I love the first t-shirt…really rather nifty.

Zionism is alive and well. As for Communism, it is (almost) dead and buried. Thank God.
I’m a bit surprised though. I thought you billed yourself as a libertarian anarchist or some such.

Zionism is alive and well. As for Communism, it is (almost) dead and buried.
I kind of see Ami’s point. The t-shirt looks kind of cool, especially (I would guess) from an American point of view, since Communism was so long a taboo there.
On the other hand, in a world where many Jews actually experienced life under hammer-and-sickle-bearing regimes — and the racism and mass murders of the various Communist regimes — few whose perspective stretches beyond U.S. borders are likely to appreciate the ironic chic.
Or, to put it another way, the association between “Reclaim Zionism” and Soviet Communism is as likely to be perceived as yet another caricature of Zionism. Especially these days, when far-right nostalgia for Communist days has actually revived some of these symbols and affixed them firmly to fascist FSU politics.
This, from someone who maintained a collection of Soviet-regime posters ’cause I thought socialist realism looked cool. After a while it occurred to me that the aesthetic, too, was political…

that’s why i’m a libertarian socialist and not a communo-fascist zionista.

oh well i will use this chance to tell a communist joke. i think this is from the brezhnev era, though i might be wrong.
so brehznev is going to visit poland and wants to bring a present to the sattelite leader. what shall he bring? the comissars finally come up with any idea – lets bring a painting! but what will the painting be of? well they think and think and think and then brezhnev comes up with a great idea – the painting will be “Lenin In Poland”, titled after the visit of lenin in poland.
So Brezhnev’s happy so he calls this jewish painter guy and tells him – “I want a painting titled ‘Lenin In Poland’ in three weeks!” so the jewish painter agrees and goes off.
Three weeks pass by and Brezhnev calls for the jewish painter, who comes as promised with the painting. so the jewish guy reveals the painting, which shows a man and women have intercourse.
Brezhnev, shocked,shouts out: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS???
the painter says: This is just what u asked, Lenin in Poland!
brezhnev and the commisars are all shocked and outraged.
Then Brezhnev asks: “So who is this woman?!”
The painter answers: “well, thats Lenin’s wife!”
Brezhnev cant control himself: “WHAT THE FUCKKKKK!! And WHO the HELL is this man?!”
“oh, that’s Trotsky of course,” the painter asks.
Brezhnev, outraged, cries out: “Where where the hell is Lenin?!!!”
“well,” the painter answers, “Lenin’s in Poland!”
(I am telling this out of memory and its hard to tell jokes in this format, so sorry if this didnt come out well”)

…is just a flag. Evoked by the hammer-and-sickle t-shirt.
Which is what we were talking about. Not that a larger discussion of communism and its role in the world isn’t super-fascinating, ‘course.
Asaf: funny … though I cheerfully admit cluelessness here — there’s an ironic twist there for those who know something of the history of Lenin and Brezhnev and so on, I bet.

greetings from Israel, not much time to write as this isn’t my computer.
the anarchy shirt is awesome. i used to doodle “jewnarchy” symbols–magen david extended into an A. i’m glad someone beat me to putting it on a shirt because i wouldn’t have found as good of a quote.
as for the hammer and sickle, i tend to agree with those who hate it. i don’t get why these “CCCP” shirts are trendy and cool, while wearing a swastika would get you dirty looks and justified beatings. the CCCP and Soviet government killed mad people. MAYbe you could use it as a symbol of all the workers who wanted something other than what Stalin gave them, but I’d still recommend against it.
if you want a shirt that says “RECLAIM ZIONISM” I would put a picture of Martin Buber on it. and maybe Judah Magnes, or Gershom Scholem. confusing the heck out of just about everyone, except for the two or three religious-zionist-anarchists out there.

I meant it lightly in my initial comment above, but seriously, are the folks who are offended by the sickle-hammer symbol also offended by the Hapoel A.C. logo (which includes a sickle-hammer design)?

zionist socialist posters from palestine from the 20s-50s, that all had the hammer and sickle on ’em and are the folks who are offended by the sickle-hammer symbol also offended by the Hapoel A.C. logo — er, this is not a coincidence. Those all hail from Jews who genuinely were fans of the Soviet system.
Hell, there were genuinely good people (Jews, gentiles) who were fans of Stalin right till the bitter end. Self-delusion’s a tough business. People want to believe.
So that’s part of our history. The question is how we move forward. I guess I make a difference between things that are well-established and new things we choose to establish. It’s not like I’m horribly offended; it just strikes me as a relatively smarmy I’m-so-ironic Americanism that wouldn’t play too well anywhere else.
.i don’t associate the hammer and the sickle with the regimes that put it on their flags as so much as the very thing which the symbol actually stands for
Weird.

8opus,
You describe a cult of personality. While there probably were a few individual Jews who admired Stalin, my experience leads me to believe that most who got goosebumps at the sight of the sickle and hammer were genuinely inspired by the ideal (fantasy?) of classless utopia. In the world of literature we can see this illustrated in the life and work of Isaac Babel, for example.
Mobius brings up an interesting correlary with President Bush. Similarly, there are the individual Jews on the rightward end of todays political spectrum who insist that oppostion to Bush administration policies amounts to treason, even as the Bush administration unwittingly leaks intelligence information to Iran via Ahmed Chalabi, deliberately leaked the identity of a covert CIA operative as cynical political payback, and fudged the State Department’s “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report to give the appearance of greater success for the war on terror.
As we have had Jews drift toward Hare Krishna cults and Stalinism, we also see Jews smitten by the “Hare Dubya” cult. Ideas may not be as big a problem as the messianic mishigoss of personality cults.

8opus: “Er, yes. Obviously. But not just the ideal (fantasy?) — also the belief that actually-existing Communism was here to stay.
That has nothing to do with a cult of personality. It wasn’t about Stalin himself — it was what letting go of Stalin would mean for what they thought about the Soviet Union.”
OK, then. And if it was so obvious, then why make the intial remark, “there were genuinely good people (Jews, gentiles) who were fans of Stalin right till the bitter end. Self-delusion’s a tough business. People want to believe”?
Of course people want to believe in a climactic progression. That’s why we have redemption theologies and messianic formulas. It’s just sort of sad that after all the history of human civilization we still, on the whole, feel compelled to wait in holy passivity for the mothership, the messiah, or the “great man” to bring the redemption to us. Only to be burned over and over again by the usual shameless opportunists, exploiting our procrastination and leaving us wallowing in pathetic misery at the sight of mere symbols of our all-too-human failures. From where I sit, “I’m so ironic Americanism” doesn’t seem like it could really hurt in the broader context.

8opus,
I wrote that it couldn’t hurt. If you want to argue that it isn’t falling down funny, you need to take it up with someone else.
You write: “Um, ’cause we were talking about why people embraced the Soviet Union, reproducing its emblem everywhere, even during a time when the Soviet Union was led by one of history’s great mass murderers.”
The “Soviet Union was led…,” not “communism was led….” There’s a difference.
The logo both preceded and survived Stalin’s leadership of the USSR. To state your offense at the logo because there were believers in a Stalinist personality cult at one point [06/09/04 04:52pm], and at a later point state that distinctions between Stalinism and communism are “obvious,” does little to explain your offense (and your “ums,” and “ers” appear patronizing and petty too).