[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [HumanRights] In Vienna: Hitler and Hertzl vs Mozart, Popper, and Freud

[C. G. Estabrook]

The Qumsiyeh piece is peculiar in several ways - most notably I think in
omitting perhaps the most important Viennese intellectual, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
and crying up that apologist for a crass liberal capitalism (and great friend of
Hayek) Karl Popper.

Wittgenstein and Popper didn't like each other, in part surely because of their 
deep philosophical differences and perhaps Wittgenstein's distrust of Popper's 
sincerity.  He was said to have brandished a fire-place poker at Popper at a 
meeting of the Cambridge Moral Science Club...

The important Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor accuses Popper of exploiting 
his worldwide fame to denigrate philosophers of the 20th century continental 
tradition. According to Taylor, Popper's criticisms are completely baseless, but 
they are received with an attention and respect that Popper's "intrinsic worth 
hardly merits."

The most interesting things about Wittgenstein & politics that I've seen come 
from the critic Terry Eagleton.  See the article "Wittgenstein's Friends" in 
"Against the Grain" (1986). His philosophical novel "Saints and Scholars" (1987) 
includes both Wittgenstein and James Connolly as characters.

Connolly BTW is responsible for a great comment that one would never hear from 
the partisan of "The Open Society and its Enemies" [sic]. In a lecture on World 
War I conscription almost exactly contemporary with the one that got Woodrow 
Wilson to imprison Eugene Debs, Connolly said

"One great source of the strength of the ruling class has ever been their 
willingness to kill in defence of their power and privileges. Let their power be 
once attacked either by foreign foes, or domestic revolutionists, and at once we 
see the rulers prepared to kill, and kill, and kill. The readiness of the ruling 
class to order killing, the small value the ruling class has ever set upon human 
life, is in marked contrast to the reluctance of all revolutionists to shed blood."


On 7/5/10 9:37 PM, David Green wrote:
> Hi Mort, Actually, it was a lame effort at psychoanalytic humor, about which
> Freud would certainly question my motives. But the British academic
> Jacqueline Rose has written a serious book about Zionism and the collective
> Jewish unconscious, /The Question of Zion/:
>
> "This study therefore asks of the reader to do what may well seem impossible.
> To suspend both belief and disbelief. To try to enter the imaginative
> mind-set of Zionism in order to understand why it commands such passionate
> and seemingly intractable allegiance. I am convinced that a simple dismissal
> of Zionism fatally undermines the case it is intended to promote. On three
> grounds. First political. As Lenin once said, you must always construe your
> enemy at their strongest point. Otherwise your refusal or blindness will
> expose you to the enemy's unacknowledged strengths. Second, psychoanalytic.
> Insult an identity and you will drive it in deeper (for the same reason, you
> will not have any effect on Zionism by simply accusing it of being based on a
> set of myths). Finally, historical. Such a dismissal leaves us in complete
> ignorance as to what Zionism is, or was. "To paraphrase Marc Bloch to the
> historians of the French Revolution," Bensoussan concludes his opening
> paragraph, "we would like to say to the present-day protagonists: 'Zionists,
> anti-Zionists, for pity's sake tell us what Zionism was!' ""
>
> http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7927.html
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
*From:* Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
> *To:* David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> *Cc:* Peace Discuss
> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> *Sent:* Mon, July 5, 2010 6:09:50 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: [HumanRights] In Vienna: Hitler and
> Hertzl vs Mozart, Popper, and Freud
>
> I guess I found it interesting, if not surprising, that Freud, living in
> Vienna where anti-semitism of a virulent kind probably existed, foresaw that
> the Zionist project of Hertzl would lead to the persecution of others.
> Einstein probably had similar understanding. And I found it notable that
> Qumsiyeh discovered this quotation. Did you know about it?
>
> But why do you ask?
>
> Glad to be back, in some ways.
>
> Mort
>
> On Jul 5, 2010, at 5:47 PM, David Green wrote:
>
>> "Which I found interesting." Yes, but do you really know /why /you found it
>> interesting? Welcome back. DG
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
*From:* Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu <mailto:brussel at illinois.edu>>
>> *To:* Peace-discuss List <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> *Sent:* Mon, July 5, 2010
>> 11:41:48 AM *Subject:* [Peace-discuss] Fwd: [HumanRights] In Vienna: Hitler
>> and Hertzl vs Mozart, Popper, and Freud
>>
>> Qumsiyeh was visiting Vienna, representing, as usual, the Palestinian
>> cause, and wrote:
>>
>>> …But back to Hertzl who contributed to 110 years of conflict and
>>> suffering for millions of people. Hertzl wrote in his diaries that
>>> “Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic countries our
>>> allies.” Instead of working to better life for all people, he chose to
>>> mimic ethnocentric chauvinistic nationalism in Europe and export it to
>>> another land whose people had nothing to do with what was happening in
>>> Europe. Another famous Austrian Jew, father of psychoanalysis Sigmund
>>> Freud, rejected Zionism because it has within it the same seeds of human
>>> frailty that he could easily comprehend. To wit, Freud wrote once to a
>>> Zionist who tried to recruit him:
>>>
>>> *“I cannot do as you wish. I am unable to overcome my aversion to
>>> burdening the public with my name, and even the present critical time
>>> does not seem to me to warrant it. Whoever wants to influence the masses
>>> must give them something rousing and inflammatory and my sober judgment
>>> of Zionism does not permit this. I certainly sympathize with its goals,
>>> am proud of our University in Jerusalem and am delighted with our
>>> settlement’s prosperity. But, on the other hand, I do not think that
>>> Palestine could ever become a Jewish state, nor that the Christian and
>>> Islamic worlds would ever be prepared to have their holy places under
>>> Jewish care. It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a
>>> Jewish homeland on a less historically-burdened land. But I know that
>>> such a rational viewpoint would never have gained the enthusiasm of the
>>> masses and the financial support of the wealthy. I concede with sorrow
>>> that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for
>>> the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the
>>> misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a
>>> national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives. Now judge
>>> for yourself whether I, with such a critical point of view, am the right
>>> person to come forward as the solace of a people deluded by unjustified
>>> hope.”*
>>
>> Which I found interesting.
>>
>> --mkb