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Statement about Andreas Malm

Statement about Andreas Malm

Verso Books, a left-wing English book publisher, interviewed Andreas Malm and put this interview on youtube at the end of November 2023. In it, Andreas Malm talks for two hours about all sorts of things that are politically important to him. In addition to eco-socialism and ecology, the Palestinian liberation struggle and the PFLP, seem to have been his most important field of political action until 2004.
In the interview, he calls the Hamas-led massacre of over 1,200 people living in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 a "creative act of resistance with a bit of creativity", and sees it as a quasi-logical action resulting from the weakness of the Palestinian struggles. (The rest is long-winded and rather confused rambling about Palestinian literature, the Arab Spring and the drama of Palestinian oppression)
This "reading" of 7 October is in line with various statements, especially from the anti-imperialist and post-colonial spectrum; it is inhuman, under-complex and anti-emancipatory!
We will not write a treatise on the long-standing Middle East conflict, the Israeli occupation and settlement policy, the systematic oppression of the Palestinians and the various actors in it, as this is beyond the scope of this declaration. Nor do we as labournet.tv have a discussed position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However, it is clear to us that Andreas Malm has disqualified himself to such an extent with his view of 7 October that he can no longer be a discussion partner for us.
Terror does not justify terror, bloodshed does not justify bloodshed, oppression does not justify contempt for humanity.
We feel for the relatives of those killed and abducted on 7 October and we are appalled by the massacre that the Israeli army is carrying out in Gaza in the name of the "anti-terrorist struggle". Breaking the spiral of ever worse violence requires a just and democratic perspective also for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
 
Freedom for all hostages!  Immediate ceasefire now!

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