Habakkuk on "incitements to anti-Semitism"

I find this comment by DH to be so striking that I have made it a post. There will be complaints about a lack of paragraphing.  If DH wants to revise it I will re-post it.  pl

-------------

I had not looked back at this thread, so had missed your response.

There will, I think, be better occasions to take up the issues you raise, which are very important ones.

For now, a few remarks.

In the interests of clarity, I should perhaps say that insofar as I am ill at ease with the ‘Hobbits’ of Tolkien’s ‘Shire’, it is because of forefathers who were ‘dwarves’ in the coalfields and smelters of South Wales.

My possessing the name of an Old Testament prophet betokens Calvinist origins, not Jewish. But then, radical Protestants have commonly been philo-Semitic.

There is a figure called Kevin Macdonald, whose writings on Jews as an ‘hostile élite’ you may well know.

(See https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2068070204_Yuri_Slezkine .)

As it happens, I do not much like him. His reference to ‘the Germans, from Wagner to von Treitschke to Chamberlain and Hitler’, disliking the irony of Heine, seems to me to demonstrate an inability to grasp that groups, be they Germans, Jews, Muslims, or whoever, are rarely monolithic wholes.

That said, an important part of the background to his writing – as of the piece by Lawrence Auster to which you link, which seems to me far superior to Macdonald’s writing – is that very many of the most influential American Jews seem to be queuing up for starring roles in versions of the ‘hostile élite’ drama.

Quite a few of them appear to be doing their level best to persuade people who place any value on the traditional ‘Anglo’ culture of the American Republic that they are something close to an ‘existential threat’ to it.   (editor bolding) 

In Britain, also, ‘tribal’ Jews – ‘ghetto Jews’ sometimes seems to me an appropriate term – have claimed the right to speak for some kind of coherent ‘Jewish people.’

So, for example, concluding his May 2015 article ‘We never forget Jerusalem’, our former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, wrote:

‘We have had the privilege to be born in a generation that has seen Jerusalem reunited and rebuilt. We have seen the Jewish people come home. ‘

Today God is calling on us all to be Guardians of Zion. Never has this been more important. We must all stand up for the one home our people has ever known and the one city our people has loved more than any other. We are all shagrirey medinat Yisrael (ambassadors for the State of Israel) and we must all make Israel’s case in a world that sometimes fails to see the beauty we know is here. Let us all take on that task. With Hashem’s help, we will succeed and we pray may the world make its peace with Israel so that Israel and Israel’s God can bring peace to the world.’

(See http://rabbisacks.org/we-never-forget-jerusalem/ .)

As it happens, I think this is an ‘open-and-shut’ case of ‘incitement to anti-Semitism.’

That there are some Jews who have their ‘home’ in this country – and are more than temporary residents – seems to be beyond our former Chief Rabbi’s capacity to imagine.

That he cannot see the possible implications of implicitly defining all Jews as ‘resident aliens’ is, I think, indicative of extraordinary stupidity and recklessness.

It also completely obscures the fact that, for many Jews here, their history is one of lost homes, and the equally important fact that very many of them had long abandoned the Jewish religion.

I mentioned Peter Ganz, for whom ‘home’ had clearly been Mainz: clearly not a Jew, in Rabbi Sachs’s definition.

What then can I say about Peter Stern, who likewise made it over here just before the outbreak of war, leaving relatives who died? He also ended up as a professor of German, having been a sergeant in His Majesty’s Armed Forces.

Again, the comparison with Maxwell is interesting, in that like him Stern came from Czechoslovakia – he served in No 311 Squadron, the Czech bomber squadron in the RAF, hunting U-boats over the Atlantic.

I well remember two fingers clawed around a pipe, a relic of one of the ultimate lucky escapes, when the Wellington bomber in which he served as ‘tail gun Charlie’ was shot down by Ju-88s, and the survivors were picked up, by pure fluke, after fourteen hours in the water.

While Peter Ganz was an agnostic brought up as a Lutheran, Peter Stern was brought up a Catholic, and remained a kind of ‘Jewish Christian’ to the end of his life.

Like so refugees from ‘assimilationist’ families, both completely failed to maintain the concern for group survival which Macdonald appears to think a Jewish characteristic, marrying out.

And then, what can I say of a lifelong friend of my mother’s from schooldays, the daughter of a secular Jewish lawyer, who herself ended up as a pillar of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Kensington?

I vividly remember their house, with the walls covered in prints of the St. Petersburg which the father had left in the Civil War, leaving his coat on the door, before finally making it over here through Crimea.

My ‘few remarks’ have got longer than I intended.

What is important is that the kind of ‘tribalism’ which Macdonald sees as a general Jewish characteristic is found among some Jews, but not others.

An obvious fact is that ‘assimilationist’ Jews tend over time to disappear.

However, a situation where the ‘tribal’ Jews who do not want to ‘assimilate’ attempt to shape the fate of non-Jewish polities is, quite patently, fraught with potential for disaster.

That however, does not provide good reason for accepting the simplicities either of Sacks or Macdonald – who agree on a ‘totalitarian’ vision of all true Jews as essentially the same, but simply differ on whether the largely mythical identity in which they believe should be given a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ sign.  DH

Comments

[English Outsider]

Corbyn has to be demolished if the English Tribal Conservatives, who have shown a tendency to stray recently, are to be brought back into the fold.  I won't go further into that because it's to do with Brexit and to understand What's happening on Brexit "you have to be there."  But the line is that Corbyn is a Marxist antisemitic supporter of terrorists who is intent on destroying our economy and possibly our way of life.

Which is a lot to load onto a mildish Islington prog.  DH, who knows the English political scene far better than do I and is also better acquainted with the American, might be able to come up with an American equivalent but from what I've seen Corbyn isn't up to the weight of, say, Bernie and nowhere near as off the wall as AOC.  He's also a pretty shrewd political operator, if finding the nearest fence and sitting on it 'til it collapses under him is shrewd.

He's been around a while and over the years has accumulated a number of hostages to fortune that the media is busy unearthing.  He has a penchant for brotherly meetings with terrorists/freedom fighters, among them Palestinians and the IRA, it seems.

On foreign policy he's no George Galloway but is discreetly on the side of the angels when it comes to disapproving of the chaos we're causing in the Middle East.    

For me that aversion to bombing brown people is his one good quality but it's a black mark in English politics.  It's an article of faith, I'd guess for most Conservative voters at least, that the Russians are devils incarnate and that bombing brown people or otherwise smashing up their economies and societies is good for them if it gets rid of their evil dictators.

That aside he is, as said, just another mildish Islington prog.  When it comes to progs I'm like the Duke of Edinburgh with the Chinese.  They all look the same to me and I don't see much to distinguish Corbyn from progs like Boris Johnson or like whatever her name is who is leading the LibDems to glory.

He could be on a loser when it comes to "antisemitism".

1.  His party is Labour and Labour tends to get the immigrant vote, that including the Muslim vote.  Since not a lot of Muslims approve of Israel Corbyn is open to the charge of pandering to antisemitism to get those votes.  I don't know whether that's true but certainly antisemitism would do him no harm there, particularly since the Muslim vote is at the start of the process of breaking clear of Labour and is showing signs of becoming a political force in its own right.

2. He's up against the ultra-Zionists, who are something of a force in English politics.  With the Shoah behind them they get a lot of traction and for them any criticism of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is clear proof that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is your bedtime reading.

3. But he also has people in his party who are genuinely antisemitic and whom he doesn't crack down on hard enough.  In the opinion of well-informed people I meet who are Labour supporters he goes further than that and gives them support.

I think that's true.  That is not to his credit.  In the worst case he shares that prejudice himself.  In the best, he's found another fence to sit on that is busy collapsing underneath him.

How much damage this will do him electorally is uncertain.  Not forgetting those Tribal Conservatives.  It's their desperate fear of Corbyn the Red Peril that's sending those Tribal Conservatives scampering back into Mr Johnson's pen.  But those Tribal Conservatives aren't always that philo-semitic themselves.

[Fred]

"Quite a few of them appear to be doing their level best to persuade people who place any value on the traditional ‘Anglo’ culture of the American Republic that they are something close to an ‘existential threat’ to it. "

The hostility to traditional 'Anglo' culture here across the pond has accelerated with such fine things as the 1610 project, courtesy of the NYT, and a renewal of anti-American educational policy by, to use your phrase, a ‘hostile élite’. Hollywood, academia, the political left and even many on the right. Nikki Haley's couragous erasure of history in South Carolina comes to mind, it was certainly a political accelerant to her career. In this new millenial era there are only victims and oppressors, guess who did what to whom, which party contains the mosaic of victims easily pitted against the (hereditary) opprossors, and please don't ask who enslaved whom in 1618 and then sold them off in 1619.

"Collective memory is the toolshed, tomorrow's ideological arsenal, from which political concepts and symbols are selected, reinterpreted, and manipulated both by established governments and opposition groups."
Those in opposition to "traditional Anglo culture of the American Republic" have been quite successful since the mid-1960s in erasing from public view the collective memories of the American people.

[Diana C]

English is indeed my native tongue. I have an MA in English and modern linguistics. My minor as an undergrad was German--since my parents and grandparents came to the U.S. as "Volga Deutsch" and Black Sea Deutsch"

As I was growing up, I attended a church for that group of Germans from Russia. We had a sermon first in English and then a shorter one in German. We sang out of the Volga Gesangbuch.

My problem with the posting without paragraphs stems from the fact that I suffer from myopic retinal degeneration. I must often use a magnifier to read now. Do not confuse that condition with macular degeneration.

And please don't even think about feeling sorry for me. I saw the world, so to speak, by always having a book by by side. I didn't get glasses until I was almost eleven when I finally realized I did have to see the chalk board in school as the teacher's notes on the board became harder to follow by simply listening.

I graduated top in my high school class. I graduated with honors in my under-gard program and with the Dean's citation for excellence in my MA program (with comps in American and English Literature and in Modern Linguistic Theory.

[turcopolier]

DianaC

Good for you. I see why your handicap may have been a problem. Sorry. As a teenager in Maine the pastor in the Catholic Church my parents attended always gave the same sermon first in English and then in French.

[Diana C]

I should mention that I can also read Old English and English from the Middle Ages. (Actually, I used to recite the opening passage of Beowulf IN Old English to my children when I was angry with them for something they were doing or something they had done. They thought I was cursing them since Old English is very gutteral in its probable pronunciation.

[The Beaver]

@ Babak

He is from the so-called Ayn Rand Institute. This article gives a whole list of his articles:

http://ariwatch.com/RelentlessPropagandaReduxForIran.htm

He has been at it since 1989.
And it may seems that Steve Miller must be one of his followers when one reads this , from him:

Severely limit visiting and immigration from the Third World, and after a period of imprisonment deport any visitor or immigrant convicted of a felony

“Religious Terrorism vs. Free Speech” by Leonard Peikoff, published as an advertisement in the New York Times on March 30, 1989

[Babak Makkinejad]

He means the Protestant-dominated polities of the Western Diocletian civilization.

[David Habakkuk]

TTG,

Very many thanks. Much appreciated.

[Diana C]

I can also read a little Latin, but I haven't had reason to do that much over the last few years.

The many base words and common words of English are Germanic, from the early Anglo-Saxon invaders in England. The sentence structure of English is the Latinate structure of the language of the Norman-French Invaders who came later. Sir Walter Scott in his novel Ivanhoe often illustrated the struggle between opposing languages during that time in England--the struggle caused by the loyalty for the native language of the Anglo-Saxons and the need to understand the language of the conquerors--The Norman French.

[J]

Did you see the news week that was shaking the foundations of the Israeli State?

The staunch Anti-Zionist Anti-Israeli State religious leader, the Satmar Rebbe began a 10 day visit to Israel to hand out at least $5 Million to those communities and institutions who maintain themselves as staunch Anti-Zionist and Anti-Israeli State, and who refust any handout or stipend of any kind whatsoever from the Israeli State.

The Satmar Community here in our U.S. is one of the largest Chasid חסידות communities in the world, it is also one of the richest in the world. Originating from Hungary, the Satmar have maintained traditions, and see the creation of the Israeli State by other than Divine Hands as a slap to Heaven and to the Nations of the World. That the non-Divine hand created Israeli State poses a grave danger to Jews in the world as the man-made Israeli State causes animosity against Jews world-wide. That the non-Divine created Israeli State that we currently have on the world's stage is preventing the coming of the Messiah.

Many know them as Neutra Karta also, who every week protest against the Israeli State at several locations in NYC where the Israeli State has properties as you will.

On another note one of the large Chasid communities the Ger has split in two because of a family rift.

Back to the man-made Israeli State, Zionist Israeli lawmakers had their short bunched up between their legs that the Minister of Security even let the Satmar Rebbe into the country, and was providing crowd, traffic, and security control for the Rebbe's visit. One of the staunch Zionist lawmakers is a lady who emigrated from the Ukraine that was flapping her gums the most at the Rebbe's visit.

Here for your listening and viewing enjoyment is Levy Falkowitz and Yedidim singing

Neshome'le (Abie Rottenberg) Shimmy Levy ft Levy Falkowitz & Yedidim | שימי לוי, פאלקאוויטש, ידידים

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3mrRTOWj4

[johnf]

I think that is probably true, which makes them the second oldest jewish community on earth.

The oldest is, I think, the Samaritans at Kiriyat Luza on Mount Gerizim near Nablus, West Bank under joint Israeli and Palestinian control.

They were and probably are the last practitioners of pre-Exile Judaism. They did not go into Exile but stayed in the Holy Land practising the form of Judaism they had always known. But when the Exiles returned with a reformed type of Judaism with Persian and Babylonian influences, the returnees did not take kindly to this primitive nonsense. Their faith was just about tolerated, but they have not fared well, now being reduced to one small village with problems of inbreeding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryat_Luza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans

[David Habakkuk]

Petrel,

It only seems like a caustic remark because the context is missing.

I was responding to a response by Keith Harbaugh of my attempt to elucidate the role of the Maxwells in the Epstein affair, provoked by a query from ‘Ishmael Zechariah.’

At the end of his comments, Keith said, ‘I, for one, feel the need to “defend the Shire.”’

As it happens, my late mother’s family was English High Anglican, (also a Scots admixture), with a bizarre mixture of country and small town Tory and Anglo-Catholic Christian socialist, so the worlds of ideas one finds in Tolkien and his fellow ‘Inklings’ are part of my own history. (He was Catholic, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams Anglican.)

There is however an unresolved conflict with elements of the culture of industrial South Wales, which my father left. In his case ‘Enlightenment’ ideas and values were superimposed upon a ‘Nonconformist’ culture with strong Calvinist undercurrents.

These however are tensions one finds on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Ligurio]

"However, a situation where the ‘tribal’ Jews who do not want to ‘assimilate’ attempt to shape the fate of non-Jewish polities is, quite patently, fraught with potential for disaster."

To risk all the dangers of historical analogies, this present situation reminds me of the post-Tridentine rhetoric of the 16th century papacy, and the sudden discovery of the "traditional" temporal indirect power of the pope by Jesuits like Bellarmine et al. A group of hard-line Romanists on the continent do their best to convince old Catholics of England that their *real* and *primary* allegiance is to Rome and that they are duty bound to relinquish their loyalty to the English monarch on the say so of the Pope etc. Zionism today is much like the extreme Romanism of the latter Reformation.

[J]

DH,

Another group that has endured much persecution, that is the Armenian communities of Anatolia all because they were Christian in an environment dominated by their Muslim neighbors. The Orthodox Church Armenians suffered at the hands of the Young Turks shortly after the beginning of the 20th century, and had suffered discrimination at the hands of the nomadic Kurds.

Here's a brief look at the Armenians of Anatolia

Վրեժ Ճղրիկյան - Ելեք հայեր

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkkicyZ2QV0

And

Yarkhushta / Յարխուշտա

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q13BMlWKZWU

[Seamus Padraig]

Making peace with Russia and Iran would be a good thing in itself, but seeing all those zios and neos "burst into flames," as you put it, would be a terrific fringe benefit!

[Babak Makkinejad]

Ayan Rand was a crypto-Jew, very much like Lenin or Yelena Bonner; forever trying to escape both God and the Judaic Tradition. In all 3 cases, what lured them was the demon of Reason.

[Seamus Padraig]

He has a penchant for brotherly meetings with terrorists/freedom fighters, among them Palestinians and the IRA, it seems.

What I find so bizarre about the UK media's treatment of Corbyn is how they give hi such an amazingly hard time for his pro-Palestinian stance, while seeming almost indifferent to his support for the IRA--even though the latter launched bomb attacks in Britain several times, while no Palestinian group ever has! It's almost as though, to the British press, the life of an Israeli is worth more than the life of a Briton. Very odd ...

[Babak Makkinejad]

Not at all odd from my perspective. IRA was attacking the Crown, Palestinian were attacking the bedrock of Anglo-American Protestanism.

[Tidewater]

You were reminding them that Grendel had a Mother?

[sova]

Any and all,
Among the many very well considered and researched thoughts here one very important is missing: jews, their history, religion and their entire many faced existence are now completely hijacked and misused by the governments which are using the current state of israel as their stronghold/outpost among the people and cultures seeking emancipation and recognition. All topics mentioned here however valid and well argued are irrelevant because "the owner" of all those topics and issues currently is this state of israel empowered into this role by those governments which use it as their weapon. This situation is skewing the constellation of religious/historical/political contents of everything said here to a point that any true debate about any of it is simply irrelevant at the moment. Once the current state of israel let's its inhabitants become true neighbours with all other peoples among which they live we MAY see the true face and feel the true soul of the modern jewry. Before this happens everything we're talking about here is a theatre of absurd.

[Fourth and Long.]

Murdoch owns sky news and times of london - he’s jewish. BBC is conservative old tories and royalists - watching average brits be thrown off cliffs, die in war defending their privlege or lose lives to terrorists gladdens the icy cockles of their icy hearts. They are the ruling class for gods sake.

[catherine]

'' Those in opposition to "traditional Anglo culture of the American Republic" have been quite successful since the mid-1960s in erasing from public view the collective memories of the American people.''

A snippet from the agenda of one group out to erase American memory. If it weren't for the fact that they have already achieved
several of their goals we could laugh it off as another Protocols
of the Elders conspiracy theory.

''An end to antisemitism!..catalogue of policies to combat Antisemitism''

By the European Jewish Congress, New York University, Tel Aviv University and the University of Vienna.February 2018,
https://anendtoantisemitism.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_anendtoantisemitism/PDF/Catalogue_FINAL_webversion_complete.pdf

''The key to the eradication of antisemitism in a group is to change its cultural and religious heritage''

»» Any cultural organization, institution or cultural decision maker and influencer who propagates antisemitism should be exposed to legal punishments ranging from fines to prison sentences, depending on the severity of the case.

» Each country should fund the fight against antisemitism with 0.02% of its Gross Domestic Product annually.
» Each group, organization, and institution should spend 1% of its budget to fight antisemitism inside its own context annually.

› Jewish achievements for a given society or country should be highlighted by memorials celebrating Jewish contributions to the world’s heritage.

› Schools need to teach the history, culture, and religion of Judaism on all levels from pre-school to universities and continuing education.

› Schools need to teach the history of antisemitism from its ancient beginnings until today from the earliest educational level advisable up to universities and continuing education.

»» Removing the authority of antisemitic role models such as saints or highly respected authorities that provide guidance to the members of a religious group or institutions Examples include John Chrysostom, Martin Luther and others

»» Removing antisemitism from the private beliefs of the members of a religious group or organization.

»» Antisemitic cultural decision makers or influencers as well as anti-Semitic employees or antisemitic members of cultural organizations and institutions need to be dismissed, suspended from duty, or expelled. This includes the membership in scholarly and scientific organizations but also such positions as university professors, museum directors, or the editor-in-chief of a newspaper or news channel. In case of elected offices, antisemitism should be treated as an attitude that forces a cultural decision maker to resign.

»» For new employees of a cultural organization or institution, it should be a mandatory requirement for their appointment to have taken classes in the history, culture, and religion of Judaism as well as in the history of antisemitism.

»» Neither virtual nor real libraries should provide anyone with anti-Semitic literature, films, music, etc. Only scholarly and national libraries should hold antisemitic items. Access to these antisemitic items should be restricted to researchers (including advanced students) who need them for their work in studying and combating antisemitism, and those civil servants, politicians, and journalists who need them for their work.
»» Publications of central written, oral, and visual parts of a cultural memory should include introductions, marginal notes, subtitles or captions that warn about antisemitic passages and depictions in them (examples include the antisemitic stereotypes in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice).

»» Buildings, streets, ships, army barracks, universities, etc. should not be named after antisemites.

»» Antisemitic artwork at churches and other places needs to be removed, Antisemitic music and plays should not be performed in opera houses or theaters
»» Plaques should explain changed names, removed memorials, and
removed art

Highlighting Jewish achievements for a given society or country. For this purpose,
››Memorials should be created to celebrate Jewish contributions to the world’s heritage.
››Streets, places, parks, houses, universities, schools, etc. should be named after Jewish persons of achievement.
››Memorials should be erected for Jewish persons of achievement.

[Vegetius]

No, I do not.

No one has a problem identifying white people when they are to be blamed for the problems of modernity, when 'privilege' is being discussed, or when they shaken down for reparations.

Yet when a white makes an affirmative statement about themselves or their culture suddenly things get very Talmudic and the hairs begin to be split.

This little game worked well on high-trust (and naïve) Baby Boomers, but not more.

[Vegetius]

Are you white?

[English Outsider]

Well, you're right about the sound of OE. Having read your comment I tried out those opening lines at the dinner table. General view - "Sounded like a declaration of war." And yet that's from the some of the most euphonious and accomplished verse in existence.

For some fun, here's a fairly recent thesis on the relationship between OE and ME verse. Used to be that most OE scholars had a tin ear and were more interested in the text than the sound. Not any more. I'm not up on it enough to know if the thesis is bomb proof but hell, it looks sensible and I am now a fervent Yakovlevian.

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/catalog/uuid:02e46bb4-0abb-479d-9c50-64be689e013e/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=Nicolay%2BYakovlev%2B-%2BDPhil%2Bthesis.pdf&type_of_work=Thesis