For Professor Nietzsche, anti-Semitism was an intolerable and despicable diversion from proper pursuit of the elimination of the slave morality and its secular derivatives that had been introduced with Christianity and developed therefrom after the Christian metaphysic had been discarded. Indeed, opposition to Jewry, the ancient authors of Christianity, tended rather to induce a sense of victimization and class declension among Gentiles, i.e., a slave or lower-class mentality ("ressentiment") - precisely the opposite of that SUPERHUMAN state of mind that Nietzsche was desperately trying to cultivate with his "Amor Fati," his "Eternal Return," his "Aristocratic Radicalism".
In Nietzsche's terms, Judaism was a priestly master morality, employing lies and lllusions rather than violence as the other of the two means by which stratified societies are governed:
In my "Genealogy of Morals" I give the first psychological explanation of the concepts underlying those two antithetical things, a noble morality and a ressentiment morality, the second of which is a mere product of the denial of the former. The Judaeo-Christian moral system belongs to the second division, and in every detail. In order to be able to say Nay to everything representing an ascending evolution of life--that is, to well-being, to power, to beauty, to self-approval--the instincts of ressentiment, here become downright genius, had to invent an other world in which the acceptance of life appeared as the most evil and abominable thing imaginable. Psychologically, the Jews are a people gifted with the very strongest vitality, so much so that when they found themselves facing impossible conditions of life they chose voluntarily, and with a profound talent for self-preservation, the side of all those instincts which make for decadence--not as if mastered by them, but as if detecting in them a power by which "the world" could be defied. The Jews are the very opposite of decadents: they have simply been forced into appearing in that guise, and with a degree of skill approaching the non plus ultra of histrionic genius they have managed to put themselves at the head of all decadent movements (--for example, the Christianity of Paul--), and so make of them something stronger than any party frankly saying Yes to life. To the sort of men who reach out for power under Judaism and Christianity,--that is to say, to the priestly class-decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of "good" and "bad," "true" and "false" in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it. (The AntiChrist, 24.)
And he saw the current secular derivative of Christianity - the belief in the "coming states of society in which there will be 'no more exploitation'" - as the prospect of conversion of the planet into a global graveyard, lacking all "organic functions" in consequence of the elimination of "'exploitation'...the essence of the living thing...the primordial fact of all history." Nietzsche, the "Antichrist," felt that "Christianity" had sucked the life-blood out of the superlative ancient Classical civilization, vampire-wise, and was threatening to do likewise in Europe, in Nietzsche's own time:
58. There is a perfect likeness between Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points only toward destruction. One need only turn to history for a proof of this: there it appears with appalling distinctness. We have just studied a code of religious legislation whose object it was to convert the conditions which cause life to flourish into an "eternal" social organization,--Christianity found its mission in putting an end to such an organization, because life flourished under it. There the benefits that reason had produced during long ages of experiment and insecurity were applied to the most remote uses, and an effort was made to bring in a harvest that should be as large, as rich and as complete as possible; here, on the contrary, the harvest is blighted overnight. . . .That which stood there aere perennis, the imperium Romanum, the most magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that has ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and after it appears as patchwork, bungling, dilletantism--those holy anarchists made it a matter of "piety" to destroy "the world,"which is to say, the imperium Romanum, so that in the end not a stone stood upon another--and even Germans and other such louts were able to become its masters. . . . The Christian and the anarchist: both are decadents; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future. . . . Christianity was the vampire of the imperium Romanum,-- overnight it destroyed the vast achievement of the Romans: the conquest of the soil for a great culture that could await its time. Can it be that this fact is not yet understood? The imperium Romanum that we know, and that the history of the Roman provinces teaches us to know better and better,--this most admirable of all works of art in the grand manner was merely the beginning, and the structure to follow was not to prove its worth for thousands of years. To this day, nothing on a like scale sub specie aeterni has been brought into being, or even dreamed of!--This organization was strong enough to withstand bad emperors: the accident of personality has nothing to do with such things--the first principle of all genuinely great architecture. But it was not strong enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption--against Christians. . . . These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality--this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all "souls," step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride. The sneakishness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge--all that sort of thing became master of Rome: the same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon--not paganism, but "Christianity," which is to say, the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and immortality.--He combatted the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity--to deny immortality was already a form of genuine salvation.--Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in Rome was Epicurean--when Paul appeared. . . Paul, the Chandala hatred of Rome, of "the world," in the flesh and inspired by genius--the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence. . . . What he saw was how, with the aid of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism, a "world conflagration" might be kindled; how, with the symbol of "God on the cross," all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. "Salvation is of the Jews."--Christianity is the formula for exceeding and summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of Osiris, that of the Great Mother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct was here so sure that, with reckless violence to the truth, he put the ideas which lent fascination to every sort of Chandala religion into the mouth of the "Saviour" as his own inventions, and not only into the mouth--he made out of him something that even a priest of Mithras could understand. . . This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the fact that he needed the belief in immortality in order to rob "the world" of its value, that the concept of "hell" would master Rome--that the notion of a "beyond" is the death of life. Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme.
59. The whole labour of the ancient world gone for naught: I have no word to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me.--And, considering the fact that its labour was merely preparatory, that with adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to go on for thousands of years, the whole meaning of antiquity disappears! . . To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans?--All the prerequisites to a learned culture, all the methods of science, were already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art of reading profitably--that first necessity to the tradition of culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road,--the sense of fact, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools, and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was ready;--and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and laziness. What we have to day reconquered, with unspeakable self-discipline, for ourselves--for certain bad instincts, certain Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies--that is to say, the keen eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole integrity of knowledge--all these things were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! More, there was also a refined and excellent tact and taste! Not as mere brain-drilling! Not as "German" culture, with its loutish manners! But as body, as bearing, as instinct--in short, as reality. . . All gone for naught! Overnight it became merely a memory !--The Greeks! The Romans! Instinctive nobility, taste, methodical inquiry, genius for organization and administration, faith in and the will to secure the future of man, a great yes to everything entering into the imperium Romanum and palpable to all the senses, a grand style that was beyond mere art, but had become reality, truth, life . . --All overwhelmed in a night, but not by a convulsion of nature! Not trampled to death by Teutons and others of heavy hoof! But brought to shame by crafty, sneaking, invisible, anemic vampires! Not conquered,--only sucked dry! . . . Hidden vengefulness, petty envy, became master! Everything wretched, intrinsically ailing, and invaded by bad feelings, the whole ghetto-world of the soul, was at once on top!--One needs but read any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top. It would be an error, however, to assume that there was any lack of understanding in the leaders of the Christian movement:--ah, but they were clever, clever to the point of holiness, these fathers of the church! What they lacked was something quite different. Nature neglected--perhaps forgot--to give them even the most modest endowment of respectable, of upright, of cleanly instincts. . . Between ourselves, they are not even men. . . . If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men. . . .
60. Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (--I do not say by what sort of feet--) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin--because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! . . . The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust--a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile."--What they wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich. . . . Let us put aside our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more! The German nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking nobility, was in its element there: the church knew only too well how the German nobility was to be won . . . The German noble, always the "Swiss guard" of the church, always in the service of every bad instinct of the church--but well paid. . . Consider the fact that it is precisely the aid of German swords and German blood and valour that has enabled the church to carry through its war to the death upon everything noble on earth! At this point a host of painful questions suggest themselves. The German nobility stands outside the history of the higher civilization: the reason is obvious. . . Christianity, alcohol--the two great means of corruption. . . . Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not. . . . "War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!": this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel decently? I can't make out how a German could ever feel Christian. . . .
"I want to stress this notion of freedom because regrettably, sometimes there is so much emphasis on the detail, on the minutia that we do not see the forest for the trees. Friedrich Nietzsche, in his Genealogy of Morals and other books, understood the radical character of Judaism which penetrated into its daughter religions, Christianity and Islam. Nietzsche says there are two different kinds of morality in history. One is called 'herren morale' -- master morality and the other is called 'sklaven morale' -- slave morality. Herren morale is a natural morality, says Nietzsche. It is found among the healthy, the strong, the victorious, and the warriors. It is they who exercise their natural 'will to power,' their will to dominate. Master morality, says Nietzsche, is found in our language. Why do you call some act noble? It is because it comes from the nobility. And why do you call some evil acts villainy? Because it comes from villain which means peasant.
ReplyDelete"In contrast to herren morale is slave morality which subverts natural power and force. It introduces what he calls an 'umwertung der aller werte' -- the transvaluation of values. Judaism represents 'sklaven' morality, the morality of slaves. Judaism sabotaged the power morality of the master by introducing such ideas as pity, compassion, mercy, and conscience. Listen to how Nietzsche explains what the Jewish bible and Jewish ethics have done to transvalue and turn over the master morality. 'The wretched are alone the good, the poor, the weak, the lowly are alone the good; suffering the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation. But you on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiable, the godless.'
"This is important for the understanding of Judaism as a social ethical force. For Nietzsche is not alone. The social Darwinists, people like Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner in the nineteenth century, argue that if we follow evolution and if we follow nature we will see that nature is red in fang and claw. They argued for the survival of the fittest, and they have little tolerance for softness and compassion.
"Herbert Spencer asks, 'What happens when a sow has a runt in its litter? She eats it. What happens when wolves go out on a hunt and they wait around for the old, weak, injured foxes? No, they leave them behind. What happens when a mutational chick is born? The mother hen pecks it to death. But we foolishly give the weak, the poor, the disadvantaged social welfare.' Nietzsche traced 'sklaven' morale to Judaism. And that which he condemned in Judaism I find to be its greatness. There is a rabbinic Midrash or commentary in which God says: 'Be good to My children and I will be good to you. Who are My children? The widow, the orphan, the poor, the stranger in thy midst.'" (Rabbi Harold Schulweis, Uniqueness of Judaism Lecture III, 1998)
DEMOCRATIZE PALESTINE!
ReplyDeleteWho can argue with that?
"Democracy" is axiomatically virtuous.
Israel is declaredly democratic, and the US is declaredly democratic.
Israel is the singular putative democracy in the Middle East.
Therefore, Israel and the US are natural allies in virtue — and naturally opposed to the implicitly evil un-democratic regimes of the area.
Then shall we not enhance our "virtue" and the number of our "allies" by extending democracy in Palestine — unless we hold some racist theory about the unfitness of Palestinians for democracy, such that the present de facto apartheid arrangements are thus justified?
No, Jewry gets the world's only pass in maintaining an "ethno-state" because of their historic status as victims of the cosmicly singular event, The Holocaust. They thus have unlimited capital in global *moral* authority as victims of injustice - and memorably evidence this *masterful* transcendent authority whenever and wherever Israelis must expose themselves to lesser, unclean, *incorrect* humanity in travel throughout the world.
(Benjamin Freedman's Address to US Marine Cadets in 1974)
ReplyDelete...So, we had a President in Washington, Mr. Taft, Mr. Jacob Schiff, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., the bankers in New York who are the arm in the United States of the Rothschild International world wide plutocracy - Mr. Schiff, with two young men, went down to see Mr. Taft, and he said, "Mr. Taft, . . . (I am not telling you this out of my memory. I almost know this by heart, because the books are here, in the Congressional Library. The people who were in the room with President Taft, at that time, and President Taft were told by Jacob H. Schiff) . . . "We want you to cancel the Most Favored Nation Treaty with Czarist Russia, and we want you to recall our Ambassador." The President told them, "Mr. Schiff, things are not what you represent them to be. My ambassador tells me differently." So, Mr. Schiff told him, in so many words, "Is you is, or is you ain't - going to do it?" When the President said that he would not do it, Mr. Schiff said "We will put a political party and a president in Washington, to whom we can dictate what they should do."
Jacob Schiff came back to New York (He was at that time head of The American Jewish Committee), and in my father's home (I was a young man then), in the presence of many prominent men some of whom you've heard the names of, he retold the story and I looked at the books in the Public Library, Memoirs of men who were in the room at that time, names that are familiar to many people that are here. That is a -fact. Now, what happened?
They ganged up in New York, to get rid of Taft. I was a protégé of Mr. Bernard Baruch - a name that I think you are all familiar with. His father was a doctor, Dr. Simon Baruch, who had brought me into the world, and Bernard Baruch was a visitor at our home all the time. He courted my sister; one of my sisters. So the stage was set to get rid of the Republican Party and the Republican President and put in their own party and their own President. But it was very difficult, because, after the Cleveland depression (President Cleveland was a Democrat, we had Free Trade) we had the worst depression ever seen anywhere. And that swept the Republican Party into power, because they advocated tariff, protective tariff to protect the working man against the cheap labor of Europe and to protect the infant industries, in the United States against foreign competition.
Mr. Schiff went down there and had this conversation, came back to New York and the stage was set. And I, as a young man, got into the act. What I am telling you now, I saw with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, but I make it brief. The stage was set: "How can we get rid of the Republican Party; how can we get rid of Taft" - and Mr. Baruch was picked out as the leg man. He was a smart man!
They set up the National Democratic Headquarters at 200 Fifth Avenue, which was the site of the old Fifth Avenue Hotel, now an office building, and Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the old man, the father of the one you all know, was made chairman of the Finance Committee. I was made his confidential assistant in liaison with the Treasurer, who was Mr. Rollo Wells of St. Louis, - the Andrew Mellon of his time. And I was right in the middle! I saw everything that went on, because I handled all the books that had the cash contributions in them. Mr. Jacob Schiff and the Jews (use that word as I told you, with reservations) put up the money to launch this Party, and they looked around for a man to put up as President. To make a long story short, because the details aren't very interesting, they got Woodrow Wilson, a rascal who wasn't worth the powder to blow him to hell!
They got Woodrow Wilson, the man who had more ego than any man I have ever read about, they got him to head the Democratic Party. And they got into difficulties! Because the Democrats only got the Electoral votes in the South; where the people in agriculture wanted cheap goods from Europe. But the North wanted the Republicans. They found out they could not elect a President in the United States. So, I handled the money; I was the leg man, the errand boy (I was only a boy then.) They trotted Theodore Roosevelt out of the political "moth-balls" (He was then an editor of a magazine). They told him, "You are the indispensable man. You are the only man who can save the United States." And with his ego they formed the "Bull Moose Party" and Mr. Jacob H. Schiff and the Jews throughout the world - they got plenty of money from England - they formed the Bull Moose Party. And in that way they split the Republican vote between Roosevelt and Taft, and Mr. Wilson walked in with a minority of the popular vote - the lowest man, (and I knew the inside of his private life, which I don't want to go into here). But never was a lower rascal in the White House, and I've known plenty of them since that time!
Now, Mr. Wilson really didn't know enough to come in out of the rain! I cannot understand how he ever got there, except that in shuffling the cards, they had the goods on him, You find in politics, every time they pick a candidate, and put him out in front, they have the goods on him. You know he had been sleeping with the wife of the professor who lived next door to him at Princeton, whose name was Peck. And they used to call Wilson, at Princeton, "Peck's bad boy." When she got a divorce and moved to Washington, she married a man who had a son. And that son borrowed $40,000 from the bank, without asking them. He didn't know how to pay it back, and the pressure on him was getting very, very hot. So this woman heard of Samuel Untermeyer (of the big firm, Googenheim, Untermeyer and Marshall) a prominent Democrat; and supplied much money to the party. She went to him with a big package of letters which I read (Wilson was a great letter writer. He knew the language; there's no doubt about it, Wilson knew his vocabulary, when it came to making love, anyway). So, they cooked this up and she got the idea of blackmailing him. She got Samuel Untermeyer to go to see him, as a lawyer. He was a big contributor to the Party and he knew Wilson, and he went there. To make a long story short, Wilson didn't have the money; Untermeyer provided it, and the boy paid the money back.
Now, Mr. Untermeyer told President Wilson, "I'll advance that money if you will do one favor for me. The next opening on the Supreme Court, I want to name the man." He said, "We've never had a Jew on the Supreme Court I think there ought to be a Jew on the Supreme Court.'' So Wilson said, ''It's a deal!" and they paid the $40,000. When a vacancy appeared on the Supreme Court, Mr. Untermeyer recommended Mr. Brandeis. Mr. Brandeis was the number one Zionist in the United States; the head of them all, and he became very friendly with Wilson. And when the war with Germany broke out, the war between England, France, Russia, and Germany and Austria, the United States had nothing to do with it. They all thought England, France and Russia would crush Germany in 60 days. Big headlines in all the papers. I was very active then, in politics, "Boys home by Christmas, Boys out of the trenches by Christmas," but when Christmas came, the war was getting hot!
The Germans had brought out the submarines, and the Irish gave them two bases on the coast of Ireland, and they were sinking everything that brought food and ammunition to England, which under International Law is correct. Now, when they saw that Great Britain was going to lose the war, the Jews were very much excited, because, up to that time, Germany was their best friend.
In 1822, Germany passed the Emancipation Edict which gave everybody in Germany equal rights; no religious discrimination. Up to that time, every country in Europe had quotas: l%, 2%, 3% to become a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, a banker, a schoolteacher, anything. Germany, in 1822 passed that Emancipation Edict and all the Jews across Europe rushed to Germany, because they could get an education. They could become doctors, lawyers, dentists, druggists. So, when I was in Germany, 50% of the pupils in German schools were Jews from all over Europe. They all ran to Germany. And they worshiped the Germans
Baline, a Jew, was the head of the Hamburg-American, North German-Lloyd lines. Even the private bankers, the Hohenzollerns, were Jews. The head of the German General Electric Company was a Jew. The biggest companies, - there was no discrimination at all, in Germany. And the Jews had a picnic there, but they were not the Khazars! They were so-called Jews that came into Western Europe with the Roman armies; that came from Judea when the Romans occupied Western Europe, and there were two houses of worship, one in Speyer, one in Lyons, little stone houses, in the second century, which was 600 years before the Khazars were converted. So the German Jews were just as much apart as the Arabs and the Khazars, today, in fact, there was a saying, I don't know if I can say it in this company, but when I lived in Germany, the Germans said about the Pollocks - (they called them "the Pollocks," the Eastern European Jews), "Where a Pollock pisses, grass will never grow." They hated them! They could never allow their children to marry. So, when Germany was winning the war, the Jews were very happy, because they didn't want Russia to come out the winner, with France and England, because they thought it would be tougher for the Jews in Russia. So, they were all pro-German. What happened? When the Germans trotted out the submarines, - England in August or September, I don't remember just which week, but General Haig, in London, warned the English, "We have less than two week's food supply for the whole nation of 55,000,000 people." The food and ammunition boats were sunk so quickly, they couldn't get food or ammunition.
So, England was offered a Peace Treaty by Germany. They were offered a Peace Treaty twice! It was on the desk of the British War Cabinet, ready to be signed. It needed only one signature. What happened? The Khazar Jews in New York, Washington, led by Brandeis, made this promise through Fleischman & Sockloff in London. They went to the British War Cabinet and they said, "You don't have to make peace - which is tantamount to surrender. We can show you how you can win the war, if, when you defeat Germany, and carve up the Ottoman Empire (or Turkey) you will give us Palestine. And they made that deal. It was all written. I don't say so; Other people don't say so. The Zionists, in the books that they have written, tell this whole story. How they got the promise of Palestine, by promising to use their influence to get U.S. into the war. That's how they are going to turn against the United States; the same way they turned against Germany; after everything Germany did for them, since 1822. They made the deal to bring the United States into the war, which meant certain defeat for Germany; which was triumphant, then; offering a peace that was tantamount to surrender.
So, when that offer was made, the Zionists in London went to the British War Cabinet, according to their own books, their own record, in the British Museum. I circulated thousands of copies of this 12 page memorandum by the man who negotiated it. When they were bombing London in 1945, he thought he'd die. And he typed this out, this true story, and gave it to the British Museum for posterity. That's available. Anyone can have a copy of it. I sent out thousands, - maybe ten thousands of them.
Now, the United States got into World War I. How did they get in? They didn't know how to get us in, because the Germans leaned backwards. They said, "We are going to do nothing on land, on the sea, or in the air, to provoke or justify a declaration of war by the United States, because we'll be licked! Now, we've won the war!" Which they had. The Russian armies were in retreat; in France, the army had revolted, and wouldn't fight. There was no more fight left in the allies. So, what happened?
They went to Great Britain; made this offer; Great Britain accepted it. Then the question came, How to get U.S. into the war? They couldn't get us in if the Germans didn't give us provocation or justification. So, what did they do? A message was sent to Washington, that the S.S. Sussex, a ferry from Dover to Calais, had been torpedoed in the Channel and 38 Americans lost their lives! I'm not going to string this out, because I've got a lot of other things to tell you!
On the basis of the torpedoing, and the loss of 38 lives of our citizens, Congress declared war against Germany. Now, after the 4,000,000 men that General Pershing had been drilling, were on their way over, some of them fighting in Europe - (a lot of you, here, went over, were fighting while this fighting was going on) a member of Parliament and others, who couldn't stand it any longer, they came out with the secret that the Sussex was not sunk and no Americans lives were lost. And we were in the war! Now that is how the Jews got us into World War I, and that started everything because Wilson was elected. We had a national debt of one billion dollars. And since then it has gone up - I think it's now 465 billion, after the wars we've been having, so that's how the Jews got us into World War I.
I knew Judge Samuel Rosen who was Mr. Roosevelt's mentor. They used to say that he didn't go to the water closet without consulting Judge Rosen. I was very friendly (here's somebody who will bear me out) - Now, when it came to World War II, we couldn't get into the war because the Germans said, "When the Americans came into World War I, look what happened to us!" So there was war in Europe again, Germany and European countries, and there was no way to get us into the war. And the pressure of the Jews here, in New York City, Washington, to get into that war was terrific! They didn't know how to do it. So, as Mr. Tanzell wrote in his "Back Door to War," (he was at Georgetown University, a professor of history) - I saw, in the Yale Library, the papers of the Secretary of Defense at that time - we were pushed into World War II by Mr. Roosevelt, through the back door! Germany would give us no justification or provocation. But the Jews, here, were putting pressure on Roosevelt, "We've got to get into that war! We can't let him do that to us!"
We had to make up our minds what to do, so the United States sent to Japan, and they said, "We can't sell you any more scrap steel or oil." Japan was fighting a war with China; Without scrap steel or oil, which they got altogether from the United States, they would have to withdraw from the war. So they sent nine different Ambassador here, trying to change Mr. Roosevelt's mind. Ile said, "No, we can't sell you any more, at all." So, at that time, Germany and Japan had a treaty; Any country that declared war on either one was instantly at war with both! So, Mr. Roosevelt figured, "We'll provoke a war with Japan." That's why he threatened them to cut off steel and oil. So they sent nine ambassadors here, and, finally, they couldn't take it much longer, so you know what happened at Pearl Harbor!
Now, Mr. Roosevelt figured, and it's in Mr. Stimson's diary, in his own handwriting, which is in the room at Yale Library containing all Mr. Henry L. Stimson's papers - he was the Secretary of Defense. He wrote in his diary important things that went on (in his own handwriting) and under November 25th, two weeks before Pearl Harbor, he wrote, "The President sent for us to come to the White House. I thought it was to discuss the war in Europe, but he told us that we had to be at war with Japan but he didn't want it to look as if we fired the first shot!" That is almost verbatim. Henry Stimson, the Secretary of Defense wrote that in his diary. That is how we got into the World War, because Roosevelt said, "We want to be at war with Japan, but we don't want it to look as though we fired the first shot"! So we got the first shot, alright, at Pearl Harbor! But, the only way we could be at war with Germany was to be at war with Japan. Then automatically, under their treaty, we were at war with Germany. That's how we got into World War II...
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ReplyDeleteGraham: "This (Jewish) stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's gonna down the drain."
Nixon: "You believe that?"
Graham: "Yes, sir."
Nixon: "So do I. I can't say it, but I believe it."
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Larry Hagman: "Television is a Jewish medium".
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BRANDO: "Hollywood is run by Jews; it is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of -- of people who are suffering. Because they've exploited -- we have seen the -- we have seen the Nigger and Greaseball, we've seen the Chink, we've seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap, we have seen the wily Filipino, we've seen everything but we never saw the Kike. Because they knew perfectly well, that that is where you draw the wagons around."
KING: When you say -- when you say something like that you are playing right in, though, to anti-Semitic people who say the Jews are --
BRANDO: No, no, because I will be the first one who will appraise the Jews honestly and say "Thank God for the Jews."
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...This is, [Truman] Capote asserts, "a clique of New York-oriented writers and critics who control much of the literary scene through the influence of the quarterlies and intellectual magazines..."
...And Capote goes on: "Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and Isaac Bashevis Singer and Norman Mailer are all fine writers but they're not the only writers in the country as the Jewish Mafia would have us believe..."
"...I could give you a list of excellent writers .. . ; the odds are you haven't heard of most of them for the simple reason that the Jewish Mafia has systematically frozen them out of the literary scene..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Similarly, Noam Chomsky, the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist, describes his experience with the ADL:
"In the United States a rather effective system of intimidation has been developed to silence critique. . . . Take the Anti-Defamation League. . . . It's actually an organization devoted to trying to defame and intimidate and silence people who criticize current Israeli policies, whatever they may be...."
"If there's any comment in the press which they regard as insufficiently subservient to the party line, there'll be a flood of letters, delegations, protests, threats to withdraw advertising, etc. The politicians of course are directly subjected to this, and they are also subjected to substantial financial penalties if they don't go along. . . . This totally one-sided pressure and this, by now, very effective system of vilification, lying, defamation, and judicious use of funds in the political system . . . has created a highly biased approach to the whole matter." (Chomsky 1988, 642-3)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Jewish control of the major media in the media age makes the enforced silence both paradoxical and paralyzing. Survival in public life requires that you know all about it, but never refer to it. A hypocritical etiquette forces us to pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and if you don't respect their victimhood, they'll destroy you. It's a phenomenal display not of wickedness, really, but of fierce ethnocentrism, a sort of furtive racial superpatriotism." (Sobran 1996, 3).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It began with an essay about the Iraq war that appeared in the May 6 issue of the daily Post and Courier of Charleston.
(http://hollings.senate.gov/~hollings...004506A17.html)
"With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country?," he wrote. "The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel. Led by [Paul] Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, for years there had been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel's security is to spread democracy in the area."
Several Jewish organizations, as well as some prominent Jewish political figures, quickly chastised Hollings, and his remarks were denounced as anti-Semitic.
But he didn't back down. Instead, he rose in the US Senate on May 20 to defend and explain his essay.
(http://hollings.senate.gov/~hollings...004521A35.html)
"I don't apologize for this column," he declared. "I want them to apologize to me for talking about anti-Semitism." President Bush went to war in Iraq "to secure our friend, Israel" and "everybody knows it," said Hollings.
Referring to the cowardly reluctance of his Congressional colleagues openly to acknowledge this reality, he said that "nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on." With few exceptions, members of Congress uncritically support Israel and its policies due to "the pressures that we get politically," he said. The pro-Israel lobby knows "how to make you tuck tail and run." But "not the Senator from South Carolina," he added, referring to himself. To emphasize the seriousness of his remarks, Hollings added: "I have thought this out as thoroughly as I know how, and it worries me that here we are..."
...Hollings cited the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most important pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, in determining US policy in the Middle East. "You can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here. I have followed them mostly in the main, but I have also resisted signing certain letters from time to time, to give the poor President a chance.
"I can tell you no President takes office -- I don't care whether it is a Republican or a Democrat -- that all of a sudden AIPAC will tell him exactly what the policy is, and Senators and members of Congress ought to sign letters. I read those carefully and I have joined in most of them. On some I have held back. I have my own idea and my own policy..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After defending the academic freedom of a Holocaust denier, an evolutionary psychologist at California State University at Long Beach says his own academic freedom is on the line.
...
Mr. MacDonald said he testified for Mr. Irving in the name of academic freedom. The independent scholar -- who sued Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of religion at Emory University, for calling him a "Holocaust denier" -- argued that various Jewish groups were trying to silence him by squelching his publishing opportunities. Mr. Irving thought Mr. MacDonald, who has written that some Jewish organizations have fought anti-Semitism by crushing critiques of the religion, could help bolster his claim.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration."
"Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government." (Charles Lindbergh, Jr.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...But Patton continued to do what he thought was right, whenever he could. With great reluctance, and only after repeated promptings from Eisenhower, he had thrown German families out of their homes to make room for more than a million Jewish DP's -- part of the famous "six million" who had supposedly been gassed -- but he balked when ordered to begin blowing up German factories, in accord with the infamous Morgenthau Plan to destroy Germany's economic basis forever. In his diary he wrote: "I doubted the expediency of blowing up factories, because the ends for which the factories are being blown up -- that is, preventing Germany from preparing for war -- can be equally well attained through the destruction of their machinery, while the buildings can be used to house thousands of homeless persons."
Similarly, he expressed his doubts to his military colleagues about the overwhelming emphasis being placed on the persecution of every German who had formerly been a member of the National Socialist party. In a letter to his wife of September 14, 1945, he said: "I am frankly opposed to this war criminal stuff. It is not cricket and is Semitic. I am also opposed to sending POW's to work as slaves in foreign lands, where many will be starved to death."
Despite his disagreement with official policy, Patton followed the rules laid down by Morgenthau and others back in Washington as closely as his conscience would allow, but he tried to moderate the effect, and this brought him into increasing conflict with Eisenhower and the other politically ambitious generals. In another letter to his wife he commented: "I have been at Frankfurt for a civil government conference. If what we are doing (to the Germans) is 'Liberty, then give me death.' I can't see how Americans can sink so low. It is Semitic, and I am sure of it."
And in his diary he noted:, "Today we received orders . . . in which we were told to give the Jews special accommodations. If for Jews, why not Catholics, Mormons, etc? . . . We are also turning over to the French several hundred thousand prisoners of war to be used as slave labor in France. It is amusing to recall that we fought the Revolution in defense of the rights of man and the Civil War to abolish slavery and have now gone back on both principles."
His duties as military governor took Patton to all parts of Germany and intimately acquainted him with the German people and their condition. He could not help but compare them with the French, the Italians, the Belgians, and even the British. This comparison gradually forced him to the conclusion that World War II had been fought against the wrong people.
After a visit to ruined Berlin, he wrote his wife on July 21, 1945: "Berlin gave me the blues. We have destroyed what could have been a good race, and we are about to replace them with Mongolian savages. And all Europe will be communist. It's said that for the first week after they took it (Berlin), all women who ran were shot and those who did not were raped. I could have taken it (instead of the Soviets) had I been allowed."
This conviction, that the politicians had used him and the U.S. Army for a criminal purpose, grew in the following weeks. During a dinner with French General Alphonse Juin in August, Patton was surprised to find the Frenchman in agreement with him. His diary entry for August 18 quotes Gen. Juin: "It is indeed unfortunate, mon General, that the English and the Americans have destroyed in Europe the only sound country -- and I do not mean France. Therefore, the road is now open for the advent of Russian communism."
Later diary entries and letters to his wife reiterate this same conclusion. On August 31 he wrote: "Actually, the Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. it's a choice between them and the Russians. I prefer the Germans." And on September 2: "What we are doing is to destroy the only semi-modern state in Europe, so that Russia can swallow the whole."
By this time the Morgenthauists and media monopolists had decided that Patton was incorrigible and must be discredited. So they began a non-stop hounding of him in the press, a la Watergate, accusing him of being "soft on Nazis" and continually recalling an incident in which he had slapped a shirker two years previously, during the Sicily campaign. A New York newspaper printed the completely false claim that when Patton had slapped the soldier who was Jewish, he had called him a "yellow-bellied Jew."
Then, in a press conference on September 22, reporters hatched a scheme to needle Patton into losing his temper and making statements which could be used against him. The scheme worked. The press interpreted one of Patton's answers to their insistent questions as to why he was not pressing the Nazi-hunt hard enough as: "The Nazi thing is just like a Democrat-Republican fight." The New York Times headlined this quote, and other papers all across America picked it up.
The unmistakable hatred which had been directed at him during this press conference finally opened Patton's eyes fully as to what was afoot. In his diary that night lie wrote: "There is a very apparent Semitic influence in the press. They are trying to do two things: first, implement communism, and second, see that all businessmen of German ancestry and non-Jewish antecedents are thrown out of their jobs. They have utterly lost the Anglo-Saxon conception of justice and feel that a man can be kicked out because somebody else says he is a Nazi. They were evidently quite shocked when I told them I would kick nobody out without the successful proof of guilt before a court of law . . . Another point which the press harped on was the fact that we were doing too much for the Germans to the detriment of the DP's, most of whom are Jews. I could not give the answer to that one, because the answer is that, in my opinion and that of most nonpolitical officers, it is vitally necessary for us to build Germany up now as a buffer state against Russia. In fact, I am afraid we have waited too long."
And in a letter of the same date to his wife: "I will probably be in the headlines before you get this, as the press is trying to quote me as being more interested in restoring order in Germany than in catching Nazis. I can't tell them the truth that unless we restore Germany we will insure that communism takes America."
Eisenhower responded immediately to the press outcry against Patton and made the decision to relieve him of his duties as military governor and "kick him upstairs" as the commander of the Fifteenth Army. In a letter to his wife on September 29, Patton indicated that he was, in a way, not unhappy with his new assignment, because "I would like it much better than being a sort of executioner to the best race in Europe."
But even his change of duties did not shut Patton up. In his diary entry of October 1 we find the observation: "In thinking over the situation, I could not but be impressed with the belief that at the present moment the unblemished record of the American Army for non-political activities is about to be lost. Everyone seems to be more interested in the effects which his actions will have on his political future than in carrying out the motto of the United States Military Academy, 'Duty, Honor, Country.' I hope that after the current crop of political aspirants has been gathered our former tradition will be restored."
And Patton continued to express these sentiments to his friends -- and those he thought were his friends. On October 22 he wrote a long letter to Maj. Gen. James G. Harbord, who was back in the States. In the letter Patton bitterly condemned the Morgenthau policy; Eisenhower's pusillanimous behavior in the face of Jewish demands; the strong pro-Soviet bias in the press; and the politicization, corruption, degradation, and demoralization of the U.S. Army which these things were causing.
He saw the demoralization of the Army as a deliberate goal of America's enemies: "I have been just as furious as you at the compilation of lies which the communist and Semitic elements of our government have leveled against me and practically every other commander. In my opinion it is a deliberate attempt to alienate the soldier vote from the commanders, because the communists know that soldiers are not communistic, and they fear what eleven million votes (of veterans) would do."
His denunciation of the politicization of the Army was scathing: "All the general officers in the higher brackets receive each morning from the War Department a set of American (newspaper) headlines, and, with the sole exception of myself, they guide themselves during the ensuing day by what they have read in the papers. . . ."
In his letter to Harbord, Patton also revealed his own plans to fight those who were destroying the morale and integrity of the Army and endangering America's future by not opposing the growing Soviet might: "It is my present thought . . . that when I finish this job, which will be around the first of the year, I shall resign, not retire, because if I retire I will still have a gag in my mouth . . . I should not start a limited counterattack, which would be contrary to my military theories, but should wait until I can start an all-out offensive . . . ."
Two months later, on December 23, 1945, General George S. Patton was silenced forever.
(Harvard Hates Whites — Does America, Too?
ReplyDeleteEdmund Connelly
February 16, 2009)
...Buchanan continues to rally for the rights of whites. And he comes fairly close to naming who it is that hates us and wants us displaced. Excoriating *New York Times'* editorial writers, he writes that “to oppose the *Times'* agenda on social or moral issues is ascribed to mental illness or moral sickness.” This, of course, is precisely Kevin MacDonald’s argument in *The Culture of Critique*, particularly with respect to the Frankfurt School.
Continuing, Buchanan notes that the *Times'* comes off “as loathing Middle America.” Referencing a Christian parable, he asks “In its own mind, the *Times'* is battling heroically the forces of hatred. Can it not, by rereading its own words, see the hatred in its own heart?”
Ah, hatred. “From what poisoned well comes this hatred of the America we love?” Buchanan inquires. The answer, I am convinced, is from the Jews, for hatred is a Jewish virtue. Once again to the credit of Commentary magazine, they published an essay that clearly spelled out this uncomfortable truth. Author David Gelernter, the Yale University computer scientist nearly killed by an explosive sent by the Unabomber, wrote of America that “the old elite used to get on fairly well with the country it was set over. Members of the old social upper-crust elite were richer and better educated than the public at large, but approached life on basically the same terms.” The new elite is not only different from the masses, “it loathes the nation it rules.”
It loathes the nation it rules. Consider that. And, as we at TOO have noted, Jews form a vastly disproportionate role in this new elite. The loathing of this new elite for the rest of America may be considered a Jewish value — the hatred of the people and culture of non-Jews that is so central to Jews throughout their history...
(The Conservatism of Fools: A Response to John Derbyshire
ReplyDeleteBy Kevin MacDonald
(http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/books-derbyshire.html (for annotation)))
This is a response to a review by John Derbyshire of my book, *The Culture of Critique*, that appeared in The American Conservative. In an earlier article, Derbyshire described himself as philo-Semite who traces his attitudes on Jews to his pleasant childhood memories of a local Jewish family and "the numberless kindnesses that I have received at the hands of Jews, friendships I treasure and lessons I have learnt. I cherish those recollections."
"I [Derbyshire] find myself now, in middle age, with complicated and sometimes self-contradictory feelings about the Jews. Those early impressions -- culture, wit, intelligence, kindness, and hospitality -- are still dominant, and I have read enough to know what a stupendous debt our civilization owes to the Jews. At the same time, there are aspects of distinctly Jewish ways of thinking that I dislike very much. The world-perfecting idealism, for example, that is rooted in the most fundamental premises of Judaism, has, it seems to me, done great harm in the modern age.... I also find the theories of Kevin Macdonald (*The Culture of Critique*) about the partly malign influence of Jews on modern American culture very persuasive -- though this is not an endorsement of Macdonald's theory of "group evolutionary strategies" which I do not understand. And like (I suppose) every other Gentile, I have often been irritated by Jewish sensibilities, and occasionally angered by them."
These earlier comments on *The Culture of Critique* appeared in April, 2001. Derbyshire's evaluation of the book (and its author) has changed a bit, perhaps because the edition reviewed in The American Conservative contains a new preface that tilts the balance in my writing even more on the side of the negative.
For Derbyshire, evaluating Jews is like a business ledger: There are positives and negatives, and for him, the positives vastly outweigh the negatives. However, providing a balance ledger of credits and debits is not a purpose of *The Culture of Critique*. My purpose is to document Jewish intellectual and political movements -- movements led by Jews and motivated by perceptions that these movements would advance Jewish interests. I have tried to document all such movements that I am aware of, but this is not the same as documenting Jewish contributions to civilization or culture. As I note in the Preface, Albert Einstein's work -- obviously an important contribution to physics -- does not qualify as a Jewish intellectual movement because it was not motivated by advancing Jewish interests (even though Einstein was a strongly identified Jew). Similarly, my book has no interest in recording fond memories of individual Jews that seem to have formed Derbyshire's intellectual outlook.
As a result of his generally positive attitude about Jews and Judaism, Derbyshire is, apart from some minor irritations, quite uncritical about Jewish motives and influence, even when they conflict with the interests of people like himself. He implies that non-Jews should understand Jewish motivation to break down the ethnic homogeneity of their own societies while advancing the interests of Israel as an ethnostate. We non-Jews should understand such Jewish behavior because these outcomes are good for Jews. But, somehow he fails to follow through with this logic, imputing malice to people like me who are concerned about the future of their own people in societies where they are becoming minorities surrounded by groups that, like Jews, harbor deep historically conditioned hatreds toward them. It is quite an extraordinary omission and lapse in consistency by Derbyshire. In the end, the logic is as follows: Jews have made wonderful contributions to civilization. Therefore, non-Jews should welcome Jewish efforts to advance their interests even when they conflict with their own. As Derbyshire himself says in another context, the only thing to say of those who voice such sentiments is what Shakespeare's Bianca would have said: "The more fool they."
Derbyshire lives in a sort of childlike world in which Jewish interests are legitimate and where Jewish attempts to pursue their interests, though they may occasionally be irritating, are not really a cause for concern much less malice. It doesn't require an evolutionary theory to realize that good, reasonable people can have conflicts of interest, and that the results of conflicts of interest can be devastating to the side that loses. My view is that modern evolutionary theory gives us a powerful way of understanding why this must be so. Anti-Semites have often portrayed Jews as the embodiment of evil. Consistent with evolutionary theory, however, I have documented that Jews tend to be highly intelligent, good parents, and patriots fighting to preserve their people and extend their people's power and influence -- sometimes at the expense of the interests of other peoples. Many organized groups of Jews have pursued such conservative goals by resisting other groups and behaving aggressively against them. By the same logic, it is legitimate for non-Jews to defend their own ethnic interests. Is this a formula for perpetual conflict? Hopefully not, but the only hope for a just resolution is to recognize the nature of the situation and agree on terms, not to deny the importance of one's own interests.
Derbyshire's review begins with a chilling account of how critics of Jews simply disappear from sight -- their professional horizons diminished if not entirely ended. One thinks of people like Joe Sobran, William Cash, and a host of politicians who have had the temerity to criticize Israel or American support for Israel, or who have called attention to Jewish power and influence in particular areas. Jewish groups have made any critical discussion of Jewish issues off limits, and that's vitally important because, yes, Jews are a very powerful group. What Derbyshire refers to as Jewish "world-perfecting idealism" is very much with us and is still wreaking havoc in the modern world, everywhere from the erection of a multi-cultural police state in the United States -- the origins of which are the general topic of *The Culture of Critique* -- to the current war for the "liberation" and "democratization" of Iraq, a war that is being fomented by Jewish neo-conservative activists based in the Bush administration, congressional lobbying organizations, and the media. As with other examples of Jewish idealism, the destruction of Iraq is shrouded in a lofty moral idealism aimed ultimately at securing a rather obvious Jewish ethnic goal -- Israeli hegemony throughout the Middle East. That these latest examples of Jewish "world perfecting idealism" also happen to conform rather obviously to Jewish ethnic interests should be of concern to all non-Jews.
Derbyshire dismisses evolutionary psychology as a passing fad, and asks, sarcastically, if in criticizing evolutionary psychology, he is pursuing his own evolutionary goals. Well, maybe. Most of what we humans do is connected only distantly to evolutionary goals. For example, quite a few evolutionary psychologists propose an evolved goal of social status based on commonly accepted standards of scientific evidence, but we are very flexible in how we achieve such goals. And it does occur to me that writing critiques of evolutionary psychology and dismissing those who criticize Jews might be one way to attain social status among the predominantly Jewish neo-conservative elite that dominates so much of the conservative media.
Derbyshire complains about my statement that, "The human mind was not designed to seek truth but rather to attain evolutionary goals." I was merely expressing a principle of evolutionary biology that has been of fundamental importance since the revolution inaugurated by G. C. Williams and culminating in E. O. Wilson's synthesis: Organisms are not designed to communicate truthfully with others but to persuade them -- to manipulate them to serve their interests. We should expect deception and self-deception to be at the very heart of interactions among organisms. This is the subtext of *The Culture of Critique*: The beguilingly irresistible theories masking an ethnic agenda. I too was once enthralled by psychoanalysis and Marxism.
Derbyshire supposes that the idea of a group evolutionary strategy may be "complete nonsense." Freed of technical jargon, a group evolutionary strategy refers to the ways people structure groups in order to get on in the world -- to attain group goals such regulating their own members (e.g., preventing them from defecting, promoting cooperation with ingroup members, promoting eugenic marriages) and dealing with outsiders (e.g., having different ethical standards for ingroup versus outgroup). I discuss how Jews accomplished these tasks in traditional societies in my book, *A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy*, and I recently applied this sort of analysis to several other groups, including the Overseas Chinese, in the paperback version of that book. There are several other good sources, including David Sloan Wilson's *Darwin's Cathedral*, where, among other examples, the early Christian Church is described as a non-ethnic form of Judaism that was adaptive at the level of the group in navigating the uncertainties of the ancient world.
My analysis describes the powerful social and psychological forces that have maintained Jewish group loyalty. Derbyshire asks, "From an evolutionary point of view, would not the optimum strategy for almost any European Jew at almost any point from AD 79 to AD 1800 or so have been conversion to Christianity?" But the question is not whether an omniscient Jew in the Middle Ages would choose to remain a Jew, but what forces have kept Jewish groups together over the centuries while other groups have been assimilated or otherwise disappeared. Even if individual Jews would have been better off defecting (some did!), the vast majority did not because of sanctions against relatives who remained Jews, because of powerful, psychologically salient ethnic and kinship ties to other Jews, because of the high level of social and material support available in Jewish communities, because of hostility toward Jews emanating from the wider society, and probably because, despite periodic troubles, Jews were remarkably successful in many times and places, including the medieval period.
Despite Derbyshire's claim, it is simply not the case that Jews have only been successful since "emancipation." Jews have very frequently achieved powerful positions: ancient Alexandria and the late Roman Empire; parts of Western Europe during the Middle Ages prior to the expulsions of Jews from most of Western Europe; the Turkish Empire after the fall of the Byzantine Christians and many other places where Jews served alien ruling elites, especially in the Muslim world (e.g., Spain after the Muslim conquest); Christian Spain beginning at least by the late 14th century and extending well into the period of the Inquisition; Poland and other areas of Eastern Europe beginning in the early modern period and extending into the 20th century. Perhaps most notably, the elite status of Jews in the Soviet Union had little or nothing to do with the opportunities made available by the Enlightenment, since the Enlightenment had little impact on the Russian Empire.
Group strategies don't need outgroups. The main thing is that there is group-level organization that regulates individual behavior to conform to group goals. Derbyshire mentions Chinese eugenics, but as important as eugenics may be for understanding the Chinese, it does not necessarily imply a group evolutionary strategy. The most obvious explanation is that the emperor wanted the more intelligent people to run the civil service, and, given the Chinese practice of polygyny and the benefits of high social status, this had a eugenic effect. But this can be easily explained by self-interest on the part of everyone involved; no need to invoke the effects of group structure on individual behavior. On the other hand, in the recent paperback edition of *A People that Shall Dwell Alone*, I argue that the Overseas Chinese qualify as a group strategy because they live as an organized group among outgroups; they have a consciousness of themselves as being of a different ethnic group than their hosts, they are internally organized (but not nearly so tightly as traditional Jewish communities), and they cooperate in economic enterprises.
Derbyshire rejects my argument that without Jewish involvement, the Bolshevik Revolution and its horrific aftermath would not have happened. The percentage of Jews in early Bolshevik Party congresses is irrelevant to this issue. The questions I ask are: Would the Revolution have occurred without the key involvement of a relatively small number of very talented Jews like Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Uritsky who played such prominent roles in the Bolshevik Revolution and the early Soviet government? (In the same way, one can reasonably ask whether the neo-conservative revolution in U.S. foreign policy would have happened without the critical contributions of Richard Perle, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, and David Wurmser, to name only some of the most prominent Jews involved. Small numbers of highly talented, closely cooperating people can have enormous influence.) Would the Revolution have been sustainable in its early stages without the involvement of large sections of the Jewish community who came to staff the Soviet bureaucracy, most notably the Secret Police? Were the most powerful non-Jews accurately described as philo-Semites'"Jewified non-Jews," to use Albert S. Lindemann's term? Were Jews an elite group in the Soviet Union at least until anti-Jewish attitudes began to be government policy after World War II? Did Jewish Communists and other leftists in the Soviet Union and elsewhere identify as Jews? I see no reason to change my views on these issues as a result of Derbyshire's comments.
Similarly, Derbyshire states that Jews "were not the sole, nor even the prime, movers in [the] downfall" of European dominance in the U.S. without providing a concrete alternative. I have never stated that Jewish intellectual movements and interest groups were the sole force, but I do indeed maintain that they were by far the most important. On the critical topic of immigration, there simply was no other force that energetically pursued the goal of multi-ethnic immigration in the period prior to 1965 apart from Jewish organizations or organizations composed partly of non-Jews that were funded, organized and staffed by Jews.12 And beyond the transformations being wrought by the sea change in immigration policy, I think it inconceivable that the current regime of what Derbyshire terms "racial guilt, shame, apology, and recompense, accompanied by heroic efforts at social engineering ('affirmative action')" could have been built without the influence of the intellectual and political movements described in The Culture of Critique. As Derbyshire notes, this regime is inherently far less stable than what went before, and one can only shudder at what the future holds throughout the Western world.
It is always difficult to imagine that 3% of the population could have such enormous influence on culture and public policy, but successful lobbying efforts by small, committed special interests are commonplace in American politics, not only among ethnic lobbies but among business interests, farming groups, unions, professional organizations, and even gun enthusiasts. An obvious example is U.S. policy in the Middle East. Here we have a record of an incredibly effective, well-funded, intensive lobbying effort carried out over several decades. The historical evidence reviewed in Chapter 7 of *The Culture of Critique* shows that Jewish organizations carried out a similar campaign in an effort to alter U.S. immigration laws and that they were by far the most important force in changing these laws, often taking pride in the part they played.
Derbyshire does not think it hypocritical for Jews to promote multiculturalism in the U.S. while wishing to maintain Jewish ethnic dominance in Israel. The hypocrisy comes from the fact that, as I note in Chapter 8 of *The Culture of Critique*, the Jewish advocacy of Israel as a Jewish ethnostate coincided with a major effort by Jewish organizations and Jewish-dominated intellectual and political movements to supplant the prevailing view of the United States as a European Christian civilization with a European ethnic base. Especially hypocritical is that the disestablishment of the European basis of American identity was performed with appeal to universalist Enlightenment ideals of justice and individual rights, while it pathologized the ethnocultural basis of American civilization that had become an important foundation of American identity by the early decades of the 20th century. Although it is common for defenders of Israel to describe Israel as a democracy based on Western political ideals, I have yet to see any important Jewish organization or intellectual movement pathologize the ethnic basis of Israeli society or challenge the many ways in which Jewish ethnic interests are officially recognized in Israeli law and custom (e.g., the Law of Return). Indeed, the American Jewish community has been complicit in the ongoing ethnic warfare in the Middle East that has resulted in the dispossession, degradation, and large-scale murder of the Palestinians.
Derbyshire accuses me of being one of those who would prefer "a return to the older dispensation" -- the older cultural and ethnic mix characteristic of the United States until the changes inaugurated in the last 35 years. I plead guilty to this charge. That regime was stable and it was good for people like me (and Derbyshire), and even for the American Jewish community who saw the modest, low-profile, non-violent character of anti-Jewish attitudes that were fairly common prior to World War II dwindle to irrelevance in the postwar period. Nothing wrong with that.
The dispossession of Europeans is the ultimate defeat -- an evolutionary event of catastrophic proportions for people of European descent. Whatever the contributions of Jewish "entrepreneurs, jurists, philanthropists, entertainers, publishers, and legions upon legions of scholars," they could never make up for this cataclysmic loss and for the political instability and chronic ethnic tensions that have been unleashed by the Jewish intellectual and political movements discussed in *The Culture of Critique*. Further, as The Culture of Critique attempts to document, a very high percentage of the Jewish contribution to culture has been used to advance Jewish ethnic interests. The only exceptions are advances in technology and basic science, but does anyone seriously suppose that technological advances like the atomic bomb mentioned by Derbyshire would never have been discovered without Jews? (Germany, certainly, was very close.) It may be that these advances would have taken longer, but there is no question that they would have happened without Jews. After all, with a mean IQ of 100 and far larger numbers, European populations undoubtedly have far more individuals of the requisite IQ to make the stupendous contributions to culture that have occurred in recent centuries.
Western cultures have produced a long list of ethnically European geniuses in every field of science and art, from Plato and Aristotle down to the present. Pity the poor English who expelled the Jews in the Middle Ages and were thus restricted to the meager cultural contributions of Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Newton, and Darwin even as they vastly expanded their numbers and the territory controlled by their people. Can anyone seriously suppose that the West would be unable to produce a brilliant high culture without Jews or that the Jewish contribution is of irreplaceable value? And recall that my argument in *The Culture of Critique* is that many of the most important Jewish contributions to culture were facilitated not only by high IQ but by closely cooperating, mutually reinforcing groups of Jews who were centered around charismatic leaders and excluded dissenters. In other words, their accomplishments are due in large part to the fundamental cultural forms of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy, not to any inherent worth in what was produced. The sorry records of psychoanalysis, Boasian anthropology, Marxism, and the Frankfurt School are far more a testimony to Jewish identity and group cohesion than they are to anything resembling science.
Derbyshire acknowledges that the Jewish contributions to culture discussed in *The Culture of Critique* have been made with an eye to advancing Jewish ethnic interests. This is certainly a very sizeable portion of the entire Jewish contribution to culture during the period I discuss, but advancing Jewish interests by contributing to culture goes far beyond these movements. As I attempt to show in the preface to the recent paperback edition of *The Culture of Critique*, Jewish contributions to entertainment and the media have often had the function of promoting positive images of Judaism and multi-culturalism and negative images of Christianity and European ethnic interests and identification. Derbyshire describes his love of songs like White Christmas that have come to define how Christmas is experienced. However, such songs are also part of the Kulturkampf in which Christmas has been converted into a secular and commercialized event; as such it represents a kind of cultural subversion. As Philip Roth noted, "God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then he gave Irving Berlin Easter Parade and White Christmas, the two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ ... and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow."13 In recent decades, a major thrust of Jewish influence on culture has been the promotion of the Holocaust as the fundamental moral touchstone and intellectual paradigm of the contemporary Western world. (I recently came across a reference stating that there have been over 170 Holocaust films since 1989.)
Jewish entrepreneurs and philanthropists may have indeed contributed to economic growth, but they have also lavishly funded Jewish causes -- causes that typically oppose the ethnic interests of European Americans. Jews constitute more than a quarter of the people on the Forbes Magazine list of the richest four hundred Americans, 45% of the top 40 richest Americans, and one-third of all American multimillionaires. The beneficiaries of this wealth include 4000 foundations controlled by Jews and 300 national Jewish organizations, the latter with a combined budget estimated in the range of $6 billion -- a sum greater than the gross national product of half the members of the United Nations. Jewish entrepreneurs and philanthropists like hedge-fund manager Michael Steinhardt, Charles and Edgar Bronfman (co-chairs of the Seagram Company), bingo parlor magnate Irving Moskowitz (who funds the settler movement in Israel), the notorious Marc Rich (who funds Birthright Israel, a program aimed at raising Jewish consciousness), George Soros (who funds pro-immigration organizations in the United States and in a variety of European countries), film maker Steven Spielberg (head of the Shoah and Righteous Persons foundations), Leslie Wexner (owner of the Limited and Victoria's Secret), Laurence Tisch (chairman of the Loews Corporation), Charles Schusterman (owner of an oil-and-gas business in Tulsa), and Mort Mandel of Cleveland (former distributor of electronics parts) have used their money to advance Jewish causes such as Israel and increasing Jewish consciousness and commitment among Jews. Wealthy Jews are by far the largest contributors to the Democratic Party and are very significant contributors to the Republican party, ensuring that Jewish interests will be heeded throughout the U.S. political spectrum. Whether Jewish success in business has had a measurable effect on economic growth is difficult to know. What we do know is that it has come with an enormous cost to the ethnic interests of European Americans.
In concluding, I call attention to the challenge for evolutionary psychology in trying to understand the complete lack of ethnic identification of so many elite Europeans such as John Derbyshire. He is only the tip of a massive iceberg. I have sketched a theory of why this might be in the Preface to the paperback edition of *The Culture of Critique*: a relatively weak sense of ethnocentrism resulting from our European evolutionary past combined with the influence of the Jewish intellectual and political movements I describe and its amplification in the media; the powerful opprobrium and, increasingly, police state controls that have become attached to criticism of Jews and Israel; and the heady inducements to conform to the interests and views of a powerful minority. Having read Derbyshire's account of his childhood, one might add to the model two more variables: socialization in a very benign Jewish milieu and deep reverence for the cultural accomplishments of Jews. In the end, Derbyshire is the epitome of that sad and paradoxical figure, the Judaized intellectual discussed in *The Culture of Critique* for whom Jewish attitudes and interests, Jewish likes and dislikes, now constitute the culture of the West, internalized by Jews and non-Jews alike. It is a mindset that is leading Europeans directly to the fate of the Israelites who stray from God's way as described in Deuteronomy (28:62): "And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude."
(How Jews See Themselves, 2008
ReplyDeleteKevin MacDonald
March 7, 2009)
Any group that expects to survive into the long term future should be aware of current trends and how they will influence the group. Jews take such planning quite seriously. The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute has assumed the role of long term planning for the Jewish people, not only in Israel but also the Diaspora. The JPPPI is an independent think tank that reports to the Israeli government and has close ties with other Jewish organizations. Its mission is “to promote the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry. JPPPI's work is based on deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state.”
The chairman of the Board of Directors of JPPPI from 2002–2009 was Dennis Ross — the same Dennis Ross who has played a major role in US policy in the Middle East in the Bush I and Clinton administrations and was director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy — a hard-line pro-Israel lobbying group. Ross gave up his position with the JPPPI after he was named as the Obama administration’s top envoy to the Middle East, a position where he will be able to influence policy on Iran and other issues deemed vital to Israel. (Ross remains a "Consultant" at WINEP.)
It is noteworthy that no one complains when Ross is appointed to such an important US foreign policy position despite his close ties to Israel and the Israel Lobby; but there is major hysteria when people point out that Charles Freeman (Obama's nominee for the head of the National Intelligence Council) has an association with a group funded by Saudi Arabia.
The JPPPI’s report Facing Tomorrow 2008 is a sort of State of the Union document for Judaism — how are we doing what challenges are on the horizon. In scope and intention, it reminds one of the National Policy Institute's report "The State of White America."
Not surprisingly, there is great concern about Iran as an "existential threat" — presumably an area that will be a major concern for the former chairman of JPPPI’s Board of Directors.
"The Jewish people must, as the highest priority, develop an appropriate response to the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and to global stability as a whole. While there is no ambiguity about the need to do so in Israel, it is necessary to mobilize Jewish opinion around the world as well. The American Jewish community cannot be intimidated either by a post Iraq syndrome in the United States, or by the false and pernicious allegations of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, or former President Carter."
*Notice, that Jews around the world are encouraged to mobilize to combat the threat to Israel represented by Iran. The assumption is that Jews have common interests as Jews no matter what country they happen to live in.* [Emphasis mine, NN]
One might think that such a view would leave Jews in the Diaspora open to the charge of disloyalty, but the problem is easily finessed: *Jews in the Diaspora are told to sell their hostility toward Iran by framing it as a global threat, not simply as a threat to Israel.* The report advocates putting pressure on China, Russia, and moderate Arab states in order to develop the widest possible coalition: “For instance, currently, the US negotiates with China, bilaterally and multilaterally on both currency issues and on Iran, without linking the two issues. Perhaps they need to be linked.”
Notice that the US is viewed as Israel’s point man, and that it should use any leverage it has with China to develop a coalition against Iran.
The report is quite clear that the influential writings of former President Carter and professors Mearsheimer and Walt are major obstacles. As I have noted before, these critics of Israel are important because they are associated with elite institutions, their critiques are sober and factually based, and because they constitute a moral indictment of Israel. We can expect more attacks on these figures in the future. There is also concern that because of the debacle in Iraq, the US will not be willing to provide the “unconditional support” for Israel that it has in the past.
Relatedly, the report recommends that Diaspora Jewry do its utmost to undermine the moral critique of Israel. *Jews must combat portrayals of Israel as a state that is “colonialist, violates human rights, and engaged in unacceptable behavior that could be described as Apartheid and even Nazism.”* Diaspora Jews should also combat charges of dual loyalty. Amazingly, despite the assumption of common Jewish interests no matter what country they live in, without any sense of irony the report notes that Dennis Ross — Exhibit A on the dual loyalty issue — will soon be publishing a book on these issues.
And Ross isn't the only high level American diplomat involved in this report for an Israeli think tank: Stuart Eizenstat is the author of a major section on "Mega-Trends in the Next Five Years which will Impact on World Jewry and Israel."
The situation is exactly the same as the involvement of prominent American neocons (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David and Meyrav Wurmser) in the notorious "A Clean Break" report for an Israeli think tank. This report, which advocated regime change in the Middle East by many of the architects of the American invasion of Iraq, was also presented to the Israeli government.
There is deep concern about Jewish identification, marriage, and fertility. Jews have the lowest birth rate in the world (1.5–1.7). In the Diaspora, “there is a slow, steady, seemingly inexorable decline in an already diminished population.” In Israel, the Jewish population is increasing but the Arab Israelis and Palestinians are increasing faster. “Between the Mediterranean and the Jordan Sea, there may be a majority of Palestinians by mid-century. Time is not on Israel’s side.” Nevertheless it is important to “Ensure that the borders of the State of Israel guarantee a clear Jewish majority.”
The solution is to encourage fertility not only by aiding and promoting Jewish births, but by funding programs that strengthen Jewish identification:
Massive investment should be undertaken to improve knowledge and transmission of Jewish identity through expanding existing and new networks of Jewish schools, and the best forms of informal education such as Birthright, camps, youth movements, adolescent education and adult education.
*All of these policies would be viewed as unvarnished racism if adopted by Europeans or the European Diaspora.*
The report on geopolitical trends by Stuart Eizenstat is quite blunt, noting the decline of the West and the emergence of a multipolar world with the rise of China and India. Israel must ready itself for a world no longer dominated by the US, but projects that the US will be primus inter pares for at least another generation.
A similar JPPPI publication is its Report 2008. This report makes many of these same points as Facing Tomorrow 2008 but also analyzes the position of Jews in the US. It is quite frank on Jewish power and the status of American Jews.
Jews are important political players in the US. Despite their relatively small numbers, Jews are important in part because of “the economic resources they bring to bear on the candidates of their choices … [and] their prominence in American culture and society.” Well said. Moreover,
while Jews tend to be wealthier than most Americans, they identify their long-term interests with liberal policies, and are regularly moved by the perception that the Democrats are the standard bearer of a number of traditionally Jewish ethical concerns. (This latter contention is of course profoundly contested by Jewish Republicans, among whom are to be counted a large number of leading Jewish thinkers and intellectuals.)
The idea that Jewish support for liberal causes stems from ethical concerns is profoundly problematic from other perspectives as well. *The ethical hypothesis is ludicrous given that American Jews also support a racialist, apartheid, expansionist Israel.* (See here for a discussion of Jewish ethics as fundamentally about what is “good for the Jews.”) Indeed, the Report notes that because both Democrats and Republicans are committed to Israel, Jewish voting is more determined by other factors. In other words, since there is no disagreement in American politics regarding unconditional support for Israel, Jews are free to vote their other ethnic interests — in particular the disestablishment of white America.
My view is that the Jewish commitment to liberal politics and the Democratic Party stems from their fear of and animosity toward an America dominated by white Christians. As Elliott Abrams has stated, the American Jewish community “clings to what is at bottom a dark vision of America, as a land permeated with anti-Semitism and always on the verge of anti-Semitic outbursts” (p. 86).
It may indeed be rational for Jews to seek a rapprochement with white America, given that non-white minorities, especially Muslims, are unlikely to share the Jewish commitment to Israel. But the main stumbling block remains a psychological one: Can activist Jews overcome their gut feelings of hostility toward the West?
Indeed, although not mentioned in the Report, the summary presented to the Israeli cabinet recommended “Enhanced ties between Jewish communities and the Hispanic and Afro-American communities in the US.” Implicitly, the idea is that just as Jews must prepare for the emergence of China and India as world powers, Jews must be prepared for the decline of white America.
Of course, it is no secret that the organized Jewish community has spearheaded the mass immigration of non-whites and that they have have forged close ties with blacks, Latinos, and other minority groups in the US. As I noted elsewhere:
In recent years Jewish organizations have made alliances with other non-white ethnic activist organizations. For example, groups such as the AJCommittee and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington have formed coalitions with organizations such as the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). A prominent aspect of this effort is the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, co-founded by Rabbi Marc Schneier, President of the North American Boards of Rabbis. The Foundation is closely tied to the World Jewish Congress which cosponsors the Foundation’s Washington, DC office and several of its programs. Typical of the Foundation’s efforts was a meeting in August, 2003 of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Jewish Congressional Delegation, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus; the meeting was co-sponsored by the World Jewish Congress. The Foundation’s many programs include organizing the Congressional Jewish/Black Caucus, the Corporate Diversity Award, given to “a major Fortune 500 company committed to building a diverse work force,” the Annual Latino/Jewish Congressional Awards Ceremony, the Annual Black/Jewish Congressional Awards Ceremony, and the Annual Interethnic Congressional Leadership Forum. The latter project organizes an annual meeting of the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the World Jewish Congress, and the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.
Quite clearly the various non-European ethnic groups are developing close ties and Jewish organizations are taking the lead in this effort.
Finally, it should be noted that there is no self-criticism in these reports — no angst about the ethics of Israel's horrific actions in Gaza or the erection of the racialist, apartheid state of Israel. Nor is there any self-examination of the power of Jews in American politics, particularly the issue of disloyalty as it pertains to the Israel Lobby.
The portrait of Judaism is therefore part and parcel of creating a positive Jewish self-image. *This one-dimensional "Jews-have-no-warts" image is a useful fiction for a group with such a large agenda in conflict with the interests of so many other peoples — from white Americans and other European-descended peoples to Iran and the Arab world.*
It is an image that is aggressively enforced by Jewish activist organizations such like the ADL. A large part of Jewish power is the ability to create and enforce a positive image of Jews that is quite independent of the reality of aggressive Jewish pursuit of group interests.
The rest of us need not see the Jewish community in quite such a one-dimensional manner.
(Charles Freeman’s disloyalty allegations
ReplyDeleteKevin MacDonald
March 13, 2009)
Charles Freeman’s withdrawal from his appointment as head of the National Intelligence Council has attracted a great deal of comment. But the most amazing parts of his statement are the least commented on. To wit:
"I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country."
This is a rather unvarnished statement of disloyalty. Indeed, Freeman’s comment bears more than a passing resemblance to Pat Buchanan’s famous comments on the neoconservatives who engineered the US invasion of Iraq on behalf of Israel:
"They charge us with anti-Semitism—i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a 'passionate attachment' to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America."
And in case anyone missed it, Freeman made the accusation of disloyalty twice more:
"There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government — in this case, the government of Israel. …
"I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government."
And yet, coverage of the Freeman withdrawal in the mainstream media has ignored these allegations. (In fact, as Andrew Sullivan noted, the MSM basically ignored the issue entirely.) The Washington Post article (posted also at the Los Angeles Times website) summarized the situation by saying only that “Freeman had come under fire for statements he had made criticizing Israeli policies and for his past connections to Saudi and Chinese interests.” It quoted Freeman’s statement that he did not believe that the NIC “could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack" but left out the rest of Freeman’s sentence: “by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.”
The Post’s editorial on the subject bordered on the bizarre, claiming that any suggestion that the Lobby was behind the failed appointment was nothing more than a “conspiracy theory.” Please!
The New York Times article included some of Freeman’s very negative comments on the Israel Lobby, but also included the denial of any influence by a spokesman for AIPAC:
"Mr. Freeman blamed pro-Israel groups for the controversy, saying the 'tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth.'"
Joshua Block, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, said Tuesday that his organization had not taken a formal position on Mr. Freeman’s selection and had not lobbied Congress members to oppose it.
Again, no mention of disloyalty. And although both the New York Times and the Washington Post took Block at his word in denying AIPAC’s involvement, Block was lying through his teeth. According to Stephen Walt, despite claiming that it had no role in the affair, AIPAC “leaned hard on some key senators behind-the-scenes and is now bragging that Obama is a ‘pushover.’”
But even Walt’s blog skirted the disloyalty issue. (In my review of Mearsheimer and Walt’s The Israel Lobby, I criticized them for going soft on the disloyalty issue.)
The only mention of the disloyalty issue I have been able to find in the MSM is Melanie Phillips’ column in The Spectator (London) titled “Exit, Spraying Venom.” Phillips quotes Freeman’s “passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country” comment, describing his comments as a whole as a “gross libel against American Jews, through its false and malevolent accusation of untoward and uniquely powerful and damaging political power.” Phillips concludes:
"Given the unhinged hatred towards Israel and the Jews coursing through the west, which was given rocket fuel in the US by the Walt/Mearsheimer travesty which invested Jewish conspiracy theory with a wholly spurious aura of academic respectability, it was inevitable that if Freeman bit the dust the Jews would be blamed."
Wow! Clearly Phillips is the one who is unhinged. But not for the first time. She has been quoted as believing while "individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project."
In making his charges of disloyalty, Freeman’s comments must be understood as indicting not only the usual suspects, such as AIPAC and Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum (current home of Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC operative who is being tried for espionage on behalf of Israel and was the first to flag Freeman’s appointment). Minimally, Freeman is also indicting the Jewish Senators and Congressmen who pushed hard on this issue. (Non-Jewish politicians like Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, who took up the Lobby’s cause in Congress, are guilty of nothing more than mundane things like subservience, cowardice, and the desire to be reelected.) The Jewish names mentioned most prominently in the Congressional campaign against Freeman have been three Zionist stalwarts: Sen. Charles Schumer, Rep. Steve Israel and Sen. Joe Lieberman.
It is noteworthy that Schumer and Israel expressed their complaints to Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff. Emanuel has been described as “a fierce partisan of Israel” who volunteered to aid the Israel Defense Force during the 1991 Gulf War. He was doubtless a sympathetic ear.
One wonders why the ADL has not made a statement on Freeman’s comments. It may well be that the entire organized Jewish community hopes for a quick death for this incident — the less said the better at this point. This same logic would explain why the disloyalty issue is not discussed in the MSM: Disloyalty is a very grave charge that the goyim shouldn’t even be thinking about. As Steven Walt points out, lobbies live in the dark and die in the light of day. It’s hard to imagine Abe Foxman complaining that Freeman’s accusation of disloyalty is yet another anti-Jewish canard when it’s not very difficult for even the most braindead among us to see that there is a whole lot of truth in it.
It is important to realize the gravity of the charge of Jewish disloyalty. It is a charge that has repeatedly surfaced throughout Jewish history beginning in the Book of Exodus where Pharaoh says: “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land” (Exod. 1:9–10).
The first example I am aware of in American history was the successful campaign by Jewish organizations to abrogate a trade agreement with Russia during the Taft Administration in 1911. In promoting the bill, Jewish spokesmen favored formulations in which the problem was couched as an American problem rather than as a problem for American Jews (even though the difficulties for American Jews were only a pretext for a campaign that was actually directed at changing the status of Russian Jews).
Similarly, as I noted in my last column, Jews around the world have been advised to frame the Iranian threat to Israel as a global problem, not simply as a problem for Israel.
The charge of disloyalty stems from a very simple fact: Jews sometimes have interests as Jews that are not the same as the interests of the society as a whole. And because the organized Jewish community has often had power far beyond its numbers, there is a very real possibility that Jewish influence would compromise the interests of the society as a whole. We have already seen this in the successful neoconservative promotion of the war in Iraq — the focus of Buchanan’s ire (and by now proved beyond a shadow of a doubt with an avalanche of other treatises on the subject). Of course, right now, the conflict revolves around Israel and the “existential threat” it sees in Iran.
The interesting thing now is what will happen to Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the Director of National Intelligence and the person who appointed Freeman. Blair not only defended Freeman to the bitter end, his stated views on Iranian nuclear capability are very much opposed by Israel (and hence the Israel Lobby). On March 10, Blair noted that "The overall situation — and the intelligence community agrees on this — [is] that Iran has not decided to press forward . . . to have a nuclear weapon on top of a ballistic missile." This conflicts with the Israeli perspective. In commenting on the disparity in views, Blair stated that "the Israelis are far more concerned about [Iran’s nuclear capability], and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view."
Blair is implying that the Israeli and the American views are not the same. Horrors! This is doubtless a grave offense in the eyes of the Israel Lobby — a group that seemingly cannot even imagine that Israel and the US may have different interests.
Clearly, the Lobby still has some work left to rid the government of people with ideas that differ from theirs. But they expended quite a bit of energy and credibility with the heavy-handed tactics they used in torpedoing Freeman and enforcing their version of foreign policy orthodoxy. Their next battle may be even more difficult.
The good news is that the machinations of the Lobby are more open than ever. The vast majority of the debate happened on the Internet. The MSM was late in reporting it, and in the end it left out critical details. This is yet another nail in the coffin of the credibility of the MSM, and it means that people who are serious about understanding current events are going to rely even less on it. People will read the New York Times not for "all the news that's fit to print," but to try to understand why the Times left out what it did. Sadly, this indictment of the MSM also applies to mainstream conservative pundits such as Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh.
It is noteworthy that, as J. J. Goldberg has pointed out, the Obama Administration has initiated foreign policy positions that are quite different than the Bush Administration, including high-level negotiations with Syria, approving the dialogue between the British and the political wing of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and steps that might be interpreted as a more conciliatory approach to Iran. Already, Zionist hardliners like Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America are up in arms about Hillary Clinton's "troubling transformation."
While it is too early to see where this is heading, whatever happens is going to be all over the Internet. That is a major problem for the Lobby — and one that will only get worse in the future.