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In Praise of James Petras

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I’m thrilled to see that retired scholar James Petras is still punching above his weight. Last month he published yet another powerful essay on his website, this one explicitly bringing to our attention the whopping over-representation of one particular ethnic group at the top of America’s power structure. He begins: “Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court marks a continuation and deepening of the lopsided ethno-religious representation in the US judicial system. If Garland is appointed, Jewish justices will comprise 45% of the Court, even though they represent less than 2% of the overall population.”

PowerPetras, retired Bartle Professor of sociology at Binghamton University whose views are generally on the left, came to my attention nearly a decade ago when he released three books that were extremely critical of not just Israel but Jewry as a whole. First was the 2006 book The Power of Israel in the United States, followed a year later by Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists and Militants. Then, in 2008, came Zionism, Militarism, and the Decline of US Power. (For those interested, my forty-two-page review of The Power of Israel and Rulers and Ruled appeared in the Winter 2007–2008 issue of The Occidental Quarterly.)

Obviously, it’s rare to see such critical prose from an academic. Despite his stature and wide exposure, Petras has continued to this day his principled criticism of Jews and Zionism — and has not been silenced by the usual tactics. I’m impressed. Read more

Cameron tax bombshell and Tory civil war: Who’s dropping banana skins on the road to Britain’s EU Referendum?

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The campaign to keep Britain in the European Union is unravelling by the day. The prospect of an easy win for the ‘Remain’ camp is vanishing, as a succession of banana skins and a brutal civil war in the Conservative party wipes out a poll lead that seemed unassailable just a few weeks ago.

None of this was supposed to happen; indeed, there was never even supposed to be an EU vote at all. When David Cameron promised an “in-out” referendum before the last UK general election, it was a cynical and empty PR stunt.

First, because he expected, at best, to end up leading another minority government, in which his Lib-Dem partners would block any such referendum.

Second, even if the unexpected did happen, there was big existing majority of the UK electorate (which, of course, is increasingly not the same as the actual British people) in favour of continued membership.

With the ‘Yes’ campaign backed not just by the government but also by most of the political elite, and massively funded by big business, there was no reasonable hope of this changing. Read more

Feckless European Leaders

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It is impossible to exaggerate the complacency and irresponsibility of the ruling class in Europe today.

European leaders are not stupid, nor are they unaware. Consider the following speech from October of last year by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker:

I do not often cry, but when I look evening after evening at this long procession of refugees which remind me of those black-and-white images at the end of the Second World War which I saw when I was young, I sometimes almost cry. I do not like this Europe — this navel-gazing Europe, this Europe which is closing itself to the hopes and expectations of others. I love the Europe where hundreds of thousands of volunteers come to help, to support the refugees. Me, I know full well that we cannot welcome on our territories all the misery of the world, but we need to at least look at the misery of the world before acting.

We were able to end the Cold War. We were, and I am proud of it, able to fuse nineteen national currencies into a single currency. In fact, I am the only politician in Europe left who is among the signatories of the Maastricht Treaty which created the European Union and the euro. . . . We must relearn how to be proud of Europe. We were able to end this tragedy where Europe was a continent of wars. We have peace. The entire planet admires us for this. Except sometimes, and more and more often, the Europeans.

We very often forget, my dear friends, that Europe is the smallest continent. The European Union is a territory of 5.5 million square kilometers. Russia, a European country, represents 17.5 million square kilometers. Our relative share of global gross domestic product is shrinking. Within a few years Europe will represent 15 percent of global gross domestic product. Already 80 percent of growth is taking place in countries outside the European Union. And we are already demographically very weak. We were at the beginning of the twentieth century, us Europeans, we represented 20 percent of the world population. Today, 7 percent and at the end of century among 10 billion men, women, and children, Europe will represent 4 percent. Therefore we are the smallest continent. We are demographically weakened and will remain so. . . . Therefore, the moment has not come for us to divide ourselves into leagues and national categories, the moment has to come to ensure that the European Union remains together, that it emerges strengthened from events and from crisis events. . . . And therefore, we must be careful to respect the nations. The nations who incidentally must remain internally united. There are too many divisions in Europe. No more must be added. Therefore, I would like that the whole of Europe remain coherent and remain consequential in its actions and not merely in its ambitions. [My emphasis.]

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Review of David Cesarani’s “Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–49” — Part Five of Five

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Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

“I took a bit of revenge on the Germans…I also did some things with the German children.”
Jurek Kestenberg, 1946. 

“Aba Kovner, the leader of the Jewish partisan group that formed in Vilnius in early 1942, dedicated himself to mounting a major revenge operation. With other members of his unit he set about obtaining enough toxin to kill thousands by contaminating the water system of a German metropolis.”
David Cesarani, Final Solution.

Blood Feud, 1941—? 

The “hot” war that occurred between 1939 and 1945 only overlapped with what had been a much older European inter-ethnic “cold war.” This “cold war” was built on centuries of suppressed “high pressure” that finally found its release in what descended into a carnival of death for all sides. As the war became waged more desperately, the means by which this conflict was fought were made more horrifying. As the Jewish book Germany Must Perish! suggested, the war was increasingly being framed not in terms of geo-political terms, but in terms of racial annihilation.

As 1942 approached, the Third Reich faced a “European-wide food crisis,” forcing it to tighten the rationing system in order to favor its own people. The rations of Poles, Jews and POWs would all be decreased. When the United States entered the war, the imbalance of German resources was made all the more obvious. In this context, a meeting was held at Wannsee to discuss the “Jewish Problem.” Although this meeting has been mythologized and seared into popular memory as the point at which a “Final Solution” involving murder by gassing was concocted, the most recent scholarship has raised some significant doubts. As Cesarani points out, while gas vans had indeed been very briefly experimented with during the German euthanasia program, they were quickly abandoned for a host of social and practical reasons. More pertinently, however, this supposedly meticulous, conclusive and “final” meeting to discuss the question of Jews in Europe didn’t even refer to the particulars of the euthanasia project, and did not connect any of their plans with this operation — “not even by cautious euphemisms.” Most modern scholars now conclude that for a “war against the Jews,” the German effort was “ill-planned, under-funded and carried through haphazardly at best.” Read more

Review of David Cesarani’s “Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–49” — Part Four of Five

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“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West 

War and Death, 1939–1949

As I closed my introduction to this review, I noted that the only genuine mystery attached to the Jewish fate during World War II was that there should ever have been anything mysterious attributed to it at all. I may have been a little rash. You see, in more ways than one, “the Holocaust” as a cultural concept has performed one of the greatest vanishing acts in history — the disappearance of the Jews as active participants in a war that certainly took place between 1939 and 1945, but which began long before and continues until the present. Examining the thousands upon thousands of histories of World War II, one would get the impression that there was not only one war, but also only one aggressor. Quite how and why “the Jews” leave the historical stage as belligerents in 1939, when the preceding six years had witnessed them engaging in international propaganda wars, political manoeuvring, and targeted assassinations in several European countries, has been surprisingly overlooked.

Instead of answering genuine mysteries like this, the relevant historiography has been preoccupied by posing pointless questions that have obvious answers. For example, given the German-Jewish relationship prior to 1939, is it really so illogical to conceive that the German armed forces would view Jews as a security threat throughout Europe but especially on the Eastern Front? Further, is it really any wonder that the most common means of dealing with this threat would be the construction of what really amounted to POW camps for Jewish civilians, termed ghettos for the sake of cultural and historical familiarity? Or that rationing in these ghettos would be roughly equivalent to that seen in POW camps? Strangely enough, however, only in the second decade of the twenty-first century are we witnessing the emergence of histories that accept plain realities such as these.

Reflecting a growing scholarly consensus, Cesarani concedes at the start of his exploration of the years 1939–45 that what may have appeared at first glance as anti-Jewish measures during this period were not “necessarily driven by anti-Jewish sentiment.” In 1939 “the German economy had been revved up to breaking point.” As a result, from the beginning of the war effort, the German pursuance of armed conflict was fatally linked to geo-strategic and economic exigencies, and a fanatical concern with security. Food and fuel would always be scarce, meaning that almost every German move in the war was made with a degree of desperation. Germany had only one real chance at victory, and to achieve this victory it would have to overwhelmingly succeed in every tactical advance it undertook. It would also be forced to adopt unsentimental methods in order to secure these victories. Read more

Review of David Cesarani’s “Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–49” — Part Three of Five

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Ernst vom Rath (right) and his Jewish assassin Herschel Grynszpan 

“On the explicit order of the very highest authority setting fire to Jewish shops or similar actions may not occur under any circumstances.” Rudolf Hess, November, 1938.

The Complexities of Judenpolitik, 1933–1939, Continued. 

Until 1935 the security police (SD) “had only a minor interest in Jewish affairs and had no specific department dealing with the Jews.” Its focus only shifted to this domain in order to monitor public opinion on the Jews with the aim of preventing inter-ethnic violence. One 1935 report noted that because a Jewish “re-conquest of the economy” appeared imminent, further legislation was probably required to check such an eventuality and avoid public anger. After the Gestapo reported on East Prussia where “the number of cases where Jews sexually abused Aryan girls is also on the rise,” it remarked that local and police officials were struggling to keep popular anger and “defensive measures” within the law.

Although Cesarani doesn’t discuss the matter, at the heart of this increasing friction was the age-old tenacity displayed by Jewish populations even when faced with deep unpopularity. Raised— indeed indoctrinated — with the notion that they are resented by the surrounding population, Jews have proven adept at clinging to a host population even in extremely adverse conditions. Jews have also proven extremely capable of forming counter-strategies in which they can maintain or expand influence in such situations. For this reason the forced expulsion features to a significantly greater degree in Jewish history than the exodus. Read more

Review of David Cesarani’s “Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–49” — Part Two of Five

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“Germans were not being asked to hate Jews; they were being asked to love other Germans. … It would be a mistake to equate Nazi values with hate.”
David Cesarani

Part 1.

The Complexities of Judenpolitik, 1933–1939

Although David Cesarani’s book is divided into eight chapters, it is best reviewed by dividing it in two sections: the author’s treatment of the development of Jewish policy by the National Socialist government before the war, and their development of Jewish policy following the outbreak of hostilities with Britain and France in 1939. The separation of the two is essential.[1] Throughout history, during times of war governments and heads of state have made significant changes or accelerations in their policies towards minorities, particularly ethnic and religious minorities with suspect loyalties. A major weakness in mainstream historiography on the Third Reich, particularly that authored by Jewish historians, is the refusal to make this concession. Instead, Jewish-authored narratives of Jewish casualties suffered in wartime overwhelmingly trace the sum total of deaths to earlier laws, edicts or policies in which very different circumstances prevailed, and in which no future outcomes were pre-ordained. By doing so, these “histories” become essentially anti-historical.

For over a decade I have been fascinated by the development of National Socialist Judenpolitik between 1933 and 1939. Indeed, I find the period infinitely more interesting than anything that occurred during the war years. The world then, in terms of government, diplomacy, and the global economy, was actually not that different from today. What careful study of this period offers is a unique opportunity to peer into the attempts of a modern state, with modern obligations and responsibilities, to reckon with the question of Jewish influence. It is therefore essential that those with an interest in this question familiarize themselves with the political and economic ramifications of attempting to deal with it. “Holocaust education” may therefore be of some use after all, although quite different from that envisaged by our educators.

David Cesarani was of course one of the foremost of these educators, yet he begins Final Solution with some frank admissions about the Holocaust trope he so relentlessly promoted. In one of many tactical retreats, he admits that histories of World War II have been pushed on the mass public as a part of a network of “extraneous agendas” which aim, among other things, at bolstering multiculturalism and constructing “an inclusive national identity.” Most of these histories “lazily draw on an outdated body of research, while others … downplay inconvenient aspects of the newer findings.” The inaccuracies, false memories, and downright lies of many self-professed “Holocaust survivors” “routinely trump the dissemination of scholarship.” The Holocaust is more a “cultural construction rather than the historical events to which it is assumed to refer.” Cesarani even argues that the term ‘Holocaust’ itself should be abandoned since it is “well past its sell-by date,” and if nothing else, its “politicization” is a “good enough reason to retire it.” The author admits the failings of a “standardized version [of Jewish deaths during World War II], to which I have myself contributed.” Read more