A quotation about this academic, who lived a long, comfortable life in England justifying the theory and practice of communism.
“In 1994, he shocked readers of the Times Literary Supplement when, in an interview with Michael Ignatieff, he said that the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens under Stalin, although ‘probably excessive,’ would have been worth it if a genuine Communist society had been the result.”
Sixty million killed in the Soviet Union alone. Hundreds of millions of lives made miserable there.
Probably that was excessive? And it would have been worth it if Hobsbawm’s political ideas had resulted?
Who is more evil — killers, or those who enable and justify the killings?
Sources:
New York Times, “Eric J. Hobsbawm, Historian With a Communist Resolve, Dies at 95.”
Photo: Roland Schlager/European Pressphoto Agency.
Thanks to R.M. for the link.
Update: Michael Moynihan, “How a True Believer Keeps Faith”, The Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011. And A. N. Wilson, “He hated Britain and excused Stalin’s genocide. But was he a traitor too?” Daily Mail (UK), October 3, 2012.
Karl Marx, possibly the most worthless human being in history, was so lazy that his friends and admirers claimed, “If he heads world socialism, it is doomed.” [paraphrase] Marx was paid by the Society of Just Men (a Rothschild adjunct) to write his inflammatory rhetoric, to foment future wars, the most profitable enterprise bankers know. Readers should check Marx’s letters to see his real motivations, which are appalling. After WWI Europe lived in fear of being swamped with Marxist republics, as in the Liebknecht uprising and Bela Kun in Hungary, et al. One must also study Fascism to grasp the totalitarian nature of both systems. But Marxism came first (not really related to Fourierism, which has always been around) and Fascism was its perverse reaction. It should be noted that all Marxists, Communists are, by their manifestoes and behavior, traitors to all non-Marxist governments, even to their own “revolutionary proletariat.” Hang ’em up or shoot ’em all! Note: there is no such thing as the “proletariat”, but, this necessary fiction (to Marxism) is being created by today’s immoral and irresponsible governments (!).
Do you have any quotations available from Marx’s letters, Stephen? That would be informative.
The best I can do right now is the letter from Marx to one Baruch Levy ca. 1897. I can only paraphrase another, but have forgotten its source. BOTH ARE CONTROVERSIAL (perhaps) to the readers of this blog. Above,
“The Jewish people as a whole will be its own Messiah. It will attain world domination by the dissolution of other races…and by the establishment of a world republic in which everywhere the Jews will exercise the privilege of citizenship. In this New World Order the Children of Israel…will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition…”
(Little known lletter by Karl Marx to Baruch Levy, quoted in ‘Review de Paris’, Edition of June 1, 1928, p. 574)
This sentiment is also echoed in another letter (source currently unknown) which says: “Upon the victory of world socialism the Children of Israel shall have all the wealth…the man in the street will tip his hat to the Israelite…”
It has long been remarked that Marxism and Zionism are basically the same thing, domination of money and power by “the children of Israel.” This is, apparently, a Talmudic view, it is not Scriptural. Israelites are commanded by Moses to treat any alien as they would themselves. Except for bowing before foreign idols. With the disintegration of the “land of milk and honey” into Judah and Israel, then its absorption by the Babylonians, and eventually, the Romans, the opinions of rabbis veered away from Moses to the writers of the Talmud.
The Rothschilds were always looking for issues to foment wars in Europe and to foster the Zionist ideal of a “homeland for the Jewish people,” which is today a conglomerate of various political factions, which continually bombs its neighbors, harbors Jewish embezzlers from abroad, has unneeded nuclear weapons, lives on borrowed or extorted moneys, and which recently was forced to convict an Israeli general (see Haaretz on the Net) for selling the body organs of Arab children on the international market. These children (estimated 50,000) were shot in the head for throwing stones at military vehicles and given “an autopsy” after which they were butchered. This horrible practice was exposed by Swedish journalists and originally denied. In Israel we consider a country that has done nothing for any nation but itself. Arguments that “the Israelis” are our allies — when a goodly number of American national secrets have been sold to the Red Chinese via Jewish spies like Jonathan Pollard and others — are ridiculous. Nay, obscene.
The coagulation of Marxist/Zionist ideas is evident in that the Russian Revolution was funded by a Rothschild bank in Brooklyn, where Trotsky visited. The Federal Reserve Bank (not a government bank, but a private bank, owned by Zionist interests) has been instrumental in raising funds for WWI and WWII. Lenin correctly called Liberals, Socialists, and other do-gooders as “useful idiots.” The entire thrust of this “new world order” is the control of nations via the money supply and power brokering. This would take place under the pretended aegis of Israel being the favorite of the “true God” and as a mediator between the two major religions, Islam and Christianity, which both revere its prophets.
Remember, the most profitable loans large banks can make are for war supplies. The business of weapons dealers (private supply, though often sanitized through government channels) is second in volume only to drug moneys. Indeed, drugs are often used as collateral and as a medium of exchange in such transactions.
Marx and Engels were the first competent mouthpieces of this Rothschild-based enterprise, and were supported through the Society for Just Men. Zionism would not have any international support without various Rothschild scions. Whereas the philosophy of this movement is horribly bogus and its pretense to bless all mankind completely spurious, the agile minds of Marx and Engels have — like the Archfiend himself — deluded millions. Stalin once showed off his posters in Moscow to a journalist and said, “They see it once, they ignore it; they see it fifty times, they believe it; they see it a thousand times, they die for it.”
The unspeakable evil of totalitarianism has it discernible origin in those two brains, plus the ferocious competence of Trotsky as a military general. Nothing compares with the death toll of International Marxism, one needs only to calculate Russian and Chinese atrocities. Americans are singularly naive about this international situation because of their childlike view of helping others and their Woodrow Wilson starry-eyed ideals. The current election won’t change the grip of Zionists on American disintegration. However controversial, the man in the street must come to see that Marxism/Zionism is just another offshoot of unscrupulous financial forces. I’m not speaking as anything but a political neutral. One must also realize that Zionism is not accepted by many Jews, some say 50%. Many are content with their (prosperous) minority status in all the richer countries of the world. But all have been corrupted by a sense of “getting something for nothing” or usury as a norm. The FBI recently busted a number of rabbis in NJ for laundering illegal moneys through their charities. Indeed, Israel being the main producer of the drug “Ecstasy” rabbis from Israel are regularly strip-searched at airports. This is a matter of record, but one obviously not publicized by New York city media giants. These facts may be educed from many Internet media sources, impossible to cite here. But it comes back to an inflammatory thinker like Marx — a pontificator of the worst sort — who proclaimed the inevitable victory of a (non-existent) “proletariat.” I invite the reader to ignore what may seem any religious or “racial” prejudice in the above and Google Marx quotations at his leisure. You’ll find all kinds of “noble” sentiments and none of the hard political facts. “The dictatorship of the proletariat” is absurd and a contradiction in terms. The “proletariat” Russian army of 1917 was quickly defeated by a handful of German divisions. The “proletariat” can only be managed by the cruelest elite, such as in the Politburo.
Marxism, Leninism, Maoism is all the same crap and begins with huge lies as sacred premises. The underlying motivation is perhaps better found in the private letters of Karl Marx, two tidbits above showing, I think, its direction. When you have as much money as the Rothschilds (or Schiffs, Warburgs, Rockefellers, Kuhns, whoever) there is only one thing you can desire, political power. Eventually, the power of life and death. Wisely, this was the first privilege the Romans revoked when they seized a new territory. Sadly, it is the object of most collectivist agitators, be they priests, bankers, or commissars. The American system has come closest to “freedom and justice for all.” However, Marx, Engels, the Rothchilds, the Federal Reserve bank, all of these rats grow in number and gnaw fiendishly at the underpinnings of our society.
Excuse my verbosity, but one can’t merely quote one thing, without addressing its adjuncts and corollaries. Apologies in advance to those who either don’t see the picture, or who desire not to.
In response to Mr. Dahl’s post, Marx was one of that unfortunately not so rare phenomenon, an anti-Semitic Jew. In their popular speculative history ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln make the excellent point that EVERY group has its agenda and works for its successful realization, even triumph, through honorable or dishonorable means. Jews supported the creation of America and the creation of socialist states probably for the same reason: their projected universalism. In the former it was I think ultimately well-founded, in the latter not.
Marxism advocated the interests of a class, Zionists of a tribe and/or religion. I find it hard to see the commonalities.
The myth of powerful Jewish conspiracies was promoted even by certain Jews themselves e.g. Chaim Weizmann to press on British authorities to favor the creation of the state of Israel (see Tom Segev, ‘One Palestine, Complete’). But this alleged super-conspiratorial power did not prevent the Holocaust and persecution elsewhere.
Ludwig von Mises noted that arms manufacturers are responding to demand – whatever it is – and that they would gladly switch to making Bibles if it meant a profit for them.
I do agree that Israel today is deeply problematic. Zionism emerged as a defensive reaction to the 19th century völkisch movements that eroded the universality of individual rights in the European mind in favor of mystical “blood and soil” ideas of the Volk (folk, or people) unfortunately, if understandably, adopting some of its most unsavory tenets e.g. ethnic and/or religious collectivism. While assimilating aspects of it, Zionism also supplanted perhaps the brightest movement in Jewish intellectual history, the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment.
The tragic, if eminently understandable reality lying at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian morass is that it is a tribal conflict. The fundamental contradiction Israel must resolve is that it aspires to be both a tribal and Enlightenment state: Two mutually exclusive ideas. In turning from the vision of moderate Zionists like Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein and (later) Noam Chomsky – all who urged respect for the rights of resident Arab populations – the Israel established in 1948 has become what Arendt predicted it would then: An eternal provocation to conflict. Instead of bringing the Enlightenment to that benighted part of the world European Jews were drawn into their own and the regions’ darkest tribal pasts. The dream of a greater Israel is an exclusionary tribal fantasy – the universalization of a tribe – that is undermining solutions for both sides. The tribal past has never been, is not, and can never be the solution. Indeed, I can see it as nothing but its opposite: A rescripting of the Jewish tragedy. To predicate a state on ethnicity by definition raises the specter of ethnic criteria, hence cleansing – inviting a reciprocal definition from outside: An ill advised policy for a large people; a suicidal one for a small. Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians implicitly side with the rationales of their historical persecutors. Without denigrating its formidable military prowess, Israel today exists by virtue of two fragile realities: vastly disproportionate US financial and military aid and the stagnation of the rest of the Middle East, neither of which can be counted on in perpetuity (the reason the Arab Spring is making many Israelis nervous). Israel will not survive as a tribal state; it has a realistic chance of surviving as an Enlightenment one. (Significantly there were Zionists who saw America, not Palestine, as a potential promised land; and it is in America – legally blind to ethnicity, race and creed – not Israel, where Jews have found the greatest acceptance, peace and security). Jews have traditionally been the most intensely tribal people on earth. But the irony is that tribalism and tribal politics are the worst way to defend tribal interests: It is precisely the smallest and most defined tribes that most need the Enlightenment ideals of individual rights, tolerance and pluralism.
I applaud Mr. Fox’s essay. I would hazard that he is Jewish himself, as he makes such perceptive and insightful remarks. From the text of his letter the reader can discern that is important. Self-evaluation is more telling than external enquiry.
Anti-Semitism (a vague term — it used to mean “someone who doesn’t like Jewish people” but now intends “someone the Jewish people don’t like”) among Jews might reflect that the original “tribe” (a nickname Jews enjoy using) was made of 12 disparate sons of Jacob. I think it more accurate to say that Marx and Engels were German Jews, and these have for centuries seen themselves as creme de la creme, compared, particularly, to Ostjuden, the often impure offshoots of their original race. Russian, Polish, Hungarian…many of which filtered into 19th century Vienna (provoking a homeless artist named Adolf) are known for their seeking money at any cost, particularly that of their dignity. Indeed, when Adolf Hitler first attained a power base, Max Warburg and others gave him money, mainly to prevent the immigration of Ostjuden into Germany. The second greatest influence in American politics, after the Irish immigration, was the Ostjuden coming to New York, where they (obviously) stayed.
Lest this riposte become turgid, as above (!) I would like to register a few points:
1. To be a “Jew” (this is a nickname, derived from “Judah” and not used in Scripture until the Book of Esther) one must be descended from one of the 12 tribes, the offspring of Jacob and Leah/Rachel. This could be checked at the temple in Jerusalem, but with its destruction by Rome in 70 AD no such proofs exist, and world of mouth is not acceptable.
2. To be admitted to the inner temple (compared to the Court of the Gentiles) one had to be so recognized and one must have been circumcised (no exceptions!). The “Jewish religion” is therefore the only one which requires blood ties. It is completely patriarchal — women may not be priests. Indeed, the only priests allowed must be descended from Levi. There is a place for proselytes but it is secondary. Originally the Jews (descended through Abraham and Sarah) grew in numbers, emigrated to Egypt, left and established their kingless theocracy in Canaan. Eventually they wanted a king like the “nations” in lieu of the system of judges which ruled. Everyone knew Moses’ laws, and they were strictly enforced. If you committed adultery you were taken out and summarily stoned to death.
3. The basis of Jewish laws were those given by Moses (please note, while he was on the mountain, angels announced these laws to the flock before he descended) and his first five books, the Pentateuch, is the backbone of Orthodox Jewry. But Moses had issued severe warnings that “you are the least of the peoples…this is a stiff-necked people…if you break the law you will [eventually] lose the blessing of God and be scattered to the ends of the earth…’
4. During the Roman conflict 70-120 AD this scattering took place, although there had been colonies of Jews throughout the Mediterranean for commercial reasons, such as in Alexandria. Many Jews spoke no Hebrew, only Greek. The “Holocaust” which shook Jerusalem at this time had no equal — almost the entire population was murdered or enslaved, or at Masada, committed suicide.
5. Jesus himself told the Jews “your inheritance is taken from you” just before his death, and also told the faithful they must leave the city when the “abominable thing surrounds it” and then retreats (it would return, to complete the prophecy). From this point the “dispersion” of the Jews dictates their future: they would be a minority among the “unclean” or “uncircumcised” nations, but this was not so bad, because it would reinforce their religion by making it quintessential to their survival. They could not assimilate, they could not evolve a different religion. They could only hope for the Messiah to deliver them. There is no provision in Scripture that they could reassemble in the “promised land.” Any more than Babylon could be rebuilt, as Saddam Hussein planned to do.
6. However, over centuries the Jews veered away from Moses to Talmudic scholars, who authored a hateful version of Judaism which stressed detestation and exploitation of the Gentiles (who, anyone must concede, were often none too bright). This led to a number of slanders and myths, such as blood rituals, and the infamy of being known as a religion of usurers, parasites on “native husbandry” (Hamlet). Moreover, as the Messiah (so identified by about 200 prophecies) had obviously come and gone, paid the ransom sacrifice, and removed any need thereby for a temple and animal sacrifice, the Jews were in left field for almost 2000 years whistling Dixie. Yet, they retained their arrogance as a “chosen people” and as a group of prospective “aristocrats” (David Ben Gurion, 1948 comment), whereas the Jews lack all aristocratic traits, and show social responsibility mainly to their own kind, as in Jewish charities.
This fascinating people, the only extant “folk” which can trace its roots back 3500 years, which has given Western civilization the Bible, which even atheists read, continues today in huge public profile. (Atheist/agnostic readers kindly note, this is not a religious sermon. Whether you believe in God or do not, it is a completely free will issue.) In America there is little doubt TV, movies, and the media in general are Zionist to the core.
So, the issue of Karl Marx is that of a “chosen one” assuming prophetic powers through his “dialectic” of lies and twisted theory. Whether his arrogance comes from anti-Semitism or German “superiority” matters less than his projection of the reassembled Jewish nation in a supreme position, possible only through the Marxist state. The “nations” must be reduced to a mongrel slave class/family/group so that the “children of Israel [may] have all the wealth…all men shall tip their hats..&c”. The entire Marx equation relies on human instincts toward egalitarianism (via, for example, the Enlightenment) and the Messiah complex of the Jewish “tribe” — although I would use the term on African drum-beaters. I think we will see an eventual world government centered in Jerusalem, wherefrom the bankers/usurers and their ilk will control the globe. According to the Book of Daniel, this government will be short-lived. Sooner or later, this “New World order” will cash in all the assets of organized religion, from the Vatican City to the Mormon Tabernacle — there’s alot of dough out there for the taking. It may be necessary to refinance “the world.” Most people could care less for the “opiate” of religion — they’ve got their HD TV, a can of beer and a hot pizza, and their remote control.
A note: the conflict between Palestine and Israel can be seen as a battle of the Semitic peoples. Arabs are descended (in a bastard style) from Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid, and Sarah, nice Jewish girl who, being told she would have a child at the age of ninety, remarked, [paraphrase] “Oh, I’ll have my sexual pleasure again!” Both peoples are Semitic, both are monotheistic. That makes for a good wrassle.
Don’t mean to beat this to death but would like to express a few more related thoughts.
Mr. Dahl, I don’t have the honor of being Jewish. I think the greatest historical difficulty of being such has been the traditional stress on tribe and bloodlines which appears to trump religious doctrine. (I should say I don’t play favorites: I can’t stand any of the “great” religious doctrinal systems, Judaism included). This served to render them a small, less easily assimilated people, thereby concentrating them as a target for the projected pathologies of surrounding and host societies. Christianity and Islam placed a far greater premium on doctrinal adherence, were proselytizing, and what Bernard Lewis calls triumphalist: aspiring to the worldwide victory of their faith over all others. This secured them a vast power base – and license for their mischief – that the Jews lacked.
It must remembered that, forbidden entry into trade guilds, banking was one of the few professions open to Jews. When they became good at it they inspired the resentment of those around them.
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today both sides talk about lineage, tribes and peoples. Even Newt Gingrich got caught up in it, asserting that the Palestinians weren’t a genuine people. The whole morass is so wretchedly tribal i.e. collectivist. Lineage is no substitute for intellect and character. Both peoples belong to the tribe called humans and would do better prioritizing that fact.
Fact is whether one is a Jew or Arab doesn’t matter walking down a street in America. It does in Israel.
Granted the Palestinians are an easy people to knock: A brutish pre-Enlightenment society reduced to virtual banditry by extortionate Ottoman taxation, corruption and landowning policies now rife with corruption, lack of intellectual freedoms, “honor-killings” of women, etc.
But it could hardly be said the raw sea of humanity that entered America through gateways like Ellis Island from faraway lands were typically animated by Enlightenment ideals, though some were. They came with their old world habits, customs, superstitions, gods, rivalries and hatreds. Many were incredibly backward and brutal. But slowly, painfully, they assimilated – because they had to. Their new country demanded much of them, but took little cognizance of their ethnicity, race or creed (at least officially).
Had Israel been consistent in its commitment to individual rights by including rather than excluding the Palestinians it would have raised them up, to the advantage of both peoples, and brought the Enlightenment to that benighted bit of real estate. (Even today Druze and Bedouin are citizens and loyal members of its armed forces; need its inclusiveness stop there? I don’t think so). European Jews would have been viewed as the region’s benefactors instead of the oppressive colonizers they are now. This in fact was the wish of more enlightened Zionists.
Mr. Fox, again my thanks. Half of humanity seems to find this question fascinating, half utterly dull. I am not trying to win an argument or “be right,” or indulge in “triumphalism”, but here are some more points:
1. “Honor” is usually accorded to a person for meritorious deeds or high achievement, so, if you “don’t have the honor of being Jewish” it doesn’t make sense, as Judaism is the only religion into which you must be born. You deplore the major religious systems, yet seem to “honor” Judaism, which was once monolithic and now quite fractionalized.
2. Are you familiar with [my coinage] the “Flaming Badge Syndrome”? I’ll give you an example. One of my professors at Yale became a friend until we discussed the Holocaust one day and he began to foam at the mouth, calling it the worst and most systematic outrage, &c, &c. I asked, “What do you think of Stalin’s massacres? Of Mao’s? What about Genghis Khan?” He immediately calmed down. “Those weren’t like what happened in the Holocaust, it was systematic.” “The starvation of the Ukraine wasn’t systematic?” Another subject he rants on is Civil Rights. He moans out sympathies for any black community and rants over slavery, but when I discussed white slavery, and slavery in India, and — it’s still prevalent — all over the world, well, that’s too bad. He can’t wear the fashionable and profitable badge that burns with a righteous flame. He can’t march in a parade, and if you correct the many errors in such an argument, he wants to punch you in the mouth. Indeed, a Fascist, but wearing a different badge. We are good because of the good things we do, not because of the bad things we hate.
3. The sufferings of the Jews were predicted by Moses in Leviticus or Deut 7, can’t recall, as I mentioned above, but Moses also said, “You will be persecuted without reason…in the morning, you will say, ‘If only the night would come’ and at night you will say, ‘If morning were only here!'” Most serious Jews take this, like all Moses’ work, seriously. The Law (Tanakh or Torah) incised the outline of all Israelite lives, it wasn’t the soup and stew of today where they make laws to outlaw something already illegal. But with the rise of the Jews in America en masse from a struggling minority to a powerful mercantile/lawyering/medical/political class, with their media control, Zionist bent, and infallible shield, the Holocaust, check out “political correctness” and it serves their aims quite well. Norman Finklestein’s book on the Holocaust Industry cost him his job in Chicago. If you can be successfully painted as a Holocaust denier (whatever that means) it’s about like being a child molester. People will spit in your face, people who never met you before.
4. Don’t infer that the “Holocaust” never happened, because we know millions of people, gypsies and Jews, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses, anyone who went against the grain of the Third Reich were killed. The numbers will probably always be disputed. The basic plan was relocation, but the war went badly and doubtless, many people died because of no food, medicine, whatever. There is no doubt that the SS Einsatzcommando killed several hundred thousand Jews, although many of the photographs are Russian partisans. But the entire Holocaust Industry rests on the unspeakable panorama of men women and children exiting cattle cars at Auschwitz and being streamed into gas chambers and then blazing furnaces, like a scene from a medieval manuscript. The strongest documentation suggests that the Reinhardt Camps, specifically designed to kill people by working them to death and the like, at Sobibor and Treblinka, was horrible — nearly a million died there. But Auschwitz, as pictured, with the gate ARBEIT MACHT FREI was a work camp pure and simple. Yet it is such a monstrous story to make one suspicious. All the camps received the same amounts of Zyklon B gas, which was used to fumigate people’s clothes, shoes, whatever — in “gas chambers”. So they wouldn’t die of typhus, slaves and workers that they were. That is not to say some people weren’t also killed that way, but firm evidence suggests it was the work of the Einsatzcommando and their trucks fitted with exhaust pipes that poured carbon monoxide into the rear van. All this ferocious detail removes rational argument (usually) on the subject. And gave the American Jewish establishment a huge “leap forward” in consolidating economic and political power far in excess of their population. Do you really regard it as a honor to be part of such a scam? Or am I tearing the flaming badge away? In Europe I couldn’t write this without incurring a $50000 fine. Do you believe, like Christopher Hitchens, that Holocaust deniers be given center stage, to expose their misconceptions? The point of this argument is that we tread on holy ground, on religious issues, on a Messianic people, that Karl Marx said would “become their own Messiah” by the destruction of other folk. Where is the honor there?
5. As for medieval laws, these varied from duchy to duchy. In the main, Jews were not allowed to own tracts of land, the pre-eminent form of wealth in Europe and England. They could pursue many other professions than moneylending, such as medicine, merchandising, money-changing, textiles…yet they usually portray themselves as helpless ghetto dwellers, locked in a night and forced to wear a yellow star. They, in fact, built the ghettoes to avoid contact with Gentiles and appeared in public dressed shabbily, so as not to advertise their wealth, and to avoid tax. They — where location made it possible — were heavily involved with the slave trade. Jews also paid no Papal taxes, indeed, some cities converted en masse to Judaism to avoid them. The two sides of this story are both weird and unbelievable, so it pays to investigate the other side — like a judge in a divorce.
6. As for Ellis Island and what people thought, who they were, what were their aims, I think mostly it was endless opportunity and cheap land that enticed many. We should remember Ayn Rand’s remark that “America was not built by people who believe the streets were paved with gold.” But after the success of the republic a good many people who thought so began to arrive. Immigration quotas were quickly set, most against Chinese, who still form our largest single immigrant influx.
7. Christopher Hitchens points out that religion poisons everything, and that it was used in Israel for Ashkenazim and Sephardim (the former predominating) to seize land and with terrorist methods — the Haganah. Not nice people. But if it is “a homeland for the Jewish people” is it not also a haven? Jews like Mark Rich embezzled millions and ended up there. No embezzler has ever been extradited to America. Bernie Madoff, had he not cheated his own kind, would have retired there also. The list is very long and not readily published by New York City interests. Is this part of your “honorable” ambition?
I throw these things at you, not to stigmatize you or to reecho anti-Zionist rhetoric, but this topic and issue, so obsessively compelling, is very vital to present day finance and politics. Even Sarah Palin had to go to Israel to “get approved.” Netanyahu has said more than once in the Knesset, “The Americans don’t tell us what to do, we tell them!” The lie has become so big — like Stalin’s posters — that we are all expected to die for it or at least, keep handing over billions. It is grotesque, without equal in history, and not even tribal. It has become a cancer that devours anyone in its way. Nothing to do with race or religion, and…everything! Do you think Marx was kidding in those letters I quoted? We have a Weimar Republic thing all over again, and I shudder to think what will happen here. It started, did it not, with printing money, printing more money, printing money, money, money?
I ask my readers to forgive me an excess of blood red prose and purple prophecy. I don’t want to see ill befall any group. I do believe that the real juggernaut was begun by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Back to Ayn Rand and the influence of ideas. Well, she was Jewish, turned atheist early, and blew the whistle on the lot of Commie fanatics. Did quite well for Joe McCarthy also.
Guess that makes me all wet!
I wrote the “honor of being Jewish” tongue in cheek, perhaps grabbing too much poetic license and what you say in response in your second paragraph above is perfectly correct.
It’s not Jewish conspiracy stuff but Ritchie Ovendale in ‘The Origins of the Arab Israeli Wars’ and Israeli historian Tom Segev in ‘One Palestine, Complete’ both note the intense pressure by the Jewish lobby on American politicians. Important votes were timed with it in mind: votes popular with it before elections, unpopular after. Visiting British officials were appalled, saying there appeared to be little principle in American politics, just vote oriented finagling.
Jews are a smart, tight-knit, well organized community and it’s understandable that they would advocate for their interests. (While understanding why they would perceive it as such I don’t think Israel as an exclusionary tribal state is to their interests; indeed I think there’s a strong case to be made for the opposite). I told a Muslim friend who spoke of this lobby that Muslims should take a page from them and learn to do the same. In Canada Sikh’s have organized themselves into a very effective political lobby.
Of course the issue of lobbying itself opens another can of worms. The more free a society the less reason for lobbying.
Tom Friedman noted that Israel can be the most schizophrenic place on earth for Jews as there are so many different interpretations of what it means to be one there.
Like all cultures, particularly religious based ones, the Judaic has its pathologies. I think these were beginning to be confronted during the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment inspired by the European one. But like the latter it was derailed by the German reaction, particularly the völkisch movements that eroded the universality of individual rights in the European mind and served to undermine the precarious integration of Jews into European society. Zionism emerged as a defensive reaction.
Again, praise for your sanguine attitude. This issue is reminds me of Shelley’s “doth tease us into eternity” (Adonais). We are trying to undo the Gordian knot, and doubtless have tugged — at odds — on the same strand. As non-Jews we might struggle to understand the dichotomy in “the Tribe” : about half are Zionists, bent on this new state, and half are local-yokel Jews, content to be doctors, lawyers, merchants, pharmacists, real estate developers — whatever pays maximum wages. The former are the Zealots and the latter, average Joes like you and me. One thing we don’t hear much about is the high temple dues, and the virtual taxation of “the Tribe” vis a vis Israeli bonds. It’s their kind of “tithe”. I’d like to travel to Israel to get a better idea of what’s going on — but fear the terrorist atmosphere there. If you travel to France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy you’ll find a “non-Jewish” clime, that is, no advertisements, no TV spots screaming “buy, buy, buy!” and very little Shoah stuff in the media. Europe, despite the ECU, is returning to regionalism. Moreover, they truly resent the effect on oil prices and the international baloney of Israel. They’ve had a snootful of war.
I don’t agree that Zionism is a defensive reaction, it seems so after WWII. You might research the other side via revisionist historians and study some historical sweep of the Judenfrage. I’d argue for an Aristotelian mean, but the issue retains a volatility that keeps it centers changing. If “they” manage to involve us in a war with Iran, or begin one, and if they use one of their many nuclear bombs — oy veg! What will happen then?
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If you wish to continue this discussion, or any other, write me : dahl.stephen@gmail.com
Best!
BTW re the original prod of this thread: don’t usually like to pick on things like this, it may be bad luck at the gene lottery and hardly makes for an intellectual argument, but looking at photos of Eric Hobsbawn it struck me that his face resembles something scooped up from the Marianas Trench – leaving me wondering whether the effect is purely the result of his physical physiognomy.
I can’t resist, but please do write me offline, should we share interests. Are you a close friend of Stephen Hicks, that paragon? I think he’s my cousin.
Have you noticed that most left wing people, Stalin, Mao, Freud, whomever, are physically ugly and often deformed? The ancient Greeks believed that people who were beautiful to look at, like Alcibiades, were also gifted cranially. Socrates made fun of this as he was unusually ugly, but most “quality” people look, and think, beautiful. The Greek word “kallos” means “good” and “beautiful.” In the Hebrew Book of Genesis, “God looked at his work and saw that it was good.” Antiquity was not so genetically mixed and corrupted as today. Check out the ancestry of Hobsbawm on Wikipedia, you’ll find it none too distinguished. Who knows his real cognomen?
To support the ancient Greek theory, you could take examples like Professor Hicks, or myself — both brilliant, handsome, virile, raging red-blooded he-men, that women cannot resist — but I exaggerate.
Best!
For the record re my remark above: “Marxism advocated the interests of a class, Zionists of a tribe and/or religion. I find it hard to see the commonalities.”
In fact there are strong commonalities. I believe more than one (Rand, Mises?) noted that Marx treated classes as tribes governed by irreconcilable interests that could be resolved only by conflict, war, oppression and extermination – as Mises pointed out, an ancient modus operandi.