Anti-Imperialism & Anti-Humanist Rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon

[barracuda]

I guess we're going to have to disagree on this one then, Alice, because as nuanced and intricate as you seem to think your ideas and those of Mr. Atzmon's are, at heart I find them remarkably simplistic and filled with obvious dissembling. I don't respect them. Truly though, perhaps it is the simple way my mind functions, in which case maybe your brand of discourse, your perspective on the Jews, is simply too rich for me to to attain, too complex for my meager faculties. Some of it's just over my head, and that, I admit, I ignore. My reactions to these ideas are just that, reactions, but they're not really fanatical like your own. And in the context of this discussion it's my opinion that which side we are on about Gilad Atzmon's work unfortunately has little or no effect whatsoever on the plight of the Palestinians.

[compared2what?]

...all the statistics suggest that's simply (and quite literally) a fair observation. For example, the population of California is about seven percent black, about three percent Jewish, and (almost) three percent Islamic. Since 2001, however, about 26 percent of all hate crimes in in California have been anti-black; about seven percent have been anti-Jewish, and about one percent have been anti-Muslim.

First, it's hard to evaluate such statistics without first knowing if, say, a swastika drawn in chalk, or a very minor incident of rudeness or refusal to give time off work is registered the same as a physical assault or a shooting, or a bombing, a big deal out of nothing

...I see. So do you think that less than one percent of hate crimes in California since 2001 may have been directed at Muslims, or is there only one victimized group you suspect of regularly getting its panties in a twist about a little bit of harmless chalked graffiti?

or the ugly little organized hate-fest we saw in that video filmed in Orange County, or, for that matter, if the hate-fest is even counted as a "hate crime", which it probably wasn't; after all, the local paper merely described it as a celebration, with the atmosphere of a July 4 picnic, or something like that.

Well. Since it wasn't, in fact, a hate crime but rather an exercise of the exact same free-speech rights that people who wish to deny the Holocaust can (and do) avail themselves of legally in California -- as I thought that you and I quite agreed on principle that they should be able to do, btw -- I'd say that it VERY probably wasn't counted as one. Are you suggesting that you think it should have been? Because I'd certainly hate to see you blatantly using that kind of a double-standard twice in a row.

And I mean that. It just about kills me to see.

Government officials incited xenophobia and hatred, distributed the American flag to the harassers and congratulated them for their 'patriotism'. Is it imaginable that a comparable 'event', let alone with official sanction and media complicity, could be organized anywhere in the US to harass Jews, including children for pete's sake, for no reason other than that they are Jews? I don't think so.

I think it's safe to say that there's virtually no chance of a similarly biased event that targeted any group other than Muslims occurring in contemporary American culture. Plus, maybe,"immigrants," which in this country really means "non-black Latinos," for the most part.

You certainly wouldn't see a similar officially publicly sanctioned expression of bigotry and hatred directed against black people anywhere in the United States, though. Furthermore, back when you might have done -- ie, in the not-so-distant-past, when racial prejudice was an officially and publicly sanctioned fact of American life -- it wouldn't have been very illustrative of the full scope or nature of discrimination against black people in this country at all, even if you had.

Unless you arbitrarily decide to make the presence of government officials inciting xenophobia and hatred while distributing the American flag to harassers and congratulating them for their 'patriotism' the criterion by which all acts and expressions of bias are defined, however, that sure doesn't mean that there's no racial prejudice here.

I mean, there also isn't any kind of interfaith marriage that even comes close to being as taboo as virtually every interracial (black/white) marriage does in the eyes of most, lo unto this very day. But that sure doesn't mean that there's no prejudice against Muslims. Or anybody else. Different cultural prejudices have different cultural manifestations, here as elsewhere.

As I'm sure you'll agree, they're all roughly comparable, in the sense that they all serve comparable ends and are all comparably intolerable, and so forth. But after a certain point, as I said, comparisons get to be otiose. At best.

FTM, Anti-Muslim sentiment here really just doesn't run nearly as deep and wide as it does in (for example) daily life in parts of Europe. In fact, it still mostly has to be drummed up with the aid of tip-sheets and scorecards from the state, as circumstances require, simply because Islamic/Arabic culture is too much of an over-there-and-far-away phenomenon for most people to have really gotten good and habituated to hating it on an intimate, personal basis in this country.

But since the anti-Muslim sentiments that are culturally endemic here are plenty good enough to have habituated us to killing hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims elsewhere without giving it a second (or even first) thought, choosing to dwell on the culturally unintegrated nature of those feelings (relative to most other common forms of bias that are widespread in American culture) would only do more to obscure all than it would to illuminate it.

Those politicians who participated would be hounded out of office and could kiss their careers goodbye forever. What does this double standard say?

It's not a double standard. Please see above.

Second, nobody's addressed my main point about the crucial difference between individual racism and institutional racism. The former is very limited in impact and scope and can usually be dealt with as a crime, but the latter has a devastating yet often ignored impact on the personal, national and even global levels. Within the US, both black people and Arabs and/or Muslims are systematically targeted by the latter, unlike Jews. It's enough to know that "respectable" establishment types can and do openly call for Muslims to be profiled and kept under surveillance, and that for them, even a small, spontaneous charity donation or striking up an acquaintance with the wrong person could open up a whole world of hurt for them and their families. World-wide, there's simply no basis for comparison: we're talking about economic deprivation, denial of human and legal rights and mass murder in the millions. Institutional racism within the US may not be as obvious or severe as its external manifestations, but it's pretty bad, and they are very much interlinked.

Sure. If you insist on making otiose comparisons. And also on minimizing, dismissing. denying and/or remaining blind to all signs of prejudice against Jews (some of it institutional, in this country and -- to a much greater extent -- elsewhere) as it actually occurs, I guess that might mean something besides....Oh, sorry. No, it doesn't. It's just antisemitic. You're very antisemitic, Alice. That's a terribly painful thing to see you suffering from, tbh. So I very much hope you get over it some day.

But since it's abundantly clear that you're not going to on this thread, I don't really see it being worth my while to continue trying futilely to minimize the permanent stain on the board that this thread represents.

Besides which, I don't really know how to accommodate the feelings other people have about Jews and the Ukraine Famine, in light of my own, which include the ones I have about my direct forebears who starved to death during it while Jewish. I mean, Jews do need to eat, after all. And there were still a very large number of poor, non-Marxist Jews in the Ukraine in 1933. You know. Being resolutely uninterested in emigrating to Palestine, and writing the numerous letters to my grandfather through which their lives and identities are now known to me, and what-have-you.

I mean, I wouldn't want to be insensitive to Sounder by (as he might perceive it) shoving a bunch of unwelcome Jews into a genocide that means something to him. But I have feelings, too, of course. So. I'll conclude.

Be good, everybody.

[bluenoseclaret]

Fighting a Forbidden Battle: How I Stopped Covering Up for a Hidden Wrong

by Jesse Lieberfeld......Interesting read..

I once belonged to a wonderful religion. I belonged to a religion that allows those of us who believe in it to feel that we are the greatest people in the world—and feel sorry for ourselves at the same time. Once, I thought that I truly belonged in this world of security, self-pity, self-proclaimed intelligence, and perfect moral aesthetic. I thought myself to be somewhat privileged early on. It was soon revealed to me, however, that my fellow believers and I were not part of anything so flattering.

Although I was fortunate enough to have parents who did not try to force me into any one set of beliefs, being Jewish was in no way possible to escape growing up. It was constantly reinforced at every holiday, every service, and every encounter with the rest of my relatives. I was forever reminded how intelligent my family was, how important it was to remember where we had come from, and to be proud of all the suffering our people had overcome in order to finally achieve their dream in the perfect society of Israel.

This last mandatory belief was one which I never fully understood, but I always kept the doubts I had about Israel’s spotless reputation to the back of my mind. “Our people” were fighting a war, one I did not fully comprehend, but I naturally assumed that it must be justified. We would never be so amoral as to fight an unjust war. Yet as I came to learn more about our so-called “conflict” with the Palestinians, I grew more concerned. I routinely heard about unexplained mass killings, attacks on medical bases, and other alarmingly violent actions for which I could see no possible reason. “Genocide” almost seemed the more appropriate term, yet no one I knew would have ever dreamed of portraying the war in that manner; they always described the situation in shockingly neutral terms. Whenever I brought up the subject, I was always given the answer that there were faults on both sides, that no one was really to blame, or simply that it was a “difficult situation.” It was not until eighth grade that I fully understood what I was on the side of. One afternoon, after a fresh round of killings was announced on our bus ride home, I asked two of my friends who actively supported Israel what they thought. “We need to defend our race,” they told me. “It’s our right.”

“We need to defend our race.”

Where had I heard that before? Wasn’t it the same excuse our own country had used to justify its abuses of African-Americans sixty years ago? In that moment, I realized how similar the two struggles were—like the white radicals of that era, we controlled the lives of another people whom we abused daily, and no one could speak out against us. It was too politically incorrect to do so. We had suffered too much, endured too many hardships, and overcome too many losses to be criticized. I realized then that I was in no way part of a “conflict”—the term “Israeli/Palestinian Conflict” was no more accurate than calling the Civil Rights Movement the “Caucasian/ African-American Conflict.” In both cases, the expression was a blatant euphemism: it gave the impression that this was a dispute among equals and that both held an equal share of the blame. However, in both, there was clearly an oppressor and an oppressed, and I felt horrified at the realization that I was by nature on the side of the oppressors. I was grouped with the racial supremacists. I was part of a group that killed while praising its own intelligence and reason. I was part of a delusion.

I thought of the leader of the other oppressed side of years ago, Martin Luther King. He too had been part of a struggle that had been hidden and glossed over for the convenience of those against whom he fought. What would his reaction have been? As it turned out, it was precisely the same as mine. As he wrote in his letter from Birmingham Jail, he believed the greatest enemy of his cause to be “Not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who…lives by a mythical concept of time…. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” When I first read those words, I felt as if I were staring at myself in a mirror. All my life I had been conditioned to simply treat the so-called conflict with the same apathy which King had so forcefully condemned. I, too, held the role of an accepting moderate. I, too, “lived by a mythical concept of time,” shrouded in my own surreal world and the set of beliefs that had been assigned to me. I had never before felt so trapped.

I decided to make one last appeal to my religion. If it could not answer my misgivings, no one could. The next time I attended a service, there was an open question-and-answer session about any point of our religion. I wanted to place my dilemma in as clear and simple terms as I knew how. I thought out my exact question over the course of the seventeen-minute cello solo that was routinely played during service. Previously, I had always accepted this solo as just another part of the program, yet now it seemed to capture the whole essence of our religion: intelligent and well-crafted on paper, yet completely oblivious to the outside world (the soloist did not have the faintest idea of how masterfully he was putting us all to sleep). When I was finally given the chance to ask a question, I asked, “I want to support Israel. But how can I when it lets its army commit so many killings?” I was met with a few angry glares from some of the older men, but the rabbi answered me. “It is a terrible thing, isn’t it?” he said. “But there’s nothing we can do. It’s just a fact of life.” I knew, of course, that the war was no simple matter and that we did not by any means commit murder for its own sake, but to portray our thousands of killings as a “fact of life” was simply too much for me to accept. I thanked him and walked out shortly afterward. I never went back. I thought about what I could do. If nothing else, I could at least try to free myself from the burden of being saddled with a belief I could not hold with a clear conscience. I could not live the rest of my life as one of the pathetic moderates whom King had rightfully portrayed as the worst part of the problem. I did not intend to go on being one of the Self-Chosen People, identifying myself as part of a group to which I did not belong.

It was different not being the ideal nice Jewish boy. The difference was subtle, yet by no means unaffecting. Whenever it came to the attention of any of our more religious family friends that I did not share their beliefs, I was met with either a disapproving stare and a quick change of the subject or an alarmed cry of, “What? Doesn’t Israel matter to you?” Relatives talked down to me more afterward, but eventually I stopped noticing the way adults around me perceived me. It was worth it to no longer feel as though I were just another apathetic part of the machine.

I can obviously never know what it must have been like to be an African-American in the 1950s. I do feel, however, as though I know exactly what it must have been like to be white during that time, to live under an aura of moral invincibility, to hold unchallengeable beliefs, and to contrive illusions of superiority to avoid having to face simple everyday truths. That illusion was nice while it lasted, but I decided to pass it up. I have never been happier

http://pulsemedia.org/2012/01/17/fighti ... den-wrong/

[Sounder]

I’m in a bit of an odd spot here. I play a game that is similar to Gilad’s in that I want more than anything for my ‘audience’ to recognize new or novel reflections produced at the intersection of externally received impressions(sounds) and internally produced responses. While Gilad seems to revel in causing psychical pain at this intersection, I do not relate to or agree with this as a strategy. Because people are in so much pain, both repressed and unrecognized, then added to historical imprints along with currently impactful health concerns, both mental and physical, I try my best to not add to that mix. Yet because my objective is to add a voice to development of horizontal authority distribution systems, a primary element is to encourage creative in preference to reactive mind thinking. And if one, through creative incite, were to realize that a current habitual thought pattern is essentially a reactive expression of ones conditioning, this reflection will create some unavoidable pain.

What’s a poor boy to do? I resort to ‘literal word salad’ as a way to say; ‘hey you know, it’s your choice as to what you can or are willing to deal with’.

I did however step out of the haze on pg 46 to speak more plainly about connections, both real and imagined, between Jewish survival, promotion of Marxism and the abolition of Capitalism, to no apparent effect. Perhaps the introduction of half-baked assertions would serve as better conversation starters. After all, everybody loves a food fight.

Here is one more attempt to speak plainly; it is racist to support a special designation regarding attitudes towards one and only one racial category. ‘Anti-semitism’ then violates and perhaps inverts the pejorative stance toward a ‘special’ race that is contained within the normally understood meaning of ‘racism’.

[American Dream]

...The Jewish nationalist would rob Palestine in the name of the right of self-determination, the Jewish progressive is there to rob the ruling class and even international capital in the name of world working class revolution.6

... Were Jewish Marxists and cosmopolitans open to the notion of brotherhood, they would have given up on their unique, exclusive banners and become ordinary human beings like the rest of us.7 ...

... Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, and Jewishness is, sadly enough, inherently intolerant; indeed, it may be argued that Jewish intolerance is as old as the Jews themselves.9

... The endless trail of Jewish collective tragedies is there to teach us that Jews always pay eventually (and heavily) for Jewish power exercises. Yet, surprisingly (and tragically) enough, Jews somehow consistently fail to internalise and learn from that very lesson.

... The remarkable fact is they don't understand why the world is beginning to stand against them in the same way they didn't understand why the Europeans stood against them in the 1930s. Instead of asking why we are hated they continue to toss accusations on others.

... I have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to understand the circumstances that led to the clear resentment of Europeans towards their Jewish neighbors in the 1920's-40's.

OK- time to start building a master list.

More points regarding Atzmon that some here continue to rigorously ignore:


Atzmon has gone out of his way to support and associated with those who declare themselves ‘proud’ to deny the holocaust. People like Paul Eisen, whose purpose is to ‘contextualize and re-humanize the person of Adolf Hitler, the National Socialist regime, and, indeed, the German people….’


Anti-Semitism is no longer a danger to Jews. It is dangerous for Palestinians. Not only does it threaten to misdirect the movement onto false targets, but it plays into the Zionists’ hands by racialising the struggle. Zionists constantly attack anti-Zionists as ‘anti-Semitic’ when they are no such thing. There is nothing more that the Zionist leadership desires than an upsurge in traditional anti-Semitism. Without anti-Semitism there are no Jewish immigrants to Israel and without immigration there can be no Zionism. It is the lack of such immigrants today, more Jews leave than go to live in Israel, which is, in part, responsible for the political crisis of Zionism.


Palestinians have faced two centuries of orientalist, colonialist and imperialist domination of our native lands. And so as Palestinians, we see such language as immoral and completely outside the core foundations of humanism, equality and justice, on which the struggle for Palestine and its national movement rests. As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.


Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34135&start=270

More points regarding Atzmon that some here continue to rigorously ignore:


A Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzman




Excerpted from:
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/03/guid ... -anti.html

‘The J’s are the ultimate chameleons, they can be whatever they like as long as it serves as some expedient. As soon as you criticise their expansionist militant national beliefs (Zionism) you hurt them as a race (Semites),… When you condemn their racist tendencies, they are transformed immediately into an innocent cultural identity… when it was right to be a Socialist they were right there in the forefront of the Bolshevik revolution, now when it is hard capitalism that sets the tone, you read about them in the Wall Street Journal, they are the new prophets from Manhattan. Life is never boring for ‘J’ people.’ It’s one never ending (Jewish) conspiracy.

'I am not a Holocaust scholar nor am I a historian. My primary interest is not the story of Auschwitz nor the destruction of European Jewry…. I do not wish to enter the debate regarding the truth of the Holocaust….

'Most of the scholars are themselves orthodox observants. Though they may be critical of different aspects of the exploitation of the Holocaust, they all accept the validity of the Nazi Judeocide and its mainstream interpretations and implications. Most of the scholars, if not all of them, do not challenge the Zionist narrative, namely Nazi Judeocide, yet, more than a few are critical of the way Jewish and Zionist institutes employ the Holocaust…. no one goes as far as revisionism, not a single Holocaust religion scholar dares engage in a dialogue with the so-called 'deniers' to discuss their vision of the events or any other revisionist scholarship’.

’

…. Holocaust religion was well established a long time before the Final Solution (1942)…. The Holocaust religion is probably as old as the Jews.’

‘If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?’ ‘If the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? ‘We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative...’ ‘Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next-door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East.’

‘To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook... Hitler has never flattened a country for no reason at all, and this is exactly what the Israelis have been doing in Lebanon for four weeks already and in Gaza for years and years….

If a comparison is to be made, then it is the Israelis who win the championship of ruthlessness and the reasons are obvious. Nazi Germany was a tyranny, Israel is a democracy led by a centre-left national unity government.’…

Nazis were indeed proper expansionists, they were trying to take towns and land intact. Carpet bombing and total erasure of populated areas that is so trendy amongst Israeli military and politicians (as well as Anglo-Americans) has never been a Nazi tactic or strategy.’

'I am suggesting that the only way to internalise the meaning of the Jewish Holocaust is to teach Jews how to start looking in the mirror, to teach Jews to ask themselves why conflicts with others happen to them time after time. Rather than blaming the Goyim, the Germans, the Muslims, the Arabs, it is about time the Jewish subject learns to ask the 6 million $ question: “why do they pick on me?”

posting.php?mode=quote&f=8&p=453203

Even More points regarding Atzmon that some here continue to rigorously ignore:

http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/15/n ... zmon-at-sw


Gilad Atzmon has revealed time and time again in his writings that he is less interested in being a part of a genuine anti-racist mass movement for the liberation of Palestine against Zionism than he is in trying to prove that there is something "inherently Jewish" about Zionist atrocities, attacking anti-Zionist Jews in England as "undercover Zionists" and, in the case of founder of the revolutionary anti-Zionist Israeli Socialist Organization, Moshe Machover, a "Judeo Marxist."

Atzmon has declared Machover to be worse than British neo-Nazi Nick Griffin, and in criticizing the printing of a speech by Moshe Machover in the International Socialist Review urged "Socialists and Marxists to save themselves from the Judeo political grip" and "consider liberating themselves of their tribal infiltrators." (If Moshe Machover's politics make him a "Judeo Marxist," then I am proud to identify as one--a Muslim Judeo-Marxist. Let's see how Atzmon tries to figure that one out.)

In addition to that, Atzmon has been known to circulate Holocaust denial literature and to associate with known fascists like the notorious racist Russian-Swede Israel Shamir, an open admirer of Hitler, David Duke, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Nick Griffin and the neo-Nazi British National Party (although apparently being very disappointed that the BNP isn't doing more these days to attack Jews). Israel Shamir has said of Atzmon: "Gilad takes up the tools of modern philosophical discourse...to explain our position: why we are against domination by Judaic spirit."

Atzmon also has previously been condemned by Palestine solidarity activists Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish. Atzmon's pseudo-philosophical writings include quotes like this: "In the light of Israeli brutality, the conviction of gross swindler Madoff and the latest images of Rabbis being taken away by FBI agents, it is about time we stop discussing the rise of anti-Semitism and start to elaborate on the rise of Jewish Crime."

To quote from a statement put out by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign against any legitimacy in the movement for Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir:

Anybody who insists that Jews must give up their Jewishness, or Catholics their Catholicism, before being allowed to join the anti-Zionist movement, or even line up alongside the vast army of critics of Israeli murder, is not just an idiot, but is a menace to the Palestinians...

Palestinians need mass support--it won't come by associating ourselves with extreme-right sympathizers who miss no opportunity to spew their racist bile into a movement for human and national rights for the Palestinian people. For the Palestinians are groaning under Zionism, which is armed and sustained by Western imperialism. Not a Jewish world conspiracy. One of these ideas is the natural discourse of the left and liberal center: one is a blind cul-de-sac propagated by the extreme right.



viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34135

And of course, this kind of historymust be ignored:


Racism, anti-Semitism and the modern world

Racism is a set of ideas that takes older prejudices, and systematically makes them into a worldview. Contrary to what most folk think, it emerged specifically in the modern world, as a way of explaining and understanding what was happening as global society began to rapidly change. Most racialised views of different peoples made their victims out to be inferior, such as the claim black people are stupid and lazy for example.

But Jews had a long history in Christian thought as being thought of as demonic enemies. They were blamed for the killing of Jesus, and in the medieval world were regarded as clever and dangerous because they took part in trade and money lending. In the modern world Jews came to be understood by many people as some kind of absolutely monstrous Other, a huge evil threat. This was of course total nonsense, but it was a useful idea for those who couldn’t face the reality of what was going on in capitalist society, and for those in power who didn’t want people to see that reality.

Anti-Semitic ideas became to be encapsulated in the idea that there was a world Jewish conspiracy, which aimed to establish a global government under their control. They would do this by their international control of banks and money, as well as control of the media and education.


An anti-Semitic cartoon shows the crazy idea
of a global Jewish conspiracy

These ideas came together in a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This was an anti-Semitic forgery put together in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, which claimed to be documents of meetings and plans of the Jewish elite to dominate the world. These documents were circulated around the world, and became particularly important after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Many, who were fooled into thinking the Protocols were real, used them as evidence that the revolution was part of the Jewish conspiracy, and that the Bolsheviks aimed to advance it. This was a huge part of why Hitler hated socialists and communists so much. But the same ideas also had massive circulation in the leading government and powerful circles of US politics, and were argued by many right wing US Congressmen and other political figures.

If it has ever confused you why right wing conspiracy nutters say they hate banks and big business, and then go on to say they hate communists and socialists who run the world, this is why. For them, communism and socialism are part of a wider conspiracy by a tiny elite to control the world. The aim of this group, they think, is to create a one world government. Whether they talk about Jews openly, or whether they restrict what they’re saying to names like “international bankers”, the origins of this idea go back to the Protocols and the mad ideas of 19th century anti-Semites.

The Protocols are a straight up work of fiction. But the ideas they put forward have surfaced again and again. Since World War Two it’s been increasingly difficult for racist groups to openly advocate anti-Semitism, because these ideas saw their ultimate expression in the slaughter of the Holocaust. Even before this, many didn’t talk openly about Jews, but instead about “international bankers”, the “secret cabal” who ran the world.

The problem with all this for socialists is obvious: financial capitalists really do hold a huge amount of power and influence over government policies, and the international ruling class does co-ordinate its actions secretly and conspiratorially to make sure that capitalism keeps working and that profits are maximised.

However, these things aren’t the result of a plot of a small group of evil men. The fact is that capitalism is a self-sustaining economic system with a life of its own. It doesn’t really matter who is at the top as long as somebody is. People find it hard to grasp the reality of the way our economic and social system works, because it’s complex and hard to understand. Put simply, capitalists don’t want to just get rich and sit back. They want to find ways they can invest profits to create more profits and keep the economy growing. That’s the driving force, not the evil desires of a small group of men. But it’s hard to get your head round that, and many people find it much easier to blame an identifiable group they can easily conceptualise, like Jews.

The 19th century German socialist August Bebel once said that “Anti-Semitism is the Socialism of fools,” because it tried to understand the causes of real problems resulting from capitalism, and instead blamed them on Jews. Throughout the 20th century, many right wingers began to see the dominance of banks and financial capital as evidence of a Jewish conspiracy. for them, this was evidence of the traditional prejudice that Jews were evil, manipulative money lenders bent on power and control.

The real reason that finance has become more and more dominant is that it’s increasingly difficult for capitalists to invest their money in something that produces stuff (like a factory) and make their money back, because after 200 odd years of capitalism the world is full of factories and stuff -- so it’s harder and harder to make new products, like cars or furniture or tools say, and make a profit from it. So instead capitalists put more of their money into banks, financial investments etc. There’s no secret to it -- it’s just about making money, and what’s the best way to go about it.

http://ssy.org.uk/2010/06/shitegeist/

[Searcher08]

TL; DR; Copy Pasta

I am not sure who you think is 'rigourously ignoring' this AD. If anything you are the one who is ignoring responses. The only person who I have seen rigorously argue in detail against Alice in this thread is c2w. Frankly posting ill-constructed (see my dissection) Guilt By Association bilge from a thug and bully next to her case is just naff. But maybe that is just me.

Could you point me to your expose of the ADL, filled with articles showing it's contradictions?
Do you think in the grand scheme of things that Gilad Atzmon is more dangerous to the world than the ADL? Why have you never led a charge in that direction?

What is your critique of 'Defamation'?

This thread has made me really curious why you are willing to post volumes of critique about every religious and political philosophy on the planet, except Greensteinism. Which curiously seems to be the area that Atzmon focuses his provocative lens on.

[American Dream]

And of course, this kind of history must be ignored:



An anti-Semitic cartoon shows the crazy idea
of a global Jewish conspiracy



http://ssy.org.uk/2010/06/shitegeist/

[compared2what?]

Here is one more attempt to speak plainly; it is racist to support a special designation regarding attitudes towards one and only one racial category. ‘Anti-semitism’ then violates and perhaps inverts the pejorative stance toward a ‘special’ race that is contained within the normally understood meaning of ‘racism’.

Really?

And then you have to ask, why the bias in the media? Are there not ultra, mega wealthy Arabs who could try to influence them through their own lobby groups? Regardless of elite Arab action or inaction on the question of Palestine, it could not be good for Arabs as a whole that the most pervasive media on the globe espoused a blatant anti-Arab bias, could it?

By the way, I know nothing of the credibility of the "canadafreepress." On a quick glance, they seem pretty anti-arab, anti-immigrant, right wing and reactionary to me.

Karl Rove’s only full-time foreign-policy advisor is Michael Ledeen, a rabid anti-Arab, pro-Israel activist.

This detail is particularly important in view of the enormous efforts made by Israel to use certain radical elements claiming to represent Copts in the US and Canada, to spread anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agitprop.

Is the whole Israeli governmental system so corrupted with anti-Arab passion that mercy for a dying mother is nowhere to be found?

8bitagent, you seem VERY well informed, and have obviously done a lot of thinking about the 9-11 attacks. In that context, it's hard to believe that you appear to have swallowed the "19 Arab hijackers" story hook, line and sinker. In any case, a lot of the questions you raise, about whether or not there were hijackers, and about the evidence that "doubles" were used to specifically and deliberately incriminate Arab individuals, have been discussed before on this board....Anyway, there have been many more posts that raise serious doubts about whether any of the so-called hijackers were anything more than patsies unwittingly used to incite anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hysteria and panic.

Iron Man(tho it looks like anti Arab pro war propaganda)

So they can promote anti-Arab sentiment while admitting that Dr. Kelly was murdered. Sounds like a win-win for the mind control establishment.

There's nothing worse than a sloppy smear, but then again, Paul's enemies aren't too particular about the quality of the slime they sling at him. Charles Johnson, the anti-Arab fanatic who runs the Little Green Footballs Web site, has absolutely no compunctions about teaming up with a neo-Nazi goofball like White if it serves the purpose of discrediting Paul. Yet by acting as a megaphone for a crazy person, Johnson only winds up discrediting himself.

Menachem Begin was a particularly virulent racist and Arab hater

Jewish or not, I can already tell you the coverage would have been rather different if he was Arab, even if he was going around spraypainting anti-Arab slurs.

Even eschewing further citation of precise examples, as well as the numerous equivalent formations that don't happen to use "anti-" and assorted other phraseological approaches to highlighting one act of bias against a discrete group...

As a young oversensitive person the notions behind WW1, the holocaust and the Ukrainian Famine twisted my mind into pretzels. But especially the Ukrainian Famine because it was directed at a narrow class, and its effects were so quick and so total, yet directed by folk that claimed humanitarian intentions, that my mind reeled at the depravity required to effect such a thing.

[/quote]

...in some way that renders its meaning distinct from all others, I'd say that you're in a bit of an odd spot there.

Also, I don't think I agree with you at all. However, I'm not even sure I understand you. To be fair.

What's racist about recognizing bias against Arabs for what it is?

____________

NB: Yes, I know that "Arab" is an ethno-cultural and not a racial signifier. However, so is "semite."

[Searcher08]

AD, I bet that you don't even know who that cartoon is supposed to be.

I look forward to you answering my questions

[compared2what?]

I did however step out of the haze on pg 46 to speak more plainly about connections, both real and imagined, between Jewish survival, promotion of Marxism and the abolition of Capitalism, to no apparent effect. Perhaps the introduction of half-baked assertions would serve as better conversation starters. After all, everybody loves a food fight.

I apologize for not responding to that earlier, honey. Assuming that you mean this, I'll get right on it, since I came back specifically to look for whatever post I noticed your previously mentioning as having remained unaddressed.

I just got sidetracked.

[compared2what?]

AD, I bet that you don't even know who that cartoon is supposed to be.

Don't be silly, darling. Anyone can see it's a clit.

[Searcher08]

AD, I bet that you don't even know who that cartoon is supposed to be.

Don't be silly, darling. Anyone can see it's a clit.

I will now dream of a giant clit taking over the world... <sighs>

[barracuda]

In the above example, the gentleman in question is not relegated to the fringes with the likes of David Duke and the KKK and their fellow denizens of the fringes of society, excoriated, denied legitimacy for his hateful ideology, but on the contrary, is recognized and welcomed as a respectable religious authority.

David Duke and the KKK are hardly "fringe", at least not on the level that you're attempting to portray them. David Duke received 671,009 votes when he ran for the governorship of Louisiana, which was 55% of the white voters in the state. The website run by his ex-wife, Stormfront, welcomes over 40,000 unique visitors per day. He likely has significant support within the Tea Party. He is considering another run for the presidency with this platform:

1. Bring all U.S. troops home from foreign nations and put as many as we need to seal the US Mexican borders. Let Europe, the Mideast, and the rest of the world run their own affairs, solve their own issues. Why should our boys be guarding the borders of Afghanistan and Iraq when the greatest threat to our people is along the Mexican American Border and in the smoke-filled rooms of politics and media in Washington, New York and Hollywood!

2. Fair trade not free trade! It’s time to protect American business and American workers! Tariffs on goods coming from slave wage nations, and tariffs. And no more outsourcing of American jobs!

3. Prosecute the criminal International banks! Bailout the taxpayers — not the bankers! Put an end to the Banker control of the Federal Reserve, no more “foxes guarding the chicken coop!”

4. An absolute end to the racial discrimination of affirmative action and diversity. True Equal rights for all! Defend the Constitution of the United States and our American heritage!

5. No more foreign control over our foreign policy by the Israeli Lobby! The interests of the United States must be put absolutely first.

6. Tax Hollywood and use the money to expand, cheap high speed, fiber optic internet access to every corner of America, and let the American people develop their own media.

He is a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a group which has influenced American politics and policies for over a century, and has included in its membership two U.S. presidents, the longest-serving member in the history of the United States Congress, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and has influenced and brought to power innumerable state governors and local politicians.

[DrEvil]

Quote:
“Norway is the worst country in the world when it comes to its record on Israel and the Jews,” he said. “It is on the wrong side of history, morality and democratic values. It permits the butchering of seals and whales, but does not allow the most humane means of animal slaughter simply because it is needed by Jews.”

The man is clearly a fucking idiot. The reason why Kosher meat is "illegal" in Norway is because Jews apparently can't eat animals that were tranquilized before they were slaughtered. Tough luck. The muslims don't seem to have a problem with it.
And yes, we butcher whales (which I'm personally against) and baby seals (which I'm not against. There's too many of the little bastards).

Edit: Yes, we really really hate Jews. That's why we gave them tons of heavy water so they could build nukes.
Also - a lot of people still remember this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair
They mistook Bouchiki for their target and shot him repeatedly as he walked back from a cinema to his apartment with his pregnant wife. ("They" being mossad).
And finally - calling for a boycott of Israeli goods is not the same as calling for the destruction of a people/country (You know, like various rabbis and other nutjobs are in the habit of advocating for the palestinians).
Oh, and extra-special finally - If anyone on this planet should know better than to treat another people like second rate humans (untermenchen) it should be the Jews.

[slimmouse]

AD, I bet that you don't even know who that cartoon is supposed to be.

Oh he knows what it is alright. He just never articulates. And when those of us who explain exactly why this kind of crap is pervasive in the extreme, he's busy looking for another cartoon to explain his ( and the vast majority of the rest of humanities' completely fractured vision of the world.)

Who the fuck are "the Jews" exactly ? Who labelled them as such ? Why ? I look at a "Jew" and usually see a person with 2 arms and 2 legs and all the rest of it. Some are extremely nice and some are assholes, not surprisingly, just like the rest of us.

One fact remains inescapable. If it werent for this whole invented idea of "Jewishness", along with a host of other crapola labels, then neither the official holocaust (along with a thousand other unofficial holocaust), nor the State of Israel would exist since anyone with half a brain left would ask themselves why am I killing these people ? There is little doubt in my mind that your average "jews" sure as hell have got Zero benefit from either the holocaust or Israel. So who has ? I dont. Anyone here, "Jewish" or otherwise ?

If all that sounds wonderful with hindsight then so be it. But here we are in the here and now, and surely its time for us all to break these bullshit spells.

We can all harp on about our cultural identities until were blue in the face. Heres mine and Gilad Atzmons take on it - it aint fucking working for the most of humanity, including those " jews" who abhorr, just like every informed decent human should, the monster that is Israel.

Argue with that if you can.

So go ahead, and give him all these bullshit lables. Thats what your supposed to do with anyone who gets into these areas and starts challenging the way the world is and the buffoonish, crass way the vast majority of us percieve both it and ourselves.

I look forward to you answering my questions

I wouldnt hold your breath, unless you fancy some cartoon depiction of reality, similar to the one that the vast majority of humanity holds so dear.