disability, and misery among the workers, the worse the chances for social revolution—and vice versa.4
In “Eugenics without the state: anarchism in Catalonia, 1900–1937” (2008) and Anarchism and Eugenics (2019), the Hispanist Richard Cleminson explains how such a seemingly puzzling calculus on Goldman’s part fit right within the eugenicist priorities of many, but not all, anarchists in the contemporary international movement—both at the level of individuals and institutions. The latter included the CNT-FAI, the Mujeres Libres (“Free Women”) of Spain, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), among others.5
Promoting Nietzsche, a Proto-Fascist
In a similar vein, in Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Goldman defends Nietzsche, who “is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the Ubermensch. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind [sic] that this vision of the Ubermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.”
Most charitably, Goldman in her discussion here of the Nietzschean Ubermensch (“overman”) means to say that she and her interlocutor look forward to a future in which humanity is no longer servile, dependent, and oppressed, but rather, master of its own destiny. Still, we must not be naïve: the Ubermensch presupposes Untermenschen (“subhumans”). In fact, examining Goldman’s diction, one notices that she quietly concedes the criticism that Nietzsche “hate[d…] the weak,” in that she does not contest the charge, but rather changes the subject to something else that this supposed genius “also” reportedly believed! In reality, Goldman can in no way defend Nietzsche on the grounds that he did not hold humanity in contempt—much less, that he promoted an egalitarian, classless future.
Au contraire! Nietzsche’s entire shtick was to inveigh against the Judeo-Christian “slave morality,” the role of compassion in social life, the political legacy of the French Revolution, and Enlightenment concepts of freedom and equality. In the words of Ronald Beiner, his was an “ultrareactionary political philosophy.” Being a eugenicist and social Darwinist, Nietzsche differentiated between ostensibly “elect” and “unfit peoples,” and he openly supported feudalism, slavery, and caste systems.6 As reflected in the ravings found in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–1885), Nietzsche drew special inspiration from Zoroastrianism, the State religion of the notoriously hierarchical Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE). In his own words: “The supreme law of life, first formulated by Zarathustra, requires that one have no compassion for all the dross and refuse of life […].” Nietzsche likewise identified with Hinduism’s systematic incitement against, and dehumanization of, the Dalits, otherwise known as “Chandala” or “Untouchables.”7
Along similar lines, Nietzsche blatantly celebrated the counter-revolutionary crushing of the Paris Commune of 1871—or what he called “Franco-Jewish levelling”—in private correspondence, and the The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is marked by the evident anguish induced in its author by the Communards’ proletarian uprising.8 Nietzsche furthermore lamented the protective roles played by Judaism and Christianity toward the “deformed and the sick,” denied the “malformed the right” to life, and even looked forward to a “storm [coming] to shake all this rot and wormfood [sic]” away. In this vein, he astoundingly sought not only to encourage the ill and disabled to kill themselves, but also to inspire a “hammer with which to smash and eliminate the degenerating and dying races [sic]”—specifically, by “annihilating millions of those that have turned out badly [sic].”9
Returning, then, to Goldman’s quote with this rather disturbing context in mind, the most devastating interpretation one could make of her statement might simply be to conclude that Goldman actually is citing the proto-fascist Nietzsche to bolster her own eugenicist vision of a future society without “weaklings and slaves.”
Conclusion
However basely Goldman betrayed her anarchist principles by endorsing eugenics, it is undeniable that most well-known fellow anarchists have contradicted themselves as the most basic level. For instance, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin were antisemitic, Proudhon and Lev Tolstoy were misogynists, Ricardo Flores Magón and Max Landauer were homophobic, and Murray Bookchin was arguably a megalomaniac. Peter Kropotkin supported the Allies in World War I, Albert Camus backed French colonialism in Algeria, and Noam Chomsky has long rationalized atrocities perpetrated by myriad “anti-imperialist” regimes. Many white Russian anarchists have held racist views toward Asians, and Magón himself incited Sinophobia—with tragic results in the explosive setting of the Mexican Revolution. Lucy Parsons abandoned the cause to join the Communist Party toward life’s end. (We won’t mention the nonsense peddled by the nihilist Stirner, who was no anarchist.)
Given the track record of her peers, then, Goldman’s disconcerting support for eugenics and apologism for the proto-fascist Nietzsche are not uniquely aberrant. Nonetheless, the existence of such toxic dynamics among anarchists hardly excuses her from responsibility for the dangerous ideas and intellectual distortions she promoted. Although Hemmings rightly reminds us that Goldman “never supported a eugenics view that privileged propagation as a mode of national or racial belonging,” it is incontestable that Goldman’s eugenics were not only ableist but also classist.10 Thus illuminating Solomon’s point about her “confusing inconsistencies,” Goldman fatefully overlooked Kropotkin’s principled condemnation of eugenics for perpetuating working-class oppression.11
Emma G’s great contributions to the cause notwithstanding, her sympathies for a reactionary German philosopher who was explicitly into hierarchy, violence, and brutality—who complained that “everyone is sick,” and “everyone is a nurse,” even as he warned that “[o]ne should not try to be a physician for the incurable”—strongly call into question not only her judgment and reasoning, but also her honest commitment to anarchism and nursing.12 In this light, a more balanced and distant view of her life and legacy is certainly called for.
Let us press on in a critical anarchist spirit, as we repudiate eugenics, ableism, and fascism at a time when the Trump regime and its supporters are aggressively inciting and exacerbating these very scourges.
Works Cited
Beiner, Ronald 2018. Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.
— 2021. “Dangerous minds in dangerous times.” Thesis Eleven, vol. 163, no. 1. 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136211005989.
Cleminson, Richard 2008. “Eugenics without the state: anarchism in Catalonia, 1900–1937.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 39. 232–9.
— 2019. Anarchism and Eugenics: An Unlikely Convergence, 1890–1940. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.
Ferguson, Kathy E. 2011. Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Fluss, Harrison 2021. “Introduction to the English-Language Edition” of Domenico Losurdo, Nietzsche: The Aristocratic Rebel: Intellectual Biography and Critical Balance-Sheet. Trans. Gregor Benton. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 1–13.
Hemmings, Clare 2018. Considering Emma Goldman: Feminist Political Ambivalence and the Imaginative Archive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hustak, Carla C. 2012. “Saving Civilization from the ”Green-Eyed’ Monster‘: Emma Goldman and the Sex Reform Campaign against Jealousy, 1900–1930.” Journal of Transnational American Studies, vol. 4, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.5070/T841007119.
Kuru, Ahmet T. 2019. Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Losurdo, Domenico 2021. Nietzsche: The Aristocratic Rebel: Intellectual Biography and Critical Balance-Sheet. Trans. Gregor Benton. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Footnotes
- Ferguson 164. ↩︎
- Ibid 173n168. ↩︎
- Hustak. ↩︎
- Hemmings 53, 91. ↩︎
- Cleminson 2008; Cleminson 2019; Hustak. ↩︎
- Beiner 2018: 4, 18, 40, 144n35. ↩︎
- Kuru 112–16; Losurdo 597 (emphasis added), 601–2. ↩︎
- Fluss 5; Losurdo 26–9. ↩︎
- Losurdo 593–9. ↩︎
- Hemmings 54. ↩︎
- Ferguson 164; Cleminson 2019. ↩︎
- Beiner 2021; Losurdo 595. ↩︎

Comments
Nonsense on stilts
anarcho (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 06:30
Seriously? A few passing comments on Nietzsche are turned into a big thing -- as if Goldman endorsed (or even knew) about his more reactionary positions. As for "eugenics", that is misreading her position -- along with others. And the notion that she was not a communist-anarchist is just silly -- she repeatedly indicated she was a communist-anarchism and her writings confirm that.
This is the kind of nonsense you expect from Leninists, not libertarians -- see my article:
Emma Goldman, class warrior
https://anarchism.pageabode.com/emma-goldman-class-warrior/
Yes, she was deeply concerned about individuality -- as was Kropotkin. Does not make her an "individualist".
Ironically, Goldman lamented in the book referenced how "The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality." That is what is petty article does.
OooOooh nooOooo, Emma was a…
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 07:30
OooOooh nooOooo, Emma was a socialist-nihilist individualist, we are veeEeery raaAaare!
But there is a picture of…
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 08:54
But there is a picture of Hitler looking at a Nietzsche bust. QED!
This is so fucking bad…
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 09:06
This is so fucking bad.... Eugenicists back i the '20s were mostly Leftist-leaning, with a few dogshit proto-Nazis. The problem was just the wider issue of how your anarcho-syndie movement 100 years ago had failed to see the (literal) fascist creep crawling under their radar, to later take full power. Fascists recuperated mass proletarian movements in parts due to the shady racial element within these very movements, their apparent neglect on the matter of racial, cultural and national consolidation of power.
When you're collaborating with a bunch of rural Nativists, ethnic urban Euro migrants or retarded lumpen racists in the name of "uniting the proletariat" without at least clearly educating them about racial divides, having the support fascists later on is one of the results you might be getting. These people eventually stop taking *universalist* principles seriously and fall back to organizing and accumulating power along "bloodlines".
it's beginning to look like…
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 10:04
it's beginning to look like sethness just wants to be this age's bob black, aka Edge Lord, what with all the attacks on icons.
nothing wrong with attacking icons, ze says anarchistically, but surely we deserve more thoughtful, better reasoned, and more literate attacks...
I agree with you.
May Corvin (not verified) Fri, 07/18/2025 - 01:29
In reply to it's beginning to look like… by anonymous (not verified)
I agree with you.
hmmm...
CalvinSmith (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 11:33
ironically, I've been reading thus spoke xarathustra, and it doesn't seem to be promoting anything in particular: in part, it's a satire on the lifestyle and teachings of Jesus. Zarathustra can't really overcome his human status, but promotes a semi-inverted point of view related to the new testament. The cripples come to Zarathustra in the book, wanting to be healed. He brushes off the idea that the disabled need to be healed:
"...for there are humans which lack everything, except one thing of which they have to much....human beings who are nothing but a big eye or big mouth..."
"...But i never believe the people when they spoke of great men; and I maintained my belief that it was an inverse cripple who had too little of everything and too much of one thing."
The new testament preaches healing the lame. Trying to pin down a seemingly cryptic and poetic writer such as Nietszche is pretty messy business, even though some insulting pigeonholes do the trick.
The quotes I wrote at face value seem to be the exact opposite of both fascism and eugenics, as the latter is about having a hand in shaping the development of humans, and has some things in common with Emma's assertion that "one should not try to cure the incurable". Maybe anyone who preaches anything is a proto-fascist, i really don't know.
whoops, that was actually nietszche who was talking about not
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 07:53
In reply to hmmm... by CalvinSmith (not verified)
wanting to cure the incurable...
you can call Neech a fascist all you want, but most doctors have the same opinion...if your cancer is incurable, they will tell you, and talk about palliative measure. LMFAO! If i had a quarter for everytime i saw someone couple Nietzsche with fascism and eugenics online, without even providing quotes that have anything to do with those ideas.....there must be a glue huffing epidemic going on, a bath salts party in anarchist spaces, or something else ridiculous.
You know what?! STIRNER WAS A NAZI PEDOPHILE! The evidence is plane in his book "i hate mein spuks", and I came to this conclusion because he just didn't want parents around to tell him not to molest children:
"I hate mein spuks! They want to keep me away from children! Who I want to MOLEST, MOLEST, MOLEST"
-i hate mein spooks, by Max Shtirner
There, I found the evidence!
"I was dismayed to learn…
humanispherian Sun, 05/11/2025 - 12:08
"I was dismayed to learn recently that the nihilist anti-humanist Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) is still influential among, and even considered acceptable by, some in the anarchist milieu."
This is the worst piece I’ve ever read lmao…
GiggyMantis Sun, 05/11/2025 - 12:43
Just genuinely… sigh at the collective
It's beyond ridiculous to…
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 19:25
It's beyond ridiculous to now, in the middle of the heightened genocide against Palestine, to make up three complete bullshit accusations against Goldman but skip over a legit criticism of her that was made by a fellow traveler, Reginald Reynolds, in 1938: that she was using colonialist arguments to defend Israeli colonialism. It's almost like whoever wrote this critique of Goldman has no idea what they're talking about.
what's particularly stupid is this inistence that Nietszche
CalvinSmith (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 20:10
In reply to It's beyond ridiculous to… by anonymous (not verified)
was a hardcore fascist:
"Emma G’s great contributions to the cause notwithstanding, her sympathies for a reactionary German philosopher who was explicitly into hierarchy, violence, and brutality"
This is definitely a very ignorant interpretation of Nietzsche texts: he was not an activist like Emma G and the writer of this, and didn't have any interest in trying to control those three things, but there's absolutely no evidence Nietzsche was calling for bloodshed in any of his books. I would argue the point of they are expressing here is a violently stupid one, it really attempts to cut at Nietzsche's large body of text with a blunt scalpel.
I'm convinced this confusion about Nietzsche's so-called fascist points of view was the will to power, which was more or less a commentary on how life tends to work rather than a value statement. It was pretty clear in some of his texts that he was sexist towards women, but this is hardly surprising given the accurate tidbits the author is pointing out about classical anarchists.
They seem to believe in the conclusion that anarchism is only about not subscribing to "-isms", which is obtuse at best.
adds a fourth bullshit…
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 21:05
In reply to It's beyond ridiculous to… by anonymous (not verified)
adds a fourth bullshit accusation to the list and thinks Israelis existed in 1938
Excuse me, wannabe Israelis,…
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 05/11/2025 - 21:21
In reply to adds a fourth bullshit… by anonymous (not verified)
Excuse me, wannabe Israelis, also know as Zionists before the State of Israel was formed. Here's the link to the text where she uses Locke's arguments for settlers' theft of land becoming legitimate by mixing labor and land.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-on-zionism
She was called on this in the same periodical by Reynolds: "'Finding is keeping' is a good motto for conquistadores and imperialists, but not, I should have thought, for Anarchists."
Next time educate yourself before you make a bullshit accusation of bullshit accusation.
the more extreme-hate colonial attitudes
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 04:20
In reply to Excuse me, wannabe Israelis,… by anonymous (not verified)
in Israel weren't really present in the Israel/Palestine region until the U.S. got Israel going in 1948, though.
How would that make it not…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 05:24
In reply to the more extreme-hate colonial attitudes by CalvinSmith (not verified)
How would that make it not colonialism? The British colonized Palestine after WWI on behalf of the Zionists. Which is why anarchists like Berneri were already criticizing both the Brits and the Zionists for what was happening in Palestine in 1929. Stolen land is stolen land whether the settler hates you or not, regardless of how much he hates you or when he starts hating you more than he did before.
What? "It"? "Not colonialism"?
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 06:21
In reply to How would that make it not… by anonymous (not verified)
What are you talking about with "it"? When did I even say the works "Not colonialism", anywhere in this article discussion?
Please do me a favor and try to be more cogent/clear when asking me things.
Jeez, the comment i was responding to here, and the above
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 07:43
In reply to What? "It"? "Not colonialism"? by CalvinSmith (not verified)
essay just make it frustratingly plain how little effort "anarchists" make when they try to accuse people of doing bad things. I make mistakes too, but i just wonder why people in the anarchist sphere don't want to really learn the truth about their villains: learning about an enemy, for me, is a requirement...when I have them. Talking to people in the comment section is so frustrating.
*smh*
"The British colonized…
HistorySanityCheck (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 08:01
In reply to How would that make it not… by anonymous (not verified)
"The British colonized Palestine after WWI" Well that's about the crux of the whole failed narrative on Palestine, as no, there wasn't a colonization of Palestine... as there wasn't a Palestine *in the first place*.
The British supported a plethora of monarchist gangs led by T.E. Lawrence and Prince Faisal, up against the Ottoman Empire. The UK had been at war with the Ottoman for decades already and they had found a common enemy with the Arabic tribes.
The only Palestine there was was a British colonial mandate. So the UK did not "steal" Palestine... they fucking MADE Palestine. The former intent of the Hashemite kingdom was to take over this piece of land in order to make a new Arabia all across the Med coast from what is now Syria to Saudi Arabia.
That project failed. Not even due to the Zionist movement, but mostly the Saud family, led by Faisal, and the British who wanted to keep the mandate as their foothold. This is all easily verifiable with simple web searches.
Not saying the Israeli nationalist narrative ain't a joke either, but let's look at the facts...
Also no colonization of the…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 08:50
In reply to "The British colonized… by HistorySanityCheck (not verified)
Also no colonization of the Americas because of the Aztecs and Incas (and just empty land everywhere else) right? Another game of pass the buck. The Brits and Spaniards are so misunderstood. They're the real victims.
and what are you talking about now?
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 09:10
In reply to Also no colonization of the… by anonymous (not verified)
Who was talking about the americas? What are you getting at? Are you just posting so other people get mad and respond to you? I'm tired of this de-colonialism-poisonous-hogwash-mixture-jibberish on anarchist news.
Nobody here denies that the americas were colonizaed by the british and the spaniards, god fucking dammit. I have not seen it, and I do not remember it. You are probably talking about a more normie atmosphere or conservative you tube.
I feel like i'm talking to lumpy. Nobody here is talking about the aztec and inca empires. What the fuck. Is anarchist news going to forever be me, the moderators, lumpy, and some other curious onlookers? Fuck the de-colonial dishonest and disengaged "activism". It's just hate trolling, it's just you fuckers wanting to make someone mad, and strangely enough you never get bored of it.
hey now! don't drag me in to…
lumpy (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 09:37
In reply to and what are you talking about now? by CalvinSmith (not verified)
hey now! don't drag me in to this
that anon is using that comparison is a very broad and lazy way, to be snarky i assume. but it's definitely always useful to do comparative analysis of colonialism and see who gets all twisted up about it, not to mention the reason people will "never get bored" is because it's ongoing ... like have you ever "got bored" during a fight while somebody was actively punching you in the face? probably not.
people will stop talking about it when the nightmare ends, so probably never!
Still, you are not responding to posts,
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:00
In reply to hey now! don't drag me in to… by lumpy (not verified)
But pre-concieved ideas you have about posters. I never ask people to stop talking about colonialism, but i don't want to get hung up in worthless existential about what it means to be white, or what it means to be POC. You dig?
*existentialism
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:01
In reply to Still, you are not responding to posts, by CalvinSmith (not verified)
Spell correct
calvin, we all know you…
lumpy (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:08
In reply to Still, you are not responding to posts, by CalvinSmith (not verified)
calvin, we all know you always WANT to decide how to frame a discussion and i'm here to remind you that that's just like, your opinion maaan
Yeah it seems like you and the anon
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:11
In reply to calvin, we all know you… by lumpy (not verified)
Above arent making sense...this whole discussion is made up of opinions. Ty for clarifying, goodbye.
The Europeans colonized the…
HistorySanityCheck (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 15:51
In reply to Also no colonization of the… by anonymous (not verified)
The Europeans colonized the Americas regardless of the politics of the native people in a given area. The goal of the Arabic tribes in the Middle East at the end of WW1 wasn't to overthrow or repel imperialists (aside from the Turkish imperialism) but to secure territory for their monarchies after the collapse of the Ottoman, in collaboration with the British and the French.
Why Syria and Palestine were formed in the 20th century? *Because* of Euro imperialists, not up against. These two designations used to be, for several centuries, for provinces of the Roman Empire. They did not exist prior to the French and British involvement in the region.
I think it is important to remember that colonialism is 100%
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 16:05
In reply to The Europeans colonized the… by HistorySanityCheck (not verified)
about resources, and ideological aspects of control are about maintaining a division of labor.
jihad is cool because it is…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:20
In reply to "The British colonized… by HistorySanityCheck (not verified)
jihad is cool because it is anti-colonial! nationalism of the oppressed is awesome!
Exactly! How crazy is this…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:30
In reply to jihad is cool because it is… by anonymous (not verified)
Exactly! How crazy is this nonsense.
It would be crazy if it wasn…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:39
In reply to Exactly! How crazy is this… by anonymous (not verified)
It would be crazy if it wasn't what anarchists were saying since the beginnings of Zionism. The victim-blaming, the noble-savage myth making, hyper-focusing on European powers to the exclusion of other powers, abandoning means-and-ends thinking when it comes to any armed struggle group calling itself "anti-imperial" or "anti-colonial"... It's all been part of anarchist fail logic for decades. At least the Soviet Union got something from all that, but anarchists just shred their own movements over it.
ya'll seem to like whoopin'…
lumpy (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 11:07
In reply to It would be crazy if it wasn… by anonymous (not verified)
ya'll seem to like whoopin' on that little strawman you got there but uhm ... strawmen can't fight back so it's pretty easy, not very impressive tbh
Yeah the way you are talking…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 11:13
In reply to ya'll seem to like whoopin'… by lumpy (not verified)
Yeah the way you are talking about Goldman is a strawman and she can't defend herself.
What's the deal with…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 10:28
In reply to It's beyond ridiculous to… by anonymous (not verified)
What's the deal with mentioning Palestine and the strange idea Emma Goldman defended Israeli colonialism? Is it to signal to others you support a Palestnian state? It's like the pet project of leftists to let everyone know they support a Palestinians state when no one asked and has nothing to do withh the article.
Emma Goldman couldn't "defend Israeli colonialism" since there was no Israel to defend by the time she died. It appears you're conflating "Israeli" with "Jew" which is dumb. The semitic peoples (akkadians, canaanites, assyrians, babylonians, edomites, pheonicians...etc) who'd become israeli and palestinian people today have been in that area for a long, long time. Your claim that Emma Goldman defended "israeli colonialism" hinges on the Arabs being the indigenous, but they weren't. Colonialism is when the indigenous peoples of an area subjugated by an foreign force usually to plunder the resources of said area.
The claims about Emma Goldman that Javier Sethness makes in the article are absurdly dumb. Adding your claims to it makes it even more dumb and ignorant.
Context Matters
sugarfree (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 09:08
EG -- like most humans, evolved and changed her approach throughout her life. Anyone who truly knows Emma, knows that later in life she was massive supporter of the CNT-FAI. Her casket was even covered by the anarcho-syndicalist flag when she was buried.
As for the issue of Palestine -- she was among the leftists at the time who believed that land -- all land belonged to the working class. It's unfortunate that there are elements of colonialism within the notion that borders do not exist, but but that's not an Emma Goldman problem. That's an issue anarchists today still have to think through.
I would agree with you up to…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:28
In reply to Context Matters by sugarfree (not verified)
I would agree with you up to the point where you said that there are elements of colonialism... etc. What does it even mean. The lefties are indeed taking all the right wing talking points. Defending borders, nationalism, identitarianism just to name a few in the name of "decolonisation". Absolutely nothing to do with anarchism and the struggle against the state and capitalism.
Yeah i thought that last point
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 11:36
In reply to I would agree with you up to… by anonymous (not verified)
They made was a little weird: borders are imaginary, it's pleasant imagine fewer of them, especially i need to walk aroumd a bit...
There's definetly something
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 11:49
In reply to I would agree with you up to… by anonymous (not verified)
Creepy about people who think immigration is inherently colonial, LMFAO. What are people supposed to do: burns their arms witj ciggs until they're good anarchists?
"It's unfortunate that there are elements of colonialism within the notion that borders do not exist, but but that's not an Emma Goldman problem."
arguing that anarchists…
lumpy (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 11:51
In reply to I would agree with you up to… by anonymous (not verified)
arguing that anarchists saying "no borders", has "elements of colonialism" is complete bullshit in my view
at worst, it's rad lib demagoguery or maybe if i'm being generous, somebody's analysis could be suffering from a lack of structuralism? which leads them to equivocate some random person saying an anarchist slogan with literal military conquest, occupation and genocide. when you phrase it like that, hopefully it becomes clear how embarrassing that would be, if somebody was hypothetically doing that
Clarification
sugarfree (not verified) Tue, 05/27/2025 - 01:38
In reply to arguing that anarchists… by lumpy (not verified)
Here's what I mean when I say "no borders", has "elements of colonialism".
If you going into a space arguing that borders are not real so you can settle anywhere, then it replicates a colonial mindset. Like sure -- you aren't doing military conquest, but it still ignores the power dynamics of going into a space.
A slogan like "no borders" isn't the same as an intentional awareness of building community. Recognizing that borders are made up isn't a carte blanche to take over a space at the expense of indigenous individuals or long-time residents. So yes, "no borders" has elements of colonialism -- because often times the people practicing it haven't made it past their own upbringing to think critically on how to deal with their own power dynamics in within a space.
Which ethnicities are…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/27/2025 - 10:09
In reply to Clarification by sugarfree (not verified)
Which ethnicities are privileged enough to have the right to settle anywhere?
Where do you get off telling people where to live? If I'm Maori, and I buy land in Montana, am I an evil colonizer too?
Humans go places and use the resources there and fight over it. I suspect you have no land, really suck at fighting and/or making money, and thus the over-elaborate explication in an obscurantist comment section.
More Clarification
sugarfree (not verified) Tue, 05/27/2025 - 01:53
In reply to I would agree with you up to… by anonymous (not verified)
If you read carefully, you will see I never said there should be borders or nations, only that there are elements of colonialism also within the notion of no borders.
Both statements can be true.
Borders are colonial.
No borders can be colonial.
Colonization is more than just about borders or nationalism.
So, then ...
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/27/2025 - 13:48
In reply to More Clarification by sugarfree (not verified)
Is your point that there are no positions not already corrupted by colonialism? In which case what point is served by critiquing some specific thing as colonialist?
Or do you think that everyone should live and die on the same patch of land where they happened to be born, but we just shouldn't draw lines between these places or think of them as nations?
too bad they never responded…
lumpy (not verified) Sun, 07/20/2025 - 08:28
In reply to So, then ... by anonymous (not verified)
too bad they never responded! think you hit bedrock with your question here
i also forgot about this thread but your question is exactly why i answered with my earlier point: if we're anarchists, we're anti-state, therefore no borders. that's not something we're saying so we can then "do more colonialism" (?!?) because it's ontologically upstream from colonialism, which requires states to be competing for resources in contested territories.
this is a fairly simple error of theory by many folks who might mean well but when an anarchist speaks about how borders have no real justification, it's pretty fukin weird to assume they're only saying that while they load up a wagon to try their luck on the oregon trail. that's a weird, hostile assumption! aka bad faith listening
i'm sure some asshole somewhere some time was ranting about colonialism BAD while he literally had cops throw squatters off a chunk of land and some of them were native folks, like probably that's happened many times but it's not really the point
Re: Palestine, this is false…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 12:19
In reply to Context Matters by sugarfree (not verified)
Re: Palestine, this is false, because Goldman wasn't just going with the flow of the times, she was specifically reacting against anarchists and socialists (Vernon Richards and Reginald Reynolds) in the periodical Spain and the World who were criticizing Zionist colonialism, in her same time period. Her own article in that journal was in response to Reynolds having written, "In plain words, a pact was formed during the War between British imperialism and Jewish nationalism, of which the Arabs were to be the victims."
In response to her response he then wrote, "Ideally speaking, the land should 'belong' in my opinion, to the whole community — since all wealth comes out of it. But if I accept Emma’s statement, then the land in Palestine should have belonged to the Arab peasant; and the Arab landlords had no right to sell it to Jewish immigrants who dispossessed these Arab tenants. That is the only sense I can make out of Emma’s statement, unless she means that the land belongs to whoever can grab it — i.e. that it belonged first to the Arab fellaheen but now belongs to those who pushed the Arab off."
So Goldman had no excuse based on her time period. Other socialists and anarchist had already figured out that colonialism is wrong and doesn't become right when settlers mix their labor with other people's land.
The text is so short it can…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 13:04
In reply to Re: Palestine, this is false… by anonymous (not verified)
The text is so short it can fit in a comment here and you still try to strawman it its amazing...
Emma Goldman
On Zionism
1938
To the Editor,
“Spain and the World”.
Dear Comrade,
I was interested in the article, ‘Palestine and Socialist Policy’, by our good friend Reginald Reynolds in ‘Spain and the World’ of July 29th. There is much in it with which I fully agree, but a great deal more which seems to me contradictory for a Socialist and a near-anarchist. Before I point out these inconsistencies, I wish to say that our friend’s article lends itself to the impression that he is a rabid anti-Semite. In point of truth, I have been asked by several people how it happens that ‘Spain and the World’ printed such an anti-Semitic article. Their surprise was even greater that Reginald Reynolds should be guilty of such tendency. Knowing the writer I felt quite safe in assuring my Jewish friends that Reginald Reynolds has not a particle of anti-Semitic feeling in him, although it is quite true that his article unfortunately gives such an impression.
I have no quarrel with our good friend about his charges against the Zionists. In point of fact I have for many years opposed Zionism as the dream of capitalist Jewry the world over for a Jewish State with all its trimmings, such as Government, laws, police, militarism and the rest. In other words, a Jewish State machinery to protect the privileges of the few against the many.
Reginald Reynolds is wrong, however, when he makes it appear that the Zionists were the sole backers of Jewish emigration to Palestine. Perhaps he does not know that the Jewish masses in every country and especially in the United States of America have contributed vast amounts of money for the same purpose. They have given unstintingly out of their earnings in the hope that Palestine may prove to be an asylum for their brothers, cruelly persecuted in nearly every European country. The fact that there are many non-Zionist communes in Palestine goes to prove that the Jewish workers who have helped the persecuted and hounded Jews have done so not because they are Zionists, but for the reason I have already stated, that they might be left in peace in Palestine to take root and live their own lives.
Comrade Reynolds resents the contention of the Jews that Palestine had been their homeland two thousand years ago. He insists that this is of no importance as against the Arabs who have lived in Palestine for generations. I do not think either claim of great moment, unless one believes in the monopoly of land and the right of Governments in every country to keep out the newcomers.
Surely Reginald Reynolds knows that the Arab people have about as much to say who should or should not come into their country as the under-privileged of other lands. In point of fact our friend admits as much when he states that the Arab feudal lords had sold the land to the Jews without the knowledge of the Arab people. This is of course nothing new in our world. The capitalist class everywhere owns, controls and disposes of its wealth to suit itself. The masses, whether Arab, English or any other, have very little to say in the matter.
In claiming the right of the Arabs to keep out Jewish immigration from Palestine, our good friend is guilty of the same breach of Socialism as his comrade, John McGovern. To be sure the latter makes himself the champion of British Imperialism while Reginald Reynolds sponsors Arab capitalist rights. That is bad enough for a revolutionary socialist. Worse still is the inconsistency in pleading on behalf of land monopoly, to which the Arabs alone should have the right.
Perhaps my revolutionary education has been sadly neglected, but I have been taught that the land should belong to those who till the soil. With all of his deep-seated sympathies with the Arabs, our comrade cannot possibly deny that the Jews in Palestine have tilled the soil. Tens of thousands of them, young and deeply devout idealists, have flocked to Palestine, there to till the soil under the most trying pioneer conditions. They have reclaimed wastelands and have turned them into fertile fields and blooming gardens. Now I do not say that therefore Jews are entitled to more rights than the Arabs, but for an ardent socialist to say that the Jews have no business in Palestine seems to me rather a strange kind of socialism.
Moreover, Reginald Reynolds not only denies the Jews the right to asylum in Palestine, but he also insists that Australia, Madagascar and East Africa would be justified in closing their ports against the Jews. If all these countries are in their right, why not the Nazis in Germany or Austria? In fact, all countries. Unfortunately, our comrade does not suggest a single place where the Jews might find peace and security.
I take it that Reginald Reynolds believes in the right of asylum for political refugees. I am certain he resents the loss of this great principle, once the pride and glory of England, as much as I do. How then, can he reconcile his feelings about political refugees with his denial of asylum to the Jews. I must say I am puzzled.
Our friend waxes very hot about national independence for the Arabs and for all other peoples under British Dominion. I am not opposed to the struggle for it, but I do not see the same blessings in national independence under the capitalist régime. All the advancement claimed for it is like the claims for democracy, a delusion and a snare. One has to point out some of the countries that have achieved national independence. Poland, for instance, the Baltic States or some of the Balkan countries. Far from being progressive in the true sense, they have become Fascist. Political persecution is not less severe than under the Tsar, while anti-Semitism, formerly fostered from on top, has since infested every layer of social life in these countries.
However, since our friend champions national independence, why not be consistent and recognise the right of the Zionists or the Jews at large to national independence? If anything, their precarious condition, the fact that they are nowhere wanted, should entitle them to at least the same consideration that our comrade so earnestly gives to the Arabs.
I know of course that a great many of the Jews can lay no claim to being political refugees. On the contrary, most of them have remained indifferent to the persecution of workers, socialists, communists, trade-unionists and anarchists, so long as their own skins were safe. Like the middle-class in Germany and Austria, they have exploited labour and have been antagonistic to any attempt on the part of the masses to better their condition. Some German Jews had the temerity to say that they would not object to driving out the ‘OstJuden’ (Jews coming from Poland and other countries). All that is true, but the fact remains that since Hitler’s ascendancy to power all Jews without exception have been subjected to the most fiendish persecution and the most horrible indignities, besides being robbed of all of the possessions. It therefore seems strange for a Socialist to deny these unfortunate people a chance of taking root in new countries, there to begin a new life.
The last paragraph in ‘Palestine and Social Policy’ caps the climax. The author writes: “What does it matter who makes a demand or why it is made, or who pays the bill if that demand is just? To reject a just demand is to brand ourselves as friends of tyranny and oppression; to accept it and to work for it is not only our duty but the only policy that will expose the pretensions of our enemies.”
The question is, dear Reginald Reynolds, who is to decide what is a ‘just demand’? Unless one makes oneself guilty of the charge the writer hurls against the Jews, “the intolerable arrogance of people who regard their own race as superior”, one cannot very well decide whether the demand of natives for the monopoly of their country is any more just than the desperate need of millions of people who are slowly being exterminated.
In conclusion, I wish to say that my attitude to the whole tragic question is not dictated by my Jewish antecedents. It is motivated by my abhorrence of injustice, and man’s inhumanity to man. It is because of this that I have fought all my life for anarchism which alone will do away with the horrors of the capitalist régime and place all races and peoples, including the Jews, on a free and equal basis. Until then I consider it highly inconsistent for socialists and anarchists to discriminate in any shape or form against the Jews.
Emma Goldman
London, August, 1938
Retrieved on May 23, 2012 from contested-terrain.net
Article originally titled 'Palestine and Socialist Policy: Emma Goldman's Views' and printed in 'Spain and the World', August 26, 1948. Reprinted in ‘British Imperialism & The Palestine Crisis: Selections from the Anarchist Journal ‘Freedom’ 1938–1948’ (London: Freedom Press, 1989), pp. 24–27
Who's strawmanning who? It…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 13:27
In reply to The text is so short it can… by anonymous (not verified)
Who's strawmanning who? It was Goldman who was upset that Reynolds had opposed British and Zionist colonialism in the first place. That's what her article you repost is responding to. If anything, she was making a strawman of his argument. Here's more of his response to her response (you apparently had no response to the other part of his response that I reposted earlier, probably because he's obviously correct and Goldman is obviously wrong):
"Next there are three opinions which Emma attributes to me for which there is not the slightest foundation. I have nowhere 'sponsored the Arab capitalist rights' and I have nowhere said that 'the Jews have no business in Palestine.' Also I did not 'justify' the closing of Australian ports against the Jews. Quite on the contrary. Discussing the views of the Australian representative at the Evian Conference, I said: 'No Socialist or Anarchist would, I hope, endorse that view.' Is that justification? But I added that if Australia excluded Jews there would not be an attempt to force her to accept Jewish immigrants by landing an army of occupation. It was simply a statement of fact; but I am prepared to make it one of opinion, and to ask whether Emma Goldman or anyone of her persuasion is prepared to advocate such a step? If I say that I am not going to interfere forcibly with my neighbour’s household it does not necessarily mean that I approve of everything he does; and I am sorry if Emma cannot see the distinction.
My attitude to Palestine is based on the same principles. The prime question is not whether I approve of Jewish immigration, but who shall decide on its extent. At present, it is determined by a foreign government — our own — whose decisions are enforced upon an unwilling population at the point of the bayonet. The alternative of Madagascar would present the same problem (though Emma confuses it with the problem of Australia, as though both were self-governing and autonomous). Hence my suggestion that a little constructive thought should be devoted to discovering 'some part of the world where they (the Jews) can live at peace with their neighbours by mutual agreement.' This is what my dear friend calls 'denying these unfortunate people a chance of taking root in new countries."
Goldman was either a fool or operating in bad faith.
who cares about her…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 14:15
In reply to Who's strawmanning who? It… by anonymous (not verified)
who cares about her strawmanning Reynolds when this is the argument being made:
"she was using colonialist arguments to defend Israeli colonialism" - https://anarchistnews.org/comment/82157#comment-82157
"she uses Locke's arguments for settlers' theft of land becoming legitimate by mixing labor and land." - https://anarchistnews.org/comment/82161#comment-82161
You are trying to defend Reynolds and "Other socialists and anarchist" who supposedly "had already figured out that colonialism is wrong and doesn't become right when settlers mix their labor with other people's land."
But from her own text these accusations against her are easily disproven, even if it did strawman Reynolds. From the text:
"I have for many years opposed Zionism as the dream of capitalist Jewry the world over for a Jewish State with all its trimmings, such as Government, laws, police, militarism and the rest. In other words, a Jewish State machinery to protect the privileges of the few against the many."
"he makes it appear that the Zionists were the sole backers of Jewish emigration to Palestine."
"there are many non-Zionist communes in Palestine" which "goes to prove that the Jewish workers who have helped the persecuted and hounded Jews have done so not because they are Zionists, but for the reason I have already stated, that they might be left in peace in Palestine to take root and live their own lives."
"In claiming the right of the Arabs to keep out Jewish immigration from Palestine, our good friend is guilty of the same breach of Socialism as his comrade, John McGovern."
"the land should belong to those who till the soil. With all of his deep-seated sympathies with the Arabs, our comrade cannot possibly deny that the Jews in Palestine have tilled the soil. Tens of thousands of them, young and deeply devout idealists, have flocked to Palestine, there to till the soil under the most trying pioneer conditions. They have reclaimed wastelands and have turned them into fertile fields and blooming gardens. Now I do not say that therefore Jews are entitled to more rights than the Arabs, but for an ardent socialist to say that the Jews have no business in Palestine seems to me rather a strange kind of socialism."
A lot of the rest of the text are supporting these basic arguments. So what is she NOT arguing?
She is not arguing that Arabs should have been displaced, even through legal means like land purchases. She is not arguing that anyone under any circumstance should have a right to land according to Lockean property claims. She is not arguing that Zionism is good or that it lacked imperial or colonial features.
She is arguing that refugees should be able to use "wastelands" for agricultural settlements and that locals shouldn't be able to stop those refugees from doing so. Not because she thinks the refugees have more rights because of Lockean property claims, but because she thinks locals don't have rights to stop them on the basis of race thinking about who land belongs to.
So this one text, the only one, is all that is needed to debate the original comments above.
I care that she was making a…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 14:28
In reply to who cares about her… by anonymous (not verified)
I care that she was making a strawman of Reynolds argument because he was arguing against the British and Zionist colonization of Palestine, including displacement of Arabs, and she was arguing against him because he argued that, which is colonial defensiveness. But even if we, for no good reason, pretended she wasn't defending colonialism from Reynolds critique and couldn't possibly have just not responded to him, her arguments are still colonialist, specifically Lockean and Zionist:
"the land should belong to those who till the soil. With all of his deep-seated sympathies with the Arabs, our comrade cannot possibly deny that the Jews in Palestine have tilled the soil. Tens of thousands of them, young and deeply devout idealists, have flocked to Palestine, there to till the soil under the most trying pioneer conditions. They have reclaimed wastelands and have turned them into fertile fields and blooming gardens."
These are exactly the colonialist arguments I'm talking about. These are the same bullshit arguments Locke and other colonizers of the Americas used to justify their theft of Native lands. It was bullshit then, it was bullshit when Goldman did it, it's bullshit now when anyone else does. Don't like Natives or Palestinians? Don't like people criticizing colonialism? Simple solution. Don't steal land in the first place. Stop stealing land. Fuck yourself over instead of other people.
The argument really boils…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 14:42
In reply to I care that she was making a… by anonymous (not verified)
The argument really boils down to whether or not you believe these really were "wastelands" or how Palestine should be thought of. Who are the actual natives? What rights do they have to which lands?
It looks like Goldman actually thinks that there were real wastelands where no one was living and no one was using. Not nomadic tribes. Not tenant-farmers. She also seems to think that non-Zionists refugees were coming to Palestine and using THAT land. And she seems to think that "Arabs" were trying to prevent those refugees from coming to Palestine and using that wasteland. And she is making it super clear that a big part of why she cares about this is because those refugees are trying to survive a genocide.
That might SOUND like colonial arguments, but the way she is talking about it isn't the same. She is not saying "this land is going to waste because it is mismanaged by primitive savages" or something like that.
The whole point is that…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 16:53
In reply to The argument really boils… by anonymous (not verified)
The whole point is that Vernon Richards and Reginald Reynolds were saying hey there are Arabs there and the Brits are oppressing them in collaboration with Zionism and she didn't like them pointing that out, so she changed the subject, as colonizers do, to fantasies about empty land and thieves gaining title to stolen land by working the land, Locke style.
Buncha cope. Your whole…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 17:02
In reply to The whole point is that… by anonymous (not verified)
Buncha cope.
Your whole argument is based on word associations and projection.
Technically you're coping…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 17:23
In reply to Buncha cope. Your whole… by anonymous (not verified)
Technically you're coping over Goldman coping over Reynolds having said that colonialism is bad. Nobody forced Goldman to write a response article to Reynolds. If she hadn't coped about it, you'd have to cope about something else. Pretty sure British colonialism and Zionism are real and not my personal projection, but keep coping.
telling someone "buncha coping" is a fucking weak
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 18:45
In reply to Buncha cope. Your whole… by anonymous (not verified)
criticism. You're all using this website free of charge for pleasure. Get over it.
Which "land"? And where? …
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 20:45
In reply to The whole point is that… by anonymous (not verified)
Which "land"? And where?
Maybe your revisionism is obsfuscating you from realizing that back in Emma'sa days there was no knowledge of a Palestinian land prior to the British mandate; that there were only Arabs.
Guy who thinks the land…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 20:55
In reply to Which "land"? And where? … by anonymous (not verified)
Guy who thinks the land masses currently occupied by the states of Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada magically appeared out of thin air too once the Brits people showed up. Real genius hours, once again.
You don't dare answering my…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 15:21
In reply to Guy who thinks the land… by anonymous (not verified)
You don't dare answering my questions, you deceitful filthbag. You don't dare as you're stuck with only a void as an answer.
The whole fucking Palestinian cause, regardless the past and ongoing massacres, is based on an abysmally bad reading of history maintained and spread by a bunch of authoritarian ideologues and fanatics, to hordes of poorly-educated people around the world who just won't double-check the claims.
Like I said, this nowhere negates that Israeli nationalist is equally a fucking mythology... like all nationalist narratives I can think about.
obviously they aren't…
lumpy (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 16:02
In reply to You don't dare answering my… by anonymous (not verified)
obviously they aren't required to humour you and let you set terms with your questions BUT i find it interesting that you admit there's an equivalence of nationalist narratives being dishonest, as any anarchist should know
therefore, wouldn't the only thing left that matters, be who has overwhelming military force? if all nationalism is just mythology, that just leaves who's doing the genocide, right?
"nationalist narratives…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 19:38
In reply to obviously they aren't… by lumpy (not verified)
"nationalist narratives being dishonest, as any anarchist should know"
"should know"... yea obviously. But that's hardly the case. You got UkWaynians as well as Pro-Palestine anarchists for instance.
"who has overwhelming military force?"
In the region? Israel, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt...
*whoosh noise* but did you…
lumpy (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 09:27
In reply to "nationalist narratives… by anonymous (not verified)
*whoosh noise*
but did you miss it or duck it? HMMM...
I, at many times here, been…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 20:37
In reply to *whoosh noise* but did you… by lumpy (not verified)
I, at many times here, been asking the same question that unsurprisingly none of these Leftie or anarchoid Pro-Palestine tools could answer...
There is no single evidence of Palestine being anything more tangible than a made-up notion, botched out at some point by the PLO, and this Palestinian Cause being has always been precisely imperialistic, not the other way around.
Arab nationalism was first backed by the British, and then it became an unstable movement in the '30s when the Nazis recuperated and used it. Then under the PLO and PFLP it was Soviet Russia that used it as a vehicle against the Western bloc. Then with Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, a vehicle of Iran and filthy rich Arab oil princes. A "free Palestine" was never part of the plan. It's about Arabs being used and abused by foreign powers, mostly non-Arabic save from the Arabic billionaire manchilds of the Gulf.
... i see. so deliberate…
lumpy (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 09:43
In reply to I, at many times here, been… by anonymous (not verified)
... i see. so deliberate dishonesty then! or you just have a trash analysis of power but probably deliberate dishonesty!
No u
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 17:19
In reply to ... i see. so deliberate… by lumpy (not verified)
Try answering the question I asked before calling others "dishonest"... (this is the internet lol)
So question goes like: "Where was this land named "Palestine" that the British and/or Zionists have purportedly taken over? I mean the land that was NOT the British mandate. Where the fuck was it?"
same place it's been for…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 17:55
In reply to No u by anonymous (not verified)
same place it's been for thousands of years, being one of the oldest named and mapped regions of the world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartography_of_Palestine
What place?
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 18:31
In reply to same place it's been for… by anonymous (not verified)
European imperialists called it "Palestine" for a pretty obvious and convenient reason. Pssst! Here's a hint... It was literally, during its only official territorial designation, a GODDAMNED PROVINCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, and for just a few centuries in Medieval times.
And this "place" was a blurry piece of land on the Eastern Med coast in most of these maps, especially the non-Western ones.
Yet there was no such designation as Palestina according to both Caliphates of Bagdad and hardly the Ottoman Empire, that called it the Sanjak of Jerusalem, then designated the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem in the late 19th century, along with the Nablus Mutasarrifate of Nablus and Damascus.
"Palestine" only exists historically as a Western Christian imperialist designation. And as a political claim... it's barely a few decades old.
Why is that? Because the region was Ottoman for centuries... But it was also already dominated by the Muslim Caliphates for a long time as well.
Palestina is *a product of imperialist and especially inter-imperialist wars*... in a similar way to Wayne's Ukraine these days.
oh my! good thing i had my…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 19:01
In reply to What place? by anonymous (not verified)
oh my! good thing i had my smelling salts on me or i might have fainted! next up: a hearty dose of cocaine, some ethnic cleansing and ecological destruction, and then back to playing passive victim of history
goldman wants to…
alex (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 19:52
In reply to The text is so short it can… by anonymous (not verified)
goldman wants to differentiate between people who sought refuge in palestine and zionists who sought to form a state there. you could go put on the folk song "shenandoah" and contort yourself into the appropriate position to believe that the people who came up with those lyrics were likewise different from the ones simultaneously raping, displacing, clear-cutting and shooting their way into the same country, and that it would be some kind of strawman argument to observe that their river boats and their individualist sensibilities amounted to nothing, while their work, and their dollars and cents, just happened to pave the way for their bosses and less scrupulous cousins...whoops!
goldman stuck her neck out for the putative leftists among the zionists, believing them to be different, and it is only right to criticize her for her stupidity on that front. if the refugees were so different from the zionists history has shown that they would have had to demonstrate as such not merely by standing by but by opposing the zionists, forcefully, from the beginning. instead, they let themselves be corralled into the kibbutzim where their tendency towards running meetings was used for administrative purposes and presenting a friendlier zionism for the more soft-hearted new recruits. the problem for individualists in this context in my opinion is not the specific theory of how/why it may or may not be acceptable for a person to go and build a cabin somewhere but the way in which the individual efforts of these "pioneers" did not even rise to the level of recuperation, for the most part, but was simply part and parcel of the projects of their sponsors and bosses. it is precisely taking them at their word, and assuming that they were honest--acknowledging that they were "idealists," to quote goldman directly--to observe that the particular kind of sickness of the heart and intellect they developed, the entirely false and doctrinal myopia of the good-hearted settler, has got to be one of the most annoying things about being alive in this kind of place today
They did oppose the Zionists…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 20:21
In reply to goldman wants to… by alex (not verified)
They did oppose the Zionists. what are you basing anything you are saying on? At the very least we know they formed the Palestine Communist Party and other opposition groups. They opposed the main Zionist labor organizations and parties. Have you ever looked this stuff up? It is like you think that because they lost as a movement in Palestine, they must not have been sincere or something.
basing on? vibes bro but i…
alex (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 22:47
In reply to They did oppose the Zionists… by anonymous (not verified)
basing on? vibes bro but i agree people should look specific things and people up. and i know goldman's relationship with the comintern was fraught or whatever but i couldnt help but notice she did not refer to them or to anyone else specific, who had done or even said anything specific at all, choosing instead to appeal to the noble worker and the noble refugee as generalities and the totally honest assumption that their politics there would be as us good people's politics are here. understandable and, as i said, precisely if taken as sincere, foolish
Oi, just leave me gran Emma…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 08:01
In reply to basing on? vibes bro but i… by alex (not verified)
Oi, just leave me gran Emma outta this! She was 69 that year, writin’ with hand cramps from exile in bleedin’ London, squintin’ through the fog tryna defend some Jews from both Nazis and lads like you thinkin’ everyone with a hoe was annexin’ Acre. She just wanted a garden, mate, not a state.
her garden is on fire
alex (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 08:55
In reply to Oi, just leave me gran Emma… by anonymous (not verified)
are you really the grandchild of emma goldman?? you should submit your skull measurements pronto so we can include them in this review of her theory of eugenics
It's funny that you fools…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 10:02
In reply to Oi, just leave me gran Emma… by anonymous (not verified)
It's funny that you fools think Goldman's primary motivation was sympathy for Jews trying to escape Germany. Here's what she wrote in 1939 in a letter to Mark Mratchny:
"Not so the Jews who have never lifted a finger to prevent the event of Hitler in Germany or have shown the least resistance in any country. Please do not think that I feel they are getting what they deserve — no. But I cannot close my eyes to the fact that the Jews have failed miserably to defend their own grounds. I insist further that if Hitler had only persecuted the Polish Jews he would have 90% of the German Jews on his side just as Mussolini had nearly all the Jews in Italy on his side.
Alas, it is no good to be a coward. In the end, no one respects cowards and the price for it is just as great."
It's funny how you looked up…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 10:57
In reply to It's funny that you fools… by anonymous (not verified)
It's funny how you looked up some other letter when the one that you're supposed to be such a great analyst of already has this:
"I know of course that a great many of the Jews can lay no claim to being political refugees. On the contrary, most of them have remained indifferent to the persecution of workers, socialists, communists, trade-unionists and anarchists, so long as their own skins were safe. Like the middle-class in Germany and Austria, they have exploited labour and have been antagonistic to any attempt on the part of the masses to better their condition. Some German Jews had the temerity to say that they would not object to driving out the ‘OstJuden’ (Jews coming from Poland and other countries). All that is true, but the fact remains that since Hitler’s ascendancy to power all Jews without exception have been subjected to the most fiendish persecution and the most horrible indignities, besides being robbed of all of the possessions. It therefore seems strange for a Socialist to deny these unfortunate people a chance of taking root in new countries, there to begin a new life."
It's funny how I didn't have…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 14:01
In reply to It's funny how you looked up… by anonymous (not verified)
It's funny how I didn't have to look it up, I just already knew about it, just like I already knew about many of Goldman's writings, including her response article coping about Zionism in Spain and the World, and the article National Atavism, she published but most likely didn't herself write on Zionism back in 1906. It's funny how it's useful to read more than one text by a person to get more context, and it's funny how her private letter to Mratchny was harsher than her public article in Spain and the World, where she had to cope about Richards and Reynolds opposing British imperialism and Zionism more than she did. It's funny she had to argue in bad faith if not outright deceit that Reynolds supposedly wanted to "deny these unfortunate people a chance of taking root in new countries, there to begin a new life," when he said no such thing, and clarified in his response that he never said or meant such a thing, a response so clarifying that she had no response to it herself. It's funny when anarchists defend Lockean colonialism instead of shutting the fuck up.
Especially when*
CalvinSmith (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 11:37
I need to walk aroumd a bit.
I will walk with you brah,…
anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/12/2025 - 22:37
In reply to Especially when* by CalvinSmith (not verified)
I will walk with you brah, and we can both spit on all the religiously anthropocentric Abrahamic constituted States on this fragile planet !!
Sometimes when I walk my…
CalvinSmith (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 13:33
In reply to I will walk with you brah,… by anonymous (not verified)
Sometimes when I walk my feet get sore but soaking them in tomato juice is good especially when skunk varmits trespass on mine domicile. You would think that eugenics could fix this like Nietzsche talked about during his whistle stop through the American South. I guess we'll find out next week?!
If walking on unyielding…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 18:25
In reply to Sometimes when I walk my… by CalvinSmith (not verified)
If walking on unyielding hard surfaces, the feet must be placed softly and carefully if bare, but if walking on cushions, the luxury allows for haphazard haste brah.
Goldman & National Self-Determination
Wayne Price@ (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 18:40
Emma Goldman was a great revolutionary anarchist-socialist. She was not perfect and made mistakes which should be discussed--but not used to dismiss her.
She did not distinguish between imperialist countries and oppressed countries. There is a difference between Jewish refugees trying to get into the U.S., the U.K., Australia, etc., and trying to get into Palestine, Madagascar, or similar country. In the latter case, whatever their motives and whatever their needs, the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany were being used to take the land away from an oppressed population, the indigenous Arabs (whether or not "Palestine" was yet a real country). This was clearly understood by the Zionist leaders (even if some Jewish immigrants did not understand it). The Palestinian-Arab people should have (then and now) the freedom to establish their own country, with the political and economic system they prefer.
If the Israeli Jews today will give up their Jewish supremacy and agree to live together with the Palestinians (in some way mutually determined), then peace and freedom are possible. But in any case anarchists should be on the side of the Palestinian people (not their specific leadership organizations such as Hamas, but the people) against their Zionist oppressors.
Goldman was mistakenly supporting the Zionist land-grab (in collaboration with the British), with various rationalizations. Of course, as she says, she opposed a Zionist state, but she was supporting supposedly non-Zionist Jews coming to Palestine and occupying the land, which is just what the Zionists wanted. Nor was she the only anarchist Jew who made this error.
Wayne she specifically says …
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 20:13
In reply to Goldman & National Self-Determination by Wayne Price@ (not verified)
Wayne she specifically says “wastelands” and you are projecting the rest. There were in actual fact real wastelands and everyone knew it. Look it up: mewat land. Where in what she says does she justify any of the displacements of Arabs? Just because that was also going on doesn’t mean it was the only thing going on.
You are both wrong! Mewat…
anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 23:45
In reply to Wayne she specifically says … by anonymous (not verified)
You are both wrong!
Mewat land was a legal category from the Ottomans, but a lot of it was still used and Israel has been using that category to dispossess Palestinians. The Ottomans created the category to encourage cultivation, so they had something like squatter's rights to it and in practice let Bedouin use it even though on paper it wasn't registered to them. But Emma Goldman probably didn't know that and what she says in her writings does not suggest that she would accept the State's land categories on paper over the real use of land by the people.
What she was arguing against was the idea that the elite absentee landholders leading the nationalist movement should be given priority in the decision about allowing Jewish refugees into Palestine. That doesn't mean she thought the British should decide and it doesn't mean she thought the Zionists should decide. It just means that she applied a class analysis to the nationalist movement that others did not and considered it a capitalist movement.
The argument that those refugees were still "used" by Zionists is interesting, but in 1938 you can't say that Goldman could know the Zionists would be so successful. The immediate need of the Jewish refugees trumps the potential success of the Zionists to use them as agents of colonialism. At least that looks like Emma Goldman's reasoning.
Based on all that, Goldman's reasoning with what she likely knew is consistent with anarchist principles. We can look back now and say with hindsight that perhaps she missed something clear to us now, but the way her position is getting used to paint her as a Zionist or Zionist sympathizer is wrong.
Wasteland.
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 04:03
In reply to chisel, greg, bugs, notnull… by Zhachev
That's a common name designation given by colonialists who have seized land off indigenous inhabitants, and unfortunately the religious zeal for conversion to believing in spooks quickly follows.
calling land “wasteland” isn…
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 07:36
In reply to Wasteland. by anonymous (not verified)
calling land “wasteland” isn’t only a colonial tactic. It’s also a classic tool of primitive accumulation in non-colonial contexts, used to dispossess commoners and pastoralists by redefining their land as unused. English enclosures, Scottish Highland Clearances, Prussian land reforms, etc. The Ottomans used mewat land the same way in their 1858 Land Code: not as colonizers, but as a centralizing empire aiming to tax and control. The British and the Zionists later exploited this logic, but the logic itself wasn't colonial in origin.
This is why you should all read more Marxist books like WaynePrice says you should.
"This is why you should all…
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 07:44
In reply to calling land “wasteland” isn… by anonymous (not verified)
"This is why you should all read more Marxist books like WaynePrice says you should."
lol fuck off dude. You SHOULD ake sum viagra and hang out at the gym or somethin. Or perhaps will you succeed at a Communard revolution at the daycare center?
Why not the working class…
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 08:12
In reply to "This is why you should all… by anonymous (not verified)
Why not the working class read Capital and it lead to a revolution that almost changed the whole world, but Emma Goldman readers give up changing even their clothes. Anarchists who don't read Marx will call dumpsters "wastelands" and colonize them.
Because you didn't read…
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 20:37
In reply to Why not the working class… by anonymous (not verified)
Because you didn't read Camatte, and/or got no experience of what the working class is really about these days.
Also fuck the working class, btw.
...working class sez "fuck you too"? Well just wanna let you know they've been saying that *already* since I'm like 4 years old. The working class are taking active part in the social oppression. They are the cops.
Get rid of these spooks you live with. The Workers don't give a shit about you.
I read Stirner and saw the…
Le Truth (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 15:52
In reply to calling land “wasteland” isn… by anonymous (not verified)
I read Stirner and saw the whole collectivity as the "wasteland" , as did TS Elliot, the wars, the seizure, the walls and the brainwashed ghosts that inhabit the ' wasteland' On the other hand, the indigenous have sacred wilderness, the reign of wild animal spirit, the unchained mystery of the existent.
Emma Played into the Hands of the Zionists
Wayne Price@ (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 14:03
In reply to You are both wrong! Mewat… by anonymous (not verified)
I did not say (and do not believe) that Emma Goldman was a Zionist sympathizer or in favor of the displacement of Palestinian Arabs. I do say that she played into the hands of the Zionists (and of the British imperialists, who were ambivalent about Zionist colonization). She rationalized the settlement of Jews in Palestine--saying that some were supposedly non-Zionists--or saying they were only colonizing "wastelands." But this still meant that European Jews were filling up the land, colonizing the country, and establishing their own settlements. That was exactly what the Zionist leaders wanted. While a great revolutionary and anarchist, E.G. made some mistakes, and this was one of them.
Further response: I am for national self-determination, which is not the same as nationalism. As I have repeatedly shown, many anarchists have advocated national self-determination without capitulation to nationalism (one program for achieving self-determination, but not the only one).
Wayne, the issue with your…
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 17:40
In reply to Emma Played into the Hands of the Zionists by Wayne Price@ (not verified)
Wayne, the issue with your argument isn't that Goldman wasn't mistaken about some practical outcomes, but that your alternative leads to equally harsh consequences.
Supporting Jewish refugees settling in Palestine might have indirectly aided Zionist plans, as you suggest. But consider the opposite scenario. Opposing or severely restricting Jewish refugee settlement at a time when Jews faced extermination from Nazis and their allies, including Haj Amin al-Husseini, who explicitly promoted Nazi genocidal policies, would directly assist those forces.
This wasn't just an abstract ideological debate. Goldman didn't disregard Arab self-determination; rather, she applied a class perspective, distinguishing between Arab masses and nationalist elites. Rightly or wrongly, she prioritized immediate solidarity against genocide over potential long-term nationalist consequences.
If you fully confront your argument's implications, Wayne, you'll have to acknowledge that your proposed alternative of limiting Jewish settlement risked facilitating genocidal forces already active in Palestine. Goldman's stance had problematic consequences, but your critique doesn't offer a morally clearer solution once we account for these historical realities.
To be a little reductionistic: the choice for these Jews at that time was something like "play into the hands of the Zionists" or "play into the hands of the Nazis".
this is consequentialist…
alex (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 07:37
In reply to Wayne, the issue with your… by anonymous (not verified)
this is consequentialist hokum. to respond also to the other anon who objects that it's only with the benefit of hindsight that we can criticize goldman on these grounds, i am much more interested in engaging critically with the past to learn what kinds of perspectives and approaches failed, and how, than i am in litigating whether or not a particular person was right or wrong given their context, which is what this is. part of the reason for that is that the latter approach inevitably mystifies and confounds what we can now see clearly, given that we do in fact have the benefit of hindsight--what it all amounted to.
today is nakba day, as was observed in a deleted comment. in my opinion, just as with the american case, we can, in retrospect, observe that what passed for moral urgency, economic expediency, political pragmatism, etc, at the time, culminated in genocide, a legal term that was also established with the benefit of hindsight and which nevertheless has its uses. the american settlers fleeing the genocide in ireland, on which both manifest destiny and zionism would draw on as a model, are not excused by virtue of that fact for their participation on what was often the bloodiest edge of american expansionism. the IRA militants who took refuge in america and used the economic opportunities there to develop a mighty solidarity network are not excused of their participation in genocide by virtue of the fact that they had a reason for it. the more difficult road, which goldman refers to in her more hard-nosed letter also quoted in this comment section, and which one of the anons who responded to me was referring to via the communist party founded by anti-zionist jews, was then, and remains now, either not joining the settling force in the first place and fighting ones enemies at home, or by rejecting the protections and associations that come with belonging to the settling force and building real, direct, entrenched networks and associations with the indigenous people there. i believe this to be the case not because it would have produced a better outcome--i have no way of knowing that and suspect that it probably would not have, especially given that a few people did do it because it is in fact bullshit to suggest that none of this was knowable at the time--but because i do not believe that moral urgency or political or economic expediency can be the basis of a politics or way of living socially that contributes to anything but war and exploitation.
the test of the anti-zionist jews in palestine was presented to them in 1948, and in retrospect we can observe they failed to distinguish themselves in that setting. same can be said of the arab nationalists, and particularly the major capitalists, bureaucrats, and state leaders among them, who continue to betray the people of palestine, and the people in the region generally for whom they supposedly hold some allegiance, day in and day out, today, right now. the test of the american "pioneers" who stood with the indigenous and wanted only to trade and make their way as independents of the american project likewise, failed. it is certainly possible that there is no other mode than failure, but i'm convinced at least that apologizing for the forebears of israelis and americans in an effort to preserve the reputations of long-dead political figures is not a good way of communicating anything other than complacency, retreat, and conciliation in the present moment. i also believe that it is possible for people to associate with each other in such a way that they can engineer the defeat--or at least meaningfully sabotage--their own state and capitalist managers whenever they get it in their heads to go and brutalize another people, for any reason. but that requires rejecting the kinds of protections, including e.g. being a proletarian, that many seem more interested in denying exist at all.
thanks for this, alex…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 08:23
In reply to this is consequentialist… by alex (not verified)
thanks for this, alex. nuanced and cogent.
the only thing missing in…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 09:15
In reply to thanks for this, alex… by anonymous (not verified)
the only thing missing in that analysis is the highlighting of the zionist leadership that openly collaborated with anti jewish tyrants in the half century leading up to the first waves of immigration.
from the inception of zionism it's leaders have been completely willing to sell out and leave the bottom 99% of the jewish community to be dinner for wolves. this was never about judaism or indigeniety or other religion. it's just some white elites who did a power grab so they could become the rulers of a giant plantation in the levant.
benito cheeto parading his clown ass around with the criminal leaders of arab regimes inside their glass towers is such a blatantly demonstration of this.
there might not ever be another worldwide proletarian revolutionary wave in the purest sense but we're clearly at a precipice and there is a huge reckoning about to happen. around the follow from a) colonialism, b) peak oil [no one's even discussing this anymore] and c) the transformation of the global wilderness into one giant metropolis
alex, I think it’s right for…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 09:56
In reply to this is consequentialist… by alex (not verified)
alex, I think it’s right for you to point out that it is Nakba Day and it makes me not want to respond on all points out of respect for that. So, I’m going to stick to this point that anyway seems to be at the heart of the matter:
"the more difficult road, which goldman refers to in her more hard-nosed letter also quoted in this comment section, and which one of the anons who responded to me was referring to via the communist party founded by anti-zionist jews, was then, and remains now, either not joining the settling force in the first place and fighting ones enemies at home, or by rejecting the protections and associations that come with belonging to the settling force and building real, direct, entrenched networks and associations with the indigenous people there."
This is what many Jews did... like the ones Goldman was praising. They fought at home as Bundists, communists, autonomists, anarchists and were destroyed by fascists and others. They fought in Palestine as Poale Zion, Hashomer Hatzair, the Palestinian Communist Party (later the Palestine Communist Party) and were crushed there too. So what people are pushing back on here is that it's insulting to suggest these things when those things were what was already tried. It comes off as daft as saying the Jews should have fought back in Warsaw as if they didn't fight back in Warsaw.
I don’t think you are trying to erase this history... I think you just don’t really know the history that well. You seem to be looking at the mechanics of how settler-colonialism tends to happen in other places and applying it to Palestine. But even people who do the history like that stress how important it is to show that there is a lot that makes Palestine unique.
Bottom line is this:
Goldman thought Reynolds was saying that the Arab nationalists should dictate immigration policy because they represented the indigenous people. Not only did that ignore the indigenous Jews living there who also needed to defend themselves, but it was also a year before the 1939 White Papers where the British capped Jewish immigration based on a logic of appeasing those same Arab nationalists. So literally, if Goldman’s rationale for defending Jewish refugees was playing into the hands of the Zionists... Reynolds’ rationale for allowing Arab nationalists to dictate immigration policy was playing into the hands of the Nazis.
One of the most prominent leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was not just a collaborator with Nazi Germany... by 1938 he had already fled British authorities in Palestine, helped orchestrate the Arab Revolt, and established close ties with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. He later moved to Berlin, where he met personally with Hitler, was granted state support, received a stipend from the German Foreign Office, and worked with the SS to recruit Muslim soldiers for Nazi military divisions in the Balkans. He broadcast antisemitic propaganda across the Arab world, advocated for extending the Final Solution to Palestine, and directly lobbied Nazi officials to prevent Jewish refugees from escaping Europe to the Middle East.
And during all of that... there were still Jews in Palestine who were trying to work with Arabs and fight against the Zionists. Defending those Jews, as Emma Goldman did in her letter, is what even you seem to think is the right position to take.
yes and for whatever reason…
alex (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 11:11
In reply to alex, I think it’s right for… by anonymous (not verified)
yes and for whatever reason goldman chose to say one thing in the published piece which began this exchange (i didn't read the article that these comments are supposedly responding to, i saw its premise and moved on), and another thing in the letter that has now also been quoted and brought into the picture. the published goldman is handwaving and casting the disagreement between her and reynolds as one of moral urgency and antisemitism, which seems to have encouraged several people in these comments to adopt a similar line, which i've argued twice now in different ways was a mistake on her part and one which reverberates today as people still attempt to reduce the issue to one of moral confusion and racial mysticism rather than one of material interests and concrete projects that one can ostensibly choose to recognize and confront on those terms. the private goldman, now published, says something different, which you and i both seem to broadly agree with. my basic position is that there is no justification for participating in settler-colonialism, particularly the form that emulates the english pale, which uses ethnic cleansing to create a population that is then driven to consider its collective interests in existential terms and dependent on (more) ethnic cleansing, and if people find themselves participating in it, because of force or birth or being lied to or whatever, the imperative should be to find a way to oppose it, even if that means ultimately surrendering ones own position within it. as we have now both said multiple times, some people throughout history have chosen to do exactly that, and were mostly crushed for it. i stand by my initial point that it is nevertheless important to remain critical of those people, especially insofar as their ways of resistance were not just "recuperated" but in some cases were misguided enough to be indistinguishable from the projects they were supposedly resisting or removing themselves from.
as for whether i know the history or not it has been over a decade since i engaged in depth with the specifics you are referring to, and if there is an article or book or whatever you think i could benefit from brushing up with, i'd be happy to take the suggestion and think would probably be a good thing to have posted here. i did the requisite wiki searching and did not see anything i felt the need to comment on. my general response is that the past and potential future resistance from within the pale does not, in my opinion, diminish or limit or call into question the present resistance of the people who are beyond it and so subject to it. the fact that europeans were clever enough to establish multiple pales (the jewish one being sort of the inverse in character to the english ones but similar enough in design and its eventual end) while simultaneously playing referee to the survival attempts of each others victims. what i am allergic to is the suggestion that the problem is intractable, that it is or was ever inevitable, or that internationalism entails a rejection of the existence of nations, even if understood as nothing more than the collection of legal codes and political-economic practices by which certain people are defined as the ones it is appropriate to kill and displace at will.
The gaps in your knowledge…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 13:57
In reply to yes and for whatever reason… by alex (not verified)
The gaps in your knowledge seem to be about Jewish identity, so I want to tell you this and leave it at that because I really do not want to center Jews on a day that reminds many of something shameful that happened involving Jews...
I agree that Zionism built a nationalist project with settler-colonial features... and from an anarchist perspective, of course it should have been resisted. But we should also be clear: resistance to Zionism should not have meant opposing Jewish migration, or rejecting demographic growth, or denying Jews the right to self-defense. And yet, much of it did. Too often, that resistance blurred into calls for Jews to assimilate into cultures that had historically excluded them... or framed any autonomous Jewish presence as inherently colonial. That is a pattern anarchists should be able to recognize... and reject.
The Jews in Hebron, for example... many of them Mizrahi, Sephardi, Ashkenazi... were part of a centuries-old, non-Zionist community. They were massacred in 1929 after months of incitement by Haj Amin al-Husseini... not because they were settlers, but because they were Jews. There’s a recent book about this called Ghosts of a Holy War by Yardena Schwartz... I haven’t read it yet, and I probably wouldn’t feel right invoking those stories too strongly here. I only mention it because that history exists, even if it complicates the usual framing.
Zionism didn’t invent the Jewish people... it secularized and nationalized a pre-existing identity. That’s why the comparison to something like the English Pale doesn’t really hold. The Pale created a settler identity through conquest and enclosure... in Palestine, Jewish identity already existed. Zionism restructured it into a statist form, but it didn’t manufacture the people inside it. That difference matters.
Anarchists should resist settler logic, yes... but also resist the antisemitic idea that Jews were foreign to the region, or only legitimate if they erased themselves.
oh ok
alex (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 14:18
In reply to The gaps in your knowledge… by anonymous (not verified)
well i will leave it to other readers to assess who is talking about what here, as i agree this is an atrocious topic for "a day that reminds many of something shameful that happened involving Jews"
Jews Already in Palestine?
Wayne Price@ (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 15:08
In reply to The gaps in your knowledge… by anonymous (not verified)
Yes, there were Jews in Hebron and elsewhere in Palestine even before the Zionist settlement program got into high gear. And they had the right to defend themselves against antisemitic mass attacks. But there were Jews everywhere, in many cities and countries, in Europe, Asia, and Muslim-majority countries. Mass migration into Palestine, however, meant the colonization of the region and the dispossession of the Arab Palestinians. Instead, the international left should have called for opening the borders of the UK, the USA, and other countries. As many did.
Wayne, the real ability for…
anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/17/2025 - 09:38
In reply to Jews Already in Palestine? by Wayne Price@ (not verified)
Wayne, the real ability for the Left to have an impact on this was miniscule. Of all people, you're not someone who needs a global assessment of the Left's position in 1938 to recognize that. So while the call to relax immigration policies was principled, in practice it was symbolic. Might as well have called for the full ousting of the British, the collectivization of Palestinian land into the hands of its actual occupants (the tenant farmers), and the formation of a tenants’ association to democratically manage immigration policy. Sounds great, but nobody had the power to make it happen.
If we want to deal with the facts, here’s how I understand them:
In 1938, the world had maybe 50 countries with actual immigration control. Of the 32 that attended the Evian Conference, almost none were willing to open their borders to Jews. The U.S. maintained strict national-origins quotas. Canada famously took in “none is too many.” Britain capped Jewish immigration to Palestine with the White Paper of 1939. Only the Dominican Republic offered to take a large number, and even that barely materialized.
If the choice is between genocide of the Jews or land sales that would displace Palestinian tenant farmers, I don’t see how you choose genocide. The displacement is tragic, but it’s not the same. At least in that scenario, the Left could struggle to ensure those farmers were compensated, given union protections, brought into economic development plans, and protected from being replaced by exclusionary institutions. That’s not ideal, it’s just the historical space where agency still existed.
No, the bottom line is that…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 07:31
In reply to alex, I think it’s right for… by anonymous (not verified)
No, the bottom line is that Goldman was arguing in bad faith, since nowhere in Reynolds' original article did he say he opposed Jewish immigration as such or Jewish presence in Palestine. His original article was primarily about British imperialism and secondarily about its alliance with Zionism in Palestine. Goldman nowhere contended with this main point, British imperialism, instead she deflected to Lockean colonial property rights to justify Zionist settlerism.
Reynolds had to clarify this even further, though it was clear in the first place, when he wrote, "The prime question is not whether I approve of Jewish immigration, but who shall decide on its extent. At present, it is determined by a foreign government — our own — whose decisions are enforced upon an unwilling population at the point of the bayonet... And just as I am opposed to the Moors when they appear as conquerors in a fascist army, so I am opposed to the Jews when they appear as colonists in a British scheme to create an 'Ulster' in Palestine."
Goldman, who was also living in England at the time, naturally had no response to this, no further way to justify the imperialism of her "own" country aside from deflection.
The Spanish CNT that she was defending, unfortunately for her, had the same position as Reynolds, "The Holy Land is under the mandate of the English metropole... English politics gives no consideration to the trails of blood that are spilled by Jews and Muslims for the dingy interests of imperialism."
Why oh why is it only…
Le Truth (not verified) Tue, 05/13/2025 - 22:49
In reply to Goldman & National Self-Determination by Wayne Price@ (not verified)
Why oh why is it only Stirnerians who know the truth, "Palestinian" is not a person being them-self. It is inherently an ethno-national designation, an *impersonal* political identity. And in this case just like many other imagined communities of the modern world, they were set up by imperialists for what is *political instrumentalization*. Hamas, PFLP and Islamic Jihad have done it profusively.
Palestinians themselves…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 09:25
In reply to Why oh why is it only… by Le Truth (not verified)
Palestinians themselves refer to themselves foremost as Arabs, members of the movement of the Believers (Mujahideen), or the more secular Fedayeen (militants to the death)
even before that as villages and family networks. they are a people of clans and tribes
linking identity to hard borders on maps is not something that Arab people do themselves. it's difficult to distinguish historical borders in the history of the region because as a nomadic people such geographic concepts were limiting to trade and culture and nomadic movement, the backbone of Arab identity
Goldman did distinguish…
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 07:02
In reply to Goldman & National Self-Determination by Wayne Price@ (not verified)
Goldman did distinguish between imperialist countries and oppressed countries when it came to America oppressing the Philippines, Cuba, Hispaniola and Mexico. Unlike you Price, she also opposed militarism. Where she failed was to see that the Boers were colonizers like the Brits, that America was still colonizing "America", and that the Palestinians were as human as the people of the Philippines, Cuba, Hispaniola and Mexico. Just as you fail to see that Palestinians are as human as Ukrainians when you hand wave away NATO militarism and Ukraine buying Israeli weapons. We should criticize Goldman's stance on Palestine without dismissing her entirely, yes, but you, we should deplatform, because you should know better and yet remain an apologist for Western imperialism, openly statist and pro-militarist (the two going hand-in-hand). You hide behind proclamation of a principle, self-determination, that you explicitly deny to Palestinians when you say BDS doesn't matter, the Ukrainian state has the right to Israeli and NATO armaments
It is admirable that Wayne…
Nick Stavrogin (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 11:19
It is admirable that Wayne Price goes to bat for what he believes in, and relentlessly stays on topic in the face of what is often unprincipled juvenile snarkiness.
As for the apologetics for nationalism that he doggedly comes up with, once an icepickhead, always an icepickhead. Trotskyism and Stalinism aren't expressions of revolutionary Marxism. They are the politics of the counter-revolution in Russia, the reification of the defeat of the world's first proletarian revolution in Russia from 1917 to early 1921. Wayne was never a Marxist. He was a Trotskyist. And he doesn't get the difference.
Orthodox Anarchism vs. Orthodox Marxism
Wayne Price@ (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 14:28
In reply to It is admirable that Wayne… by Nick Stavrogin (not verified)
On this site I have sometimes been denounced as not a real anarchist. It is unusual to be denounced for not having previously been a real Marxist! However, I really don't care to argue that I am a really orthodox anarchist (whatever that is), let alone that I ever was an orthodox Marxist-Trotskyist (which I never was, in my opinion).
Unlike Nick--and like most anarchists--I believe that "Trotskyism and Stalinism [are] expressions of ...Marxism" and also "are the politics of the counter-revolution in Russia." That is different from believing, as did Bakunin, that there are aspects of Marxism, such as the analysis of how capitalism works, which are useful for anarchists to know.
As for Nick's reference to "icepick head," note that Trotsky was not assassinated by a son or daughter of the sailors of Kronstadt or by the descendent of Makhno's army. This would have been justified. Insteadt he was killed (with an ice axe) by an agent of Stalin, because he had advocated a revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy. Granted that he never understood what he had done to create that bureaucratic ruling class, this is nothing to celebrate.
Nick, thanks for your initial recognition.
Real anarch(ist)s abhor…
Le Truth (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 15:59
In reply to Orthodox Anarchism vs. Orthodox Marxism by Wayne Price@ (not verified)
Real anarch(ist)s abhor borders and wars fought over them, and abstain from engaging in debates about them. Just sayin' cuzzin.
May 14,1940 - Emma Goldman,…
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/14/2025 - 13:01
May 14,1940 - Emma Goldman, legendary anarchist and advocate of women's rights and sexual freedom, died in Toronto, Canada.
This article is like a bad…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 06:50
This article is like a bad reading of Goldman and Nietzsche, and is purposely misleading. Or at least bad reading of the sources he's citing. I haven't read much Nietzsche, but you can't claim he was a fascist based off a handful of quotes or quotes that seem divorced from their context. To go on and claim Goldman promoted and supported Nietzsche supposed fascism is loony.
The Goldman quotes aren't supporting eugenics unless Javiar thinks birth control = eugenics. Goldman isn't even describing herself with the "race-builder" and isn't implying some sort of white nationalism Javiar is trying to get at. This guy is applying his modern understanding terms to something wrote over a 100 years ago that I doubt he read. He doesn't cite Goldman and Nietzsche own works, but rather other people, and manages to misinterpret those peoples arguments.
This seems like the sort of…
Nick Stavrogin (not verified) Thu, 05/15/2025 - 07:17
This seems like the sort of exchange that should elicit the involvement of long-time juvenile subculture pedant Lawrence Jarach -- and now, long-time venerable juvenile subculture pedant Lawrence Jarach!
What an absolute disaster…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 03:48
What an absolute disaster. Why is thecollective publishing this trash? These dweebs would try to cancel Goldman if she were alive.
Kropotkin thought conditions would be less conducive to revolution under a global German empire than not, and he was right. He never "supported" the allies. Actually read what he wrote.
There was one letter someone found in Proudhon's drawer long after he died. It appears nowhere else in his ouvre; he was not antisemitic.
Bookchin being a "megalomaniac" is not a real criticism. Finding someone annoying is not grounds for dismissal.
Acknowledging that most people are distinctly not revolutionary, and are the reason class society continues is not eugenics. Majorities & Minorities is her best contribution imo. The absolute absurdity of questioning whether Emma Goldman was *actually" an anarchist by some rando on the internet, the lack of self awareness is profound.
What is it about this website that leads to such shitty bickering
No, Kropotkin' support for…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/16/2025 - 08:12
In reply to What an absolute disaster… by anonymous (not verified)
No, Kropotkin' support for World War I is up there with the most wrong any anarchists have ever been about anything. The Brits won the colony of Palestine from the war, leading to the ongoing and escalating genocide today. French colonialism continued in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, to this day in these latter two cases! Belgium colonialism continued in the Congo. Revolution did occur in Germany and Russia. American imperialism only expanded and worsened.
There is also no question that Kropotkin supported militarism and the French and Belgian states in WWI. As Berkman and Goldman noted with disdain, Kropotkin had written, “The only and most practical thing to do now is to pitch against the 425 millimeter cannons of the Germans, 500 millimeter cannons and with the combined efforts of young and old, men, women and children to drive the Germans from French and Belgian soil.” (letter to Guillaume)
This is what happens when…
anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/24/2025 - 10:33
This is what happens when people read Alexander Reid Ross uncritically.
I’m glad to see so many…
Sylvia (not verified) Sat, 06/28/2025 - 09:22
I’m glad to see so many other people critiquing this, but I didn’t see anyone yet pointing out this specific flaw which is the first glaring one I found: “Describing herself as a “race-builder” in a 1913 article for Mother Earth,” No. First, this not a real citation and you know it. What article exactly? I had to go search for it because this seemed so implausible, and sure enough, you’ve completely misquoted her. She never called herself a race builder. She was referring to mothers as a group in this way. Secondly, it’s easy to take anything with the word “race” in it, and claim that it meant the same thing back then, before WW2, that it means today. But that’s simply not the case. At the time people would throw around the phrase “human race” like it wasn’t no thing. Now we have different connotations and associations with that phrase and with the word “race” itself. She was simply saying that mothers give birth to and raise other humans. The end. What did you think she was saying …that she was somehow building a race of white people?? It literally doesn’t make any sense. After finding such a ridiculous and faulty misquotation it really just discredits your entire argument—I’m sure there’s more where that came from.
The issue with Emma is that…
anonymous (not verified) Sat, 07/19/2025 - 07:42
In reply to I’m glad to see so many… by Sylvia (not verified)
The issue with Emma is that she was a Modern revolutionary; she didn't live ling enough to actualize her beliefs in the light of WW2. Tho many of her followers today have, yet still are stuck in the Modern, fordist context.
Since eugenics was a trend among the Left 100 years ago, even if that was recuperated by Hitler, you can't equate it to Nazism, even tho Nazism was its sorry end.
There was, too, a lack of criticism on the aspect of eugenics as a rather creepy (and dehumanizing) form of domestication of nature, that's inherently imperialistic, and equally the similar hype for neuroscience we've had with Zoomer academics. It is yet again placing biology before everything else, and thus restituting the Modernist fixation with the biophysical theory of everything.
This article written by…
anonymous (not verified) Sat, 06/28/2025 - 14:47
This article written by Javier Sethness, yEs, SEETHINGNESS !!!!!
I think we've gotta look into this more objectively......
May Corvin (not verified) Fri, 07/18/2025 - 01:56
Maybe these materials do prove some of her improper thoughts, but indeed no one can escape flaws I mean......Sorting out these flaws of our historical icons is neccessary, as it prevents us to support or agree with somebody in a unreasonable personality cult way which is certainly opposite from anarchism, but we still have to part these figures into more sides so we can recognise them objectively. We still have to admit that she had devoted a lot in anarchism, anyway. I'm not somehow a 'supporter' of her so there's no need of 'fighting for a right judgement for her' for me. I just wish everyone can stay true to their own understanding of her, not overinfluenced by some partical judgements, no matter in a positive or negative way.
there's no need to let a…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/18/2025 - 09:57
In reply to I think we've gotta look into this more objectively...... by May Corvin (not verified)
there's no need to let a symbolic historical figure make one's every decision. just learn from her what you will, and move on. frankly idrc about any slander/stupid takes dug up on long dead people. they're dead.
Yeah I actually meant this…
May Corvin (not verified) Fri, 07/18/2025 - 22:31
In reply to there's no need to let a… by anonymous (not verified)
Yeah I actually meant this. Just learn what we want from her, and not 'liking' her or 'disliking' her base on positive or negative judges. Just learn objectively.
Yes. They're dead.
(Maybe my language method caused some misunderstandings in my comments because English is not my mother tongue......Hope you can understand.😺
to the new weird comments on…
anon (not verified) Fri, 07/18/2025 - 12:14
to the new weird comments on this thread (you know who you are)-- no one is taking emma g as their icon; the point is that sethness' understanding or representation of who she is is factually wrong. and, for example, keeping that in mind for the future when he's talking about someone for whom there's less information.
that is all.
okay.
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/25/2025 - 02:36
In reply to to the new weird comments on… by anon (not verified)
okay.
Yep, she was a free thinker,…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/25/2025 - 07:15
In reply to to the new weird comments on… by anon (not verified)
Yep, she was a free thinker, closer to Stirner, like some hippy chick, but 50 years ahead of her time, I always wonder if she went to "reefer parties" in the 1920's, she mUst have, sUrely to think the way she did waAay back then, no wonder they hated her, she was sooOoo cool.
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