A Review of “Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism” — PART 2

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Cover of the original 1983 French edition of Revolutionary Yiddishland

Go to Part 1.

The Pale of Settlement

The Revolutionary Yiddishland of the book’s title refers to the former Pale of Settlement which was comprised of twenty-six governorships in Eastern Europe where Jews were allowed to live, but only in cities and towns. Out of the eleven million Jews in the world in the early twentieth century, Russia held more than five million, and of these, four and a half million resided in the cities and towns of the Pale. For the authors, this “Yiddishland” was not just a geographical territory, but a “social and cultural space, a linguistic and religious world.”[i] According to historian John Klier, the much-maligned Pale of Settlement was the only response the tsarist authorities could come up with when faced with how to deal with the “fanaticism of ultra-Orthodox Jewry” which was “unassimilable to official purposes.”

The social hierarchy of Jews in the Pale was, according to Brossat and Klingberg, made up of a wealthy financial bourgeoisie, a middling bourgeoisie which was “intellectual and commercial,” and “an immense Jewish proletariat.”[ii] The use of the term “proletariat” to describe poorer Jews in the Pale is questionable given that they typically operated as petty traders rather than industrial employees. Jewish peddlers were notorious throughout the Pale as smugglers of contraband (as referenced in Gogol’s Dead Souls). This large number of poorer Jews was the direct result of the Jewish population explosion in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century when their numbers grew from about 1.5 million at the beginning of the century to almost eight million by 1913.

This Jewish “proletariat,” a hotbed of radicalism characterized by “powerful organization,” played a “decisive part” in the “strikes and insurrections that broke out right across the Pale in the course of the 1905 Revolution.” Regarding revolutionary agitators at this time, Tsar Nicholas II claimed that “nine-tenths of the troublemakers are Jews” who also dominated the newspapers where “some Jew or another sits … making it his business to stir up passions of people against each other.”[iii]

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw millions of these poorer Jews migrate to destinations as diverse as North and South America, France, South Africa, Australia and Palestine. The ideological zealotry of these Jewish migrants directly influenced American immigration policy around this time, with Muller noting:

The image of the Jew as Communist played an often overlooked role in the history not only of Jews in America, but of the millions of Jews in Eastern Europe who would have liked to emigrate to the United States after World War I, but who were prevented from doing so by the immigration restrictions enacted in the early 1920s, culminating in the Reed-Johnson Act of 1924. For those restrictions were motivated in part by the identification of Jews with political radicalism.’[iv]

The prominent Jewish intellectual and writer Chaim Bermant observed that “To many minds, at the beginning of this [twentieth] century, the very words ‘radical’ and ‘Jew’ were almost one, and many a left-wing thinker or politician was taken to be Jewish through the very fact of his radicalism.”[v] Read more

Reflections on the Chabloz Case

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I’ll sing my way to court in high heels and a frock
Give the press a winning smile from inside the dock…
      Alison Chabloz song, Find me guilty

Mr Gideon Falter, 34, who runs the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAAS) was the chief witness for the Crown Prosecution service’s (CPS) against the British minstrel Alison Chabloz. On January 10th at Marylebone Magistrate’s Court we heard him swear the oath, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He then proceeded to give the court various hearsay conjectures, about what effect Ms Chabloz’ songs might be exerting, upon unspecified persons.

He averred for example that they were ‘spreading anti-semitic hatred’ and were ‘inciting to racial hatred.’ The Court was not given evidence for this,[1] nor advised where or in whom these emotions were being generated. Should he not have called witnesses to testify in support of these conjectures, or better still a psychologist to affirm that they were or had been generated?

The Court was advised of one offensive performance by Ms Chabloz, where she sang her songs ‘(((Survivors))) and ‘Nemo’s anti-Semitic Universe’ namely the London Forum in   2016 (September 24th). A problem here could be the signs of mirth and riotous applause in response to the songs: did this really show what Mr Falter had been alleging, or if not, what did?

She was recently introduced as ‘The brilliant comedienne and singer/songwriter Alison Chabloz,’ by Richie Allen, on his popular radio show (18 January).

The point of satire, is that it makes people laugh. Britain has a long tradition of satire from William Hogarth in the 18th century to Private Eye in the present time. Its future is surely at stake in this trial.

In October of 2017 she was arrested and jailed (or, ‘held in custody’) for 48 hours, for posting a video of herself singing a song. This had allegedly broken her ‘bail conditions’. As Ms Chabloz observed, “As far as I am aware, I am the only artist in modern British history to have been jailed for the heinous crime of composing and singing satirical songs which I uploaded to the Internet.”

We live in a society where just about any sacred belief is liable to be satirised for entertainment value, and those being satirised have not generally sought recourse to legal action. When punk-rock bands savagely mocked the Royal family for example, no-one prosecuted them. Read more

What Hitler Believed

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All my life, it’s been Hitler this and Hitler that.  For me, it was like the Norm Macdonald joke, the more I heard about the guy, the more I didn’t care for him.  Finally, I took it upon myself to read Hitler’s magnum opus, Mein Kampf, and see what I could pick up about him for myself.

Hitler dictated Mein Kampf (My Struggle) while he was in prison for an unsuccessful putsch (political insurrection) in November of 1923.  The book gives his account of his life, outlines the ideology of National Socialism, and relates the history of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (commonly known as the Nazi Party) and its plans for the future.  The book was published in two volumes, in 1925 and 1926.   It became a best seller in Germany, though with its 688 pages of pedestrian prose, it might have been more purchased than read.

I skipped over parts of the book in deference to my purpose for reading it: I was looking for Hitler’s core beliefs.  Behind his own story and all the politics and programs and particulars, what were Hitler’s fundamental assumptions and values?  This is a report of what I came up with.

I think it’s important that you keep in mind what this writing isn’t as well as what it is.   I’m not a trained social scientist or philosopher.  My knowledge of Hitler and his time doesn’t go beyond what the average reasonably literate person picks up in the normal course of things.  I’m not getting into Hitler’s merits as a human being, or the wisdom or morality of anything he did while he was in power.  I’m not making a case for him or putting him down.  I read his book (or pretty much), and this is what I got out of it about his basic convictions.  That’s all this is.  Reading the book and putting this material together has given me a better handle on what Hitler believed than before; that’s as much as I can say with any certainty.  So take this for what it’s worth.

The quotes are from Mein Kampf, Hitler’s words. Read more

Authentic Heidegger vs. Inauthentic “Fake” News, Part 2

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Martin Heidegger, 1889–1976

Go to Part 1.

The expression “fake news” has a generic purpose whose meaning varies with each individual user. This phrase, alongside a number of other phrases describing language manipulation in the media, can be ranked in the category of Heidegger’s “idle talk.” The political effects of idle talk and its related word “newspeak” were also well illustrated by the novelist and essayist George Orwell.[14] Attempting to grasp the meaning of liberal political propaganda while skipping over the study of Heidegger’s idle talk, or Orwell’s newspeak, is a nonstarter. Orwell had done a revolutionary work by demystifying idle talk and fake news by exposing frequent falsehood in modern political communication.

Needless to say a White nationalist in Europe or in America today will define differently Orwell’s description of newspeak than his globalist-minded liberal or antifascist counterpart. Blaming only Joseph Goebbels, the former National Socialist minister, for being the first to launch fake news in Germany, or for that matter for being the first in standardizing political lies and self-deception in public discourse, is false.  Ironically, it was Goebbels himself, much earlier than Orwell, who had pointed out in his books and his speeches the rising tide of idle talk or fake news in the liberal media: “And if we are to tell the truth, then we must simply confess that we are slowly getting sick of this idle talk (“Gerede”) about morality and humanity that is travelling, column by column, through the English press today.”[15]

The event which has acquired lately a historic importance and which makes modern opinion makers in the US and EU extremely worried is that charges against fake news media are being levelled by a man who represents the most influential and the most liberal country on earth—Donald Trump, president of the United States. If Trump doesn’t shy away from calling out mainstream news as fake news, he might someday start calling out the names and describe the ethnic origin of major fake news distributors in America. Trump’s labeling of major news outlets as providers of fake news is an  unprecedented indictment in the entire history of Liberalism — all the more so because the much-lauded so-called free press is viewed as the main pillar of liberalism or for that matter of the official, i.e., “deep state”  America today. Read more

Authentic Heidegger vs. Inauthentic “Fake” News, Part 1

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Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976

The trouble with Martin Heidegger, the widely acclaimed Western philosopher, is not just how to correctly interpret his texts, but also how to correctly interpret the works of his interpreters. Out of a multitude of books and articles by hundreds of Heidegger’s critics one can barely single out two critics who are on par with each other. Each critic, or rather each would-be expert on Heidegger, usually handpicks several Heidegger’s words, only to interpret those words according to his own readymade conclusions. In traditional German scholarship this obsessive compartmentalization of social science, which skips over a wider social, racial, literary, historical, etc. context, has been derisively labeled with a noun “Fachidiotismus,” that is, “expert idiocy.” Such a compartmentalized approach in social science today is pretty much widespread among liberal academics and self-proclaimed media experts.

One is, therefore, obliged to raise a simple question: Is it worthwhile reading Heidegger’s mutually exclusive critics in the first place? Part of the problem also resides in Heidegger’s own opaque prose, devoid of footnotes and bibliography, which never offers a reader a single illustration from the public realm and which remains closed off from any ethical judgments. For modern social justice warriors such abstract philosophizing is inadmissible. To make matters worse Heidegger’s toying with German compound nouns makes his texts read like a jigsaw puzzle reminiscent of the travails of Orpheus, the chores of Theseus, or the labors of Heracles during which these three mythical heroes embark on a dangerous voyage of a deadly guesswork in an attempt to decipher the puzzle of life (Being). Although these heroes had managed to divine all of life’s puzzles, at some point however, the inexorable destiny sets in. The uncontrollable individual fate, combined with the unavoidable destiny of their community befalls them all: first the violent death of the hero and then the downfall of the hero’s community[1].

It comes as no surprise then that Heidegger, just like all “nationalist-socialist-conservative-revolutionary-traditionalist-pagan-traditional-Christian, et. al” European thinkers, poets, and scholars, including sympathetic prewar political figures, was in deep love with the ancient Greek language and lore. “Yes to Athens, no way to Jerusalem!” was the underlying motto of all of them. However, Heidegger meticulously avoids any reference to the public realm, never ever venturing into the troubled waters of race studies, sociology or theology — quite unlike his nationalist or conservative contemporary colleagues, inspirers, or even imitators of the same or similar intellectual caliber, such as Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, or Ernst Jünger,[2] whose books still provide a very accessible and very readable historical, social and literary narrative about the abstract verbiage known as “Western democracy” or “humanism”(or one may paraphrase Heidegger with his own veiled words of “downward plunge” or “downfall” (i.e., Absturz) into liberalism). His sole and almost obsessive concern remains language and how language copes with immaterial and all powerful Being, and how in turn Being interrelates with physically visible “Being-there”, that is, man’s life or “Dasein.” Or, to put it simply, albeit more crudely, Heidegger theorizes on how indefinable Being affects man’s “thrownness”, or “falling” into this world without ever being asked whether he wanted to be thrown into this world in the first place. The late American rock singer Jim Morrison, who used to be an avid reader, is reported to have been influenced in his song by this Heidegger’s concept. Read more

Faustian Rome: The Indo-European Nature of the Roman Republic, Part 2

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Mosaic depicting Roman slaves

Go to Part 1.

The Racial Decline of the Roman People

In more exacting terms, the long-term consequences of Republican Rome’s exposure to the Hellenistic East, and later to exclusively non-Indo-European populations in North Africa, was the beginning of a process of racial decline which would unfurl gradually, reaching its apex in the later Imperial period, and finally end with the collapse of a united Rome Empire in 476 A.D.. The seeds of demographic decline begin in earnest during the Republican period, blossomed to fruition during the Principate, culminating in a cataclysmically irreversible crescendo during the despotism of the tumultuous Dominate period. More specifically, it was during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (r. 41–54AD) in which the first non-Roman, non-Italic citizens, was granted the freedom to hold political office within the city of Rome itself. [11] Claudius himself was born in Lugdunum (modern-day Lyons, France) and his extending of the political enfranchisement to non-Romans was quite revolutionary at the time. As elaborated upon previously, Rome was a relatively open society, and when non-Romano-Italic peoples, specifically interrelated, racially accordant Indo-European peoples, like the Gauls, Germans or European Greeks were incorporated into the proverbial Roman fold, civilizational stability occurred; similar racio-cultural populations more easily assimilated to Roman racio-cultural norms. However, when non-Indo-European people, such as the largely Semitic population of ancient Judea were incorporated into the Empire, civilizational chaos was the result, as assimilation proved impossible, and as such more coercive forms of tyrannical government became the norm.

Furthermore, beginning during the period of Civil War and as first practiced by Marius and Sulla, and then by Augustus, and all future emperors, Roman military colonies were established throughout the entirety of the Roman world. During the early Imperial period, a majority of the military colonies were placed in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, and would over the years drastically, and negatively influence the Indo-Roman racial hegemony of the original Romans. As the Roman, and the Romanized Indo-European racio-cultural core population groups came into sustained contact with non-Indo-European peoples, racial miscegenation inevitably followed. As a result of sustained contact, via the processes of Imperial incorporation, the Roman Empire became less Indo-Roman, and incrementally transformed into something that was both generically “Imperial” and consequently deracinated, which  in turn resulted in a demographic decline of the Empires vital European population core.  Read more

Faustian Rome: The Indo-European Nature of the Roman Republic, Part 1

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In his monumental tome, The History of Rome, the historian Titus Livius wrote, “There is nothing man will not attempt when great enterprises hold out the promise of great rewards,” and in the annuals of human history nowhere is this aphorism truer than when one examines the nature of Faustian Europe and its rich diversity of constituent peoples.[1] In more specific terms, and as articulated quite definitively by Prof. Ricardo Duchesne, the uniqueness of Faustian Europe lays not with its institutions, but with the primordial drive of Faustian Man to overcome all that constrains him in the eternal quest for immortal fame. [2] Returning to Titus Livy, in his history of Rome the historian was exploring not only the meteoric rise of ancient Rome, but rather attempting to ascertain the exact reasoning behind the nature of Roman hegemony. Livy’s Rome was one of transition, the historian himself being born in 64 B.C. and dying 17 A.D., and as such had lived through the tumult of the Late Republic and bore witness to Rome’s imperial rebirth under Augustus Caesar. [3] Moreover, the nature of the age that Livy had lived through was a period of “transition” not only of governmental forms, from republic to empire, but more importantly was the beginning of Roman deviation from the racio-cultural values which underpinned the Faustian nature of Europe. When European man is truest to himself, it is when he and his civilization exist in harmony with his Indo-European, Faustian nature. When deviation from this historical, dare I say cosmic reality occurs, it is a prerequisite for civilizational chaos. In the historical context of Republican Rome, it was the transition from republic to empire, and the accompanying degenerative racio-cultural changes, which deviated from the Indo-European nature of the Faustian soul of Europe, which laid the foundation for Rome’s future collapse.

Evolutionary speaking, White-European success has its origin in the prehistory of the “Last Interglacial Maximum,” and it was through the successful surmounting of the trials and tribulations of such hardship that the Faustian soul of European man was forged. Irrespective of age or context, the success of European civilization stems from its evolutionary backgrounds as made manifest by the Faustian spirit of its earliest peoples, the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their successors, the Indo-Europeans. Early Rome, both of the monarchial and republican variety, was a continuation of the Faustian soul of Indo-Europe. Moreover, it is from within the racio-cultural values of early Rome that much of the Faustian soul of Indo-European Europe was transmitted to later societal and civilizations externalizations of the European soul. Returning back to Republican Rome, my proposition is that the success of early Rome was in large part predicted upon its adherence to the racio-cultural values of its Indo-European patrimony. While conversely, the fall of Rome coincides with its abandonment of its Faustian Indo-European patrimony, as evidenced by the demographic shift, immorality, and overall degeneration of the martial spirit of Indo-Europe, as evidenced by the Roman Empire, most notably in its later historical incarnation after the second century A.D.

The Indo-European, proto-Roman Latini people most likely migrated to central Italy, i.e., “Old Latium,” during the European Bronze Age, and from early on in their prehistory made their presence felt. [8] In continuation their Indo-European forbears, the racio-cultural world of both Monarchial and later Republican Rome was extremely competitive, with aristocratic individuals vying for power and prestige. This penchant for competition in both the IE and IE successor cultures more often than not found expression in a highly militarized racio-cultural milieu, From 509 B.C. to 27 B.C., in a series of gradual and militaristically stunning conquests, first of Italy, and eventually culminating with the conquest of entirety of the Mediterranean Basin, the Roman Republic reigned supreme. In continuation of the Faustian soul of Europe, the Republican era of ancient Rome was an epoch or martial glory and by extension, militaristic expansion, and one could argue by even the most objective metrics, the apogee of Roman civilization. Rome’s geopolitical expansion and eventual hegemonic lordship over huge swathes of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia is unprecedented in European history in terms of its sheer scale, scope and tempo, and as such is an important period of study for ethnonationalists. Furthermore, the Republican values held so dear by Livy and many of his fellow Roman contemporaries, that is martial valor, honor and what the later twentieth-century Danish scholar Georg Brandes would term “radical aristocratism” when describing the political orientation of Friedrich Nietzsche, are the hallmarks of European civilizational success. Ancient Republican Rome existed for nearly 500 years, and a great deal of this civilizational longevity was achieved by the Republic’s adherence to Faustian spirit of our Indo-European forefathers, particularly their warrior ethos. Read more