From Greg Johnson’s translation of Alain de Benoist’s comment on the Charlie Hebdo affair:

Here we are dealing with attacks planned in France by individuals radicalized more or less independently. They went gradually from delinquency to jihadism, but they are usually failures at it. They have great composure, know how to use weapons, and are completely indifferent to the lives of others. But still they are amateurs, bungling provocateurs, like the Kouachi brothers who decided to slaughter a magazine staff “to avenge the prophet,” but went to the wrong address, left clues everywhere, had no exit strategy, and forget their ID in the car they simply abandoned. Unpredictable bunglers, which makes them all the more dangerous.

Hard to argue it was a false flag.

It is obviously necessary to wage war on these people by all means necessary. But talking about “total war” does not mean much. The jihadists (or issuers of fatwas) are as representative of Islam as the Ku Klux Klan is representative of Christianity.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I expect to hear from MSNBC, Obama, et al.

Moreover, it is not the jihadists, but Westerners who first raised the specter of the “clash of civilizations” after working to destabilize the entire Middle East and to eliminate all the heads of Arab-Muslism states, from Saddam Hussein to Gaddafi, who had set up roadblocks against radical Islamism. The need to fight against the immediate consequences should not obscure reflection on the root causes.

Right, but one would think that if one is talking about root causes, immigration should also be mentioned. These guys were born in France. It would be so easy given all the jihadist attacks in France for him to say that living together is just not working out. No more immigration. Muslims out of the West.

On April 26, 1999, the leaders of Charlie Hebdo carried cartons to the Department of the Interior containing 173,700 signatures calling for a ban of the National Front. It was a matter of defending freedom of expression! Manuel Valls said that “[Eric] Zemmour’s book does not deserve to be read,” while another minister asked without shame that “TV shows and newspaper columns cease to harbor such remarks.” To say nothing of the Dieudonné case.

That said, let’s be fair: Among those praising freedom of expression when it comes to Zemmour, there are unfortunately very few who are willing to extend it to their opponents. “Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently” (Rosa Luxemburg), which means that we have to defend it even when it benefits those whom we loathe. But that is precisely what the dominant ideology refuses to do, here and in the United States, where the First Amendment allows anyone to say or write what he wants, but where the nonconformist views are even more marginalized than they are in France. Just as the right to work has never provided anyone a job, the right to speak does not guarantee the opportunity to be heard!

Exactly.

Philip Weiss on a group email that was uncovered by the Sony hack. The

The heart of the exchange is [Ryan] Kavanaugh’s [despite his name, Kavanaugh is ethnically Jewish] concern that rage toward Israel over Gaza will result in another Holocaust. … The elite email group includes Sony’s CEO Michael Lynton, Hollywood producers, Republican Israel supporter Frank Luntz, and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. …

I don’t think this kind of group email is meaningless or hilarious. Frank Luntz is a rightwing Zionist pollster who has promoted PM Netanyahu over President Obama. Marvin Hier is a rightwinger too. Simmons is an outspoken Democrat, but he is obviously concerned about saying the right thing re Israel to a group that includes powerful folks. Yes: also some concern for “innocent Palestinians,” as opposed to Hamas. Despite [Natalie] Portman’s demurral, the email chain here surely represents a cultural consensus about Israel inside the establishment. The fact that Rick Stengel of the State Department also reached out at that time to Lynton– both men are of Jewish descent (and Stengel is an old friend of mine, and a good guy)– is no conspiracy but a reflection of The Powers That Be in this day and age.

The same cultural consensus and flexing of muscle was evident when Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson got together and mused about bombing Iran and buying the New York Times to guarantee its support for Israel. Haaretz at that time said archly, “It was like a scene out of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ Two immensely wealthy Jews, key financiers of the main political parties of the world’s superpower, discussing how to wage war on the enemies of the Jews, and control the media and presidents.”

It’s easy for an Israeli outlet to make that kind of comment; it has the excuse that it is talking amongst Jews in a confidential manner and not to a general public who might conceive a prejudice against Jews. But this is the embarrassment of the Sony email chain: it is a reflection of Jewish power inside the establishment in support of Israel. As I’ve said often here, I don’t have a problem with the power part; the elite is bound to have one sort of flavor or another, this is the latest flavor and it’s passing. It’s the support for Jewish nationalism in the Middle East that’s an issue.

Well, I rather doubt that Jewish power or the allegiance of Jewish elites to Israel is passing. There is zero evidence of that. After all, this is an elite that is intent on not being even identified as an elite. The example of Saban and Adelson alluded to by Weiss is a nice illustration. “Two immensely wealthy Jews, key financiers of the main political parties of the world’s superpower, discussing how to wage war on the enemies of the Jews, and control the media and presidents.”  The story is unreported in the mainstream U.S. media, and the same goes for any mention of the consensus on Jewish issues in Hollywood (progressive except for Palestine). In both cases, just another part of the “White” power structure.