Jews and the Left

Navigating Hollywood: Conservatives and Christians Need Not Apply

From time to time I get letters from students who say they are on page with ideas like mine and want to pursue  a career in the academic world. I always tell them they have to be a secret agent, not only as a grad student but at least until they get tenure. And if you come out of the closet after you get tenure, don’t expect to get any grants or be invited to any of those cool faculty parties.

It’s pretty much the same in the movie industry, and for much the same reasons: A powerful and pervasive bias toward the left. In both areas and particularly in Hollywood, there is a strong Jewish influence that means that overt displays of Christianity are a ticket to oblivion.

This came out recently in an article in the Hollywood Reporter (Conservative Actors Reveal Life of Secrecy, Lost Jobs Amidst ‘Intolerant Left’“).

Morgan Brittany, an actress perhaps best known for her work in Dallas, the prime time soap opera of the 1980s, says that “I’d go out on location with the Dallas crew. .. Everybody in the van was bashing (President Reagan). I never said anything because I thought I’d lose my job. And I probably would have lost my job.” Read more

Is walking to Canossa the right direction?

“I can assure you, we will never go to Canossa!” exclaimed chancellor Bismarck, referring to Emperor Henry IV’s walk to Cannossa in 1077 to do penitence in front of Pope Gregory VII. When the leaders of the European nationalist parties from Flanders, Austria, Germany and Sweden went to Jerusalem in the beginning of december 2010, it was if they were going on a pilgrimage to do penitence. After years of being accused of being Neo-Nazis, Mr. De Winter and Mr. Strache were paying lip service to Israel: “If Jerusalem falls, Amsterdam and New York will be next.” Are they doing the right thing? Read more

Projection: Who Were the Victims in the Ukraine?

The current TOO blog by Kevin MacDonald addresses Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s Chapter 19 of Solzhenitsyn’s book on Jews and Russians, 200 Years Together. The main point is that:

The decade of the 1930s was tragic almost beyond description. . . . However, the suffering of Jews pales in comparison to the suffering of the Ukrainian and Russian farmers undergoing forced collectivization. Moreover, Jews were never targeted as Jews, and in general Jews remained vastly overrepresented in elite positions throughout the period, even after the purges.

MacDonald notes that “Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the culpability of the West.” In particular, we have this damning point:

In 1932–33, in Russia and Ukraine —on the very outskirts of Europe, five to six million people died from hunger! And the free press of the free world maintained utter silence… And even if we take into account the extreme Leftist bias of the contemporary Western press and its devotion to the socialist “experiment” in the USSR, it is still impossible not to be amazed at the degree to which they could go to be blind and insensitive to the sufferings of even tens of millions of fellow humans.

One powerful clue we have to this twisted mystery is the effort even now to grotesquely turn the genocide of Ukrainians in the 1930s into a story of the victims themselves slaughtering the actual murderers. In a review of a new book, Professor David O’Connell, writing in Culture Wars, finds that canny efforts by those in the Jewish community have again succeeded in getting a Catholic spokesman to do the propaganda bidding of the Jews. Read more

In the 1930s: Chapter 19 of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s “200 Years Together”

The project of translating Alexandr Solzhenitisyn’s 200 Years Together into English continues apace. The 18,000-word Chapter 19, “In the 1930s” is now available (see here). The decade of the 1930s was tragic almost beyond description. The main idea advanced by Solzhenitsyn is that all segments of Soviet society suffered, including Jews who had been members of the elite. However, the suffering of Jews pales in comparison to the suffering of the Ukrainian and Russian farmers undergoing forced collectivization. Moreover, Jews were never targeted as Jews, and in general Jews remained vastly overrepresented in elite positions throughout the period, even after the purges.

Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the culpability of the West. The brutal process of industrialization was carried out with the cooperation of Western merchants and bankers eager to do business with the Soviet Union. Such commercial cooperation had been prohibited under the Czars because Jewish activist organizations had pressured governments not to do business with Russia because of its treatment of Jews — much as there are now sanctions against trading with Iran because of the concerns of the Israel Lobby. As we also see today, financial and commercial interests were not concerned with ideological commitment to capitalism or with human rights but simply sought to expand their profits.  Trade was allowed because there was the perception in the West that “Soviet power would not oppress the Jews, but on the contrary, that many of them would remain at the levers of power.” Read more

Derrida’s (Crypto-) Jewish Identity

In Culture of Critique I had a brief section on philosopher Jacques Derrida’s strong Jewish identity and how that informed his writing. (See here, p. 198ff.) It emphasizes the point that Derrida thought of himself as a crypto-Jew. Despite his pose as “a leftist Parisian intellectual, a secularist and an atheist,” Derrida descended from a long line of crypto-Jews, and at one point he explicitly identifies himself as a crypto-Jew: “Marranos that we are, Marranos in any case whether we want to be or not, whether we know it or not.” Derrida changed his first name to the French Christian sounding ‘Jacques’ in order better blend into the  French scene.

Indeed, one might say that Derrida’s crypsis is typical of Jews on the left:

[Leftist] universalism may thus be viewed as a mechanism for Jewish continuity via crypsis or semi-crypsis. The Jewish radical is invisible to the [non-Jew] as a Jew and thereby avoids anti-Semitism while at the same time covertly retains his or her Jewish identity. Lyons (1982, 73) finds that “most Jewish Communists wear their Jewishness very casually but experience it deeply. It is not a religious or even an institutional Jewishness for most; nevertheless, it is rooted in a subculture of identity, style, language, and social network. . . . In fact, this second-generation Jewishness was antiethnic and yet the height of ethnicity. The emperor believed that he was clothed in transethnic, American garb, but [non-Jews] saw the nuances and details of his naked ethnicity.” (Chapter 3 of CofC, p. 91)

The Forward has an article on a recent biography of Derrida that adds to the portrait. It notes that Derrida was “acutely aware of his ethnic identity” and as a result much of his early writing was on “fellow Jews.” He took his crypto-Judaism to the grave:

Abundant details provided by Peeters prove Derrida’s lasting devotion toYiddishkeit When Derrida was buried, his elder brother, René, wore a tallit at the suburban French cemetery and recited the Kaddish to himself inwardly, since Jacques had asked for no public prayers. This discreet, highly personal, yet emotionally and spiritually meaningful approach to recognizing Derrida’s Judaism seems emblematic of this complex, imperfect, yet valuably nuanced thinker.

In other words, Derrida was a crypto-Jew until the end and instructed his family to participate in the charade.  Read more

Glenn Beck on George Soros

Glenn Beck has not exactly been a favorite around here (see herehere, and here), but his series on George Soros is intriguing to say the least. Beck has honed in on Soros as the root of all evil, and he has emphasized the point that Soros is Jewish. Beck seems have two main complaints: that Soros is a major funder of the left and that he is a currency manipulator poised to take down the dollar and foment revolution in the US.

Soros is well-known for funding the left, but Beck sees Soros as orchestrating the entire show:“For months, Glenn has been pulling back the structure progressives have worked decades to put in place. Beneath every layer lies one common thread: George Soros.” Beck’s team highlights Soros’ self-image as a messianic figure who believes he is able to change the world in his image: “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin. But when I made my way in the world, I wanted to indulge myself in my fantasies to the extent that I could afford.” Beck’s website shows how Soros funds the left, including Moveon.org, ACORN, Center for American Progress, the Tides Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the National Council of La Raza. Read more

More on Barton Fink: Aggression and Intellectual Superiority

I saw Barton Fink a long time ago, before I had any sense of things Jewish, so Andy Nowicki’s fascinating TOO article was a real eye-opener. I was intrigued enough to take another look. What sticks in my mind are the characters of Jack Lipnick and Ben Geisler as prototypical Hollywood figures of the period. Lipnick’s aggression, his massive ego, and his brutal treatment of everyone around are a sight to behold.  As Nowicki notes, Lipnick is “a brash, loud, frightening and hysterically tyrannical man, who proudly declares himself to be ‘bigger and meaner than any other kike in this town.’”
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There’s an amazing scene where Fink tells Lipnick that he doesn’t feel comfortable talking about his screenplay before it’s finished. Lipnick nods to his underling, Lou Breeze. Breeze has to figure out what his boss wants, so he berates Fink for daring to defy Lipnick by not giving him an account of his screenplay. But he guessed wrong. Lipnick verbally assaults Breeze and demands that he kiss Fink’s feet in apology on pain of losing his job. Breeze finally walks out without kissing Fink’s feet, but we see him later in the film, indicating that everything was patched up even after his humiliation. Working for Lipnick must have been an ulcer waiting to happen.

Michael Lerner as Jack Lipnick