Thread by @Spinozasrose

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin Unlike @BernieSanders
"Trotsky also understood how political entrepreneurs – i.e. political leaders and activists, whether they were Tsarist autocrats, counter-revolutionary Whites or ostensibly ‘left-wing’ and ‘anti-Zionist’ Stalinists – 1/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders were manipulating antisemitism to mobilise effective political movements. For example, he warned in 1937 that ‘the [Stalinist] leaders manipulate it with a cunning skill’. He watched Stalin reach down into the Russian depths, 2/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders pick up the ancient antisemitism of the peasants and the Tsars, give it a new ‘communist’ veneer by muttering about ‘Zionists’ and ‘cosmopolitans,’ and use it to delegitimise the opposition to his rule. Finally, Trotsky 3/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders – ..also saw the unconscious and irrational sources of antisemitism, warning that: ‘Antisemitism consists not only in hatred of Jews, but also in a fear of Jews. This fear enlarges ones eyes to see non-existent things.’[20]" 4/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders "when invited in 1934 to define the clashes in Palestine between Jews and Arabs as what would today be called ‘progressive’ or ‘anti-imperialist resistance to Zionism,’ Trotsky refused. " 5/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders "It is not only that ‘Trotsky neither uttered nor ever wrote anything against his people which might be indirectly taken as casting aspersions on his ancestry’.[44] It is that Trotsky had ‘a much greater feeling of solidarity with the victims of antisemitism than was 6/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders the case with Kautsky, Viktor Adler, Otto Bauer or even Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg’ [-] his life was punctuated by episodes of passionate opposition to the antisemitism of Left and Right, practical solidarity with its Jewish victims, and intellectual reflection on the origins 7/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders , psychologies and political uses of antisemitism."
"Trotsky came to know a lot about Left antisemitism. .. Stalin repeatedly used Trotsky’s Jewishness against him."
"However, in a development common to all episodes of Left antisemitism, there were plenty of left-wing 8/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders pro-Stalin Jews in Russia and abroad who were neither silent nor embarrassed. They went on the offensive, attacking Trotsky for smearing Stalin with false charges. These ‘Jewish Voices for Stalin,’ as we might call them, were useful idiots. 9/x

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders One, B.Z. Goldberg,..claimed ‘there is no antisemitism in the life of [the Soviet Union] … it is therefore unforgivable that Trotsky should raise such groundless accusations against Stalin’.[80] "
10/x

fathomjournal.org/the-fathom-lon…

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders Consider @BernieSanders & names that surround him: Linda Sarsour, @IlhanMN @RashidaTlaib etc.
Does any of it seem familiar? What kind of a social-democrat is he, denying antisemitism, attacking -viciously- Jews who support Israel political sovereignty?

A Stalinist, no less.

@Martin_Kramer @jonathans_tobin @BernieSanders @threadreaderapp unroll