(So I’m sitting here watching David Reynolds on Stalin’s WW2.)
AG I read the first paper. http://balkans.puscii.nl/?q=content/text-structural-antisemitism
Every so often it is very florid and there are jumps in the argument making me lose the scent (so I will read the critical one with interest) but here are the stand out parts.
“antisemitic tidal wave in the Middle East that has blurred any distinction between the critique of the state of Israel and concrete human beings in their social relations.”
Next an introduction to the concept of Volksgenossen – ‘race comrades’ – and their abhorrence/attraction to the mysterious abstractions of capitalism, leading to an unhealthy preoccupation with soil and labour:
“The attributes given by the antisemite to Jews include mobility, intangibility, rootlessness, and conspiracy against the – mythical or mythologised – values of the imagined community of an honest and hardworking people.”
“The fetish of blood and soil is itself rooted in the capital fetish where the concrete in the form of use value obtains only in and through the abstract in the form of exchange value. Anitsemitism construes blood, soil, and also machinery as concrete counter-principles of the abstract.”
“The category Jew is seen to personify abstract thought and abstract equality, including its incarnation, money.”
“Antisemitism articulates a senseless, barbaric rejection of capitalism that makes anti-capitalism useful for capitalism.”