Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom

by Fredy Perlman

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Religion

16 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

About the author

Fredy Perlman (August 20, 1934 – July 26, 1985) was an author and publisher. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, is a major source of inspiration for anti-civilisation perspectives in contemporary anarchism.

Perlman was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. He emigrated with parents to Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1938 just ahead of the Nazi takeover. The Perlman family came to the United States in 1945 and finally settled in Lakeside Park, Kentucky.

In 1952 he attended Morehead State College in Kentucky and then UCLA from 1953-55. Perlman was on the staff of The Daily Bruin, the school newspaper, when the university administration changed the constitution of the newspaper to forbid it from nominating its own editors, as the custom had been. Perlman left the newspaper staff at that time and, with four others, proceeded to publish an independent paper, The Observer, which they handed out on a public sidewalk at the campus bus stop, since they were forbidden by the administration to distribute in on the campus.

In 1956-59 he attended Columbia University, where he met his life-long companion, Lorraine Nybakken. He enrolled as a student of English literature but soon concentrated his efforts in philosophy, political science and European literature. One particularly influential teacher for him at this time was C. Wright Mills.

In late 1959, Perlman and his wife took a cross-country motor scooter trip, mostly on two-lane highways traveling at 25 miles per hour. From 1959 to 1963, they lived on the lower east side of Manhattan while Perlman worked on a statistical analysis of the world's resources with John Ricklefs. They participated in anti-bomb and pacifist activities with the Living Theatre and others. Perlman was arrested after a sit-down in Times Square in the fall of 1961. He became the printer for the Living Theatre and during that time wrote The New Freedom, Corporate Capitalism and a play, Plunder, which he published himself.

In 1963, the husband and wife left the U.S. and moved to Belgrade, Yugoslavia after living some months in Copenhagen and Paris. Perlman received a master's degree in economics and a PhD at the University of Belgrade's Law School; his dissertation was titled "Conditions for the Development of a Backward Region," which created an outrage among some members of the faculty. During his last year in Yugoslavia, he was a member of the Planning Institute for Kosovo and Metohija.

During 1966-69 the couple lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Perlman taught social science courses at Western Michigan University and created outrage among some members of the faculty when he had students run their own classes and grade themselves. During his first year in Kalamazoo, he and Milos Samardzija, one of his professors from Belgrade, translated Isaac Illych Rubin's Essay on Marx's Theory of Value. Perlman wrote an introduction to the book: "An Essay on Commodity Fetishism."

In May 1968, after lecturing for two weeks in Turin, Italy, Perlman went to Paris on the last train before rail traffic was shut down by some of the strikes that were sweeping Western Europe that season. He participated in the May unrest in Paris and worked at the Censier center with the Citroen factory committee. After returning to Kalamazoo in August, he collaborated with Roger Gregoire in writing Worker-Student Action Committees, May 68.

During his last year in Kalamazoo, Perlman had left the university and together with several other people, mostly students, inaugurated the Black and Red magazine, of which six issues appeared. Typing and layout was done at the Perlman house and the printing at the Radical Education Project in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In January 1969 Perlman completed The Reproduction of Daily Life. While traveling in Europe in the spring of 1969

Reviews

[Nile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perlman gives us an account of his childhood as a Holocaust refugee, and how the deeply contrasted attitudes of various family members (the aunt empathetic to the indigenous people of Bolivia that they lived among, the aunt who viewed them as the conquistadors did centuries before, and the collaborator uncle) helped form the foundations of his attitude to Israel, a nation that to paraphrase his opening paragraph, learned nothing from the gas chambers.

Perlman critiques zionism as the messiah forced to arrive in the form of the state - and that this messiah is science, industry; to the anarcho-primitivist Perlman, the epitome of death. The cultural/spiritual desire for a messiah subsumed by material providence, provided by dehumanising all around them.

Like his other work, good if you prefer to read something metaphor-laden rather than jargon-laden - Perlman being an expert in telling you the breadth of an issue as if sat beside a campfire.

[Fezco · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The long exile is over; the persecuted refugee at long last returns to Zion, but so badly scarred he’s unrecognizable, he has completely lost his self; he returns as anti-Semite, as Pogromist, as mass murderer; the ages of exile and suffering are still included in his makeup, but only as self-justifications, and as a repertory of horrors to impose on Primitives and even on Earth herself.”

Fredy Perlman doesn’t just write political critique; he weaves autobiography, memory, rage, grief, and philosophy into a single story. He writes about how trauma can mutate into identification with power; how the survivor can return, not as liberator, but as assailant. It definitely triggered a lot of further research on my side.

This was my first time reading Perlman, but I’ll definitely be reading more.

[Dimitra Mylona · Rating 3 out of 5]

[…It galls me that a new Fascism should choose to use the experience of the victims of the earlier Fascism among it’s justifications.]

[Myrtw Ts · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Δεν είναι καινούριο κόλπο το να κηρύσσεις τον πόλεμο κατά της ένοπλης αντίστασης κι ύστερα να επιτίθεσαι στις άοπλες οικογένειες των αντιστεκόμενων και στον υπόλοιπο τριγύρω πληθυσμό, με τα πλέον ειδεχθή προϊόντα της Θανατο-Επιστήμης. Οι Αμερικάνοι πρωτοπόροι της κατάκτησης της Δύσης, ήταν πρωτοπόροι και σε αυτό. Ήταν μια δεδομένη πρακτική τους να κηρύσσουν τον πόλεμο στους αυτόχθονες πολεμιστές και ύστερα να δολοφονούν και να πυρπολούν χωριά όπου βρίσκονταν μονάχα γυναίκες και παιδιά. Ήταν ήδη ένας σύγχρονος πόλεμος, αυτό που γνωρίζαμε ως πόλεμο κατά του άμαχου πληθυσμού. Έχει επίσης αποκληθεί, με πιο ειλικρινή τρόπο, μαζική δολοφονία και γενοκτονία. Ίσως δεν θα έπρεπε να εκπλήσσομαι που οι δράστες ενός πογκρόμ αυτοπροσδιορίζονται ως τα θύματα, και στην παρούσα υπόθεση ως θύματα του Ολοκαυτώματος."

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short, powerful account of colonial hypocrisies exhibited by Zionists who survived the Holocaust from the point of view of a Jewish man who belongs to the larger group of Jewish people who see their identities being co-opted to oppress people and take their land in the Middle East. This reading may be hard for some because of the sensitivity of the topic, especially since Zionists often associate critiques of their movement with anti-semitism. However, this work, like Wiesel’s Dawn, underscores the human costs that become overlooked when the multitude of Jewish perspective is falsely rendered as a monolith that supports the creation of a New Jerusalem at any cost.

[Prenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received the Detritus Books edition of this essay for free, included with a book I purchased from them.

This essay seems even more timely now than when it was written 40+ years ago. The same justifications being employed by the pogromists today to justify Gaza were being employed back in '82 to justify Beirut and all the way back to the Nakba of '48.

Fredy Perlman's clarity and way with words are always essential reading.

[Nour · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing in this essay was what struck me the most. It was honest and oddly specific but in the right way. The author was able to criticise other institutions but also herself and her own culture.

[Red Lioness · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read

[Matthew Chapman · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It galls me that a new Fascism should choose to use the experience of the victims of the earlier Fascism among its justifications.”