Researching my current Taki's column, I came upon the following 2007 column by New York Times columnist Stanley Fish, the prominent professor of literature.
If you ever read David Lodge's old novels about academic life, Fish is the original of the comic character Professor Morris Zapp, an extremely energetic and intelligent (but not terribly self-aware) intellectual:
Some years ago [Morris Zapp] had embarked with great enthusiasm on an ambitious critical project: a series of commentaries on Jane Austen which would work through the whole canon, one novel at a time, saying absolutely everything that could possibly be said about them. The idea was to be utterly exhaustive, to examine the novels from every conceivable angle, historical, biographical, rhetorical, mythical, Freudian, Jungian, existentialist, Marxist, structuralist, Christian-allegorical, ethical, exponential, linguistic, phenomenological, archetypal, you name it; so that when each commentary was written there would be simply nothing further to say about the novel in question. The object of the exercise, as he had often to explain with as much patience as he could muster, was not to enhance others' enjoyment and understanding of Jane Austen, still less to honour the novelist herself, but to put a definitive stop to the production of any further garbage on the subject. The commentaries would not be designed for the general reader but for the specialist, who, looking up Zapp, would find that the book, article or thesis he had been planning had already been anticipated and, more likely than not, invalidated. After Zapp, the rest would be silence. The thought gave him deep satisfaction. In Faustian moments he dreamed of going on, after fixing Jane Austen, to do the same job on the other major English novelists, then the poets and the dramatists, perhaps using computers and teams of trained graduate students, inexorably reducing the area of English literature available for free comment, spreading dismay through the whole industry, rendering scores of his colleagues redundant: periodicals would fall silent, famous English Departments be left deserted like ghost towns. . . .
(Here's Stanley Fish endorsing Morris Zapp's project in the NYT in 2009.)
When he reappears in Lodge's Small World set in the late 1970s, Zapp, in pursuit of his oft-stated goal of becoming the world's first professor of literature with a six-figure salary, has hopped on the fad of European Marxist deconstructionism. But then Zapp gets kidnapped and held hostage by European Marxist terrorists intent on deconstructing society with bombs. After Zapp is finally rescued, he starts to reflect that perhaps the profession of professor of literature does prosper best in a bourgeois society.
So, over the course of a long career, Fish has been exposed to countless ideological currents. But it's interesting to note how strongly his thinking returns to the fundamental question:
Is It Good for the Jews?
By STANLEY FISH
When I was growing up in the '40s and '50s, a single question was asked in my neighborhood of every piece of news, large or small, local or national: "Is it good for the Jews?" We have now learned to identify this question in all of its versions - Is it good for the Catholics? Is it good for the Latinos? Is it good for the gays? and on and on - as the paradigmatic question of identity politics, the politics that is derived not from some general, even universal, assertion of what is good, but from a particularized concern with insular interests. Is it good for us, for those of our kind, for our tribe?
A community in which this question is central and even natural will be a community with a sense of its own precariousness. (No one ever asks, is it good for the white, male, Anglo-Saxon graduates of Princeton; it's always good for them.)
This attitude may help explain, in the face of the rise of Asians, the decline in white, male, Anglo-Saxon graduates of Princeton and the non-decline in white, male, Jewish graduates of Princeton. Perhaps Anglo-Saxon notions of universal good, stiff upper lip, fair play, sportsmanship, noblesse oblige, and so forth are the real social constructs, while "Is it good for my tribe?" is the human default.
Its members will think of themselves as perpetually under assault (even if the assault never comes), and as the likely victims of acts of discrimination and exclusion. ("No Irish need apply.") As a result it will turn inward and present to the outside world a united and fiercely defensive face.
As Moshe Dayan demonstrated in 1967, however, sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
It will be informed and haunted by a conviction that no matter how well things may seem to be going, it is only a matter of time before there is a knock on the door and someone comes in and takes it all away.
By all the available evidence, formal and informal, precariousness does not mark the situation of the Jewish community today, at least not in this country.
Whether the measure is education, wealth, ownership of property, influence in the corridors of power, prominence in the professions, or accomplishments in the arts, Jews in the United States are visible and successful to a degree that is remarkable given their relatively small numbers (around 2 percent of the population). Yet as Professor Charles Small of Yale University reports, "Increasingly, Jewish communities around the world feel under threat," and there are some Jews in this country who share this feeling, not because they are themselves threatened (although that does occasionally happen), but because they fear - in the spirit of Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here" or Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" - that what is happening elsewhere may soon happen here.
Why should they think that? Part of the answer is to be found in the relationship between three words - Israel, Iraq and anti-Semitism. Much of the world has been opposed to the Iraq war from its beginning, and now after four years 70 percent of Americans share the world's opinion. Some who deplore the war believe that those who got us into it and cheered it on did so, at least in part, out of a desire to improve Israel's position in the Middle East. Those who hold this view (and of course there are other analyses of the war's origins) fear that the same people - with names like Wolfowitz, Pearle, Feith, Abrams, Kristol, Kagan, Krauthammer, Wurmser, Libby and Lieberman - are pushing for a strike against Iran, arguably a greater threat to Israel than Iraq ever was.
Why, they ask, should our foreign policy be held hostage to the interests of a small country that is perfectly capable of defending itself and is guilty of treating the Palestinians, whose land it appropriated, in ways that are undemocratic and even, in the opinion of many, criminal?
... One reason the [Israel] lobby is "immune from criticism," Mearsheimer and Walt explain, is that criticism, when it appears, is always re-described as anti-Semitism, and "anti-Semitism is something no one wants to be accused of."
Their point, and it has been made by many, is that there is no reason to assume that those who criticize Israel and argue that America's uncritical support for a flawed state is strategically unwise and morally wrong are anti-Semitic.
Maybe so, but there is some empirical evidence to the contrary. Charles Small and his Yale colleague Edward Kaplan have recently published an article in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the title of which also tells its own story: "Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe." What Small and Kaplan find is that "Those with extreme anti-Israel sentiment are roughly six times more likely to harbor anti-Semitic views than those who do not fault Israel on the measures studied, and among those respondents deeply critical of Israel, the fraction that harbors anti-Semitic views exceeds 50 percent." The authors conclude that, "even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors," "anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic" and will say things like "Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind" or "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country" or "Jews have too much power in international financial markets."
Small and Kaplan are careful to disclaim any causal implications that might be drawn from their analysis: they are not saying that anti-Semitism produces opposition to Israel or that opposition to Israel produces anti-Semitism, only that the two attitudes will more often than not be found in the same individual: scratch an opponent of Israel and you are likely - 56 percent of the time - to find an anti-Semite. This does suggest that if opposition to Israel increases, there will be an increase in anti-Semitism because the population of the 56 percenters will be larger. Is this something Jews, even Jews living in the United States, should be apprehensive about?
The answer to that question will depend on whether you think that there is a meaningful distinction to be made between the "old" and the "new" anti-Semitism. Old anti-Semitism, according to Brian Klug of Oxford University, is based on a hostility to and fear of "the Jew" as an alien and demonic figure. In this ancient and much retailed story, Klug tells us, in an article in Catalyst magazine last year, subhuman Jews wander from country to country and "form a state within a state, preying on the societies in whose midst they dwell." This is the anti-Semitism that came to full and disastrous flower in Nazi Germany.
The new anti-Semitism, in contrast, Klug continues, is rooted not in a hostility to "the Jew" as a vampire-like destroyer of cultures, but "in the controversial nature of the State of Israel and its policies." As such, "it is not a mutation of an existing 'virus,' but a brand new 'bug.'" That is to say, its origin is political rather than racial, and there is at least a chance that if its political source were removed - if Israel's policies were to change - its force would abate.
So there you have two stories: anti-Semitism is on the rise and it's time to get out those "Never Again" signs. Or, it's not anti-Semitism in the old virulent sense, but a rational, if problematic, response by Middle East actors and their supporters in the West to what they see as "an oppressive occupying force"; don't take it personally. I understand this second story, and appreciate its nuance, but I can't bring myself to accept it, if only because I believe that the viral version of anti-Semitism is always capable of regaining its full and deadly form even when it is apparently dormant or weakened. All it needs is a pretext, and any pretext will do. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn't exist, it would attach itself to something else; but it does exist, and anti-Semitism couldn't be happier.
Because I think this way, I can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future when American Jews might feel precarious once again. There is a certain irrationality to this imagining, given that at this moment, I am sitting in a very nice house in Delray Beach, Fla., and taking advantage of the opportunity afforded me by The New York Times to have my say on anything I like every Monday. And in a few months I will repair to an equally nice house in the upstate New York town of Andes, where I will be engaging in the same pleasurable activity. Sounds like a good life, and it is. So why am I entertaining fantasies of being dispossessed or discriminated against or even threatened?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that I spend much of my time in colleges and universities, where anti-Israel sentiment flourishes and is regarded more or less as a default position. And I have seen (with apologies to Shelley) that when hostility to Israel comes, anti-Semitism is not far behind. But the deeper explanation of my apprehension is generational. One of my closest friends and I agree on almost everything, but we part company on this question. He tells, and believes, the "criticism of Israel is one thing, anti-Semitism another" story. I hear it, but I can't buy it. He is 10 years my junior. I remember World War II. By the time he was born it was history. Maybe it's that simple.
Traditional football wisdom is that "The best offense is a good defense." Yet, there is a slowly emerging theory in football that the best defense is to stay on offense. Thus, the number of interceptions thrown is way down versus a generation ago because it's understood how disastrous a turnover is. Granted, football coaches are extremely conservative and hate being exposed to criticism for unconventional strategy, but the idea of not always punting the ball back to the other team on fourth down is slowly gaining popularity among the most assured coaches, such as Bill Belichick. Three years ago, Belichick notoriously had Tom Brady go for it on 4th and 2 on his own 29 rather than punt the ball back to Peyton Manning. Perhaps the next evolution will be more onside kickoffs after scoring. After all, in this era of high powered offenses, does it really matter if you let your opponents have the ball on their own 20 or on the 50? It's best to try to keep the ball in your own hands.
In other words, the best defense would be to never have to play defense. Always play offense. Stay offensive and take offense.
Analogously, my current Taki's column puts forward a theory of historical evolution that I don't recall seeing before:
Before 1967 and the Six Days War, American Jews had typically asked their classic question “Is It Good for the Jews?” about their own conduct.
Sandy Koufax’s pitching? Good for the Jews.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s atom-bomb espionage? Not good for the Jews. ...
After the 1960s, Jews stopped asking the question, “Is it good for the Jews?” about their own behavior and started asking it about everyone else’s.
Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here" or Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America"
ReplyDelete-------------
Well, for Japanese-Americans dispossessed and 'interned' during WWII, it DID happen here. But never mind all that. Roth just loves FDR for preventing it from happening to the Jews. As long as it's good for the Jews, it's good pure and simple.
"Old anti-Semitism, according to Brian Klug of Oxford University, is based on a hostility to and fear of 'the Jew' as an alien and demonic figure. In this ancient and much retailed story, Klug tells us, in an article in Catalyst magazine last year, subhuman Jews wander from country to country and 'form a state within a state, preying on the societies in whose midst they dwell.' This is the anti-Semitism that came to full and disastrous flower in Nazi Germany.
ReplyDeleteThe new anti-Semitism, in contrast, Klug continues, is rooted not in a hostility to 'the Jew' as a vampire-like destroyer of cultures, but 'in the controversial nature of the State of Israel and its policies.' As such, 'it is not a mutation of an existing 'virus,' but a brand new 'bug.''"
Fish is really missing the point and I'm afraid purposely so. The real question should be why did 'antisemitism' come to be? Did gentiles just cook it up out of the blue in their 'virulent' frenzy for the hell of it? That Jews went from place to place and acted in their tribal interests is irrefutable. That many Jews have subverted and undermined the cultures, borders, and values of gentile nations/peoples is also irrefutable. I mean just look at the US. Who've been at the forefront of radical feminism, interracialism, porn, trash culture, breakdown of community standards, anti-white political correctness, and etc? And look at the collusion among media, government, finance, law, and academia. Indeed, why has Fish been invited by NY Times to publish an article? Will NY Times ever give equal time to Kevin MacDonald?
So-called 'antisemitism' wasn't so much viral as anti-viral. It was a response to the doings of an alien people, and indeed, Jews have been an alien people in other nations. If Hindus or Chinese came to Israel and settled, wouldn't they be an 'alien people'? Didn't ancient Jews see Romans as alien invaders? If Chinese or Hindus came to Israel, took over finance and media and academia and bought up politicians and undermined the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, wouldn't Jews see it as a case of an alien people undermining Jewish power and interests? Well, why would it have been any different for European nations when Jews arrived in their midst and did a lot of things that Europeans disdained?
And by the way, how would New York Jews treat fundamentalist white Christians if a whole bunch of the latter came to the big apple and tried to change the liberal city into a conservative one? Jews would freak out.
Antisemitism was anti-viral, but like any medicine, an overdose can be dangerous, and that was the problem with Nazism. It didn't just try to deal with problem Jews but targeted all Jews, even patriotic pro-German ones. But the real reason for Nazism's downfall wasn't antisemitism but anti-Slavism as that dirty Shitler attacked Mother Russia and deservedly got his kraut ass kicked.
Let's put it this way. Blacks have legitimate grievances in South Africa as whites had used apartheid policies against them. The Wandering Boers went to other parts of the world, settled as an 'alien' people in Africa, and abused their power against blacks. So, blacks have reasons to be anti-white-ite. But such feelings can go crazy and lead to Boercide. Indeed, suppose a black Hitler comes to power in South Africa and all whites are killed. That would be horrible, but would it invalidate all of anti-white-ism? No. It would only invalidate the radical act of Boercide. Blacks may have a right to feel certain hate against whites--due to historical reasons--, but they shouldn't be wiping out all whites.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, the lower classes had a right to be angry in France and Russia during the revolution. They had been oppressed for too long. And in the case of Russia, wholesale massacre of the elites took place. That was taking it too far.
But, would that mean everything about anti-rich-ism was wrong? No. The oppressed have a right to feel hatred of the rich and push for social change. But they shouldn't be wiping out all rich folks.
Gentiles had a right to be anti-Jewish, blacks had a right to be anti-black, and the poor masses had a right to be anti-rich. The problem is Hitler took it too far and so did Stalin with communism. And Mugabe took anti-white-ism too far, and who knows what might happen in South Africa. Will there be a Rwanda-like situation, a genocide of whites? That would be horrible, but that still doesn't mean that everything about anti-white feelings among South African blacks would have been wrong or 'viral'.
It's like Americans might have gone a bit too far with firebombing Tokyo and nuking Hiro and Naga, but Americans weren't wrong to be mad about them 'Japs' bombing Pearl Harbor.
So, the real lesson to be learned from 'antisemitism' is that it wasn't entirely wrong but it was tragically radicalized and pushed to extremes. But then, any idea pushed to extremes leads to stuff like Killing Fields in Cambodia, Ukraine famine in the USSR, Great Leap in China, and etc. But just because class politics led to tens of millions of death, we don't say that any discussion of class resentment is 'viral' or 'virulent'. Sometimes, class anger is valid, and the thing is to to address the problems rationally and try to solve it.
The real problem with the issue of 'antisemitism' is the myth that Jews were totally innocent and that gentiles who came to dislike Jews were just a bunch of lunatics whose minds were infected by a 'virus'. Indeed, this is classic antigentilitism that says the gentile minds have been 'demonic' and 'diseased'. It's really a form of 'reverse antisemitism'. If extreme antisemites saw Jews as 'filthy and diseased', many Jews see European history as one where all those white people were 'virulent and diseased' with a paranoia called 'antisemitism' targeted at a totally innocent and wonderful people.
If Fish wants to understand the true nature of antisemitism, he should look at Jewish power and how it is used and what it has done to the white majority in America.
What is truly virulent and irrational in America is so many white conservatives sucking up to Jews when Jews have done so much to hurt and undermine white conservative America. Philosemitism is the real virus in the white mind.
That's a very discerning theory, Steve. Well done.
ReplyDeletecipher
[QUOTE] "Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind"[/QUOTE]
ReplyDeleteThis tribal mentality is not limited to just Jews. All groups who are not Non Hispanic White Gentiles, have a tribal mentality.
The vast majority of Hispanics don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind. The vast majority of Muslims do not care what happens to anyone but their own kind. The vast majority of Blacks do not care what happens to anyone but their own kind. This even applies to most of the so-called "model minority" group Asians.
It is only Non Hispanic White Gentiles, who on average have that "colorblind we are the world, there is only one race and that is the Human race" mentality.
The average delusional Non Hispanic White Gentile liberal believes that some Nigerian from the Yoruba tribe sees White folks as his fellow brothers and sisters of the Human race, but they don't.
Actually it might be 'good for the Jews' if anti-Israelism and its concomitant anti-semitism becomes/stays dominant on college arts campuses.
ReplyDelete1/ This will lead more Jews away from artsy fluff courses.
2/ By re-exposing American Jews to virulent, but non-violent anti-semitism (and how violent can an aging arts prof be?) it'll keep the gutsy Jews within the fold. The wimpy Jews will wimp out but as an HBDer who wants wimps within your group anyways?
The assumption has always been that all anti-semitism is bad for the Jews. I'm not so sure.
Its members will think of themselves as perpetually under assault (even if the assault never comes), and as the likely victims of acts of discrimination and exclusion. ("No Irish need apply.") As a result it will turn inward and present to the outside world a united and fiercely defensive face.
ReplyDeleteIt will be informed and haunted by a conviction that no matter how well things may seem to be going, it is only a matter of time before there is a knock on the door and someone comes in and takes it all away.
I have not read Kevin MacDonald's book, but isn't this what he was getting at? I see commenters attack MacDonald and ask people to show them the secret meeting place where the Jews are supposedly plotting world domination. When no one can come up with such a place, MacDonald is dismissed like the Protocols.
But Fish's passage seems to dovetail with MacDonald's belief that such a secret organization is unnecessary so long as a group thinks of itself as separate and under attack. I wonder if the NY Times would have printed this column if it had not been written by a Jew.
A combination of hypersensitivity and arrogant pride can bring about the every enmity one fears. I sense in reading history and with it the history of the Jews, that this is a kind of cycle.
ReplyDeleteThere's talk of eliminating the kickoff in professional football because it's not in the league's long term interest to have marginal players running full speed into each other 5-10 times per game and sloshing their brains around their skulls. Why should the NFL pay lifetime disability benefits to some guy who alternated between barely on the team, cut or on the practice squad for two to four years.
ReplyDeleteIt's very smart that Jews are dominant on the Left. Left is about resisting/challenging the powers-that-be. If Jews weren't prominent on the Left, gentiles would control the left and challenge Jewish power and privilege.
ReplyDeleteBut as long as Jews control the Left, they can paint the political struggle as being about taking on 'white' power and privilege. They can direct leftist energies away from Jews-as-target and toward people Jews don't like.
Jewish 'leftists' can also reformulate leftism to actually favor the privileged globalists over the class warriors. For example, the gay agenda doesn't help blacks, browns, or poor whites. It favors rich urban gays and their haute urban clientele. It is also a waste of leftist energies and resources away from more pressing issues.
In a way, communism has helped to shield the ruling elite in China. Chinese communists came to power by ousting rightist Chinese, and thereby the chinese communist party came to own and control 'leftist' politics. So, even though the current Chinese elite are rich pigs, they control the meaning of 'leftism.'
Same with Castro regime in Cuba.
If you wanna rule for a long time, don't just grab the wealth and power but gain control of the leftism.
But what's the success rate of an onside kick? When the other team is prepared for it, it seems like roughly 10%. When the other team has no idea it's coming it's a bit higher (the Saints starting the second half in Super Bowl XLIV).
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't seem like a good idea since no one can consistently put the onside kick into play without drawing a flag for doing it wrong. It almost always seems to not go 10 yards, go out of bounds, be illegally touched, or go straight to an opponent's arms.
Interestingly, rugby always has the scoring side receive the ensuing kickoff and maintain possession, but the ball changes hands so often in that game that a turnover isn't that bad.
How long before people like Fish begin to realize that massive immigration from countries in Asia and Latin America may erode American popular support for the state of Israel, rooted as it is in Protestant tradition?
ReplyDeleteSteve Sailer wrote: "After the 1960s, Jews stopped asking the question, “Is it good for the Jews?” about their own behavior and started asking it about everyone else’s."
ReplyDeleteThis Jew hastens to say that this claim is quite simply flat out false. As a Jew privy to what Jews say, Jews still ask whether their own behavior and everyone else's is "good for the Jews."
This is an old and stupid theory. The Nazis tried to peddle the same old crap. The innocent Christians are without guile and are tricked by the selfish Jews. Yeah - that's how WASPs ended up ruling 1/2 the world - by being selfless and naive.
ReplyDeleteThe simple truth about anti-semitism is that its driven by jealousy. Jews as a group are far most successful than other groups. There will always be friction between groups and jealousy will always fan the flames of anti-semitism. There is nothing anyone can do to stop this.
ReplyDeleteIf Jewish leaders can be made to understand that Asian immigration isn't good for the Jews, then maybe they would no longer be the most vociferious advocates for large scale immigration in general.
ReplyDeleteFish has no idea how much antisemitism he's generating right here.
ReplyDeleteJews are not preternaturally able to subvert White society, but they are on average a little smarter, and they are very conscious of themselves and can coordinate their activites quite well. They are verbally very facile, and are attracted to the media, entertainment and publishing. And while they are a small minority, they are not that small. They have a critical size numerically, that combined with their aptitudes and proclivities means they are able to exert enormous sway over what is perceived to be the consensus.
ReplyDeleteI for one am not the least jealous of Jews. I do recognize their qualities and I believe we have the right to have opinions and make decisions that are not those Jews would hold and make.
Towards that end, I have educated my children that while Jews are not evil and should not be "hated", we should understand them for what they are and adjust our thinking accordingly. We discuss the Jewish influence on movies, new and old, and why Jews are usually liberal, but otherwise neoconservative or libertarian/Randite.
We are always polite and respectful to everyone, Jewish or not, but we are aware of which of our acquaintances and business vendors are Jewish. I've got them asking key questions at least mentally when certain issues come up. They have been subjected to some comments that aren't very nice, but I have taught them to act with class about it.
Fish has no idea how much antisemitism he's generating right here.
ReplyDeleteAnti-semitism -- real or imaginary, naturally occurring or artificially stoked -- is the tie that binds Jews together as a group. As a Jew who is interested in maintaining the Jewish community, Stanley Fish likely does know that he is generating anti-semitism.
Feature, not a bug.
Clearly Sailer is deeply, emotionally invested in the interpretation of the Iraq War as some furtive pro-Israel sortie (more recently characterizing it as 90-lbs. weakling Americans trying to appear manly in juxtaposition to Charles-Atlas-style Israelis, presumably kicking sand in the poor New Yorkers' faces). There was no shortage of news reports and "analysis" pieces at the time, quoting either Israeli gov't fixers or their first outer layer of consultants explaining, Nah, Iran is our real problem, haven't been too worried about Saddam since witnessing his pathetic '91 effort; and of course, without trying hard, anyone can tabulate a long list of gentile names militating in favor of the 2003 Iraq War. But because he constitutionally cannot understand that U.S. Jews ≠ Israelis (and believes goyim want to operate under some kind of parallel unconscious solidarity) Sailer remains in the grip of his "Likud plot" monolithic explanation of everything. His stupidity on the point is totally impenetrable.
ReplyDeleteLast anon is correct, Israel wanted Saddam in place as a check to Iran, as did Saudi. Both argued against the Iraq War on this basis but Bush had an agenda, and was seduced by the idea of all that cheap Iraqi oil on the global market. And was convinced by Saddam's poor showing that it would be a cakewalk, and a short-cut to stopping Jihadi violence (by producing lots and lots of money out of Iraq). Plus he feared being labeled weak by Dems (ironically) if he did nothing.
ReplyDeleteJews have historically been scapegoats -- blamed for the Black Death, plagues of all sorts, defeats in wars, etc. When Jews were exiled from England in the 1300's, that was more of the same. Jews historically have been outside centers of power: not the military, not agriculture, not kings and princes. They've been scapegoats for illiterate Medieval Europeans and greedy kings.
What has been arguably "bad for Jews" is concentration in a parasitical class, along with most other SWPL elites and pseudo elites. Say what you want about Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, at least they created their own wealth. But outside a knack for being funny, that's not really applicable. Jews are almost totally absent in manufacturing, oil exploration and recovery, farming/agriculture, things that produce wealth not middle-man it ala Barack Obama or Jessie JAckson JR.
In that, they face the same danger all the other SWPL folk do occupying things like Prof. of Literature, or what-not.
Automation and the Internet.
Which can erase who job categories, replacing thousands of Lit Professors with five guys streaming on the internet, the superstars. Same with middle management in government, as pressure mounts to make the Welfare State less prone to "leakage" to take care of say, 5 million more Mexicans each year.
"Clearly Sailer is deeply, emotionally invested ..."
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that despite the evidence of Jews having a higher verbal IQ they begin most of their arguments by attacking their opponent's psyche, sanity or motives? Would it be so hard for people of their mental abilities to argue on the facts?
"There was no shortage of news reports and "analysis" pieces at the time, quoting either Israeli gov't fixers or their first outer layer of consultants explaining, Nah, Iran is our real problem, haven't been too worried about Saddam since witnessing his pathetic '91 effort; and of course, without trying hard, anyone can tabulate a long list of gentile names militating in favor of the 2003 Iraq War."
ReplyDeleteConsidering these sorts of comments in light of what we all witnessed during the runup to the Iraq war makes me think that America's strange decision to join England in World War I needs to be investigated more closely.
Jews would be crazy if they did not think of prewar Germany all the time. They were successful and integrated there too ... until ..
ReplyDelete"The simple truth about anti-semitism is that its driven by jealousy."
ReplyDeleteSounds like some 7th grade airhead from the ghetto -- "Y'all bitches is juss JELLISS. Well okay then, LET the haters hate!"
The Parsis, like the Ashkenazi Jews, are an economic elite group of foreign origin, but everybody in their host country loves them because they're humble and generous, not arrogant and stingy.
I'll bet some clueless, nutty black has provided the same insight into the origins of white racism -- they're just jealous of the black man's domination of sports, his bigger dick, or whatever else.
No self-investigation at all.
"Why is it that despite the evidence of Jews having a higher verbal IQ they begin most of their arguments by attacking their opponent's psyche, sanity or motives? Would it be so hard for people of their mental abilities to argue on the facts?"
ReplyDeleteBecause this sort of personal condemnation is a thousand times more effective than Socratic argument, and they know it, and that's why they use it so frequently and so successfully.
If you want to win a real debate you don't attack the other man's facts and logic, you attack the other man as an individual and make others fearful of associating themselves with him.
The Parsis, like the Ashkenazi Jews, are an economic elite group of foreign origin, but everybody in their host country loves them because they're humble and generous, not arrogant and stingy.
ReplyDeleteThis is a stupid comparison. But I'm not surprised since you seem to make the dumbest arguments all the time.
The Parsis are a much smaller group than Ashkenazis. They're like around 100,000, which is around 1% of Ashkenazim. They were persecuted in Iran and most of them ended up in India, which has such a huge population that the Parsis might as well not exist. And their diaspora of a couple thousand here and there is so small to be virtually unnoticeable. Nobody "loves" them anywhere. They're too small to be distinguished, and they're just lumped in together with Iranians or Indians.
Jews have a Chinese finger trap-like mindset. The more non-Jews acknowledge behaviors, opinions and actions of Jews the more Jews push back with their own pro-Jewish/ anti-non-Jewish attitudes. Instead of looking inward at why no matter where Jews go they eventually are not well liked. They take the perspective that nothing is wrong with them and everything is wrong with non-Jews and they need to be fixed.
ReplyDeleteClearly Sailer is deeply, emotionally invested in the interpretation of the Iraq War as some furtive pro-Israel sortie
ReplyDeleteIs it just Sailer?
Because this sort of personal condemnation is a thousand times more effective than Socratic argument, and they know it, and that's why they use it so frequently and so successfully.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to win a real debate you don't attack the other man's facts and logic, you attack the other man as an individual and make others fearful of associating themselves with him.
Bingo!
"Clearly Sailer is deeply, emotionally invested in the interpretation of the Iraq War as some furtive pro-Israel sortie..."
ReplyDeleteWatching the neocon mind at work is fascinating thing.
I think black people know and understand why people don't trust them but that Jews don't.
ReplyDeleteInstead of looking inward at why no matter where Jews go they eventually are not well liked. They take the perspective that nothing is wrong with them and everything is wrong with non-Jews and they need to be fixed
ReplyDeleteI'm sure they do look inward, especially when they are coming of age and having an identity crisis. But, most probably come to the conclusion that no matter what they do or think, they are Jewish and will always be alien in some manner.
But, most probably come to the conclusion that no matter what they do or think, they are Jewish and will always be alien in some manner.
ReplyDeleteI grew up around a lot of secular and reformed Jews in 1970's Los Angeles. Even today, there is not a single Jew alive, as young as 10, who hasn't heard exaggerated first hand accounts of Nazi Germany. It's what shapes their identity. Every Jew I know has also read Mein Kampt by the time they entered high school.
Steve, the change you observe is basically due to hubris as defined by the ancient Greeks... or in this case the Jewish variant of it “chutzpah.”
ReplyDeleteAs a business person of thirty years and having dealt with a fair number of business startups I have seen this pattern played out again and again …. and again.
As soon as one of the businesses I was involved in help launching gained a modicum of success (not all of them did mind you) one very common mistake I have seen is the young CEO of the company, filled with pride, instead of trying to continue to expand their market would turn to what appeared to be simpler ways to increase profits. Invariably, these methods would include exploiting existing employees, exploiting existing customers, or exploiting existing suppliers, providers, or partners.
It’s as if there is something in human nature (not just Jewish people) that as soon as someone gets a little leverage there is a tendency to want to exploit that advantage for maximum return. “Overreaching” is human nature. I don’t think the motivation is necessarily malicious rather it stems from some strange mixture of entitlement and greed.
Of course all the aforementioned strategies were usually absolutely disastrous for the companies… because it breeds resentment. Unless you have a true monopoly … employees will find other employers, competitors will undercut you in price or design and steal your customers who you started to gouge, and suppliers will find other companies etc…in short your friends will abandon you and the wolves will come.
Jews are an unusual case in that they were only fully emancipated and given the right to participate in White Gentile society two hundred year or so ago.
Their ascendancy to power in academia, the media, and Wall Street in the U.S. became fairly obvious, even to them, around the time of the war in the late 1960s of which you speak.
You would think that given their historic record as being the most reviled people in the world they would behave differently. Because let’s face it what happened in Germany fifty years ago is only the latest instance of not being able to get along with the host population a pattern that began with their expulsion from Egypt two thousand years ago (as depicted in the Bible) with literally hundreds of other such instances having occurred in different countries between these events.
Do any other people have this dubious claim to fame?
What’s the definition of insanity…. doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
The Jews say it is jealousy … while others say it is revulsion. Well let’s see in the eyes of many White gentiles …what they now most commonly associate Jews with is… liberalism, feminism , pornography, Hollywood, white collar financial crimes, gay rights and many anti–Christian activities…. in short cultural decadence ( and of course wars for the rogue state Israel who refuses to obey U.N orders or sign a nuclear non-proliferation agreement).
If you are multilingual, and can read French or German, reading the newspapers in France or Germany from the late 1920s and early 1930s which are available online is illuminative because you see the same sorts of names involved with the same sort of activities with the same sorts of disgust exhibited by White Gentiles. It’s as if we are in the Weimar Republic phase two without the hyper inflation yet.
Now, I understand that Professor Raab at Brandies, a leading Jewish intellectual, is rejoicing that Whites will now soon be a minority in the U.S. so that the Jews will never have to face another holocaust in the U.S. like they did in Europe (remind me to tell the children that my uncle who died at Normandy never had of this news).
Maybe he is right but I don’t see any particular love from Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians toward Jews…. In fact I see quite the opposite.
Marriages of convenience rarely last.
Modern art. Modern art.
ReplyDeleteThere will always be friction between groups and jealousy will always fan the flames of anti-semitism. There is nothing anyone can do to stop this.
ReplyDeleteOh but there is. Separation. Whats the problem with that? You're in Israel, we're wherever and then we cant oppress you can we?
Today's Daily Telegraph has an excellent piece on the links between Israel and the British Conservative Party
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/9740044/The-cowardice-at-the-heart-of-our-relationship-with-Israel.html
In my relatively intimate dealings with younger Jews (Gen X and on), I'd say that their politics, on the whole, mirror SWPL politics and for mostly the same reasons. The Jews I know are mostly lawyers, mid-level financiers, grad students, and "digital artisans" of some kind or another. This is a different crowd than the baby-boomer, post Holocaust generation that Fish is referring to and the concerns and worldviews of these people seem to be fundamentally different than their parents and grandparents. Maybe it's all a put-on, but the young-ish Jews I know are so firmly assimilated into the American mainstream, that their Judaism really means very little to them and probably even less to their peers. They do not face any meaningful form of discrimination and are totally at ease in just about any social setting this side of the San Clemente Yacht Club. Much to the consternation of their elders, they're marrying non-jews in huge numbers (anywhere between 50% and 60% depending on your source), are abandoning their faith at all time highs (35% of Jews consider themselves non-religious), and even taking faddishly anti-Zionist political positions (remember these dufuses?).
ReplyDeleteThis is what worries Fish. Not Iraq or Iran or some reinvigorated strain of antisemitism. Fish, like many Jews of his generation, are fearful that their children aren't maintaining their culturally insular walls, and, like their well-heeled German forebears, might soon find themselves under siege. Whether this fear is grounded in anything real, isn't really the point. Fish isn't writing this for the goyim. This article is directed at the kids on his lawn. Tradition matters, he's saying. Your ethnic heritage matters. History matters. And if you don't believe me, wait till you see what happens. We've been down this road before.
Why should they think that?
ReplyDeleteEthnocentrism. They long ago learned that if nobody else was going to create conflict between the tribe and everyone else, they'd have to do it themselves. It's how they've survived this long. I'm open to the idea that this is an unconscious impulse, a side effect of ethnocentrism, though. Or a combination of these kinds of factors.
Maybe so, but there is some empirical evidence to the contrary. Charles Small and his Yale colleague Edward Kaplan have recently published an article in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the title of which also tells its own story
Jews' obsession with "ANTI-SEMITISM!!!" is a pretty obvious sign of their own racism. And a great way to gin up the conflict they need.
say things like "Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind"
Obsessing over "ANTI-SEMITISM!!!" and "the silent holocaust" (of assimilation) and the like is a great way to create "ANTI-SEMITISM!!!," something Jews simply cannot live without.
In this ancient and much retailed story, Klug tells us, in an article in Catalyst magazine last year, subhuman Jews wander from country to country and "form a state within a state, preying on the societies in whose midst they dwell."
Biased pro-Jewish language aside, how is this "story" not essentially accurate?
the viral version of anti-Semitism is always capable of regaining its full and deadly form even when it is apparently dormant or weakened.
Perhaps the Jewish certainty of belief in the "virus" of "ANTI-SEMITISM!!!" is based on the knowledge that they are its vectors?
Because I think this way, I can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future when American Jews might feel precarious once again.
Because he prefers survival as a persecuted and hated minority to the "death" of acceptance, tolerance, and assimilation, he enjoys imagining such a precarious time for Jews. Basically, the Jewish strategy is to find an optimum balance between the two extremes; just enough animus to prevent amalgamation, but not so much as to trigger expulsion or awareness of Jewish exploitation and malfeasance society-wide.
So why am I entertaining fantasies of being dispossessed or discriminated against or even threatened?
Because you're a racist.
Clearly Sailer is deeply, emotionally invested in the interpretation of the Iraq War as some furtive pro-Israel sortie
ReplyDeletehttp://mondoweiss.net/2007/12/james-petras-ha.html
"How Anti-Iraq-War Jews Licensed Neoconservatism"
Tom Wolfe wrote a hilarious essay about Fish called "The Rococo Marxist." Fish is the media's avuncular, professorial go-to-guy to reassure the flyover goyim that whatever fresh-new PC campus outrage makes into the mainstream is a tempest in a teapot.
ReplyDeleteI think it was Normal Mailer who reduced jewish thinking in the latter half of the 20th century down to one question: Is it good for the jews?
ReplyDeleteCredit where credit is due.
I wonder how intermarriage with gentiles is going to play out. I seem to run across quite a few half-Jews these days. On the other hand, the ultra Orthodox have lots of chidren but shy away from mainstream occupations.
ReplyDeleteFish seems to be offering an elaborate, over-long argument as to why tribalism is okay for jews, but not for white gentiles.
ReplyDelete"No one ever asks, is it good for the white, male, Anglo-Saxon graduates of Princeton; it's always good for them."
ReplyDeleteDon't know how Stanley Fish can be considered bright in light of a such a blatantly stupid line like that.
Yes, disparate impact, affirmative action, a progressive ideology rammed down the throats of kids, teaching white kids to hate themselves and their ancestry, an administration blatantly discriminating against WASPs,and redistributing the wealth that WASPs earn through talent and hard work to shiftless NAMs, media silence on obscene NAM brutality towards whites, media and academia presenting a distorted picture day in and day out of white men as evil idiots to blame for all the world's problems, while re-assigning the credit for the genius and hard work of white men that built the world to minorities; but according to Fish, its all good for us. What he really means is back to his first question, that its all good for the Scots-Irish.
I've made a point several times on this site, but it doesn't seem to be of interest.
ReplyDeleteJews and Asians seem to go for a lot of the same niches, ie professions that the pipeline is through elite colleges.
Jews seem to be abandoning the sciences, leaving it for the Asians.
Asians don't really seem interested in becoming Lawyers.
So I kind of expect Medicine and Wall Street to kind of be a competitive area between the two.
I also think that the recent Unz article will be highly read in the Asian community. Be kind of interesting to hear what kind of reaction it had there.
White evangelicals are strongly supportive of Israel. If the new study is correct, they are probably low in anti-semitism. We then have the question of why Jewish voters hated George Bush and his hick supporters while while loving Barack Obama and his anti-semite supporters. Steve, your talents are needed to address this question.
ReplyDeleteIts members will think of themselves as perpetually under assault (even if the assault never comes), and as the likely victims of acts of discrimination and exclusion. ("No Irish need apply.") As a result it will turn inward and present to the outside world a united and fiercely defensive face.
ReplyDeleteHow fairly are such people likely to treat outsiders, particularly from the group they perceive as a threat? How conscientious are they likely to be about keeping their own chauvinism in check?
Cennbeorc (recovering philo-semite)
But because he constitutionally cannot understand that U.S. Jews ≠ Israelis (and believes goyim want to operate under some kind of parallel unconscious solidarity) Sailer remains in the grip of his "Likud plot" monolithic explanation of everything. His stupidity on the point is totally impenetrable.
ReplyDeleteThat's the more generous explanation. Just as likely, though, Sailer knows better (he is a genuinely smart guy). However, Sailer's livelihood is dependant on two sources:
1) the wealthy foreign criminal Taki Theodoracopulos, who's an out and proud antisemite, and
2) donations from his readers, who get fired up by Sailer's passive-aggressive Jew-baiting.
In the 1940s when I was in my early teens, this was in Brooklyn, the term seemed to mean 'Does the fact reflect well on jews?' or 'Is it a shame/scandal on the Jews?' You, Steve, get yourself off on the Jew issue excessively and apparently get off on stirring up others who obsess on the Jewish conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteI grant you that there are some very perceptive comments scattered in among the obsessed.
Merry Xmas
Mike in Austin
How difficult is it to understand that a diaspora will be resented and eventually hated if they:
ReplyDelete1) attack the host culture through the legal system
2) capture media outlets and use them to propagandize the population
3) foment collectivist revolution and neutralize the native elite
The rational native reaction to these activities is not 'jealousy'...
No, it's not Ron Unz posting.
ReplyDeleteMost of the anti-semitic theories of anti-semitism on display here are proof of gentile stupidity and lack of historical knowledge. (I kid re the stupidity! It's only true for gentile conspi-racists (look at that Jewish wordplay, suckers!)--i.e., those who see the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast.)
Jew-hatred goes back at least as far as the early Christian era, an animosity that was *religious* in origin. The Jewish convert Paul couldn't stand that the Jews wouldn't convert, and Christians have never been happy that Jews know the Five Books of Moses better than they do--e.g., the mistaken translation of "alma" as "virgin"--and that Jews know all the best arguments for why Jesus was not the messiah. Christians never appreciated it that, for instance, Jews whupped their butts in the medieval public disputations. Likewise, Muslim hatred of Jews was and is religious in nature. The birth and success of Israel merely magnified this 100 times; Muslims never really got angry at contemporaneous Soviet (read atheist) domination. Atheists play no role in the Muslim understanding of history.
In the earliest known recorded encounter of ancient Greeks and Jews, the Greeks called the Jews "a nation of philosophers." Don't forget that the Hellenization of the Jews (which is evident in the Talmud and in all subsequent Jewish reasoning) is part of the Jewish genius. And of course the Jews are the largest contributor to Western morality, something that especially irks immoralists and nihilists, including National Socialists and Marxists. Nietzsche rightfully pointed out that Jews invented conscience and guilt--prior to that, all cultures were honor/shame cultures. Jesus' turning the other cheek represents the definitive rejection of the honor/shame culture.
Starting with the expulsion of Jews from Palestine by the Romans, Jews were forced to be itinerants. Yes, this both sharpened them and deformed them, and caused complicated arms-length relations with their host nations (e.g., Jewish moneylending emerged *due* to Christian law). But empirically, well-off nations have been those that have had a high Jewish population (yes, go ahead and debate causation and correlation--but some nations, such as the Dominican Republic and 17th Century Poland, have *invited* Jews to emigrate for this reason). Are Jews a virus or a vitamin? Were kings foolish to have Court Jews and Jewish doctors? Do you enjoy your Polio vaccine? Sure, you'll point to the Russian Revolution, but those were atheist Jews (with genuine grievances against the violent anti-semitic populace, stupid Tsars, and forced military service)--unlike nearly all Jews up to that time.
It is undeniable that modern Jew-hatred is due in large part to resentment toward their disproportionate success (Nietzsche got ressentiment backward). In unfree countries, the general tendency is for middleman minorities, like the Chinese in Southeast Asia, to be persecuted. (See Amy Chua's "World on Fire.") As for the poster who points to the single counterexample of the Parsis, may I note that they are 0.006% of the Indian population?
That anti-semitism is a contagious delusion can be seen from the fact that there is significant anti-semitism in Japan even though there have never been Jews there.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
So much Jew-hatred on this blog is due to that fact that many of its readers self-congratulate themselves on their high intelligence (an important part of their self-esteem, self-identity, and sense of superiority), yet are infuriated by the fact that so many Jews are far to the right of them on the bell curve. If you wish to measure man according to IQ, it's not fun to come up short.
Jefferson:
ReplyDeleteMost humans care a lot more what happens to "us" than to "them." The question is what criteria you use for defining us and them. For example, I care a lot more what happens to my family members than to strangers, and a lot more what happens to Americans than foreigners. That doesn't mean I don't care at all, just that, say, theTaliban murdering Afghans in Afghanistan has a very different emotional impact on me than the Taliban murdering Americans in America.
It's very common to hold outsiders to a higher standard than your own people--nothing is more common than hearing someone make excuses for awful behavior from someone he likes that he'd never excuse in an enemy. But that does not lead in a good direction, overall. Blacks are not at all well served by willingness of some blacks and whites at the top to make excuses for dumb or thuggish behavior, conservatives aren't well served from widespread unwillingness among conservatives to speak ill of other conservatives, etc.
Anon 12:22:
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty understandable, right? I mean, within living memory, one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world did its level best to murder every Jew they could lay their hands on, which turned out to be a good fraction of all the Jews in the world. That sort of thing tends to stick in your mind as important.
"exaggerated first hand accounts of Nazi Germany"
ReplyDeleteOh those Nazis really weren't such bad fellows. A bit rough around the edges perhaps, but they meant well.
Hmmm... if the younger jews don't even consider themselves jewish anymore, then the question then becomes - do the non-jews agree?
ReplyDeleteIf they agree, then there's no problem, save for the issue of the ever shrinking and exploited white majority/minority. Nobody is going to call for expelling the jews, and even if they do, these young people wouldn't be affected because for all intents and purposes, they are no longer jews in the eyes of the gentiles - they are gentiles themselves.
If the gentiles disagree - a jew is always a jew regardless of what the person himself thinks, then Mr Fisher may be right.
Good hustle - if you criticize Israel you're an antisemite.
ReplyDelete"Actually it might be 'good for the Jews' if anti-Israelism and its concomitant anti-semitism becomes/stays dominant on college arts campuses."
ReplyDeleteIt will definitely reduce support for Open Borders. Indeed, it already has. See "High Noon to Midnight: Why Current Immigration Policy Dooms American Jewry" by Stephen Steinlight (http://www.cis.org/ImmgrationEffectsOnAmericanJewry). This essay is definitely in the vein of "Is it good for...". However, the author reaches all of the right conclusions for the right reasons.
"Irish need no apply"
Is a myth folks. Wake up. See http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm for an essay on the subject. Persecution paranoia is not limited to any one group.
Luke Lea - "How long before people like Fish begin to realize that massive immigration from countries in Asia and Latin America may erode American popular support for the state of Israel, rooted as it is in Protestant tradition?"
It's coming but very slowly. See the Stephen Steinlight essay mentioned above. It's a good read. However, the real value is in sending it to anyone who still thinks Open Borders "Is good for the ...".
"If Jewish leaders can be made to understand that Asian immigration isn't good for the Jews, then maybe they would no longer be the most vociferous advocates for large scale immigration in general."
That will never happen until Asian immigrants start to express overt anti-Semitism. Conversely, many Jews are very concerned about immigration from the Middle East for exactly that reason. In general, Jews tend to view Asian immigrants as "kindred spirits" which in many respects they are. Asians tend to be well-educated, hard working, entrepreneurial, family oriented, liberal (these days), etc. "Yellow Fever" runs rampant in the Jewish community. A joke from a long time ago is that you could find the Jewish neighborhood in any city by looking for the Chinese restaurants.
"We discuss the Jewish influence on movies, new and old, and why Jews are usually liberal, but otherwise neoconservative or libertarian/Randite."
ReplyDeleteOf course, that's somewhat true. However, a substantial fraction of the Jewish community is strenuously pro-American. Notably, Jews are very active in the immigration restriction community. Their hero is Samuel Gompers (the founder of the AFL), himself a Jewish immigrant from the UK.
"Clearly Sailer is deeply, emotionally invested in the interpretation of the Iraq War as some furtive pro-Israel sortie"
Like any great and failed enterprise, the 2003 Iraq war had many origins. However, it's not crazy, paranoid, or anti-Semitic to suggest that Neocon support for the war was at least partially driven by support for Israel. Note that a common justification for the war back then was that it would "create a bastion of democracy in the Middle East with human rights, equal treatment of women, free markets, the rule of law, and friendly relations with Israel". Of course, this newly minted Iraq would then serve as an inspiration for democratic change throughout the Middle East. It was a completely delusional worldview and things didn't exactly workout that way. However, that kind of rhetoric was common at the time. Note that Bush urged his staff to read Natan Sharansky's book.
A useful point (as made by others) is that support for the Iraq war was stronger among Jews in the U.S. than in Israel. Israelis had an appropriately wary view of the war.
Of course, oil was obviously a factor in the Iraq war. Not in the usual nonsensical left-wing way. No one in the U.S. government fantasized that American oil companies would control Iraq's oil fields after the war ended (they didn't and still don't). However, there was a real (and very legitimate) concern that Saddam would eventually use his oil revenues to build nuclear weapons. It wasn't eminent in 2003. But the sanctions regime was slowly collapsing. The converse point is that the U.S. government thought that "peak oil" could be pushed back by 10-20 years by allowing Iraq to develop its massive reserves (not resources). That actually happening to a degree right now.
is it food for the fish?
ReplyDeleteThe article says anti-zionism correlates with antisemitism, but what exactly is 'antisemitism'?
ReplyDeleteIf it means 'gas all Jews', it's clearly crazy and evil.
But if it's a view that notices a pattern of Jewish behavior that undermines the interests, integrity, and power of the majority gentile population, what is wrong with it?
Indeed, I would argue that anti-zionism IS antisemitism in the sense that Palestinians, once the resounding majority of 'Palestine', got to not only witness but experience the Jewish way of power.
In other words, what Jews did in the Middle East fit the pattern of their behavior in other parts of the world. In that sense, antisemitism can be legit if it's an understanding of Jewish impulses and intentions around the world.
Jews have historically been scapegoats -- blamed for the Black Death, plagues of all sorts, defeats in wars, etc. When Jews were exiled from England in the 1300's, that was more of the same. Jews historically have been outside centers of power: not the military, not agriculture, not kings and princes. They've been scapegoats for illiterate Medieval Europeans and greedy kings.
ReplyDeleteIt takes two to tango. You need to read up on some Spanish history. Jews actively assisted the Muslims in their conquest of Spain. To this day many Jews still consider Islamic Spain a high point.
Many Jews also worked with the Ottomans to collect the so-called child tax in occupied Greece.
And of course many Europeans remember the scourge of communism, disproportionately pushed by Jews, and the ensuing destruction it caused such as the Holodomor. Even Israelis are acknowledging this.
Does this means that Jews should be persecuted? No, but just like the rest of us, it means they should be aware of their actions and the consequences it has on others. To just dismiss the entire history of Jewish-Gentile conflict as irrational hatred and jealously of the Jews by the Gentiles doesn't fit. Jews have run afoul of dozens of European nations in widely differing points of time, from Rome to Catholic Spain to Stalinist Russia. I find it hard to believe that those various Europeans, separated by language, culture, religion and time, were somehow singularly united in their hatred of Jews.
whiskey wrote, "Last anon is correct, Israel wanted Saddam in place as a check to Iran, as did Saudi. Both argued against the Iraq War on this basis but Bush had an agenda, and was seduced by the idea of all that cheap Iraqi oil on the global market. And was convinced by Saddam's poor showing that it would be a cakewalk, and a short-cut to stopping Jihadi violence (by producing lots and lots of money out of Iraq). Plus he feared being labeled weak by Dems (ironically) if he did nothing."
ReplyDeleteFirst, Bush would not have appeared weak for not attacking Iraq, because if memory serves, he already had a place to attack, Afghanistan, and a bogey man to pursue, Bin Laden. Remember 9-11?
Second, in December 2002, Robert Novak reported this about Ariel Sharon, "In private conversation with Hagel and many other members of Congress, the former general leaves no doubt that the greatest U.S. assistance to Israel would be to overthrow Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. That view is widely shared inside the Bush administration, and is a major reason why U.S. forces today are assembling for war."
Seneca: "I don’t see any particular love from Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians toward Jews"
ReplyDeleteThis notion that Jews are safer under multiculturalism is ahistorical - the opposite seems to be true. After all, Austria-Hungary and the Russian empire were "multicultural" as all hell, and they were hotbeds of anti-semitism. By contrast, boringly homogeneous Denmark was the only country to save all its Jews from the Nazis. Why aren't people drawing the obvious conclusion: that Jews are safer when the dominant majority doesn't feel threatened?
I have not read Kevin MacDonald's book, but isn't this what he was getting at?
ReplyDeleteMacDonald wrote a trilogy on the Jewish group evolutionary strategy.
The Cliff's Notes:
Book 1 -- Jews coalesced into a cohesive group. What is a "group"? Read David Sloan Wilson.
Book 2 -- Competition between the Jewish group and more-individualistic Europeans often produced a reaction (anti-semitism) since group strategies outcompete individualist strategies. The reaction sometimes included efforts by Europeans to implement group strategies of their own to counter the advantage provided by the Jewish group strategy.
Book 3 -- A number of 20th-century Jewish intellectual and political movements (like Boasian anthropology, the Frankfurt School, and open borders) were developed to prevent European-derived peoples from acting as cohesive groups.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT1PFxk5zMk
ReplyDeleteMarriage Plot, a glimpse into generation X conceptions of society.
There is one form of rugby - the seven-a-side version of rugby union - in which the side that has scored kicks off. Unlike the full versions of the game, possession in sevens is almost certain to be won by the receiving team, so it helps to ensure that one team doesn't dominate possession throughout the game.
ReplyDeleteI don't really get how defence can be the best form of attack. Attack can certainly be the best form of defence in that if you attack your opponents relentlessly and skilfully enough, they won't have a chance to attack you back. But simply defending won't necessarily guarantee you any attacking opportunities. That said, I have a minimal understanding of American Football, so maybe my association football-based reasoning doesn't apply.
"This notion that Jews are safer under multiculturalism is ahistorical - the opposite seems to be true. After all, Austria-Hungary and the Russian empire were "multicultural" as all hell, and they were hotbeds of anti-semitism. By contrast, boringly homogeneous Denmark was the only country to save all its Jews from the Nazis."
ReplyDeleteDenmark was a dinky nation. Neither Danish nor Jews could hope to be a major power in the world, and so, they just quietly minded their own business.
But Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russian Empire were BIG POWERS, and as such, Austrians and Russians thought in big terms--and this sense of bigness rubbed off on Jews. It's like a Jew living in a quiet small town will just try to get along, but a Jew in NY will be influenced by all the drama of power and wealth. He will think and act BIG too.
When a people think BIG, they are likely to get proud, nationalistic, and aggressive. And Russians and Austrians were like that, which is why WWI happened. Though anti-Jewish sentiments were widespread in both nations, Jews would have been worse off if those nations were more homogeneous. Russians were often too busy beating up on Muslims and Poles to worry about Jews. And Austrian and Hungarian elites forged close ties with Jews to run the empire.
What Jews fear most is something like Nazi Germany. A homogeneous nation that thinks in BIG terms. Unlike Danes, Germans could become a great power, and this fact made Germans very sensitive to signs of their own weakness. That such a small minority such as Jews gained so much wealth and influence in Germany was deeply disturbing to many Germans. If Germans had less pride, it would have mattered less. But they had the 'great people' pride, and so, they resented Jewish power. (Mexicans don't have much pride, and so, they don't seem to mind that conquis and Carlos Slim from Lebanon owns much of Mexico).
In the US, Jews gained elite status, and America is a powerful nation with BIG ideas and feelings. It was created through aggression and conquest and now rules much of the world. So, Jews are worried about the aggressive and arrogant aspect of American power. So, what better way to neutralize some of that power by diversifying America so that various gentile groups will be vying for differing visions of America? As for what remains of BIG feelings, mold them to serve Jewish interests around the world, especially in the Middle East.
Look at American aggression toward Iran. A lot of Americans, especially white goyim, hate Iran as much as Europeans used to hate Jews. Iran hasn't done a thing to the US, but US talks of war and dropping bombs.
So, Jews are not entirely wrong about their fears of American arrogance and power. It's still there. A lot of white Americans who used to badmouth Jews are now howling about Iran the same way.
Different target but the same passions.
So, Jews would rather control and direct such anger/aggression toward enemies of Israel in foreign affairs. And in domestic affairs, Jews would rather lessen such aggression by having various goy groups aggress against one another than at the Jew.
Was Foundation by Asimov about Christianity laying the basis for Jewish power?
ReplyDeleteRome destroyed Israel but the seed of Jewish thought, Christianity, spread out across the Roman Empire that soon fell. Christianity spread all across Europe. Over time, a new civilization developed and grew in strength. As Christianity said 'Jews killed Jesus', Christians were often harsh on Jews across the centuries, but Christianity also made Europeans reject their own indigenous and particularist cultures and see the story in the Old Testament as their real origins and foundations. Thus, even as Christianized Europeans didn't like Jews, they became part of the Jewish spiritual order. And even as they persecuted Jews as killers of Christ, they also prayed for the conversion of the Jews and respected Jews as the original people of the Book.
Most importantly, Christianity planted in the hearts of Christian Europeans the idea of sin, guilt, redemption, and repentance. In time, Europeans got all guilty about everything they did. Christianity built up the West as a power but also weakened western man's sense of pride. Thus, Jews were able to finally move in and take the power/wealth of the West while the guilt-ridden white man just said "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."
If Europe hadn't been Christianized, Europeans never would have developed a sin-guilt conscience, and they would have seen Jews as their spiritual brethren of the same God.
So, in the long run, Christianity paved the way for the eventual Jewish takeover of the West.
In this sense, Jesus was indeed the King of the Jews.
"So much Jew-hatred on this blog is due to that fact that many of its readers self-congratulate themselves on their high intelligence (an important part of their self-esteem, self-identity, and sense of superiority)..."
ReplyDeleteNo, I know I'm a dumbass and THAT is why I resent smarter Jews messing and toying with dummies like myself and other goyim.
"Nietzsche rightfully pointed out that Jews invented conscience and guilt."
ReplyDeleteIn relation to God. But Jews didn't develop conscience in relation to non-Jews. All of Jewish guilt is about what Jews did wrong before God or other Jews. It's not about what Jews did wrong to other people. Jews feel no remorse about what they did to non-Jews. Not yesterday, not today.
Now, one can argue that Jesus was different. Jesus was Jewish but rejected by most Jews. So, can His ideas be said to be Jewish? I dunno. If an idea is created by someone of A culture but is rejected by most people of A culture but then is accepted by most people of B culture, is it more A or B?
This applies to Buddhism too. It came from India, but Indians came to reject it whereas it flowered in Southeast Asia, parts of China, and Japan. So, is Buddhism more Indian or East Asian?
Btw, I'm not sure 'turn the other cheek' is about conscience. Conscience is about knowing the difference between good and evil and acting accordingly. It's about repenting for having done wrong.
But Jesus didn't do any wrong but still turned the other cheek. And He told even good people to turn the other cheek. Is that related to conscience? If Jesus was about conscience, He would have told bad people to stop beating up on good people. Instead, He just told good people to take all the punishment and hurt. That's saintly vanity than conscience.
Perhaps, Jesus thought that if good people just take the hurt from bad people, bad people will feel shame and drop their weapons and apologize and become good too.
I don't see it happening with Jews and pallies.
'Israel has 300 illegal nukes while Iran has none'.
ReplyDeleteCare to cite the law that Israel's 300 "illegal" nukes are in violation of? Are France's or India's nukes in violation also?
"Care to cite the law that Israel's 300 'illegal' nukes are in violation of?"
ReplyDeleteIf they're legal, how come Israel doesn't admit it has them?
And how come Israel has allowed no international inspections?
The authors conclude that, "even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors," "anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic" and will say things like "Jews don't care what happens to anyone but their own kind" or "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country" or "Jews have too much power in international financial markets."
ReplyDeleteThat's certainly a very convenient definition of "anti-Semitism", if you're Jewish.
What next, statements such as "Black males are many times more likely than average to commit violent crime" or "Russians drink a lot of vodka" will be deemed anti-Black or anti-Russian? It's notable that the truth or falsehood of the statements is not considered a factor - there are certain things you simply Must Not Say, regardless of whether they are true or not.
Jews have historically been scapegoats -- blamed for the Black Death, plagues of all sorts, defeats in wars, etc. When Jews were exiled from England in the 1300's, that was more of the same.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that potted version of "Jewish history", Mr Scotch-Irish. The problem is that Jewish history is not real history. It's a distorted version of history at best, and sometimes a complete fabrication.
>>>Care to cite the law that Israel's 300 "illegal" nukes are in violation of? Are France's or India's nukes in violation also?
ReplyDelete>>If they're legal, how come Israel doesn't admit it has them?
And how come Israel has allowed no international inspections?
In other words, you can't cite any such law.
This article by Fish should be read alongside his other piece, Two Cheers for Double Standards, in which he says many of the same things.
ReplyDeleteKey sentence: Your loyalty is to particular people and not to an abstraction.
No prizes for guessing which particular people Fish is loyal to.
More Fish in Two Cheers For Double Standards.
ReplyDeleteI know the objections to what I have said here. It amounts to an apology for identity politics. It elevates tribal obligations over the universal obligations we owe to each other as citizens. It licenses differential and discriminatory treatment on the basis of contested points of view. It substitutes for the rule “don’t do it to them if you don’t want it done to you” the rule “be sure to do it to them first and more effectively.” It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.
The man is an out-and-proud Jewish supremacist.
"Your loyalty is to particular people and not to an abstraction."
ReplyDeletePower before principle. Use principles to serve power, not the other way around. Wasps used to do that, which is why they got so powerful. Once they chose principle over power, they lost to the people who chose power over principle.
"In other words, you can't cite any such law."
ReplyDeleteThis is what kills me about you guys. Your lawyer shtick isn't gonna fool me. If Jews say it's illegal and immoral for Iran to even dream of having a nuke, then it naturally follows that Israel's secret nukes are illegal. So, don't gimme me this BS.
This is how Jews think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-XALtoVKYo
When it comes to certain taboo subjects, they don't even want us to....(see the video).
So, Jews can have nukes, 100s of them, but Iranians better not even think of having them.
And we better not even think of thinking about Jewish power because it might lead to 'viral' infections in the mind.
Mamet is a funny case. Along with Cronenberg, no one is more fervently(even rabidly) pro-Jewish but no one has revealed--though rather slyly--more powerfully the nature of Jewish fears, attitudes, and strategies.
It's funny how an atheist Jew is not really a Jew if he's a communist, but an atheist Jew is a Jew if he's scientist.
ReplyDeleteWhite evangelicals are strongly supportive of Israel.
ReplyDeleteCan you cite any recent polling data supporting white Protestant support for Israel? Yes, I know Sean Hannity avows his love for that nation on every Hannity show, but I'm not sure what that proves.
Also, "support for Israel" needs to be defined. Support for Israel defending itself against Muslims is not the same as l-v-u-ving latter-day Saddeucees residing In America.
If the new study is correct, they are probably low in anti-semitism.
That seems to be the inference you prefer.
Wikipedia on the Saddeucees versus the Jesus movement:
Jewish sectarianism
The Jewish community of the Second Temple period is often defined by its sectarian and fragmented attributes. Josephus, in Antiquities, contextualizes the Sadducees as opposed to the Pharisees and the Essenes. The Sadducees are also notably distinguishable from the growing Jesus movement, which later evolved into Christianity. These groups differed in their beliefs, social statuses, and sacred texts. Though the Sadducees produced no primary works themselves, their attributes can be derived from other contemporaneous texts, namely, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and later, the Mishnah and Talmud. Overall, within the hierarchy, the Sadducees represented an aristocratic, wealthy, and traditional elite.
[edit]As opposed to the Essenes
The Dead Sea Scrolls, which are often attributed to the Essenes, suggest clashing ideologies and social positions between the Essenes and the Sadducees. In fact, some scholars suggest that the Essenes began as a group of renegade Zadokites, which would suggest that the group itself had priestly, and thus Sadducean origins. Within the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Sadducees are often referred to as Manasseh. The Scrolls suggest that the Sadducees (Manasseh) and the Pharisees (Ephraim) became religious communities that were distinct from the Essenes, the true Judah. Clashes between the Essenes and the Sadducees are depicted in the Pesher on Nahum, which states “They [Manasseh] are the wicked ones...whose reign over Israel will be brought down...his wives, his children, and his infant will go into captivity. His warriors and his honored ones [will perish] by the sword.”[16] The reference to the Sadducees as those who reign over Israel corroborates their aristocratic status as opposed to the more fringe group of Essenes. Furthermore, it suggests that the Essenes challenged the authenticity of the rule of the Sadducees, blaming the downfall of ancient Israel and the siege of Jerusalem on their impiety. The Dead Sea Scrolls brand the Sadduceean elite as those who broke the covenant with God in their rule of the Judean state, and thus became targets of divine revenge.
Relentless Jewish argumentativeness and bullying has convinced the world (or at least the gentile western Christian world) that not liking Jews = wanting to kill them all.
ReplyDeleteMost anti-semites don't want to kill any Jews at all, or physically harm them. They simply don't like them or the influence they have on [insert name of white western country]. Jews cannot - must not - acknowledge this reality. The most minor criticism of them by a gentile has to be spun as a death threat, an existential danger. This has worked fairly well for them so far, but common sense suggests that it can't last for ever.
Observing from the Sidelines said:
ReplyDelete"This notion that Jews are safer under multiculturalism is ahistorical - the opposite seems to be true. After all, Austria-Hungary and the Russian empire were "multicultural" as all hell, and they were hotbeds of anti-semitism. By contrast, boringly homogeneous Denmark was the only country to save all its Jews from the Nazis. Why aren't people drawing the obvious conclusion: that Jews are safer when the dominant majority doesn't feel threatened?"
What you say may well be objectively correct, but the point is not what is good for the Jews, but what the Jews *think* is good for the Jews. They seem overwhelmingly to think that turning homogeneous white countries into chaotic overcrowded multiculti anthills is in their interest, and good luck convincing them otherwise (you racist).
And even if this isn't something they consciously think, it's something they feel in their bones. It's a slow-motion, large scale Samson Option. Jews as collateral damage of their own assault on the west, if you like. "Yes, regrettably the policies we so aggressively push in your countries will destroy us, but at least they will destroy YOU first."
Or, more simply, it's the story of the frog and the scorpion.
What you say may well be objectively correct, but the point is not what is good for the Jews, but what the Jews *think* is good for the Jews.
ReplyDeleteWhy do they think it? The problem there is "Jewish history", which is a load of fables and half-truths which Jews "know" deep in their bones.
That's pretty understandable, right? I mean, within living memory, one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world did its level best to murder every Jew they could lay their hands on, which turned out to be a good fraction of all the Jews in the world. That sort of thing tends to stick in your mind as important.
ReplyDeleteBy all accounts, Jews were defensive and chauvinistic *before* the holocaust too. I guess Kissinger's bon mot "even paranoids have enemies" applies.
Cennbeorc
Key sentence: Your loyalty is to particular people and not to an abstraction.
ReplyDeleteHeck, I believe this too. No Proposition Nation for me.
Cennbeorc
"White evangelicals are strongly supportive of Israel."
ReplyDelete"Can you cite any recent polling data supporting white Protestant support for Israel? Yes, I know Sean Hannity avows his love for that nation on every Hannity show, but I'm not sure what that proves."
Fox is really bad for conservatism. Every side has only so much energy and time, and Fox News had directed most of conservative energies at hating Muslims, supporting foreign wars, defending Bush and Cheney, listening to Karl Rove, promoting Sarah Palin, arguing for low taxes on the rich, and etc. What a waste of collective energy.
So, most conservatives are more concerned about Iran than what's happening in the SW border.
Thanks to the poster for the link to the other Fish piece at the NY Times that covered the treatment of Rush Limbaugh after his 'slut' comment about Sandra Fluke. He wrote:
ReplyDeleteIf we think about the Rush Limbaugh dust-up from the non-liberal — that is, non-formal — perspective, the similarity between what he did and what Schultz and Maher did disappears. Schultz and Maher are the good guys; they are on the side of truth and justice. Limbaugh is the bad guy; he is on the side of every nefarious force that threatens our democracy. Why should he get an even break?
This seems to dovetail with Herbert Marcuse and his Repressive Tolerance essay.
Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.
1. American Jews were never for the Iraq war. When in the beginning the American public supported the war at 70%+ rate, the Jews were evenly split. When, a couple of years later, the American public was evenly split, only a quarter of the Jews supported the war. These results are on Gallup's site.
ReplyDelete2. How do figure that the war with Iraq was in Israel's interest? The only way Iraq could've threatened Israel was with nukes or maybe long-range chemical missiles. So, if you believe that this was a war on behalf of Israel you must necessarily believe that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD (i.e. Bush was right all along). Otherwise it makes no logical sense.
3. Development of nuclear weapons is only "illegal" for the nations that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel, India, Pakistan never signed. Iran did sign the treaty and have not denounced it. This is why they are obliged to submit to inspections.
4. By the way, how do we know that Israel has nukes? Ironically, the evidence for the Israeli nukes is very similar to the 1990s evidence for the Iraqi nukes. A testimony of a renegade scientist? Check. Suspicious purchases abroad? Check. Official non-denial denials? Check. And so on. If the intelligence about the Iraqi nuclear program was bad, why do you trust similar intelligence about Israel? Same reason Bush and others believed the worst about Iraq -- because it "fits"?
"Thanks to the poster for the link to the other Fish piece at the NY Times that covered the treatment of Rush Limbaugh after his 'slut' comment about Sandra Fluke."
ReplyDeleteNothing new here.
If Hollywood fires a communist, it is 'blacklisting'. If Hollywood fires a neo-Nazi, it's justice.
If real rightists could pull their resources together to form just ONE mainstream TV channel for their views, I believe it will be a game changer. FOX did have a great impact--even if in a stupid way.
ReplyDeleteIf someone were to come forward and come up with an idea to pull together the resources and talents of those on the real right and form just one mainstream outlet for our views, then just about every real conservative will switch from Fox to the new channel. And this new channel would be a leader for it will discuss taboo topics, and as such it will attract a tremendous amount of controversy, which is will make it the center of debate.
"American Jews were never for the Iraq war. When in the beginning the American public supported the war at 70%+ rate, the Jews were evenly split. When, a couple of years later, the American public was evenly split, only a quarter of the Jews supported the war. These results are on Gallup's site."
ReplyDeleteWhat most Jews think doesn't matter. What matters if what Jews with power think. Similarly, it doesn't matter what most white conservatives think. As we have seen, what matters is what the GOP elite thinks.
The fact is the Jewish leadership has pushed foreign policies that serve Israel and Jewish interests more than they serve American interests. And most Jews never seem to stand up to Jewish elite power even when it goes against the will of most Jews. But then, we don't see blacks standing up to Obama and his mulatto crew who have done more for Jew and gays than for blacks.
Christians have never been happy that Jews know the Five Books of Moses better than they do--e.g., the mistaken translation of "alma" as "virgin"--and that Jews know all the best arguments for why Jesus was not the messiah
ReplyDelete1) The Five Books of Moses are Genesis (Bereishit), Exodus (Shemot), Leviticus (Vayikra), Numbers (Bamidbar), and Deuteronomy (Devarim). The alleged mistranslation of alma to which you are referring is in Isaiah 7:14. The proper way to refer to the Hebrew Bible is Tanakh -- Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim. Get a clue, Rabbi!
2) Ever heard of the Septuagint? It was a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek by Jewish scholars in Alexandria ca. 300-200 BC under the commission of King Ptolemy II. Note the date: this work was published and widely disseminated long before the time of Jesus, so it cannot be said to have a Christian bias. While no translation is perfect, of course, the Septuagint offers valuable insight into how Jews in the Intertestamental era interpreted their Scriptures. In the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14, the Hebrew alma is rendered parthenos, virgin. Moreover, other instances of alma refer to young, unmarried, presumably virginal women (e.g. a servant of Abraham going to fetch an alma for Isaac to marry). The English words which appear to best capture the nuance of alma are "maiden" or "damsel" -- words for a young woman of marriageable age who is not yet married, and whose virginity is implicit.
3) So Jews know the best arguments against Jesus? Yet they get stumped by their own religion. For instance, why do Jews believe that Jewish status is inherited matrilineally, when the Hebrew Bible shows very clearly the opposite (i.e., children of Jewish man-shiksa unions being treated as Israelites, e.g. Joseph's sons Ephraim and Menasseh, who became progenitors of tribes within the nation)? The children of Israelite women who were married off or got it on with goyim didn't get any inheritance. That Karaite sect, who recognize only the Tanakh but ignore the Talmud, adhere to a patrilineal standard.
1. American Jews were never for the Iraq war. When in the beginning the American public supported the war at 70%+ rate, the Jews were evenly split. When, a couple of years later, the American public was evenly split, only a quarter of the Jews supported the war. These results are on Gallup's site.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that a small minority of Jews were rabid supporters of the war. In the words of Haaretz,
"The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish..."
Also, look at the signatures on the letter that the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)wrote to Clinton requesting he oust Saddam.
Look at the signatures on the post-911 PNAC letter to Bush advising him on where to direct America's response to the terror attacks.
Just like with communism and hard-core leftwing politics, most Jews are not involved. But the fact that Jews are overrepresented stands out. It is not fair to paint all Jews with the same brush. But that is what happens when you have different groups. They notice outliers about the other groups. It is similar to how most groups link blacks with criminality even though the vast majority of blacks are law abidding.
2. How do figure that the war with Iraq was in Israel's interest? The only way Iraq could've threatened Israel was with nukes or maybe long-range chemical missiles. So, if you believe that this was a war on behalf of Israel you must necessarily believe that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD (i.e. Bush was right all along). Otherwise it makes no logical sense.
ReplyDeleteSee BS like this is why you people get on people' nerves.
Did Iraq possess WMD when they joined in the war in 1948? Obviously not. But their ideological oppositition to Israel led them to joining in anyway.
The ideological opposition only strengthened since that time so it's quite clear that Iraq remained a potential future threat, even if it wasn't in any position to strike right at this moment.
As for pinning belief in Iraqi WMD on Bush himself, hahaha. You guys are priceless, absolutely priceless.
Anyway, keep it up my man. There's no question at all that America is swarming with suckers only too willing to lap up everythign you tell them.
http://takimag.com/article/child_sacrifice_anthony_mccarthy/print#axzz2F0VpbOai
ReplyDeleteKids to be treated as puppies. Puppies are taken from natural parents and traded around. That happens with real children under 'gay parenting'.
Gays are the new Jews. They sure got a lot of poopshootzpah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNzGoNFo_Y
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20710561
ReplyDeleteGonna be a mess.
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2012/12/ron-unz-on-the-illusory-american-meritocracy/#more-17037
ReplyDeleteFOX did have a great impact--even if in a stupid way.
ReplyDeleteFOX is a leftist establishment plant, a fifth column of sorts. Haven't you noticed how they carry the exact same stories as the rest of the mainstream media? It's there to induce ridicule and further mistrust from the mainstream Left towards what they are told and perceive to be the Right.
They direct/misdirect(herd) people who think they are viewing genuine conservative viewpoints. In effect, the Left engineers the right's agenda through FOX and designs it to fail.
FOX's deliberate bashing and ignoring of Ron Paul is an example.
What you say may well be objectively correct, but the point is not what is good for the Jews, but what the Jews *think* is good for the Jews.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. So many people like to point out what is and isn't good for Jews according to their own interpretations, ignoring the fact that Jews seem to have their own ideas. Whiskey's always playing on this, or doing it, depending on whether or not you believe his "Scotch-Irish" schtick.
Why do they think it? The problem there is "Jewish history", which is a load of fables and half-truths which Jews "know" deep in their bones.
Again, indeed.
By all accounts, Jews were defensive and chauvinistic *before* the holocaust too. I guess Kissinger's bon mot "even paranoids have enemies" applies.
And guess what? They had their BIG GRIPE then, too. And before that BIG GRIPE, they had the a previous BIG GRIPE. And before that, and before that, and before that, etc., all the way back to the Egyptians and Amalek.
"Key sentence: Your loyalty is to particular people and not to an abstraction."
Heck, I believe this too. No Proposition Nation for me.
Same here. This is the heart of my "ANTI-SEMITISM!!!"; the desire to get my own kind off the bench and into the game, and emulate Jews. I know, I know, such white-hot hatred of my fellow man...
The Jews could not have survived two thousand years in exile as a distinct people without despising non-Jews.
[...]
You don't keep yourself apart from the people in whose lands you live with liberal platitudes and cultural relativism, telling your children, "Those people's ways are not our ways, although equally valid and worthy of respect." No, you tell them "Those people are dirty, stupid, blasphemous worshippers of the son of a whore; their ways are abominations, and they are inferior to us in their very essence."
Correct. With their origins so close to the cradle of civilization, I think Jews long ago survived the population bottleneck that Northern European populations are now entering. I think most N Euros will wind up amalgamating into just another boring mixed population like we see elsewhere (e.g., South America and Central Asia). The N Euros who remain, and emerge from this bottleneck, will have a lot more in common psychologically with Jews than N Euros do now.
The people who say stuff like Iran never did anything to the US. How does one become that stupid? For all the talk of the isolationists about America first you quickly start to notice that they really don't seem to care that much when America is attacked. Iranian mobs with the complicity of their revolutionary government stormed our embassy. That is an act of war full stop. That's why Americans hate the Iranians. Apparently you are the one with interests beyond your tribe because the Iranians attacked your tribe, but you are more interesrd scoring points against a different tribe the Jews.
ReplyDeleteThis is what kills me about you guys. Your lawyer shtick isn't gonna fool me. If Jews say it's illegal and immoral for Iran to even dream of having a nuke, then it naturally follows that Israel's secret nukes are illegal
ReplyDeleteYou call something illegal and then start whining about "lawyer shtick" when asked what law is being violated. Too funny.
As anyone who knows anything about the subject could tell you, Iran is an NPT signatory and thus prohibited from developing nukes, Israel, like India, is not.
"If they're legal, how come Israel doesn't admit it has them? And how come Israel has allowed no international inspections?"
ReplyDeleteFolks, this is easy. The germane law is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons). Under the terms of the treaty five nations (U.S., France, the UK, China, and Russia) are allowed to retain nuclear arsenals. All other nations (that sign the treaty) are not allowed to do so.
Notably, Israel, Pakistan, and India have never signed the Non-Profileration treaty. North Korea signed but later withdrew. Iran is a signatory, but currently in violation of the terms of the treaty.
Bottom line. Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile is not illegal. Nor does Israel deny having nuclear weapons. Israel doesn't admit to having them either.
"4. By the way, how do we know that Israel has nukes? Ironically, the evidence for the Israeli nukes is very similar to the 1990s evidence for the Iraqi nukes. A testimony of a renegade scientist? Check. Suspicious purchases abroad? Check. Official non-denial denials? Check. And so on. If the intelligence about the Iraqi nuclear program was bad, why do you trust similar intelligence about Israel? Same reason Bush and others believed the worst about Iraq -- because it "fits"?"
ReplyDeleteWith that point you destroyed the credibility of your other (correct) arguments. Dimona is well known to be a nuclear weapons manufacturing site. The Israelis certainly see it that way. Even Israeli aircraft are shot down if they venture over the plant.
The people who say stuff like Iran never did anything to the US. How does one become that stupid? For all the talk of the isolationists about America first you quickly start to notice that they really don't seem to care that much when America is attacked. Iranian mobs with the complicity of their revolutionary government stormed our embassy. That is an act of war full stop. That's why Americans hate the Iranians. Apparently you are the one with interests beyond your tribe because the Iranians attacked your tribe, but you are more interesrd scoring points against a different tribe the Jews.
ReplyDeleteThat event happened over 30 years ago, and an honest assessment reveals that the US was not completely innocent given our role in installing the Shah. In effect we were on the wrong side of that revolution. A true isolationist would never have inserted America into someone else's domestic affairs.
In the interim we got some sort of payback by helping the Iraqis inflict massive casualties on Iran during the 1980s. We also, for whatever reason, got some payback on Iran by shooting down Iran Air 655 and killing 290 people.
So I don't see the need to attack Iran today because of the 1979 Hostage Crisis.
On the other hand, isolationists like myself would have preferred no immigration from Iran. But of course that advice, like the advice to not interfere in her domestic issues, has fallen on deaf ears.
Maybe Fish set up the alternatives this way on purpose, but it seems fairly clear New A-S as he describes it is merely an instance of Old A-S.
ReplyDelete"[Old A-S says] Jews wander from country to country and 'form a state within a state, preying on the societies in whose midst they dwell.'" Isn't Israel in Palestine an instance of this?
Bottom line. Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile is not illegal. Nor does Israel deny having nuclear weapons. Israel doesn't admit to having them either.
ReplyDeleteAs a non signer to the NPT you are correct. However, the USA is a signer and as one of the five nuclear weapons states, has an obligation not to transfer nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS) to acquire nuclear weapons.
I don't know what we have or have not given Israel, but it would not surprise me if the US has violated the spirit, if not letter, of this treaty in regards to our assistance to Israel. We might not have given them nuclear weapons or material directly, but one could probably argue that we did assist or encourage them with our huge financial support which we continue to provide.
"Iran is a signatory, but currently in violation of the terms of the treaty."
ReplyDeleteSo, if Iran withdrew from the treaty and built nukes like Israel has done, would that be okay with US?
If Iran is no longer a signatory of the treaty, it will have violated nothing by developing nukes.
It isn't about revenge though. It is about not letting some effectively declared war on you get its hands on a very powerful weapon.
ReplyDelete"I don't know what we have or have not given Israel, but it would not surprise me if the US has violated the spirit, if not letter, of this treaty in regards to our assistance to Israel. We might not have given them nuclear weapons or material directly, but one could probably argue that we did assist or encourage them with our huge financial support which we continue to provide."
ReplyDeleteThere is no evidence that the U.S. has ever aided Israel's nuclear program deliberately. There is a (very) unconfirmed report that Israel stole bomb grade Plutonium from a U.S. nuclear waste dump (Plutonium cuttings left over from the machining of warheads) decades ago. By contrast, the French clearly supported the Israeli nuclear program. The Dimona reactor was provided by the French. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negev_Nuclear_Research_Center.
The U.S. provided a great deal of support for the British nuclear program after WWII. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_US%E2%80%93UK_Mutual_Defence_Agreement for one example. Allegedly, the U.S. also assisted the French (thermo) nuclear program by providing the details of the Teller-Ulam configuration.
Given that U.S. assistance to the UK and France predated the Non-Proliferation treaty, we violated no treaty or law. The same is true for French assistance to Israel. It's also worth noting that the Israeli nuclear program predates large scale U.S. financial / military assistance to Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Hook
ReplyDelete"Muslims never really got angry at contemporaneous Soviet (read atheist) domination."
ReplyDeleteThat's nonsense. There have been uprisings pretty much since the Russian Revolution - and before that, against Russsian Imperial power. In the Caucasus, and in the central Asian 'stans'. E.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmachi_movement
More recently, do Afghanistan and Chechnya ring any bells ?
Damn, whim-whammed like 5 times in a row in this thread.
ReplyDelete"Damn, whim-whammed like 5 times in a row in this thread."
ReplyDeleteWorks in mysterious ways, I tell ya.
Whim is certainly neurotic on the personality index.
"Yeah - that's how WASPs ended up ruling 1/2 the world - by being selfless and naive."
ReplyDeleteWASP success mostly came about as a side-effect of inventing stuff. They've never been that great at close-quarters political infighting because they're not cohesive enough as a group. The only time they're good at it e.g. the Great Game, is when they treat it as a game.
.
Jewish success as a minority within majority populations is based on having more ethnic cohesion than the majority group. If they lose this cohesion they lose both their main competitive advantage and also run the risk of assimilation.
Anti-semitism is a necessary part of their group strategy.
.
"American Jews were never for the Iraq war"
It's true Jews are split on the issue however it's also true that a handful of Jewish neocons engineered the Iraq war because they believed it would be good for Israel (whether it was or not is too early to say).
.
Anti-Israel sentiment only translates into anti-Jewish sentiment because it exposes the double-standards of "liberal" Jewish pundits over issues like immigration, diversity, border fences etc.
After you first notice it you can't fail to realize these people have completely opposite opinions on the same issue depending on whether Jews are the majority or the minority in the area concerned.
I was always baffled by the insistence on the right for Israel's existence. Why is this always required from anybody talking to/dealing with them.
ReplyDeleteNot even the Boers, who Anon upstream trashed in order to support his crappy argument insisted on this when they handed over power to the ANC in 1994.
Slowly it began to sink in that Israeli's themselves are not so sure about this...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/rob-magazines-ceo-of-the-year-bill-ackman/article5795408/
ReplyDeleteJewish billionaire, Bill Ackman, likes to play matchmaker...
On the home front, that means hosting occasional singles’ nights with his wife, Karen, at their sprawling co-op overlooking Central Park to introduce friends to potential mates. “I love matchmaking,” he says.
If Americans hate Iranians because of the hostage crisis, shouldn't they hate Israelis because of the Liberty and the Lavon Affair?
ReplyDeleteafter caroling, attending church, sharing gifts with family, etc. hollywood will entertain you with the bloody Django Unchained, Christmas Day. "kill white folks and they pay you for it. what's not to like." great fun.
ReplyDeleteGiven that U.S. assistance to the UK and France predated the Non-Proliferation treaty, we violated no treaty or law. The same is true for French assistance to Israel. It's also worth noting that the Israeli nuclear program predates large scale U.S. financial / military assistance to Israel.
ReplyDeleteIts believed the Israeli nuclear effort received a major leg-up from the UK. Nuclear materials/equipment were sent to Israel in the late 60s (sorry cant remember details offhand).
Curiously this seemed to happen without political oversight but was instead okayed by a senior civil servant. Well I know this will shock some people but this civil servant just happened to belong to a certain ethnic/religious minority.
As anyone who knows anything about the subject could tell you, Iran is an NPT signatory and thus prohibited from developing nukes, Israel, like India, is not.
ReplyDeleteIran was a party to the treaty, but withdrew from it.
The Jews could not have survived two thousand years in exile as a distinct people without despising non-Jews.
ReplyDeleteJews have not survived two thousand years as a distinct people.