James Petras | |
|---|---|
| Born | James Petras |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Professor ofSociology |
James Petras (born 17 January 1937) is a retired Bartle Professor (Emeritus) ofSociology atBinghamton University inBinghamton, New York and adjunct professor atSaint Mary's University,Halifax,Nova Scotia,Canada who has published on political issues with particular focus onLatin America and theMiddle East,imperialism,globalization, and leftist social movements.
Petras is a Greek-American sociologist[1] who received a B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from theUniversity of California at Berkeley.[2] He joined the Sociology Department at Binghamton in 1972 as a specialist in the following fields: Development, Latin America, the Caribbean, revolutionary movements, class analysis.[3] During his career he received the Western Political Science Association's Best Dissertation award (1968), the Career of Distinguished Service Award from theAmerican Sociological Association's Marxist Sociology Section,[4] and theRobert Kenny Award for Best Book of 2002.[2][5]
Petras is the author of more than 60 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including theAmerican Sociological Review,British Journal of Sociology,Social Research andJournal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2,000 articles in publications such as theNew York Times,The Guardian,The Nation,Christian Science Monitor,Foreign Policy,New Left Review,Partisan Review,Canadian Dimension, andLe Monde Diplomatique. He writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper,La Jornada, and has previously written for the Spanish daily,El Mundo.[2] His commentary is widely carried on the internet and radio stations around the world.
Petras currently contributes toCounterPunch, theAtlantic Free Press,[6][non-primary source needed] andThe Unz Review.[7][non-primary source needed] He is the author ofUnmasking Globalization: Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century (2001, and co-author ofThe Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2000),System in Crisis (2003),Social Movements and State Power (2003),Empire With Imperialism (2005), andMultinationals on Trial (2006).
Petras was a member of theYoung Socialist Alliance circa 1960,[8] and is listed as the Bay Area correspondent forThe Young Socialist in several issues.[9] Through the decades Petras has worked directly with indigenous workers as an organizer, in particular with the BrazilianLandless Workers' Movement and the unemployed workers' movement inArgentina.[10]
He has advised left-wing presidents such as PresidentAndreas Papandreou of Greece (1981-84),[11] PresidentSalvador Allende of Chile (1970–73) and in recent years, PresidentHugo Chávez of Venezuela. He has established himself as a defender of the rights of the indigenous in Latin America. From 1973-76 Petras worked on the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America.[2]
Petras has referred to American policy towards Iraq as "The US/Iraqi Holocaust (UIH)" which he describes as "an ongoing process spanning the last 16 years (1990-2006) [that] provides us with a striking example of state-planned systematic extermination, torture and physical destruction designed to de-modernize a secular developing society and revert [sic] it into a series of warring clan-tribal-clerical-ethnic based entities devoid of any national authority or viable economy."[12]
In November 2006, he was one of the recipients of a letter fromFARC in Colombia concerning three American hostages (Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes). Other recipients included the ReverendJesse Jackson,Noam Chomsky,Angela Davis, and several American film stars.[13]
He described the political conflict during and following the2009 presidential election in Iran as pitting "high income, free market oriented capitalist"reformists against Ahmadinejad's "working class, low income, community-based supporters of a 'moral economy'", and denounced the claim that the election was stolen as a "hoax" perpetrated by "Western opinion makers".[14]
Petras defendedMarine Le Pen during the2017 French presidential campaign, praising her policy views as pro-working class, anti-imperialist,Keynesian, pro-choice, and supportive of gay rights. Petras predicted that a victory byEmmanuel Macron followed by his implementation of an "ultra-neoliberal supply-side agenda"would lead to mass street demonstrations by leftists, followed by a stronger Le Pen candidacy in the 2022 election.[15]
In his bookThe Power of Israel in the United States, published in 2006 byClarity Press, Petras described the power of theJewish lobby overAmerican foreign policy. The book was extremely controversial for its use of arguments which some critics contended were similar to those of neo-Nazis describing Jews as a loathsome, conspiratorial force seeking to oppress others. The conclusion of the book alleges that progressive Jews are "protective of everything Jewish" and "adamantly determined" to avoid criticism of Jewish power, due to their ties to Israel and funding from Jewish organizations. Petras particularly singles outNoam Chomsky as "apologist [for] the US Jewish lobby", asserting that Chomsky loses his power of analysis when it comes to addressing "the role of his own ethnic group".[16] In a debate about the book withNorman Finkelstein, a former student of James Petras at SUNY Binghamton, during which Finkelstein described the book as having a conspiratorial "cloak and dagger" approach to geopolitics as opposed to a Marxist analysis, Petras accused Finkelstein of downplaying Jewish power: "I am afraid that when it comes to dealing with the predominantly Jewish lobby, he has a certain blind spot, which is understandable. In many other national and ethnic groups -- where they can criticize the world but [not] when it comes to identifying the power and malfeasance of their own group."[17]
In his 2008 book,If I Am Not For Myself: Journal of an Anti-Zionist Jew, leftist writerMike Marqusee criticised Petras for purportedly "overt antisemitism": "Petras... seems unaware of the way postulates about the secret power of a pro-Israel Jewish network echo older [antisemitic] themes." Marqusee particularly criticised his dismissal of Finkelstein's and Chomsky's criticisms of his position, which Petras attributes to an ethnically-grounded blindness to the negative role of American Jews. Instead, Marqusee described the argument advanced by Petras as "a circular, inherently racist argument." Marqusee concluded that Petras is not an internationalist, but anAmerica first nationalist.[18] The leftist writerMichael Bérubé similarly criticised the book, describing it as reading like "a fringe far-right figure such asDavid Duke"[19] Allen Ruff, a Trotkyist historian, reviewed the book inAgainst The Current and noted that "There’s a strong undercurrent here of an appeal to a far-from-savory American nationalism which seems very strange coming from a veteran revolutionary anti-imperialist", and that Petras blurs distinctions between terms such as Jewish lobby, Israel lobby and Zionist lobby and "lapses into the well-worn dual-loyalty discourse" about Jews, in a manner reminiscent of "elements of the far right".[20]
Other scholars and anti-racists have also described Petras as anantisemite. In a 2006 article entitled "9/11 Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories Still Abound," theAnti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized Petras's assertion that US federal investigators had reason to believe that 60 Israelis arrested under thePatriot Act after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks may have had advance knowledge about the attacks. The ADL also noted Petras' assertion that "The lack of any public statement concerning Israel's possible knowledge of 9/11 is indicative of the vast, ubiquitous and aggressive nature of its powerful diaspora supporters."[21][22]
In a 2009 article, the ADL again criticized Petras, alleging that he blamed the ongoingeconomic crisis on "Zionist" control over the U.S. government and world events, and that Petras argued that pro-Israel Americans had launched a massive campaign to push the U.S. into a war with Iran. The ADL also criticised what they described as Petras' antisemitic accusation that the American Jewish community controls the mass media and is "bloodthirsty" in its appetite for war.[23] The previous year, Petras alleged that "It was the massive infusion of financial contributions that allowed the [Zionist Power Configuration] (ZPC) to vastly expand the number of full-time functionaries, influence peddlers and electoral contributors that magnified their power – especially in promoting US Middle East wars, lopsided free trade agreements (in favor of Israel) and unquestioned backing of Israeli aggression against Lebanon, Syria and Palestine...No economic recovery is possible now or in the foreseeable future...while Zionist power brokers dictate US Mideast policies.[24] The ADL also cited a 2008 interview in which Petras stated that [U.S.] presidents are at the disposal of Jewish power[25] and maintained that Jews represent "the greatest threat to world peace and humanity."[26] In the same 2008 interview cited by the ADL, Petras stated that "it’s one of the great tragedies that we have a minority that represents less than 2% of North American’s population but has such power in the communications media" and that the reason "why the North American public doesn’t react against the manipulations of this minority...[is] because the Jews control the communications media."[27] In a 2010 article published in theArab American News, Petras stated that "For the U.S. mass media the problem is not Israeli state terror, but how to manipulate and disarm the outrage of the international community. To that end the entire Zionist power configuration has a reliable ally in the Zionized Obama White House and U.S. Congress."[28]
In 2011 and again in 2017, Petras endorsed works byGilad Atzmon which have been described as antisemitic.[29][30][31][32]
In 2011, Mark Gardner of theCommunity Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism in the UK, wrote an article in the left-wing magazineDissent saying that Petras' works "present a conspiracy theory that... fits resoundingly with the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century socialist linkage of Jews with capitalism, now updated and repackaged for twenty-first-century anti-capitalist discourse."[33] In 2014, Marxist scholar Werner Bonefeld described Petras as exemplary of a current of antisemitism on the anti-imperialist left: "The Jews [in Petras' work] have not only conquered Palestine; they have also taken control of America, or as James Petras sees it, the current effort of 'U.S. empire building' is shaped by 'Zionist empire builders.'"[34] Similarly, author and researcherPaul Bogdanor, writing in an academic book published byIndiana University Press, focusing on the same texts as Gardner, described Petras as "articulat[ing] his theory of the organized American Jewish community as a 'Zionist Power Configuration' (ZPC)—an acronym that he apparently developed as a substitute for theneo-Nazi term 'Zionist Occupation Government' (ZOG)... and cautions against 'the role of the Zionist/Jewish Lobby in promoting future US wars.' None of this material is readily distinguishable from contemporary neo-Nazi propaganda."[35]
