Jewish Self-deception

Reflections on Some Aspects of Jewish Self-Deception: Part 3. Self-Deception in Jewish Historiography (continued)

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Part 1
Part 2

Self-Deception in Jewish Historiography (continued).

As Wistrich turns his attention to the early medieval period, further examples of self-deception become evident. Language euphemisms and lies of omission remain prevalent. For example, Wistrich describes as “humiliating” the canonical restriction on Jews entering Churches without asking himself whether any Jew would in fact have wanted to do such a thing.[1] Similarly, Wistrich agonizes over regulations which prevented Christians from living, eating or engaging in sexual relations with Jews even though the very tenets of Judaism were designed to maintain just such a segregation.[2]

Language euphemism is rife in his description of power relations. These restrictions on Christian-Jewish relations, which simply mirrored those in Judaism, amounted to “ideological warfare waged by the Church against the Synagogue.”[3] Independent, wealthy Jewish capitalists and usurers become mere “economic instruments of the royal power.”[4] According to Wistrich, the Talmud, which in addition to its general anti-Gentile tenor informs Jews that Jesus will be punished in hell by being immersed in boiling excrement and instructs Jews to publicly burn any copy of the New Testament that comes into their hands, merely contains a few “anti-Christian statements.”[5]

Another manifestation of Wistrich’s self-deception is his persistent recourse to ‘images’ and ‘stereotypes’ as a way of explaining anti-Jewish attitudes. This is by no means rare among Jewish historians. In my analysis of historiography concerning the riots in nineteenth-century Russia, I noted that “those historians who have accepted that economic issues have played a role in provoking anti-Semitism fail to engage in actual case studies of economically provoked anti-Jewish actions, preferring instead to probe ‘images’ or stereotypes which allegedly infuse the consciousness of non-Jews.” I argue that this focus on ‘images’ allows Jewish scholars to only superficially acknowledge the economic role, while really lending more weight to their argument that European society has suffered some kind of neurosis. Such arguments deftly offer us a scenario in which Jews and economics play a role in the development of an anti-Semitic “image,” without placing the Jew in anything but a passive role. Read more

Reflections on Some Aspects of Jewish Self-Deception: Part 2. Self-Deception in Jewish Historiography

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Part 1: Introduction.

Part 2: Self-Deception in Jewish Historiography

In the introduction to this essay it was argued that Jewish historiography plays host to a number of key features of self-deception, particularly errors in perceptual causation brought about by neglect of contexts or ‘systems,’ self-interest in the attribution of blame, lies of omission, and exaggerated claims to objectivity. Here is it hoped to examine these facets of self-deception in more detail through a case study of a typical example of Jewish historiography on anti-Semitism. That Jewish historiography is rife with serious methodological problems, and generally suffers from a marked lack of scholarly objectivity, is fairly well-known. Some of the most astute comments in this regard can be found in Lindemann’s Esau’s Tears. Although not explicitly doing so, Lindemann clearly references neglect of contexts and exaggerated claims to objectivity when he writes that “many accounts of pre-twentieth century Jewish history move from one pogrom to the next, from expulsions to plunders, from hostile legislation to anti-Semitic manifestos –providing ‘just the facts,’ yet ignoring so many other facts and finally providing accounts that seriously lack depth and balance…it becomes easier to maintain – and relish – a narrowly moralistic and judgmental stance.”[1]

To these comments I would add only that in some cases, as will be demonstrated below, even the ‘facts’ provided by some of these historians should be treated with extreme caution. Lindemann identifies Robert Wistrich’s Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred [2] as a prime example of self-deceptive Jewish history-writing but refrains from giving it serious attention. This section of our analysis will therefore devote some effort to applying what we know about self-deception to this work, though other works will be brought into our discussion from time to time in order to demonstrate the widespread nature of some of the features being referenced. Read more

Reflections on Some Aspects of Jewish Self-Deception: Part 1. Introduction

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‘Reality denied comes back to haunt.’
Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

Introduction

A persistent theme at TOO, and in the works of anyone objectively dealing with Jewish historiography, culture and politics, is that of self-deception. A couple of hours spent reviewing the TOO archive reveals more than thirty articles which deal directly with the subject, in addition to countless more which touch upon the obvious and undeniably negative consequences of the phenomenon on our culture and our people. An entire chapter of Kevin MacDonald’s  Separation and Its Discontents: Toward and Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism [1] (hereafter SAID) is devoted to the subject, and self-deception forms a major component of MacDonald’s analysis of Jews and the Left in the third chapter of The Culture of Critique (hereafter CofC).[2] Diverse examples of Jewish self-deception have also featured as a topic of discussion, though to a lesser extent, in Gilad Atzmon’s The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics,[3] and Albert Lindemann’s Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews.[4]

In the sixth chapter of CofC, MacDonald, noted the scale of the problem, pointing to “a general tendency for self-deception among Jews as a robust pattern apparent in several historical eras and touching on a wide range of issues, including personal identity, the causes and extent of anti-Semitism, the characteristics of Jews (e.g., economic success), and the role of Jews in the political and cultural process in traditional and contemporary societies.”[5]

Put simply, Jewish self-deception is of great and central importance to the problem we face in resisting Jewish influence in the West. Read more

The Pathetic Apologetics of Caroline Glick

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Editor’s note: As someone who has  written chapters on Jewish apologia and  self-deception, I have to say that Caroline Glick may be the most extreme case I have ever encountered. One struggles for words to describe her rabid ethnocentrism and how it blinds her to the most obvious realities. Jews are morally superior paragons of rationality, responsible for everything good in the world, including Western institutions of democracy and individual freedom. With only a few exceptions (non-Jews who accept the tutelage of Jews), non-Jews are, as Brenton Sanderson phrases it, “brutish and irrational embodiments of evil” while Jews are “reasoning, intelligent moral paragons.”

Truly breathtaking. It’s terrifying to think that such a person is a highly praised and powerful member not only of the Israeli political establishment but is also a well-established figure in neoconservative circles and the media in the US.

Caroline Glick is an American-born Israeli journalist and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. She is also the Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Washington DC-based neoconservative Center for Security Policy. A radical Zionist, Glick migrated to Israel in 1991 and served in the Israeli Defense Force before going on to serve as assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Glick has been showered with awards and praise from Zionist and Jewish organizations. In 2003 the Israeli newspaper Maariv named her the most prominent woman in Israel. She was the 2005 recipient of the Zionist Organization of America’s Ben Hecht award for Outstanding Journalism (previous recipients included A. M. Rosenthal, Sidney Zion and Daniel Pipes). She has also been awarded the Abramowitz Prize for Media Criticism by Israel Media Watch. In 2009 she received the Guardian of Zion Award from Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. In 2012 The David Horowitz Freedom Center announced the hiring of Glick as the Director of its “Israel Security Project.”

Inevitably, given the Jewish stranglehold over the American media, Glick is given a regular platform to espouse her Jewish supremacist views in The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Times and many other newspapers and journals around the world. She is also a regular pundit on MSNBC and the Fox News channel. Given her wide exposure in the Jewish-controlled media, and the senior positions she holds within the neoconservative establishment (where she is touted as “a brilliant and outspoken Jewish academic”), one might expect Glick to possess a formidable intellect and have a knack for formulating intellectually sophisticated Jewish apologetics. Read more

Eugene Girin on “The Evil Hypocrisy of the Jewish Establishment” in Australia

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Leibler

Mark Leibler, Chairman of the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council, Australia’s premier pro-Israel lobbying group

Eugene Girin (with whom I had an exchange on VDARE over my review of Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Century) has a nice column on “The Evil Hypocrisy of the Jewish Establishment” in Australia. It’s a theme that we have explored often at TOO—the gap between Jewish attitudes on immigration and multiculturalism in the Diaspora and Israel. A new government policy aimed at combating illegal immigration resulted in anguished cries of public Jews on the sufferings of illegal immigrants who would be barred from Australia. Girin highlights comments of Mark Leibler, a Zionist leader who has nothing but heartfelt sympathy for non-Whites who want to come to Australia:

Down this path lie vulnerable refugees fleeing persecution and, while deserving of our empathy, they are instead left degraded and dehumanized. As a person of Jewish faith, I have long understood what racism does to people.” sobbed Mark Leibler, the chairman of Australia’s pro-Israel lobbying group “Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council”
Note the implicit invocation of the Holocaust as resulting in a moral imperative to swamp Australia—a common Jewish tactic throughout the West. Girin gets it exactly right:

But what about Israel’s hardline policies on illegal immigrants, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa? The Netanyahu government, on whose behalf Leibler’s outfit so vociferously lobbies, banned remittances, sealed Israel’s border with Egypt, and started deporting the troublesome migrants.

Why aren’t the same Jewish leftists who wring their hands and go into hysterics about the policies of gentile leaders are either silent about or openly sympathetic to Bibi’s policies? Why can Israel adopt admirably strict measures against mass immigration, but predominantly gentile western societies have to swing open their doors and allow their nations to be flooded by Third World invaders?

The answer is that Jews do not have a universalist, principled sense of morality—another perennial topic at TOO. It’s about what is good for the Jews. Freed from a need for moral consistency, Jews simply adopt moral postures that suit their interests, conveyed with truly breathtaking displays of empathic concern for all immigrants — except non-Jews who want to go to Israel.

I mention Leibler because he has appeared several times in TOO. In  Brenton Sanderson’s “The War on White Australia, Part IV“, Leibler is discussed as an important leader against Pauline Hanson’s One Nation movement. And in Part V, he also notes that Leibler has been an activist on behalf of the Aborigines, again with the link to Jewish history: ““We’ve suffered 2,000 years of persecution and we understand what it is to be the underdog and to suffer from disadvantage.”
Then there’s my article “Mark Leibler: An exemplar of Jewish hypocrisy and self-deception” which discusses Leibler’s anti-White activism and his strong Zionist commitment, quoting from his biography:
Mark served for ten years as President of the Zionist Federation of Australia and for six years as the President of the United Israel Appeal of Australia. Internationally, Mark recently completed his term as Chairman of the World Board of Trustees of Keren Hayesod – United Israel Appeal, serves on the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel, and holds office as a Governor of both Tel Aviv University and the University of Haifa in Israel.
Israel’s immigration policies are never criticized. Just lots of crocodile tears for anyone in the world who wants to immigrate to Australia.

The Organized Jewish Community: Wall-to-wall Support for a Strike on Syria

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One of the self-deceptions of Jewish life is the belief that “two Jews, three opinions” — the idea that Jews are especially likely to disagree with one another. But on critical issues like Israel, immigration, multiculturalism and Christianity in the public square, the Jewish community speaks with one (very powerful) voice. A Bloomberg article illustrates the broad-based support among Jews for a strike on Syria (“Adelson New Obama Ally as Jewish Groups Back Syria Strike). The broad-based Jewish support for a military strike on Syria is breath-taking, especially considering that Congress is finding “record opposition” to an airstrike in the rest of America.

Recent polls already show little appetite among the American people for military intervention in Syria. A Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday found just 29 percent of Americans supported air strikes “in response to reports that the Syrian government used chemical weapons,” while a Washington Post/ABC poll out the same day had 36 percent of Americans in favor of air strikes. … Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), a vocal opponent of military strikes against the Syrian government, told reporters after Thursday’s briefing that a vote to use military force in Syria would fail. “The House doesn’t want it, the American people don’t want it. People here listen to their constituents,” Grayson said. “First of all, public opinion is entirely against it. Secondly, public opinion is vehemently against it.” (“U.S. Lawmakers Say Constituents Opposed To Syria Intervention, Cite Record Opposition“)

Morris Amitay, former head of AIPAC and who now heads of the Washington Political Action Committee (whose motto is “A strong and secure Israel is America’s best interest”) favors a military strike. Both the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Jewish Democratic Council advocate a military strike. The Bloomberg article also notes that the ADL and the and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations are also on board.

One tactic is to point out that  Jews were gassed in WWII. The Simon Wiesenthal Center began its letter to all U.S. Senators and Representatives: “It was seventy-one years ago in August 1942, just a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, that Gerhard Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Switzerland informed the US and British governments of the diabolical plan to exterminate Europe’s Jews using gas.” A group of 17 rabbis, “descendants of Holocaust survivors and refugees, whose ancestors were gassed to death in concentration camps” and spanning the Jewish religious spectrum endorsed a military strike.

Most importantly, the 800-lb. gorilla (AIPAC) not only released a statement supporting a military strike but now says it is mounting a full-scale campaign to get Congress to approve. 250 activists will descend on Washington to lobby every last senator and representative.

The amount of money the Israel Lobby is able to muster for an effort like this is staggering. The Bloomberg article notes:

The pro-Israel community contributed $14.5 million to federal campaigns for the 2012 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than the $11.1 million in donations by the defense aerospace industry, one of the biggest and most consistent political contributors.

It bears mentioning that the American aerospace industry is massively intertwined with Israel’s and that they both have a shared interest in getting Congress to cough up money for defense contractors. For example, the Arrow 3 missile is a joint venture between Boeing and Israel Aerospace Industries. David’s Sling, a short-range anti-missile system, was jointly developed by Raytheon and Rafael, another Israeli aerospace company. The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (“Securing America, Strengthening Israel”) advocates shared American-Israeli ownership of Iron Dome, which is already deployed in Israel.

Sheldon Adelson’s financial commitment is truly staggering:

While most of the Jewish groups’ donations lean Democratic, Adelson alone transformed the 2012 Republican primary when he and his wife used $15 million in private funds to sustain the unsuccessful candidacy of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and then poured $53 million into groups advancing Republican nominee Mitt Romney. In all, Adelson and his wife donated $93 million to Republican causes in the 2012 campaign, center data shows.

Imagine if White advocacy had people like Adelson willing to commit $93 million to the cause.

Instead, Adelson, a board member of the RJC, will now be gearing up his millions for a military strike — no matter what the great majority of Americans want.

Justice Denied: Thoughts on Truth, ‘Canards’and the Marc Rich Case: Part Two of Two

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In the aftermath of their indictment, one of the earliest strategies that Rich, Green, and their lawyers attempted to employ was that of claiming anti-Semitism was behind the legal measures brought against them: both claimed that they had been singled out because they were Jews. And so we find ourselves finding truth behind another ‘canard’ — that Jews have used accusations of  ‘anti-Semitism’ to avoid scrutiny of their behavior. In our bid to extricate ourselves from this one, let’s rely on the authority of the government investigators: the authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 157) that this argument was “false,” “preposterous” and a (p. 159) “clumsy attempt to play the race card” that was so poorly executed that it was “rejected by associates like Abraham Foxman.”

This is a very interesting choice of words by our helpful authors — for they imply that if this false charge had a little more credibility, the jovial Mr. Foxman would have been on it in no time. Who am I to argue? The report goes on to state that investigators discovered (p. 157) that Rich’s lawyers were in possession of a 1988 memo which clearly listed almost fifty other criminal cases brought against non-Jewish crude oil resellers in the previous year. Rich, Green, and his associates knew that their Jewishness had nothing to do with the indictment — the charge of anti-Semitism was indeed used cynically in an attempt to escape scrutiny and punishment.

Both Green and Rich remained on the F.B.I’s Ten Most Wanted list for over a decade, until the pace of Rich’s appeal effort increased in intensity around 1999. During his period of self-enforced exile, Rich made repeated efforts to extract strategic advantage from the fact his daughter was dying of leukaemia, and later in his petition to the White House he claimed that he had been prevented from returning to her bedside and from attending her funeral because of Federal prosecutors. The authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 155) that “nothing could be further from the truth. Rich knew that if he returned  he would receive bail, and that he would not be incarcerated unless convicted of crimes he had been accused of committing. He was prevented from returning to visit his dying daughter only if he refused to face the U.S justice system. Rich’s desire to have his cake and eat it too, makes it difficult to generate sympathy for him in this matter. In fact, the only possible conclusion is that Marc Rich placed his own needs over those of his daughter.”

The frankly unbelievable level of cynicism seen in Rich’s behaviour towards his daughter, and the deeply immoral core of this particular aspect of the petition was by no means the only significant problem with it. Government investigators state (p. 154) that “the centrepiece of Marc Rich’s effort to obtain a Presidential pardon was the pardon petition, which was put together by the Marc Rich legal team. … The resulting document, which had a number of misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies, was a surprisingly poor effort, considering the amount of time and money that went into it.”

Funny, I was thinking precisely the same thing the other day about the thousands of shoddy works of history, philosophy and junk science that take up valuable space on the shelves of our libraries. The petition consisted of over thirty double-spaced pages, the first twenty of which “attempted to cast Rich and Green in a favorable, even likeable light.” The authors of House Report No. 454 comment that “these statements seem almost laughable given what the world knows about Marc Rich and Pincus Green.” Read more