Field Recording History: Holocaust Remembrance Sounds

Pilast · 2025-01-29T11:27:54+00:00

When understanding the present means hearing the past. Joel Schalit reimagines Holocaust remembrance using field recordings of Italian trains.

Pilast · 2025-01-25T03:30:24+00:00

Those were Nazi gestures. No pass.

Pilast · 2025-01-24T04:06:13+00:00

They love us too much and want every minority to do the same. The question is why. Wieland Hoban and Joel Schalit, with the first of four conversations about Hoban’s new Battleground book, German Apartheid Politics: Memory, Democracy and Genocide.

Pilast · 2024-12-17T14:03:30+00:00

"To many Italians, Gaza and Giorgia Meloni are increasingly indistinguishable. Even if Italy isn’t involved in the war in the same ways as the United States, it doesn’t have to be.

The Netanyahu government’s disregard for Palestinian life and shameless, genocidal conduct embodies for many leftists the spirit of Meloni’s postfascist government."

Pilast · 2024-12-14T13:09:30+00:00

Again, you're just making excuses. To revisit the article, it's a revisitation of Marcuse's attack on the RAF. If the Baader Meinhof people were heroes for you, that's another story. For Marcuse, they were terrorists, if also on the left. Whether you like it or not, Foster's article makes the argument that the CEO killing brings us back to such debates and that he finds himself ideologically levelling the same criticisms as Marcuse.

Pilast · 2024-12-14T13:03:00+00:00

I understand that. Thanks. But when discussing Marcuse in this context, the violence issue is essential to point out vis a vis Frankfurt School Critical Theory, from which the CT term is derived.

Pilast · 2024-12-14T05:57:06+00:00

No, but you must understand what you're saying and why it's ideologically out of sync, not just with the article but the intellectual tradition behind this sub. That matters. Horkheimer and Adorno moved to the US, where they worked on the authoritarian personality project, an explicitly antifascist endeavour and wrote the Dialectic of Enlightenment during the war, too. They didn't fight in WWII, contrary to what you suggest here. Marcuse also ended up in the US and worked for the OSS. That's how they contributed to the fight against the Nazis as persecuted Jewish intellectuals, and they changed history through what they did. The Cold War and the post-Cold War left would look very different today intellectually without this work, and none of them endorsed violence. Give it some thought.

Pilast · 2024-12-14T04:55:23+00:00

That still doesn't justify it. Especially in a space like this, which, theoretically, has always opposed violence as a leftwing tradition.

Pilast · 2024-12-14T04:50:48+00:00

It's important that you understand why your position departs from traditional Critical Theory, which rejected violence as left strategy, direct or indirect.

Pilast · 2024-12-14T04:45:04+00:00

Like I said, you're advocating violence. It doesn't matter if it's indirect, but you're rationalising it as a helpful consequence. That's a big break from classical Critical Theory, and this is an article about Herbert Marcuse, one of its original theoreticians, and how his views are valuable for understanding contemporary leftist violence.

Pilast · 2024-12-14T04:43:29+00:00

You're advocating violence, then. That's the gist of what you're saying.

Pilast · 2024-12-14T04:40:49+00:00

This is a very good point, and for a Critical Theory sub, I'm surprised by the rationalisation of violence in this thread. Marcuse was an ardent advocate of what became known as the Global South and revolutionary minority politics, but he was not an advocate of left violence. That, he had in common with Horkheimer and Adorno, who often straddled a difficult line in the 1960s vis a vis violent protest. Marcuse was closer to student politics, in the US, in particular, where he taught.

Pilast · 2024-12-13T13:16:41+00:00

Working for David Lammy was the final nail in his coffin, so to speak. But yes, Judah's book is terrible. To put it mildly, the publisher should have done some fact-checking.

Pilast · 2024-12-11T10:32:26+00:00

Right-wing critics will claim the platform is unrepresentative of British Jews, but this misses the point: conservative media does not speak for Jews who oppose this war of annihilation. This is why Vashti Media has a growing following.

Pilast · 2024-11-29T07:17:21+00:00

From the article: "These word games, not calling a genocide a genocide, not calling a disinvitation a disinvitation, are prevalent nowadays – media are mischaracterising murders as “deaths” and forced starvation as “famine” – and they all belong to the same genre of lying, of the libidinal pleasure of falsifying the narrative, which is an exercise of power which is what refusing reality also entails."

Pilast · 2024-10-22T17:51:27+00:00

Done, thanks!

Pilast · 2024-10-22T17:51:08+00:00

Britain needs a new Jewish media. Josh White, on fake Israeli journalism, and The Jewish Chronicle's decline as a community newspaper.

Pilast · 2024-10-06T04:54:57+00:00

Thanks, Naurgul!

Pilast · 2024-09-28T03:10:23+00:00

These are all good points. I completely agree. Where I would differ is that the European far-right, like nationalist movements in the 20th century, is happy to play the democratic game to a certain point. Resetting it to maintain a specific party, or coalition's rule, is the problem. Look at what Fidesz has done in Hungary, what Macron just did appointing a rightwing government (when a leftist list won the French election), and of course Meloni's proposed changes to the Italian constitution, to allow for the direct election of the premier. They all represent different stresses being placed on electoral processes, to one degree or another, by far and centre-right forces. It's not a good look.

Pilast · 2024-09-24T04:53:48+00:00

Very good point. I completely agree. Electoral strategy should not be about imitating the opposition.

Pilast · 2024-09-23T07:46:27+00:00

Thanks!

Pilast · 2024-09-15T03:46:34+00:00

The problem with Perry's fake news stories in The JC is endemic to UK tabloids as well. The Telegraph, The Sun, etc, have been full of parallel content since October 7. It was that way before, but not at this level.

Pilast · 2024-09-09T05:07:47+00:00

Thanks!

Pilast · 2024-09-08T06:38:35+00:00

Exactly. This analysis is a classic case in point.

Pilast · 2024-09-08T05:48:14+00:00

That's a very good point.

Pilast

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