ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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The alternative to zionism
Given the dehumanising vision propagated by Israel, how vital it is to highlight the radical, humane and beautiful world of the Bund, says HENRY BELL
IN THE BEGINNING: The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia - the Bund, was founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, in October 1897 by a group of Jews who were profoundly influenced by Marxism - their goal was to attract East European Jews to the emergent Russian revolutionary movement
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
The Bund
Sharon Rudahl and Michael Kluckner
Between the Lines, £22.50
THE late Scottish Marxist Neil Davidson described the political division in Jewish Europe as one between two different responses to the brutality of anti-semitism.
One was to see that the oppression and persecution of Jews necessitated a new society in a Jewish majority state: this was zionism and ended in the catastrophe we see today. The other response was to view the oppression and persecution of Jews as inherent and brutal aspects of capitalist oppression that necessitated a new society for everyone: a society free from capitalism, and from the state. This was socialism, communism, Bundism, and its many lives and legacies continue to exist today, though they are often erased or suppressed.
One such legacy is the beautiful new graphic novel The Bund by Sharon Rudahl and Michael Kluckner.
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