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Review of “Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–49” — Part One of Five

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Cesarini-1

“There is a yawning gulf between popular understanding of this history and current scholarship on the subject. …
This divergence has become acute since the 1990s.”

Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933–49
David Cesarani
London: Macmillan

A Portrait of the Author

In October 2015 Jewish historiography lost one of its more enigmatic practitioners when David Cesarani died of spinal cancer, aged 58, just a few months after initial diagnosis. I met Cesarani a handful of times at academic and social gatherings on both sides of the Atlantic during the 2009–2013 period, and I don’t think I’ve met a Hebrew before or since who embodied the physical and behavioral attributes of Jewishness quite as well as the late professor. Ignoring his caricature-like appearance, which once led a scorned David Irving to label him “Ratface,” Cesarani was every inch the diminutive chatterbox; a veritable bundle of verbal and intellectual intensity. He was possessed of a certain low charm, and was a perfect specimen of the shtetl comedian. When making wise-cracks he would stoop his head forward, rolling his shoulders like so many members of his race. Whether the traits were affected, or part of some bizarre genetic make-up, I could never quite decide. He was evidently persuasive, however, and strangely impressive to others. On several occasions I observed at close hand how collectives of enamoured students and faculty would warmly refer to him as “Caesar,” in a perfect example of the “Jewish guru” phenomenon.

Yet for all his bravado and undeniable gift for showmanship, he lectured in a slow, plodding and measured manner. He was more interesting in lectures than conversations, and I found him more comfortable speaking to groups rather than individuals. In the few brief private conversations I had with him on Jewish history and the “Holocaust” he appeared ill at ease; his sharp wit and excellent memory apparently deserting him. Perhaps it was something to do with the coldness with which I greeted his glib responses to my more searching questions. More likely, the slow and almost menacing grin that spread across his face at some of my enquiries was a sign of his awareness that he was in the presence of a “knowing” non-Jew; or in their vernacular, an “anti-Semite.” I would smile back, of course, and we would continue the conversation, verbally circling each other, saying a great deal and yet speaking very little at all. He was a capable, and oddly entertaining, verbal opponent. Read more

Martyr with a Machine-Gun: How Liberal Piety Facilitates Muslim Pathology

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If you pour dirty water into clean water, what happens? It’s remarkable: by a process too subtle for knuckle-dragging racists to understand, the dirty water becomes clean. In fact, the more dirty water you pour, the better the process works. Hence the slogan recently adopted by Greenpeace for the sparkling waters of the Lake District: “REFUSE WELCOME!”

I’m talking nonsense, of course. Greenpeace would never support the dumping of filth into beautiful lakes like Windermere and Ullswater. Greenpeace is full of liberals and liberals don’t believe in polluting healthy ecosystems. Instead, they believe in polluting healthy societies. Here’s a list of pathologies that liberals have wrung their hands over in recent years: mass murder, rape-gangs, dead cartoonists, honour killings, female genital mutilation and grope-festivals. Cousin-marriage and exotic diseases should be on the list too, but although they’re definitely serious problems, liberals prefer to ignore their existence.

Death to Blasphemers

Ignored or lamented, these pathologies only exist in the modern West because of mass immigration. And it wasn’t hard to foresee that Third-World immigrants would bring the Third World with them. It’s as though liberals have pumped oil into a flourishing lake and then discovered, with horror and consternation, that the lake is now polluted and dying. This particularly applies to the question of free speech. The Charlie Hebdo massacre was a deeply traumatic event for the Guardian and its readers. How could such a thing happen in the land of Voltaire? Read more

Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn: Fighting the Jewish Establishment

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It is hard to think of two politicians further apart than Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump. Corbyn is a Marxist class warrior steeped in identity politics while Trump is, well, Trump.

The similarity is in who they have managed to antagonise. For both have incurred the wrath of the media through the perception that they are not totally beholden to Jewish political priorities.

Since the moment Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the opposition in Britain in September, he has undergone a media demonization that is surely unprecedented in its intensity and duration. Like phosphorous bombs on Gaza, the abuse rains down on him from all points on the compass, day after day. It is hard to keep up with all the accusations but broadly, Corbyn is accused of harbouring or sympathising with “anti-semitism” which is defined as previous association with Islamic preachers, sympathy with the Palestinian cause and his insistence that the Iraq war was a criminal mistake.  It has now reached the stage where ‘anti-semitism in the Labour Party’ is a bigger daily story than the impending referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.

All the elements of Jewish communal defence have been mobilized in this campaign but it has been spearheaded by the British Board of Deputies and the main Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle. The Jewish vigilante group, the CST have weighed in.

How did this happen? Corbyn is probably the most left-wing leader Labour has ever had and a believer that borders are a thing of the past. He would flood Britain with refugees tomorrow, if he could. Read more

Review of “Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country”

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51q6IDODWPL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
by Greg Johnson

The picture on the cover and the title of Johnson’s latest collection of essays may seem at first glance to offer something of a bromide view of White nationalism: “A nice White country” it reads above a somewhat saccharine image representing healthy White demographics from yesteryear. This sets up a current of wistful yearning, which, given our predicament — heading for minority status in our traditional homelands within decades — is discomforting.

But the vision presented by the artful simplicity of the title and cover image is central to Johnson’s whole approach, which I characterize as stating his point as unambiguously as possible, then deploying his considerable powers of reason and evidence to drive it home.

This volume brings together 38 essays, all of which appeared on Johnson’s Counter-Currents site between 2011 and 2015, and cover a wide variety of topics. Most were written in response to the events and controversies of the day, so you might expect them to vary considerably in tone and message, but, once again, as with his previous collection “New Right versus Old Right,” the book has a remarkable consistency. The essays are organized thematically instead of chronologically. Read more

Jewish Fear And Loathing Of Donald Trump [3]: Hitler Comparisons Rampant—But Also, Weirdly, Signs Of Second Thoughts

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Originally posted at VDARE.com.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 21: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) March 21, 2016 in Washington, DC. Presidential candidates from both parties gathered in Washington to pitch their views on Israel. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

See, earlier by Kevin McDonald: Why So Much Jewish Fear And Loathing Of Donald Trump? and Jewish Fear And Loathing Of Donald Trump [2]: “New York Values” vs. Muslim Immigration

Donald J. Trump’s speech last week to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] went astonishingly well. Once again Trump showed excellent political instincts, effectively attacking Obama and Clinton as insufficiently pro-Israel. [11 times Donald Trump won the AIPAC conference, by Ron Kampeas, JTA.org, March 21 2016] As a Trump supporter critical of the role of Israel in U.S. politics, I wrote off his pandering (softening his position on “neutrality” in brokering Israeli-Palestinian peace and on Jerusalem as Israel’s capital) as a marker of Jewish power and kept reminding myself that Trump—uniquely among the candidates—has made many sensible comments on Middle East policy, including especially condemning the Iraq war and US policy in Syria.

But the controversy over Donald Trump among American Jews rages on. (In fact the walkout at Breitbart over Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s alleged rough handling of reporter Michelle Fields—for which he has now, rather remarkably, been charged—seems to be driven at least in part by a Jewish anti-Trump faction). Read more

Moorish Spain: A Successful Multicultural Paradise? Part 2

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Part 1.

It is more difficult to generalize about the situation of Jews in Moorish Spain. Visigothic law regarding the Jewish community was harsh, and designed to make it disappear eventually. Accordingly, as mentioned above, Spanish Jews formed an alliance of convenience with the Muslim invaders. Even after being reduced to dhimmi status, however, the position of Jews in early Moorish Spain (before the Almoravid invasion of 1085) was more favorable than it had been under the Christian Visigoths.

Some Muslim rulers found it convenient to employ Jewish officials since, unlike well-born Muslims, they remained entirely dependent on royal favor and were thus easy to control. Thus, a Jewish scholar named Hasdai (died c. 970), e.g., became the de facto foreign minister of Caliph Abd al-Rahman III, and was an active benefactor and protector of the Jewish community. Rabbi Samuel Ibn Naghrela (993–1056) became the most powerful Jew in the history of Moorish Spain as vizier to the ruler of Granada, earning the Hebrew title HaNagid (“The Prince”).

But such favored Jews were also resented by the Muslim population. It is recorded that Samuel Ibn Naghrela was regularly insulted by a Muslim merchant each time he rode through the gates of Grenada. His employer became the subject of a satirical poem:

He has chosen an infidel as his secretary
When he could, had he wished, have chosen a Believer.
Through him, the Jews have become great and proud
And arrogant—they, who were among the most abject.
And how many a worthy Muslim humbly obeys
The vilest ape among these miscreants?

Naghrela’s son Joseph, also a high-ranking official, was killed in the anti-Jewish riots which broke out in Granada in 1066. Read more

Moorish Spain: A Successful Multicultural Paradise? Part 1

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Andalusian ParadiseThe Myth of the Andalusian Paradise:
Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain
by Dario Fernandez-Morera
Wilmington: ISI Books, 2016

Dario Fernandez-Morera, of Cuban extraction, is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University. He has previously published American Academia and the Survival of Marxist Ideas (1996), as well as numerous papers on the literature of Spain’s Golden Age.

In this new book he tackles one of the anti-European left’s most cherished delusions, viz., that al-Andalus, or Moorish Spain (711–1492 AD), was a successful multicultural society in which Christians, Jews and Muslims flourished together beneath the tolerant eye of enlightened Islamic rulers. These supposed halcyon days of Moorish tolerance are contrasted favorably with both the Visigothic Kingdom that preceded them and the Spain of the inquisition that followed.

So popular has the romantic image of enlightened Muslim Spain become that it has been publicly endorsed by such distinguished historical scholars as Barack Obama and Tony Blair. Indeed, according to Prof. David Levering Lewis, Europeans missed a golden opportunity by not going down to defeat at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD. If only Charles Martel’s Franks had succumbed, he writes,

the post-Roman Occident would probably have been incorporated into a cosmopolitan Muslim regnum unobstructed by borders … one devoid of a priestly caste, animated by the dogma of equality of the faithful, and respectful of all religious faiths.

In two-hundred-forty pages of exposition backed up by ninety-six closely printed pages of notes, Fernandez-Morera methodically demolishes this optimistic multicultural object lesson by means of copious references to the primary documents: writings by Muslims, Christians and Jews who actually lived under Islamic rule in Spain. The cumulative effect of the evidence he cites should be enough to prove to any unbiased observer that Moorish Spain, if no worse than other Muslim-controlled societies of its time, was also no better. Read more