![]() Logo | |
Frequency | about 3 times a year |
---|---|
First issue | 1992 |
Country | Germany |
Based in | Berlin |
Website | www.redaktion-bahamas.org |
ISSN | 1614-7057 |
Bahamas is a post-leftwing German political magazine with a leading role in the anti-German movement. Bahamas is published in Berlin with three issues per annum.
Bahamas was founded in 1992 in Hamburg by the minority fraction of the dissolved Communist League (KB), named "group K". It emerged from the 1990s dispute within the KB about the position on the emerging reunification of Germany. While KB's majority current merged with the Eastern German Communist Party renamed Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), focusing on social opposition to the consequences of the expected restoration of capitalism, the KB minority expected a renewed German nationalism, the resurgence of racism, anti-Semitism and historical revisionism, which would lead to new German power ambitions and therefore focused on radically opposing reunification of the German state.
Their pessimistic outlook led them to suggest they would "emigrate to the Bahamas", in an argument to Knut Mellenthin , a prominent spokesman for the majority faction. "Bahamas" quickly became the name of their main publication organ.
In the first years of publication, Bahamas presented a pluralistic debate organ for forces of the radical left from different backgrounds, with a common focus on opposition to nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism, and the trivialization of those topics among the traditional far left. Gradually the authors started a tendency towards the positions of Freiburg Initiative Socialist forum - relying on critical theory, especially that of Theodor W. Adorno. Over time, this led to a further distancing from traditional positions of the Left, and the magazine's focus today is on anti-Semitism. Most of the former KB members left the magazine. [1]
The core values of the magazine are that criticism of capitalism is only "emancipatory" if it is based on a theoretical insight into the "fetishism" of the capitalist relations of production and if the progressive achievements of liberal bourgeois society, namely the emancipation of the individual from primitive life forms and collectives, is affirmed and carried further. Fetishised critique of capitalism, which attacks the sphere of circulation (questions of distributive justice, moral protest against exploitative behavior, the pursuit of values of solidarity within communities), on the other hand, is criticized as "racist" and "anti-Semitic." Germany is considered the epitome of the "nationalist" principle (citizenship on the basis of descent). As a positive counter-model in Bahamas' republican France was chosen because it is based on civil rights rather founded on a community of descent nation. Above all, unconditional solidarity with Israel was defined as the highest principle.
The intensification of the conflict in the Middle East led to the Bahamas' editorial board increasingly representing Islamists as "jihadist" enemies of modern civilization, comparing Islamic thought structures and organizations with those of fascism and Nazism, eventually resulting in open endorsement of the United States and the war on terror. [2]
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished. Left-wing politics are also associated with popular or state control of major political and economic institutions. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, left-wing supporters "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."
Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authority, property or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences or competition in market economies.
The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of world socialism via international revolution. The Fourth International was established in France in 1938, as Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Communist International as effectively puppets of Stalinism and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power. Thus, Trotskyists founded their own competing Fourth International.
The Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) is a communist, Marxist and Leninist political organisation in the United Kingdom.
Anti-German is the generic name applied to a variety of theoretical and political tendencies within the left mainly in Germany and Austria. The Anti-Germans form one of the main camps within the broader Antifa movement, alongside the Anti-Zionist anti-imperialists, after the two currents split between the 1990s and the early 2000s as a result of their diverging views on Israel. The anti-Germans are a fringe movement within the German left: In 2006 Deutsche Welle estimated the number of anti-Germans to be between 500 and 3,000. The basic standpoint of the anti-Germans includes opposition to German nationalism, a critique of mainstream left anti-capitalist views, which are thought to be simplistic and structurally antisemitic, and a critique of antisemitism, which is considered to be deeply rooted in German cultural history. As a result of this analysis of antisemitism, support for Israel and opposition to Anti-Zionism is a primary unifying factor of the anti-German movement. The critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer is often cited by anti-German theorists.
New antisemitism is the idea that a new form of antisemitism has developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, tending to manifest itself as anti-Zionism and criticism of the Israeli government. The concept is included in some definitions of antisemitism, such as the Working Definition of Antisemitism and the 3D test of antisemitism.
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
Anarchism and nationalism both emerged in Europe following the French Revolution of 1789 and have a long and durable relationship going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the pan-Slavic movement prior to his conversion to anarchism. There has been a long history of anarchist involvement with nationalism all over the world as well as with internationalism.
The Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation (APCF) was a communist group in the United Kingdom. It was founded by the group around Guy Aldred's Spur newspaper – mostly former Communist League members – in 1921. They included John McGovern.
The League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist–Leninist) was a Marxist–Leninist[1] movement in the United States formed in 1978 by merging communist organizations. It was dissolved by the organization's leadership in 1990.
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism, known as anarchists, advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. While anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, opposition to the state is not its central or sole definition. Anarchism can entail opposing authority or hierarchy in the conduct of all human relations.
Post-colonial anarchism is a term used to describe anarchism in an anti-imperialist framework. Whereas traditional anarchism arose from industrialized Western nations—and thus sees history from their perspective—post-colonial anarchism approaches the same principles of anarchism from the perspective of colonized peoples. It is highly critical of the contributions of the established anarchist movement, and seeks to add what it sees as a unique and important perspective. The tendency is strongly influenced by indigenism, anti-state forms of nationalism, and anarchism among ethnic minorities, among other sources.
Left-wing nationalism or leftist nationalism, also known as social nationalism, is a form of nationalism based upon national self-determination, popular sovereignty, national self-interest, and left-wing political positions such as social equality. Left-wing nationalism can also include anti-imperialism and national liberation movements. Left-wing nationalism often stands in contrast to right-wing politics and right-wing nationalism.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine – the biblical Land of Israel – was flawed or unjust in some way.
Internationalism is a political principle that advocates greater political or economic cooperation among states and nations. It is associated with other political movements and ideologies, but can also reflect a doctrine, belief system, or movement in itself.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States. Originally a group in the Communist Party USA that supported Leon Trotsky against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, it places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes The Militant, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928. It also maintains Pathfinder Press.
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.
The Communist League was a radical left-wing organisation active in West Germany from 1971 until 1991. The KB emerged from the protests of 1968 and initially had a Maoist orientation. Later in the 1980s it became a leading organisation of the "undogmatic left" (undogmatische Linke). It was one of several rivaling minor communist groups in West Germany collectively called "K groups.”
Never again Germany! was the political motto of the "radical left" (RL), with which this nationwide alliance positioned itself from November 1989 against German reunification and its feared consequences, against German anti-Semitism, racism, nationalism and fascism.