Upstream - [TEASER] Palestine Pt. 14: Decolonial Marxism w/ Patrick Higgins

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

This is a free preview of the episode "Palestine Pt. 14: Decolonial Marxism w/ Patrick Higgins." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you. The Palestinian resistance movement—when seen as a continuous struggle taking shape in the early 20th century and continuing to this very day—has been one of the most profound and long-lasting resistance movements the world has ever seen. The movement was forged in the struggle against British colonialism, Zionist settler-colonialism, and later, US imperial hegemony, and through its long struggle, was not just inspired and informed by Marxist theory—but it itself developed and expanded Marxist revolutionary theory and tested it in the battlefields of West Asia. The contributions—both materially and theoretically—by the Palestinian left, cannot be overlooked, and we’ve devoted this episode to an exploration of this history and of this development of the global, international, anti-imperialist left. And we’ve brought on a terrific guest for this conversation.  Patrick Higgins is a researcher and writer with a PhD in Arab History. He is a co-editor of the publication Liberated Texts. He is currently adapting his dissertation into a book on the history of Palestinian resistance against US imperialism. In this conversation, Patrick walks us through a history of revolutionary Marxist parties and organizations in Palestine, from the Palestine Communist Party in 1919 all the way up to the present resistance coalition of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—among others. We explore the role that pan Arabism and Arab Nationalism played in the development of the Palestinian left’s struggle, the rise of Israel as a US proxy in West Asia, the aims and goals of US imperialism and the United States’ involvement in the region, the contributions of the Palestinian left to anti-imperialist theory, and how the current genocide can be analyzed and contextualized from the perspective of the Palestinian revolutionary left.  Further resources: Resistance News Network A Study of Physical Education, Mao Tse-tung The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism, Musa Budeiri Ghassan Kanafani: The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine Red Round Globe Hot Burning: A Tale at the Crossroads of Commons and Closure, of Love and Terror, of Race and Class, and of Kate and Ned Despard, Peter Linebaugh al-Hadaf “Lessons from the Paris Commune”. Al-Hadaf (Beirut), February 28, 1970 Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Related episodes: Our ongoing series on Palestine Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly Cover art: “The Path of Armed Struggle”  issued by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1970. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making Upstream possible. We genuinely couldn't do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and provide most of our content for free so we can continue to offer political education media to the public and help to build our movement. Thank you comrades. We hope you enjoy this conversation. The main contribution of the Palestinian revolution and the Palestinian resistance to anti-imperialist theory worldwide is contributing a theory of Zionism, a durable theory of Zionism that I think has proved correct time and again.

And they led the way in making us understand that Zionism as an increasingly crucial part of the total infrastructure of imperialism is everyone's problem by everyone, I mean the popular classes of the world. The theory was developed in the field of battle. And that is the living essence of what Marxism is, is to use this as a tool in the field of battle rather than to fall back on sketches from the past. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. The Palestinian resistance movement, if seen as a continuous struggle taking shape in the early 20th century and continuing to this very day, has been one of the most profound and long-lasting resistance movements the world has ever seen. The movement was forged in the struggle against British colonialism, Zionist settler colonialism, and later, US imperial hegemony, and through

its long struggle, was not just inspired and informed by Marxist theory, but it itself developed and expanded Marxist revolutionary theory and tested it in the battlefields of West Asia. The contributions, both materially and theoretically, by the Palestinian left cannot be overlooked, and we've devoted this episode to an exploration of this history and this development in the global, international anti-imperialist left. And we've brought on a terrific guest for this conversation. Patrick Higgins is a researcher and writer with a PhD in Arab history. He is a co-editor of the publication Liberated Text.

He is currently adapting his dissertation into a book on the history of Palestinian resistance against US imperialism. In this conversation, Patrick walks us through a history of revolutionary Marxist parties and organizations in Palestine, from the Palestine Communist Party in 1919, all the way up to the present resistance coalition of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, among others. We explore the role that pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism played in the development of the Palestinian left's struggle, the rise of Israel as a US proxy in West Asia, the aims and goals

of US imperialism and the United States involvement in the region, the contributions of the Palestinian left to anti-imperialist theory, and how the current genocide can be analyzed and contextualized from the perspective of the Palestinian revolutionary left. And now, here's Robert in have you on the show. Wonderful to be here. I appreciate the invite. Absolutely.

And I would love it if we could just start with an introduction. We love to just give our guests the opportunity to introduce themselves in the way that they want to. So if you could introduce yourself for our listeners and talk a little bit about the work you do and how you came to be doing it. I am a writer and researcher on Palestinian revolutionary history in addition to that history of U.S. imperialism in West Asia. evolutionary history in addition to that history of US imperialism in West Asia. And the way I came about on this work, really I was introduced properly to the Palestinian cause when I was a teenager. But at that time, I did not harbor any ambition to become any kind of political person.

And I think when I entered college, there were a series of events that drove my curiosity. So this would have included 2008, 2009, the Zionist onslaught against the Gaza Strip during that time. 2010, after that, there was the Zionists murder of activists on the Freedom Flotilla trying to break the siege in Gaza. And then two years after that, in November of 2012, another major aggression on the Gaza Strip. And so it wasn't mere curiosity that drove me because I was increasingly angry at the time. But I did want to know and get down to the bottom of why the government I lived under was pursuing this policy.

And on top of that, I became increasingly aware that there was a revolutionary history against American imperialism, Zionism, and American imperialism support for Israel. And with that history, I found myself somewhat dissatisfied with what I had access to in the English language sources, is that you would find mention of the PLO, but I wanted to know more about the PLO on its own terms. And that's when I started to study Arabic to try to find out for myself.

And what I ended up finding through this research that I think has been beneficial for my political perspective, because we're thinking when I first started to get involved with the cause, I was what you would basically call left liberal. And it was a Palestinian cause in large part that radicalized me further. And I'm very impressed with a lot of young people today who are having strong, very rapid pace moral clarity. For me, you know, when it came to issues like armed struggle, you know, I was wrestling with a still existing liberalism inside me. And so it's not like I took on the positions I have today all at once.

There was a lot of grappling, and in my opinion, healthy grappling in hindsight, but there was grappling nonetheless. And reading directly the sources of this revolutionary history brought certain clarity to me on what is actually necessary to overthrow the overwhelming violence of Zionism, as opposed to a more sidelined, pacifist position that is based in the ideal rather than the material reality. And another thing that studying this history through mainly primary sources has helped me to do, I think that there is extending from the history of the Cold War a kind of ideological provincialism that's

been forced on the American people, that we exist in straight jackets that we don't even know we have. We've been told systematically that the American population has nothing to learn from Russian or Chinese or Arab thinkers. And so learning from these sources has helped me, I'm talking about the revolutionary sources of the Palestinian revolution, has helped me ask different questions than I otherwise would have asked and remove myself a bit from the ideology that surrounds us in the American context.

And the premise is your baseline, your assumptions about what is true or false in the American context. And the premises, your baseline, your assumptions about what is true or false in the world begin to change if you could hear conversations from around the world that they're having internally. And I think that today there are resources that do exist on the internet that would allow people to have access to this kind of output coming from the Palestinian resistance, internet that would allow people to have access to this kind of output coming

from the Palestinian resistance from the Arab region outlets like resistance news network that is doing that translation. So I think that people, you know, you might not have to learn to read or listen to Arabic. You could consult a lot of great resources that now exist that maybe didn't exist 15 years ago when I was getting involved Incredible. Yeah, thank you so much for that introduction and I really resonate a lot with everything that you just said, especially the quote we exist in straight jackets that we don't even know we have and I think your trajectory from left liberal to more of like a revolutionary Marxist or, you know, what I would identify at least as a Marxist Leninist.

I think we're probably roughly of the same generation and we grew up in a very bleak time politically, I think. And I think it's a little bit different for younger people now, even though the propaganda is still thick. people now, even though the propaganda is still thick, it seems like there's a lot more that they can sort of hold on to or discover in terms of popular Marxism, if you want to call it that, and then that's at least a gateway to get a little bit deeper into this stuff. And I think it's really interesting that Palestine was a radicalizing issue for you. And for me personally, I had always had sort of a background knowledge of the injustices and the atrocities that were happening in Palestine, but it wasn't until October 7th that I really came to understand the nuances of how this is a decolonial struggle. It didn't really, I always say I'm very grateful to Hamas and the coalition that it leads for waking a lot of us in the West up to sort of the importance of not just

anti-capitalism, but anti-imperialism. And in fact, how imperialism is a central pillar of capitalism and how internationalism is so important for us on the left to center because we live in global capitalism And so it really was the Palestinian resistance struggle that woke me up to that And I think a lot of people would probably have a similar story around that. So thank you a lot for sharing that I think that's a really great place to start and having some context about how you came to this. I think a lot of people will resonate with that. So we invited you on the show to have a conversation specifically about Marxism and

revolutionary Marxism in Palestine. Just looking at how revolutionary Marxism has influenced and been utilized by the Palestinian resistance movements over time in history and also into the present. But I thought it would be really important before we trace some of that history to just say upfront that by examining Marxism in Palestine, we are not in any way detracting from the significance and leadership of organizations like Hamas or other resistance movements that are not necessarily ideologically Marxist. And so I think maybe an important place for us to actually start would be for me to ask you to maybe talk a little bit about the coalition of organizations in Palestine that have come together under the leadership of Hamas, how Marxist organizations like the PFLP are in

partnership with Hamas, and why it's important for us on the left, on the western left, not to impose this kind of weird purity politics when we are thinking about resistance movements, Palestinian or other decolonial resistance formations? That's a very important question, Robert, because in my writing, let's say about Syria and writings about the resistance access, I encountered from left-wing currents based in the United States and UK primarily, a lot of very harsh criticism, if you can call that as probably harsher than just criticism, about my positions that I was trying to bring the left into coalition with quote unquote non-leftist forces. And so I think that there is a very clear aversion that exists to the piety or religiosity

of organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And I want to just outline a few things regarding their belief systems and how I look at it. Now it's imperative from a Marxist and Marxist-Leninist perspective to be able to analyze religious belief according to a materialist framework. So we have to understand and contextualize various interpretations of religious text, heritage, traditions, without necessarily painting a broad brush that every interpretation is the same in every time and place. This is something actually Mao was very much able to do himself.

I would recommend people, if you haven't read it already, go back and read Mao's excellent essay on physical fitness and physical education, where he offers admiring words about Jesus and Muhammad. He describes them as great men. I think because he saw early Christianity and early Islam in their context as equalizing forces. This would be symbolized in Islam through the Abyssinian slave Bilal embracing Islam and then becoming actually the first muazzin, the first person responsible for the Islamic call to prayer. So this was an image, a symbol of greater equality within its context. And if I'm trying to understand where I think this aversion comes from to the piety of organizations and fighters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, I might assume that it's the influence, first

of all, of the French Revolution, which had its period of decristianization or it could be the influence of the Bolshevik Revolution which was highly impacted by the trajectory of the French Revolution. The Bolsheviks were astute students of that revolution and so perhaps it is these histories that on the western left creates this hesitancy. But there are issues even with that because the Jacobins during the French Revolution, Robespierre was an advocate of the cult of the supreme being, so it wasn't necessarily an atheist position, even though atheists did exist in the revolution. The Bolshevik Revolution, you know,, they later end up moderating their stance regarding religious

belief so as not to preemptively anger alienate populations across the various Soviet republics. So it's not like there was one consistent line that they held regarding religious belief throughout that history. And they had to moderate in order to communicate with the people. And with this kind of attention to detail or making sure that we contextualize religious belief, I think it's important to note that the Western Left in general, as far as I can tell, seems capable of accommodating, say, Christian liberation theology as a revolutionary force, or at least is more likely to accommodate it as a revolutionary force in the Latin American context, than they are when it comes to Hamas or

Islamic Jihad. And I think that this has to be partially a matter of cultural and ideological biases. So when it comes to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, I recognize them as Palestinian nationalists working within an Islamic language and framework of resistance. And here I think it's important to note that in the Islamic and Arab region, religious history is not strictly metaphysical history. It might be seen that way in the United States where our curriculum neatly divides ancient or quote unquote pre-modern history from modern history. And I think the reason that division exists here is because the US is a

relatively young settler country whose ideological coherence depends on burying the America's ancient history. There's a lot of amnesia about that, but in the Islamic and Arab region, the history of Christianity, the history of Islam, operates as political history. Islamic history is Arab history, and thus Arab nationalist history. So Salah al-Din, for instance, the liberator of Jerusalem, is seen as a resistance figure with contemporary resonance.

There's some debate about the origin points of colonialism, and just as a side point of somebody who would argue that the Crusades can be considered such an origin point. But you look at the, even before the Islamic groups arise in a Palestinian context, that at the time of the PLO, there's a lot of language and references to the Crusades in figures like Salah al-Din and references to the Crusades in figures like Salah al-Din and the Hattin Brigade for instance, I'll give you just one quick example, was a Palestinian brigade out of Syria that was entering Jordan when the Palestinian fedain were in confrontation with the Jordanian king in 1970 and they named

their brigade after the city in North Palestine, where Salah al-Din ended up drawing out the crusader forces and defeating them. So even in the 1950s, one more example, I remember there was a field marshal, a British field marshal that was trying to enforce the Baghdad Pact on Jordan. And his name was Gerald Templer. And the Revolutionary forces who were thoroughly Republican, Nationalists, would refer to him as the Templar of 1957, or reference to the Knights Templar. So with examples like these, what I'm saying essentially is that this operates oftentimes

as anti-imperialist language. And I won't even get into the crude comparisons that are made between these anti-colonial forces and organizations that are supported by imperialism to spread nihilistic violence like ISIS and other groups like that. So Hamas and Islamic Jihad understand Islam to have been premised on spreading justice and equality across the Arabian Peninsula in its initial context, and it becomes anti-imperialist language. This doesn't mean that we can conflate the socialist Red Forces in Palestine with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, although they do share some overlaps in analysis of the situation facing Palestine. I do think that

there are things analytically that the left-wing forces have to offer because of the history of the ground broken by communist projects in the 20th century is still very useful. But that being said, they're a coalition together because they operate on an agreement, the importance of a resistance platform, a rejection of peace talks that are meant to narcotize the Palestinian people while they continue to be attacked. And so on that basis, we saw on October 7th in 2023 during the Al-Aqsa flood, a coalition of fighters joined together on this principle operating incredibly effectively when they joined together in a popular front. This was a clip from our Patreon episode with Patrick Higgins.

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