Ritual Slaughter: Holland worse than Russia… or Switzerland?

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Jews are growing bolder in their attack on the proposed ban on ritual slaughter in Holland. Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld wrote an op-ed in Volkskrant (April 19, 2011) under the title “Animals on the rise, Jews in retreat” He states that never before have so many Jewish organizations from abroad been campaigning against Holland. In February, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles began a campaign to influence major political parties in the Dutch Parliament.  Gerstenfeld notes that the chief rabbi of Moscow and acting chairman of the Conference of European Rabbis, Pinchas Goldschmidt, wrote a personal letter to the Dutch Parliament stating that during the Soviet period Jews in Russia looked up to Holland as a beacon of religious tolerance. However, if ritual slaughter is banned, Holland would be in the same category as the Soviet Union.

Despite this attempt to link banning ritual slaughter with Soviet oppression, there were (and are) several countries with a fairly pacifist and democratic track record that have banned ritual slaughter and other aspects of Jewish culture. In Switzerland, one of the oldest states based on popular consent and grassroots democracy, ritual slaughter was banned as early as 1897, followed by Norway in 1930 and Sweden in 1937. Read more

The “West” should be forgotten

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Zeus and Europa

(Translated from the French by Tom Sunic)

The “West”? Raymond Abellio observed that “Europe is fixed in space, that is to say, in geography, as opposed to the West which is “portable.” In fact, the “West” has continued travelling and changing directions. In the beginning that term meant the land where the sun sets (Abendland), as opposed to the land of the rising sun (Morgenland). Starting with the reign of Diocletian in the late third century AD, the opposition between East and West came down to the distinction between the Western Roman Empire (whose capital was Milan and then Ravenna) and the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople. The first one disappeared in 476 AD, with the abdication of Romulus Augustulus. After that the West and Europe merged for good. However, starting with the eighteenth century the adjective “Western” came to light on nautical charts referring to the New World, also called the “American system,” as opposed to the “European system,” or the “Eastern Hemisphere” (which then included Europe, Africa and Asia). Read more

Encouraging Developments in Hungary

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Recently the right-wing Hungarian government has drafted a new constitution (English translation) which is christened “a constitution for the 21st century”. This constitution is so revolutionary that the European Commission is going to review it because of ‘worrying clauses’ such as the ban on abortion and same sex marriage. “Family friendly, hostile to gays,” as the liberal Euractiv-website dubbed it. Let’s have a closer look of this new constitution and judge it on its merits.

Christianity embedded

“O Lord, blessed be the Hungarian nation” is the subtitle of the preamble called the “The Fundamental Law of Hungary,” a reference to the first line of the Hungarian national anthem. In other words, there can be no mistake which religion is the bedrock of Hungarian society: Christianity.

Crown of St. Stephen

The document states “We are proud that one thousand years ago our king, Saint Stephen, based the Hungarian State on solid foundations, and made our country a part of Christian Europe.” Christendom is called the “foundation of the nation” while the other religious traditions of Hungary are simply “respected.” The new constitution “honours” the Crown of Saint Stephen, which was sent to King Stephen by the Pope in 1000 AD and is regarded as the symbol of national unity. Read more

Selfish Bastards: A Review of “Atlas Shrugged, Part I”

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I saw Atlas Shrugged on Saturday, April 16th. It was a sold-out showing to an all-White audience in a predominantly White area. The audience contained a large contingent of Tea Party people, mostly Christian, as well as libertarians and Objectivists. There was geeky anti-government banter as we waited for the movie to begin. There was applause after the movie ended, but I did not join in. In fact, I found this to be a deeply disappointing adaptation of the first third of Ayn Rand’s epic novel about the role of reason in human existence and what would happen if the rational and productive people—the Atlases that carry the world on their shoulders—were to shrug off their burden and go on strike.

Atlas Shrugged could be a spectacular movie. It is certainly a spectacular novel, although not a perfect one, primarily because it is deformed by the grotesque excess of Galt’s Speech, 60 odd pages in which the novel’s hero John Galt explains Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. But I have to hand it to Rand, because at least for me, she managed to make even Galt’s Speech a page-turner. In truth, although I reject Rand’s individualism and capitalism and would not have lasted five minutes in her presence, Atlas Shrugged is one of the most audacious and enthralling novels I have ever read—and I have read most of the classics—and even it does not equal Rand’s earlier novel The Fountainhead. Atlas Shrugged is the greatest mystery novel of all, for it is about what makes civilizations rise and fall. It is the greatest adventure of all, for it tells the story of a man who stopped the world. Read more

Tea is for Tribe: It’s About Race, Stupid!

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The Long Racial History of the Tea Party’s Deficit Trojan Horse

It's About Race, Stupid!

Back when only the founding population had suffrage, the opposing political factions were often organized around alternative philosophies of government. Even then, ideologies were often stalking horses for individual, regional, occupational, or denominational agendas. Within the past century, both these sincere ideological differences and parochial interests have been overshadowed by a new force in American politics: tribalism. The concomitant empowerment and demographic explosion of identity groups competing and conflicting with White American interests created a series of tectonic shifts in the fault lines beneath the surface of the American political landscape.

White Americans have a taboo against pursuing their group interests and an affinity for ideals and abstractions. They also retain the fiction that their representatives are beholden to them, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary. In light of these factors, the ambitious politician seeking White votes is beset with the task of parroting a rhetoric that is rooted in abstract ideology, yet aligned with White American group interests. Once elected, it’s then in his interest to renege on both his implicit and explicit promises, as the lobbyists swarming around him pay more and pay more attention. Read more

Ritual Slaughter and Minority Politics in Amsterdam

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As mentioned previously, Wilders’ pro-Zionist Freedom Party in Holland is supporting a ban on ritual slaughter thatopposes both Muslim and Jewish customs. Now that the ban is closer than ever, Jews are franticly trying to prevent it, but by their efforts they are showing their true colours: They pursue their self-interest under the flag of tolerance and are playing a dangerous game by making alliances with other non-Dutch minorities against the native Dutch.

Firstly, Jews have tried to appeal to the perceived ‘Dutch tolerance’, an image of Dutch history which is heavily promoted by the book The Dutch Republic by the Jewish historian Jonathan I. Israel. In fact the Protestant Dutch Republic stripped all Roman-Catholics (30%-40% of the native population) of their civil rights and heavily persecuted other sects of Protestants, but allowed the Jews to settle in Holland and enjoy special privileges. Shmuel Katzman, the chief rabbi of The Hague, defines Dutch tolerance in an op-ed in the Volkskrant of 11-04-2011 in terms of what is good for the Jews: “At school we learned how Holland was the beacon of freedom and democracy in Europe — before this idea was implemented in the rest of the world. We felt admiration of the opportunities offered to the first Jewish residents of the Low Countries, in a time when they were driven from other lands.” Read more

Why Mahler? Norman Lebrecht and the Construction of Jewish Genius

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2011 marks the centenary of the death of Gustav Mahler. This follows last year’s one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the composer’s birth. In addition to an upsurge in performances of Mahler’s works by orchestras around the world, last year also saw the release of a second book about Mahler by the journalist and music critic Norman Lebrecht entitled: Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed the World. This book is the latest in a long line of encomiums by Jewish music critics and intellectuals that have transformed Mahler’s image from that of a relatively minor figure in the history of classical music at mid-Twentieth Century, into the cultural icon of today. Lebrecht wants his latest work to ‘address the riddle of why Mahler had risen, from near oblivion, to displace Beethoven as the most popular and influential symphonist of our age.’[1]

Like his previous book about Mahler (Mahler Remembered) the focus here is on alerting us to fact of Mahler’s towering genius, and how this genius was inextricably bound up with his identity as a Jew. Overlaying this, as ever, is the lachrymose vision of Mahler the saintly Jewish victim of gentile injustice. Lebrecht’s new book is another reminder of how Jewish intellectuals have used their privileged status as self-appointed gatekeepers of Western culture to advance their group interests through the way they conceptualize the respective artistic achievements of Jews and Europeans. Read more