Donde el anticapitalismo y el antisemitismo se cruzan

THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT.- ...is there a connection between anti-capitalist anti-Semitism and zealous anti-Zionism? Battini deals with this in the last chapter of his book, I think plausibly. First of all, there is the matter of Holocaust denial, which is not something the Labour hard Left can be accused of, but which is expressed by some of the Middle Eastern activists whose causes they support. Battini sees this type of denial as an extension of Jewish conspiracy theories. In this view Jews lie about Auschwitz as a way to control public opinion and promote the interests of Israel. The credibility of this type of nonsense gets some help from Israeli politicians, alas. At the very least since the premiership of Menachem Begin in the late 1970s, the Shoah has been used to legitimize the Jewish state. Those who seek to delegitimize it, therefore, must seek to discredit the history of Jewish near-annihilation.

There is a vital difference between criticizing the policies of a particular Israeli government and denying the state of Israel’s right to exist. The former is not necessarily anti-Semitic; the latter almost always is. Just as Jews, in the anti-Semitic imagination of counter-Enlightenment zealots, were linked to Protestants, Freemasons and liberals, as well as to Britain, Holland and the US, Israel is now inextricably linked to New York and Washington (not to mention Hollywood), where the Jewish diaspora is supposed to be pulling the strings. Many Arabs and European Muslims see Israel as an illegitimate colonial outpost of American capitalism in the Middle East. Another word for the domination of American capital is globalization. In the words of Battini: “In the ‘antiglobal’ attitude, which has taken the place of the old anti-capitalism, there are often ideological residues of European anti-Jewish anti-capitalism, unearthed above all in Central and Eastern Europe or reemerging in the language of Islamist extremist groups”. I believe that he is right. And what goes for extremist Islamist groups very often goes for their most ardent non-Muslim supporters in the West. Israel is no doubt guilty of many sins, and there may be perfectly sensible reasons to disagree with Zionism as an ideal, but to suggest, even in jest, that Israeli citizens should be deported to the US – as the Labour MP Naz Shah did via Twitter shortly before she was elected – is to question, once again, the right of Jews to be free citizens of the state in which they were born and raised. If that isn’t anti-Semitism, I don’t know what is. | Ian Buruma

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La rebelión antigenealógica europea

La modernidad europea antigenealógica es, al fin y al cabo, la máquina productora de solteros y personas sin hijos más eficaz desde las órdenes mendicantes medievales

'Après nous le déluge'

LIBROS DE HOLANDA.- Si para los antiguos el hombre está en el mundo porque no mereció un sitio mejor, para los modernos representa más bien un honor haber sido arrojados del paraíso, “el acontecimiento más feliz y más grande de la historia humana”, para Schiller, en cuanto preludia un despertar de las fuerzas de la razón. Es posible un nuevo comienzo, un "punto cero" de la humanidad porque la mente es una “tabla rasa” y la herencia una tara remediable.

A partir de la revolución francesa–irónicamente consentida por Dios, para De Maistre– empieza una época caracterizada por el primado del futuro (grácil) sobre el pasado (robusto), y por el primado de la moda sobre la costumbre. Para Sloterdijk se trata de una interrupción radical, un “hiato” entre la cultura genealógica paleoeuropea y los “nuevos hombres”, pero que no anuncia tanto un ascenso hacia arriba, radiante, ininterrumpido y previsible, cuanto que una permanente “caída hacia adelante” (La gaya ciencia: "¿No caemos continuamente?"), imagen que apunta a un avance paradójico, puntuado de accidentes monstruosos y consecuencias inesperadas.

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EEUU: Siete años después de la recesión, la recuperación sigue siendo las más débil desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.- Even seven years after the recession ended, the current stretch of economic gains has yielded less growth than much shorter business cycles.

In terms of average annual growth, the pace of this expansion has been by far the weakest of any since 1949. (And for which we have quarterly data.) The economy has grown at a 2.1% annual rate since the U.S. recovery began in mid-2009, according to gross-domestic-product data the Commerce Department released Friday.

The prior expansion, from 2001 through 2007, was the only other business cycle of the past 11 when the economy didn’t grow at least 3% a year, on average.

Total growth this expansion ranks just 8th of the past 11 cycles. The U.S. economy, at the end of June, was 15.5% larger than it was when the recession ended in 2009.

The current expansion remains smaller than the one during Richard Nixon‘s administration. And that 16% expansion lasted just three years. The economy grew 18% from 2001 through 2007. It grew 52% from 1961 through 1969.

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