October 7, 2013

NYT: "A Jew Not Quite English Enough"

One of the juicier political tales of recent years was the 2010 sibling struggle for leadership of the British Labour Party between brothers David and Ed Miliband, with the younger, more leftist brother Ed winning, and the elder brother going into a sort of exile in America.

Geoffrey Levy has written a fun article for the Daily Mail about the brothers' late father, the far left intellectual Ralph Miliband, and his relationship to his sons' sibling rivalry.
On a hot summer day, a young man made his way alone to Highgate Cemetery in North London to make a lifelong vow.  
Solemnly, he stood at the grave of Karl Marx at a moment when, in his own words, 'the cemetery was utterly deserted . . . I remember standing in front of the grave, fist clenched, and swearing my own private oath that I would be faithful to the workers' cause'.  
The year was 1940. The young man was Ralph Miliband, a Jewish immigrant who, with his father, had fled to London from Belgium just weeks earlier to escape the Nazi Holocaust. 
Miliband, father of Ed and David Miliband, died in 1994, aged 70, soon after the publication of his last book, Socialism For A Sceptical Age. In it, the venerated Marxist philosopher and academic continued to espouse his lifelong 'socialist' cause. 
One voice, however, vehemently informed him that he was still pursuing a lost cause. It was that of his elder son David. He did not mince his words.  
Having read the manuscript before publication, David wrote to his father asking, 'whether you are restating a case that has been traduced in theory or practice, or whether you are advancing a new case. I think that the book reads like the former . . .'

The word 'traduced' - which means 'disgraced' or 'denigrated' - was surely rather harsh, considering his aged father had always included his two sons (even when they were small), in the trenchant political discussions with ever-present academics and Left-wing thinkers that took place round the basement dining table of the family home in Primrose Hill, North London. 
Indeed, some family friends feel this episode, not long before their father died, could have been a contributory factor towards the younger - and considerably more Left-wing - son Ed unexpectedly deciding to fight his elder brother for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2010, and, of course, beating him. 
In his explosive memoirs, serialised last week in the Mail, Gordon Brown's spin doctor Damian McBride argued that Ed Miliband was obsessed with maintaining his father's legacy. Winning the leadership was Ed's 'ultimate tribute' to his father - an attempt to 'achieve his father's vision and ensure David Miliband did not traduce it'. Again, that word 'traduce'. 
Ed is now determined to bring about that vision. How proud Ralph would have been to hear him responding the other day to a man in the street who asked when he was 'going to bring back socialism' with the words: 'That's what we are doing, sir.'  
Ed's victory over David, made possible only with the unions' block votes, was perfectly in step with his father's fervent and undimmed conviction that 'alliance with the trade unions is not only one of the party's great strengths; it is by far its greatest strength'.  
Ralph's Marxism was uncompromising. ...

I have no idea if Levy's psychoanalyzing of the Miliband family makes sense, but it's certainly interesting. And it's hard to say that attention shouldn't be paid to the potential next prime minister.

But that's not good enough for Roger Cohen, op-ed columnist for the New York Times, who is now denouncing Levy in the NYT for "Jewish stereotyping" of Ralph Miliband.
A Jew Not Quite English Enough 
By ROGER COHEN 
... This is Ralph (born Adolphe) Miliband, the late father of David Miliband, Britain’s former foreign secretary, and of Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party. He is also, for that voice of the British conservative heartland, The Daily Mail, “The Man Who Hated Britain.” 
The headline stood atop a recent piece that portrayed Ralph Miliband as a disloyal socialist. He is accused of “availing himself” of a good British education while criticizing the nationalism he encountered on arrival. He helped his father in “rescuing furniture from bombed houses in the Blitz.” He stood reverently at the grave of Karl Marx in north London. He denounced the Falklands War, even while — The Mail insinuates — scheming to avoid death duties on the family house in fashionable Primrose Hill, and suffered from a “giant-sized social chip on his shoulder” that explained his criticism of British institutions. 
Sound familiar? The rootless Jewish Bolshevik who profits from others’ losses, shows no loyalty to the society in which he prospers, and devises clever two-faced financial maneuvers that demonstrate his essential hypocrisy: All this could of course have been borrowed from the Nazi propaganda Ralph Miliband fled as a young man. 
No matter, for The Daily Mail, that the young Jewish immigrant put his life on the line for Britain. Jews also served Germany with distinction as officers during World War I, but their military decorations, displayed with pride in their Berlin living rooms, did not prove they were loyal Germans (even if they loved nothing more than Germany) and could not save them.... 
... the evident Jewish stereotyping oozing from every insinuation in The Mail piece, which was written by a Jew, Geoffrey Levy, and defended most publicly by another Jew, The Mail’s deputy editor, Jon Steafel. For Levy and Steafel, in what the historian Lewis Namier characterized as the land of the “trembling Israelites,” Miliband was somehow not quite English enough. He was the Jewish communist outsider masquerading as an Englishman. 
John Mann, a Labour member of Parliament and chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, clarified the issue in a tweet. He called the attack on Ralph Miliband a “classical age-old anti-Semitic smear about disloyal Jews.” 
Dressed up as a defense of British values — when in fact it was a demonstration of bigotry in a land of overriding tolerance — that is precisely what The Mail article was: a smear laden with stereotypes of the scheming Jew. The fact that it has scarcely been debated as such demonstrates the existence of a problem rather than its absence. 
In his book “Anglomania,” Ian Buruma writes about his grandparents, German Jewish immigrants who became British, felt British, loved Britain — and yet. He writes: “Instead of using the word ‘Jew’ in public we would say ‘forty-five.’ The origin of this odd phrase is unknown. When Bernard was refused a senior position in a famous hospital in 1938, he wrote to Win: ‘It is the old, old story — (45).”’ 
This is indeed an old, old story. Keep quiet, use code, ignore the occasional comments about “pushiness” or “flashiness” or “stinginess” or “Jewish behavior” (whatever that might be) or a comment about a Jewish woman’s “great conk of a nose.” This, after all, is no more than genteel prejudice, harmless enough, unlike the Continental brand that Ralph Miliband fled. 
In The Mail article, a letter of Miliband’s is quoted: “Respectability, good taste, don’t rock the boat, there will always be an England, foreigners, Jews, natives etc. are all right in their place and their place is outside.” 
The worst of the piece is that it reflects the attitudes that could give Miliband these feelings at a time when Britain is a far more open society than the one he first encountered. 

Fortunately, David Miliband, at least, has found asylum from London's looming anti-Semites. Cohen concludes on a defiant note:
David Miliband tweeted that his father loved Britain. He now lives in New York, city of full-throated Jewishness. 

Well ... Okay!

Considering that Benjamin Disraeli was Queen Victoria's favorite prime minister in the 1870s, perhaps, though, Levy was objecting to Ralph Miliband's ideology rather than their mutual ethnicity? From Wikipedia:
"[Ralph] Miliband published his first book, Parliamentary Socialism, in 1961, which examined the role that the Labour Party played in British politics and society from a Marxist position, finding it wanting for a lack of radicalism.[10] .... He began arguing that socialists in Britain had to start working towards building a viable alternative that would be genuinely revolutionary socialist in its positions.[12]"

Let's take a look at recent British political history. The two main candidates for leadership of the Labour Party were Jewish (brothers, to boot, and sons of a well-known Jewish radical). The Tory prime minister David Cameron is a little bit Jewish by ancestry, and the previous Tory leader, Michael Howard, was Jewish.

Perhaps anti-Semitism at the top of British life is not quite the burning problem that it appears to Mr. Cohen?

68 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not long after arriving in Britain, which rescued him from the Holocaust, Ralph Miliband wrote:

"The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world ... When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the continent in general and for the French in particular. They didn't like the French before the defeat … Since the defeat, they have the greatest contempt for the French Army ... England first. This slogan is taken for granted by the English people as a whole. To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation

A country that would elect the son of such a man - a son who idolizes that man - is a country committing suicide.

"Rootless cosmopolitanism" is a weakness of certain Jews. Every group has unique weaknesses to which large numbers of its members are prone - that includes blacks, Hispanics, Southerners, Evangelicals, WASPs, and, yes, Jews. I don't despise Jews. I despise the rootless cosmopolitans.

Anonymous said...

https://www.facebook.com/galluzzoanthony

"Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down. I don't romanticize the bad old days. I find the drop in crime over the last couple of decades refreshing. Manhattan and Brooklyn, those vibrant playgrounds, are way less scary than they were when I moved here. I have no illusions that there was a connection between that city on its knees and a flourishing of creativity; I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit. But I also don't believe that the drop in crime means the city has to be more exclusively for those who have money. Increases in the quality of life should be for all, not just a few. "

Anonymous said...

The trouble is, Steve, that the Daily Mailis such a horrible little paper that its reputation amohngst all fair-minded Englishmen, is in the gutter.
It's not the first time the DM has done this sort of thing - character assination by digging into an individuals private life and antecedents, they specialize in it.
Recently they tried to monstter ex-BP boss Lord Browne about his homosexuality. Lord Browne is a big patron of the arts, and his pals in the arts rallied round and gave the DM a bloody nose. The DM is run by complete and utter snobby, cliquey bastards - archetypal public school bullies - who have a fanatic hatred of anyone who they think is 'just not quite one of us'. The outsider is permanently frozen out is showered with non-stop hatred and contempt until he collapses - that's the DM's stock-in-trade, nasty calculating bullies, just like in that classic Dickie attenborough film 'The Angry Silence'. Really, I'm not making this up - this is the whole metier and soul of that rotten black-hearted testimony of evil masquerading as a newspaper.
They destroyed Michael Foot and revelled in his political death. They assasinated Neil Kinnock and laughed sadistically as they stuck the knife in.
They even turn the Royal Family into comic figures in a soap opera, (the Royals HATE the DM).
Many people in Britain are glad that these horrible, nasty, arrogant, swaggering bullies have been taken down a peg or two.

Peter the Shark said...

The rootless Jewish Bolshevik who profits from others’ losses, shows no loyalty to the society in which he prospers, and devises clever two-faced financial maneuvers that demonstrate his essential hypocrisy

Sometimes stereotypes fit, even if accidentally. If Ralph Miliband fits that description, and there seems to be a fair amount of evidence that he does, using cries of "anti-semitism" to protect the man's reputation is incredibly dishonest. Being Jewish should not grant you instant immunity from criticism.

Anonymous said...

The Jewish reference to "45" means: "It's the same old broken record."

45 RPM was the standard playing speed for popular music records at the time.

Digital recordings have caused the old expression to fall entirely out of use.

Simon in London said...

anon:
"The DM is run by complete and utter snobby, cliquey bastards - archetypal public school bullies"

This is pretty much the exact opposite of the truth. The Daily Mail is the paper of lower middle class bourgeois morality, and thus of course is despised by snobs and public school types. It's extremely iconclastic - look at how it reports US stories the US media won't touch - and is regularly attacked by the rest of the media, especially the snob media - the dominant BBC/Guardian/Independent axis.

The Daily Mail is often not 'nice', but it's very much an outsider in the British Establishment.

Anonymous said...

The anon above is trolling malevolent nonsense.

It's the Murdoch empire that hates the Royal Family - because he didn't get a knighthood for services to pornography and dumbing down. But the Sun and the late NoTW were necessary papers, just as the Mail is. Because they'll print stuff that doesn't fit the narrative. (and you have to say that as a pressman, Dacre's a genius - look at their online presence).

Regarding the Milbands (while I think the Mail piece was a tad OTT, compare with the Salon piece on "the hatemonger next door") it's Ralph's father Samuel who sets a more worrying precedent - a Polish citizen, he fought for the invading Red Army in the early 20s conflict between Russia and Poland.

Interesting trajectory for the Miliband family

Samuel - Warsaw --> Belgium --> UK
Ralph - Belgium --> UK
David - UK --> NYC??

Noah172 said...

He now lives in New York, city of full-throated Jewishness

That is an anti-Semitic canard! Trotting out the stereotype of the Jew with a full throat -- what a schande! This is vicious anti-Semitism and evidence of mental illness. Jews are in fact very narrow-throated. Call Abe Foxman! Call Senator Schumer -- we need hate crimes laws pronto!

It is an anti-Semitic myth that New York is more Jewish than other cities. New York is no more Jewish than Biloxi, Mississippi (or is it Arkansas? or North Dakota?; darn goyisch flyover nowheresvilles)!

Dave Pinsen said...

Is Roger Cohen an American citizen? Wiki says he was born in London and moved back there a few years ago.

Exiled in Britain said...

Ed Miliband was central to New Labour. So was Peter Mandelson. And if New Labour liked Britain, they had a funny way of showing it:

Immigrants? We sent out search parties to get them to come... and made it hard for Britons to get work, says Mandelson

Former minister admits Labour deliberately engineered mass immigration

Between 1997 and 2010 net migration to Britain totalled 2.2million

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324112/Lord-Mandelson-Immigrants-We-sent-search-parties-hard-Britons-work.html

Note that Blair and New Labour were funded by Lord Levy and his very rich friends he recruited to help a charity called Jewish Care. Levy and Co. don't appear to have disapproved of Labour's immigration policies:

Levy was involved in fundraising from his early life and from the late 1960s for many causes including Jewish and Israeli causes. For this he showed a special adeptness, raising, between 1988–1994, £60m for Jewish Care, an amalgam of several Jewish charitable organisations, of which he is now President.[2] Simon Morris, Chief Executive of Jewish Care, said of Levy that, when it comes to fundraising, "there's no one better in the country." Levy has been described as the number one fundraiser in the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levy,_Baron_Levy

Conatus said...

When it comes to Disraeli a famous man once said, "Disraeli's strategy for dealing with his Jewish heritage was rather like Liberace's for dealing with his gayness, who, rather than try to conceal his flamboyance, fired up his flameosity to the max."

Disraeli had his Semitic superhero, Sidonia saying, "All is race, there is no other truth" in the novel Tancred. Perhaps after the takeover of our culture is truly complete, there will be a Saturday morning cartoon program with a guy wearing a six pointed starred shirt flying around saving the world via race.

Also the pedant in me asks, Isn't this guy below wrong? it is Tancred, not Coningsby, perhaps he was just cringing at the sentiments in the dialogue.

http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-making-of-benjamin-disraeli-adam-kirschs-new/86002/

"For Disraeli to lay claim to being a Jew, however, he needed to redefine the term, for he was no longer theologically a Jew but a Christian. He did so by replacing the bonds of belief and practice with the bonds of race. Disraeli was, in his own view, as Jewish as his friend Lionel de Rothschild, for they both belonged to the same race. As Sidonia declares in "Coningsby," "Race is everything; there is no other truth." Moreover, like other racial thinkers, Disraeli associated racial purity (and the refusal to intermarry and absorb outsiders that protected it) with power, vigor, and survival. The Jews were "an unmixed race of a first-rate organization."

josh said...

"Sound familiar? The rootless Jewish Bolshevik who profits from others’ losses, shows no loyalty to the society in which he prospers, and devises clever two-faced financial maneuvers that demonstrate his essential hypocrisy"

Well, now that you mention it...

Anonymous said...

The point I'm trying to make is that the DM is the 'curtain-twitchers' paper par excellence.
It *is* snobby, but snobby in a different - and more evil way - than the patrician snootiness of the elitists. For all their faults, elitists are usually, at root, fairly broadminded and forgiving, with 'live-let-live' being a maxim. Basically, they realise that this short earthly life is too precious to waste on pettyfogging petty bourgeious snobberies - hence the Benny Hill like antics of DSK.
But the DM pitches to the lowest possible common demoniator of British public taste - nasty, insecure status-racking, rat-race, suburban, 'non-U', nose-in-the-air type snobbery, the golf club bigot tendency. Anal-fixated and hateful.
And the hatred - unforgiving, unrelenting and unremitting hatred that seems to be the leitmotif of that whole publication never ever ceases. It's relentless - they are only happy and satisfied when their selected enemy is utterly, utterly destroyed, torn apart, fed to the crows with eyes plucked out. Nothing less will do. It's pathological and psychopathic and sadistic. I truly believe that the writers andeditors are infused with psychic energy in proportion to the pain they inflict on their enemies, like vampires they feed from it, they need it to survive.
You are all thinking that I'm exagerrating, and that I've got an axe to grind, but I've lived here long enough to know.
For example, just look at the long campaign to undermine and destroy Neil Kinnock.
I rest my case.

SFG said...

What's funny to me is that Cohen still tries to cry anti-Semitism even when the guys writing the article are Jewish. The idea that Jews might be center-right and willing to take down commies bothers him. ;)

Anonymous said...

Lord Browne was condemned by the Daily Mail for his perjury and not for his homosexuality or Jewishness.

With regard to the question of the pushiness of certain people I heard Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, say on BBC radio the other day that Ralph Miliband asked him if his schoolboy son, David Miliband, could have a desk in Livingstone's outer office. Livingstone was at that time the leader of the old London Council. David Miliband then got into Oxford via a scheme to help disadvantaged youngsters. This scheme allowed entry via an interview rather than by a requirement to achieve high exam marks at school. His actual exam results were undistinguished and would probably not have got him a place at Oxford. David Miliband's father was at this time a very wealthy and well known academic.

Cail Corishev said...

'"The DM is run by complete and utter snobby, cliquey bastards - archetypal public school bullies"

This is pretty much the exact opposite of the truth.'


It's funny: I've never been to the UK, and know nothing about it that I didn't learn from James Herriot, Monty Python, or Del Boy. I'm completely clueless about the class tensions over there and how they play into the media coverage.

And yet even I recognized that Anonymous's post was a steaming pile of BS that he expected clueless Americans like me to swallow. That's how obvious it was. Be more subtle next time, guy.

Abie Gefiltefish said...

It breaks my heart to see the poor Jews do the same thing all over again for the umpteenth time in 2000 years.

If they could only ditch their Biblical Jewish supremacism and stop trying to "heal the world" they would get along so much better with the rest of the human race.

But that would take a level of personal and national self-awareness that they seem uniquely unable to muster.

You would think that if backwardness, fundamentalism, and race hate really were a major concern of theirs they would spend their efforts rehabilitating their Haredi brethren in Beit Shemesh, Rockland County, Monsey, Lakewood and Williamsburg.

If they persist in looking the other way and not cleaning their own house, if they wait until the goyim bring a RICO suit against the various Teitelbaum colonies (for example) things will be much, much worse for all concerned.

Anonymous said...

Love seeing the treasonous Bolsheviks outed anywhere they have embedded themselves in Western Society. Thanks to the Daily Mail for this.

Jesse Stuart said...

@ananymous: "The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world ... When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it"

That was William Golding's motivation in writing "Lord of the Flies" --to show those damn English (really, all self-satisfied post-WWII goyim) that they were just animals under the skin, savages whose naturally malevolent natures were barely under control, no different than the Nazis, deep down inside.

It was a wonderful bit of post-WWII propaganda happily purveyed by tens of thousands of white lady schoolteachers.

For at least two generations those nice white ladies made the book required reading for 10th graders all across America.

Now, of course, most states have mandatory Holocaust education so they don't need to be as oblique. Instead of merely snorting, they can deliver it mainline.

slumber_j said...

Well, I live in NYC and my throat is certainly full of Jewishness at times--when I eat a bagel, for example, or when I'm jabbed from behind by an old lady's shopping cart in the checkout line at Fairway.

I do like how Roger Cohen has to point out a lot that all the people in power and all the people writing about them in this case are Jewish. Wouldn't it be more efficient to identify the odd goy?

AMac said...

@ anonymous Daily Mail hater --

11:30 PM -- "The trouble is, Steve, that the Daily Mail is such a horrible little paper that its reputation amohngst all fair-minded Englishmen, is in the gutter."

4:01 AM -- "The point I'm trying to make is that the DM is the 'curtain-twitchers' paper par excellence..."

OK, Steve's readers now understand that an anonymous fellow reader really, really despises the Daily Mail. If you want to do more than that, you'll have to make actual arguments. And supply links to buttress your case.

Luke Lea said...

Roger Cohen: "Keep quiet, use code, ignore the occasional comments about “pushiness” or “flashiness” or “stinginess” or “Jewish behavior” (whatever that might be) or a comment about a Jewish woman’s 'great conk of a nose.'"

Sounds like Cohen is the anti-Semite here even if he didn't list "brash" and "brassy" as stereotypically Jewish behavior.

I don't think these steroetypical personality traits were the source of Western anti-Semitism however, which was more sociological in origin.

Let me quote from a novel of William Dean Howells I just happen to be reading:

You know how I like to go on about other people's sins, and the world's wickedness generally; but one day Brother Peck, in that cool, impersonal way of his, suggested that it was not a wholly meritorious thing to hate evil. He went so far as to say that perhaps we could not love them that despitefully used us if we hated their evil so furiously. He said it was a good deal more desirable to understand evil than to hate it, for then we could begin to cure it.

Simon in London said...

anon:
"DM... Anal-fixated and hateful...2

Judging by your previous comments this accusation of 'anal fixation' sounds like a case of projection!

Has the DM attacked you personally? I people they've attacked, and yes they are (very) often mean and unfair to people, including Neil Kinnock (very nice guy, helped my family, would have been a terrible Prime Minister). They still perform a very valuable service. They don't control the debate, they are not the New York Times or BBC. I would not want them silenced, which is what the Great & Good are hankering after.

Anonymous said...

"swearing my own private oath that I would be faithful to the workers' cause'."


To second the sentiment expressed up above by Exiled in Britain: massive immigration has been an unmitigated economic bane for the worker the Labour party pretends to defend.


Anonymous said...

They are always whining.

2Degrees said...

Anonymous said:

The trouble is, Steve, that the Daily Mailis such a horrible little paper that its reputation amohngst all fair-minded Englishmen, is in the gutter.

NOT TRUE

That's how Guardian readers feel, but one of THEIR columnists was a KGB agent and he's still working there.

The DM is middle-brow and, let's remember, it broke the Stephen Lawrence story.

The Daily Star is the gutter press. The Labour Party rag is the Daily Mirror. It used to be owned by a real crook called Robert Maxwell. One of its chief editors was a pig of a man called Piers Morgan who was fired after falsifying pictures showing British soldiers torturing Iraqis.

Milipede wants to destroy the DM, because it is fiercely un-PC.

Piers Morgan is now one of the judges on America's Got Talent. As you Americans say, Go Figure.

Svigor said...

Solemnly, he stood at the grave of Karl Marx at a moment when, in his own words, 'the cemetery was utterly deserted?.?.?.?I remember standing in front of the grave, fist clenched, and swearing my own private oath that I would be faithful to the workers' cause'.

The year was 1940. The young man was Ralph Miliband, a Jewish immigrant who, with his father, had fled to London from Belgium just weeks earlier to escape the Nazi Holocaust.


So much for the correlation between IQ and learning ability.

But that's not good enough for Roger Cohen, op-ed columnist for the New York Times, who is now denouncing Levy in the NYT for "Jewish stereotyping" of Ralph Miliband.

Yeesh. "American" media castigating "British" media for "stereotyping" "British" politician = one Jew scolding another Jew over his treatment of a third Jew. Oh, wait, I spoke too soon; there's a fourth Jew publicly defending Jew #3.

Sound familiar? The rootless Jewish Bolshevik who profits from others’ losses, shows no loyalty to the society in which he prospers, and devises clever two-faced financial maneuvers that demonstrate his essential hypocrisy

Well, yeah. It does sound familiar, actually.

This is indeed an old, old story. Keep quiet, use code, ignore the occasional comments about “pushiness” or “flashiness” or “stinginess” or “Jewish behavior” (whatever that might be) or a comment about a Jewish woman’s “great conk of a nose.” This, after all, is no more than genteel prejudice, harmless enough, unlike the Continental brand that Ralph Miliband fled.

You can call real Brits pushy, flashy, or stingy. You can comment on a real Brit's great conk of a nose. But not Jewish Brits - then you're a racist anti-Semitic bigot. But if you treat Jewish Brits differently than real Brits, you're a racist anti-Semitic bigot. In short, if you're a real Brit, you're a racist anti-Semitic bigot.

JDL said...

"For Disraeli to lay claim to being a Jew, however, he needed to redefine the term, for he was no longer theologically a Jew but a Christian. He did so by replacing the bonds of belief and practice with the bonds of race."

Fail. Tribal membership Is a matter of race/tribe. Always has been.

But don't believe me. Ask any Orthodox (e.g. a real) rabbi. He will tell you that a Christianized Jew is still a Jew. A rodef or moser, perhaps, but still a Jew.

You really cannot trust Reform Jewish pronouncements on Halacha. They are so wrong on the law that Israel does not even permit them to perform marriages.

Anonymous said...

I was aware of Disraeli, but chalked that up to an exception and to the fact that he was religiously a Christian. But as an American I did not realize how influential Jews were in Britain.

I guess it might have been because a certain commentator at iSteve is always assuring us that Jews don't exist in Europe, so they've had no part in the current immivasion madness. He said it was all the fault of those British gals who hated British men.

PS. Thanks to 'Exiled in Britain' for the link to that article on Lord Mandelson.

Anonymous said...

"Considering that Benjamin Disraeli was Queen Victoria's favorite prime minister in the 1870s, perhaps, though, Levy was objecting to Ralph Miliband's ideology rather than their mutual ethnicity?"

Probably, unless he's channelling Oscar Levy...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Levy

Mr. Anon said...

"Peter the Shark said...

Being Jewish should not grant you instant immunity from criticism."

To a lot of people, it means exactly that.

dearieme said...

Milliband was a scumbag, of course, but on the whole our Jews in Britain are a pretty decent lot. From time to time I read something by some chip-on-the-shoulder American Jew, projecting American conditions onto us, and I shiver. Ain't we the lucky ones?

ATBOTL said...

How many non-Jewish Englishmen have been made leaders of major political parties or Prime Minister in Israel?

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

The trouble is, Steve, that the Daily Mailis such a horrible little paper that its reputation amohngst all fair-minded Englishmen, is in the gutter..........."

So, let me get this straight.

The DM doesn't like the Millibands, foreign communist agitators, who have sought and continue to seek to subvert and destroy Britain and anything British. The DM's editors don't consider the Millibands to be "one of us"? Probably becuase they are note "one of us", i.e. British.

The DM doesn't like Lord Browne, the head of BP, a reckless corporate monster, that through its greed and criminal negligence, polluted the US Gulf Coast in 2010 and killed 15 of its own employees in the Texas City Refinery explosion of 2005. BP also helped give us Obama as President, having contributed alot to his campaign. Browne has also ridden the "climate change" meme hard, using it to position BP as "green" in what really was a shamelessly cynical PR ploy. Oh, but he is also a patron of modern art (i.e., nihilistic, soul-destroying crap).

And you say the DM doesn't like the royals, merely because they are effete, degenerate, useless blowhards.

The Daily Mail sounds like a fine paper to me. The DM also runs many stories on American crimes, and - unlike American news outlets - does not fail to mention the all-too-common racial angle to such stories.

Anonymous said...

"I did not realize how influential Jews were in Britain"

Probably not US scale, but not miles off it. The last two heads of the Supreme Court, many top business people and government advisers, the BBCs top political and business correspondents, owners of the Express newspaper group - even the head of the Football Association.


There's a BBC radio programme called Desert Island Discs, where the great and the good choose recordings. Never fail to be amazed at how many participants turn out to have parents or grandparents who came from East of the Elbe.

Anonymous said...

"I did not realize how influential Jews were in Britain"
and in the aristocracy - the 'real life' downton abbey family has a rothchild which elizbeth mcgovern's character is loosely derived from, helen bohman carter as well..
possible churchill..

the DM btw, is jewish owned as is the spectator

Simon in London said...

>>A Historian said...
Simon: "Most British Jews are patriots. From what I can tell, most American Jews are patriots too."

...Your point is what, precisely?<<

My point was that most British & American Jews are loyal to Britain and America, respectively - including the actual, historic, British and American people. But American elite Jews seem to be dominated by people who dislike the actual American (& British) people, will side with Jewish Communists who hate Anglo-America, and will traduce anyone, including patriotic Jews like Levy, who point this out. There are such people among elite British Jews also, such as Ralph Miliband was, but they are balanced by plenty of other Jews who like the British and are loyal to Britain.
Basically: Your elite Jews suck. Ours are better. :)

d..... said...

"Well, I live in NYC and my throat is certainly full of Jewishness at times--when I eat a bagel, for example, or when I'm jabbed from behind by an old lady's shopping cart in the checkout line at Fairway."

Shop at the new Trader Joe's, only four blocks south, and so much nicer!

I myself do not understand the scandal surrounding John Brown's homosexuality. Isn't this business as usual for old public school boys?

I think Rod Liddle writes perceptively about the business here:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2013/10/ralph-miliband-hatred-of-britain-sprung-from-his-marxist-beliefs/

My own take on British anti-Semitism is that it's no big deal and that Cohen should just chill. The real prejudice in Britain is against the white working class.

Anonymous said...

The sad thing is that in the long run, it is very much in the interest of Jews (and any other group) to be subjected to constructive criticism. That's how people improve, and there are a lot of us out there who like and respect Jewish people and would like nothing more than to see more of them on our side on some important issues.

Jews who wish to combat anti-Semitism would do well to police those of their fellow Jews who act like anti-Semitic caricatures. Who's more of a problem for the image of Jews: Sheldon Adelson, or a philosemitic goy who points out what a jackass Sheldon Adelson is?

Once upon a time, I think leaders of minority groups went out of their way to avoid reinforcing negative stereotypes. Nowadays, if members of a minority group behave in a stereotypically negative way (e.g., blacks committing crimes, Muslims blowing stuff up, Jews being terrible on the National Question) it's the fault of John Q. Public for noticing and pointing it out.

This unwillingness to take criticism cannot end well for either minority groups or for the public at large.

Simon in London said...

>>dearieme said...
Milliband was a scumbag, of course, but on the whole our Jews in Britain are a pretty decent lot. From time to time I read something by some chip-on-the-shoulder American Jew, projecting American conditions onto us, and I shiver. Ain't we the lucky ones?<<

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. With the proviso that while most American Jewish opinion journalists seem pretty vile, I know both from personal experience and from that survey data* that regular American Jews are mostly a decent lot, too - certainly outside of New York! >:)

*That survey, much lamented by the US Jewish leadership, which showed that American Jewish opinions on mass immigration, 'social justice' etc weren't much different from the American mainstream.

Anonymous said...

It's puzzling that a large number of Jews would be touting Marxism or Keynesian economics. Both Marx and Keynes were both acknowledged anti-Semites. I was under the impression that that was a disqualifier.

Conatus said...

"The sad thing is that in the long run, it is very much in the interest of Jews (and any other group) to be subjected to constructive criticism."

BUT Antisemitism is the belief by non-Jewish people that Jewish people can be criticized, like everyone else.

Anonymous said...

This tempest in a teapot illustrates that the current taboo is not noticing patterns, it is failing to notice, and then censor oneself, when a forbidden pattern has surfaced. In this case, it's not that the original article profiles Miliband in a way that is consistent with the stereotype of the Jew as rootless cosmopolitan. The sin that Levy committed is that he should have noticed that his profile of Miliband appeared to confirm this stereotype; upon noticing this, he should have self-censored. I think this is true in many other instances. Although Steve has contended that one must remain ignorant of patterns to be perceived as virtuous by the contemporary upper/upper middle class, I think it's much more subtle than that. You have to be exquisitely aware of patterns, and then self-censor if you accidentally stumble into one of the forbidden ones. Virtue is in restraining yourself from 'exploiting' the forbidden pattern, trend, stereotype, or whatever. To do this, you have to be aware of the existence of the pattern in the first place.

Philip Neal said...

I am an Englishman and not Jewish, and I have never heard the expression '45' meaning either 'Jew' or 'the same old story'. Furthermore, according to Wikipedia, 45 rpm recordings were first introduced in 1949, so this could not have been the reference in 1938. On the other hand, anyone in this country would understand the rhyming slang expression 'a quarter to two', or sometimes just 'a quarter to', and I have heard Jews use it. I suggest, though I do not claim to know, that there was a variant, '1:45', or just ':45'.

Anonymous said...

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1994-12-04/news/9412030194_1_hollywood-jews-jewish-cabal-semitic

Dominic Lawson told Jewish American critics to fuck off 20 years ago, and I hope Levy does the same.

Anonymous said...

Basically the system currently in operation in Western countries seems to be the left making "full-throated" accusations that the right is mostly animated by backwards, tribal loyalties concerning political matters (See for example the recent,remarkably open declarations by Andrew Sullivan and Joan Walsh that the government shutdown impasse's origins are for sure the result of the Tea Party's race-hatred) and the right maybe-or-maybe-not making ever the slightest hints with very abstract coded language that maybe, just maybe, the left's politics might be motivated by tribal fears and hatreds too. What a strange world we live in.

Anonymous said...

The NWO is the Anglo-American-Jewish Empire.11

Anonymous said...

That was William Golding's motivation

@ Jessie Stuart -

William Golding wasn't Jewish.

Anonymous said...

the 'real life' downton abbey family has a rothchild

They had a Rothschild, Almina Wombwell, the half-Jewish natural daughter of Alfred de Rothschild and Marie Wombwell (nee Boyer). She's been dead for over 40 years. The current Earl of Carnarvon is her 1/16th Jewish great-grandson.

anony-mouse said...

1/ Never attribute to malice what can better attributed to sucking-up.

(My version)

Arise Sir Roger! (If Miliband wins).

Well Roger Cohen's son won't be working for the Daily Mail. Its a steady job.

2/ Important Jews in Britain? You forgot 2 of Macca's wives.

Average Joe said...

Is it at all possible that the reason why the stereotype of the disloyal Jew persists is because it is based on how Jews actually behave?

countenance said...

Ed Miliband vs David Miliband

What would be the practical political difference between the two in terms of actual public policy? I suspect the only real difference between the brothers is a matter of vocal volume and public militancy.

Average Joe said...

If they could only ditch their Biblical Jewish supremacism and stop trying to "heal the world" they would get along so much better with the rest of the human race

Unfortunately, the Jews will always see the gentile world as a problem that needs to be "fixed" whether the gentiles want it "fixed" or not.

Anonymous said...

Cohen's point was that Ralph Miliband proved himself a true patriot by volunteering to serve in the British Navy during WW2, a contrast to the Daily Mail writers, who have never served and would never think of having any of their kids serve.

Somewhat akin to the neo-cons in the US, such as Ted Cruz, who questioned Chuck Hagel's patriotism. Hagel, of course, is a decorated Vietnam veteran, while Cruz is a Canada-born Ivy League elitist chicken-hawk.

Sesus said...

I don't drink coffee I take tea my dear
I like my toast done on one side
And you can hear it in my accent when I talk
I'm an Englishman in New York

See me walking down Fifth Avenue
A walking cane here at my side
I take it everywhere I walk
I'm an Englishman in New York

I'm an alien I'm a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York
I'm an alien I'm a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York

If, "Manners maketh man" as someone said
Then he's the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say

I'm an alien I'm a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York
I'm an alien I'm a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York

Modesty, propriety can lead to notoriety
You could end up as the only one
Gentleness, sobriety are rare in this society
At night a candle's brighter than the sun

Takes more than combat gear to make a man
Takes more than a license for a gun
Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can
A gentleman will walk but never run

If, "Manners maketh man" as someone said
Then he's the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say

I'm an alien I'm a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York
I'm an alien I'm a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York

Simon in London said...

anon:
"Cohen's point was that Ralph Miliband proved himself a true patriot by volunteering to serve in the British Navy during WW2"

Being anti-Nazi does not make you pro-British! Miliband made it clear he hated the British; why not take his word for it?

Anonymous said...

"
Being anti-Nazi does not make you pro-British! Miliband made it clear he hated the British; why not take his word for it?"

Exactly, there are so many instances of Jews hating the people who gave them refuge after WWII and worked hard to change their host societies... South Africa and Sweden come to mind the most.

countenance said...

Chuck Hagel...

...is a stone cold unrepentant globalist.

Anonymous said...

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/10/08/how-many-native-americans-think-redskins-is-a-slur/

We also have to do something about 'scalpers'.

Anonymous said...

"On the other hand, anyone in this country would understand the rhyming slang expression 'a quarter to two'"

In comedian Spike Milligan's memoirs the rhyming slang is "four-by-two" (common UK timber specification in building) or "front-wheeler" as in "front-wheel skid".

PC Makes You Stupid said...

Although Steve has contended that one must remain ignorant of patterns to be perceived as virtuous by the contemporary upper/upper middle class, I think it's much more subtle than that. You have to be exquisitely aware of patterns, and then self-censor if you accidentally stumble into one of the forbidden ones.

What Cohen does is the opposite of subtle. Also, take away the "self-" in "self-censor" and you just described Komment Kontrol.

Anonymous said...

"Being anti-Nazi does not make you pro-British! Miliband made it clear he hated the British; why not take his word for it?"

Miliband, like so many Communists, turned against the Nazis when they invaded the USSR. Ralph's father, a Pole, sided with the USSR when they invaded Poland. This is as vile and radical a family as they come.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Cohen's point was that Ralph Miliband proved himself a true patriot by volunteering to serve in the British Navy during WW2, a contrast to the Daily Mail writers, who have never served and would never think of having any of their kids serve."

Others have already made this point, but I'll chime in too. That Miliband joined the royal navy does not make him a patriot. Seving as a radioman on a british warship does not make up for his work in undermining the british nation and british people. Klaus Fuchs helped design and build America's A-bomb, all the while betraying information about it to the Soviet Union. Was he an american patriot?

Anonymous said...

Ralph's father, a Pole, sided with the USSR when they invaded Poland.
funny you never see that part in steven spielburg/hollywood holcaust epics

Anonymous said...

First off, as a Brit I'm happy to state without any reservations whatsoever that Roger Cohen is an Anglophobic bigot. I base this not on this article, but the fact that whenever he mentions Britain in any of his articles the bile flows.

Re: Ralph Miliband. He was loyal -- at least for a time -- to the USSR.

That would be a totalitarian and genocidal regime that, frankly, meant Britain (and a good few other nations) serious harm.

But thanks to the Mail and the Milibands -- along with their foreign cheerleaders -- harping on about it, the odds of Ed Miliband becoming Prime Minister recede by the day.

Well done, Roger Cohen.

Anonymous said...

"I did not realize how influential Jews were in Britain"

They aren't in comparison to the US.

They don't control the media to anything like the same extent (which is why Israel comes in for flack).

They are not as influential in the universities (which is why it's still possible to find plenty of conservative -- i.e. non-cosmopolitan and un-PC scholars in British universities).

They aren't as heavily represented in politics (another reason why plenty of MPs condemn Israel).

The reason? Britain's class society meant that there has been an indigenous elite very keen on preserving itself and its influence (as the late Mr. Miliband recognized). Britain's Anglo-Saxon elite was (and is) less open than America's. And by less open, it's less open to infiltration and displacement.

I actually don't much care for Britain's elites. But when push comes to shove, if you must have an elite, it's better that they're of the same racial, cultural and religious group as you. They tend to screw you over just a little less.

Nothing is worse than a hostile elite.

Anonymous said...

Re: Anonymous said...

"Cohen's point was that Ralph Miliband proved himself a true patriot by volunteering to serve in the British Navy during WW2, a contrast to the Daily Mail writers, who have never served and would never think of having any of their kids serve."

Actually, you'll find that most of the male members of the Daily Mail old enough to serve in World War II did so. In fact, pretty much every male of military age in the UK at the time did so. Both my grandfathers did: one in the British army and the other...

...in the Royal Navy. Not "British" Navy.

When did Roger Cohen serve anyone but himself?

Simon in London said...

anon:
>>They are not as influential in the universities (which is why it's still possible to find plenty of conservative -- i.e. non-cosmopolitan and un-PC scholars in British universities).<<

Yes, and in the UK Jewish academics & intellectuals are actually in quite short supply. In my field Jewish career academics seem to be outnumbered by those who have come from industry and aren't 'intellectuals' per se.
IME British academia accepts cultural-Marxist dialectic and speaks reverently of Marcuse and Adorno (and even moreso of Habermas, the Frankfurt School heretic) while being very hostile to Israel and pro-Palestinian. I believe European academia is similar.

I haven't worked in US academia, but a colleague who has remarked on its total domination by Jewish academics, at least in the upper tiers. A lot of that is high abilty, but it also seems something of a closed shop - I get the impression that non-Jewish US academics don't have many prospects these days (except token minorities). In the UK, even in the areas where the leading academics are Jewish, I don't get the impression that there is much of a movement to exclude non-Jews.