Anti-Semitism Appeals to Intellectuals Because It Feels Like an Idea

Adam Kirsch writes at Mosaic (excerpted):

Gary Saul Morson’s characteristically learned and insightful essay on Dostoevsky raises the question of how a writer with such a profound understanding of good and evil could fall prey to such a rudimentary moral failing as Jew-hatred. As Morson says, the implications of this question go far beyond Dostoevsky himself. His example reveals one of the most troubling qualities of anti-Semitism, here and now as in 19th-century Russia: its shamelessness. Many people who congratulate themselves on their benevolence, and would be deeply ashamed of being exposed as racist or homophobic, take a certain pride in hating Jews.

This is not simple hypocrisy. Rather, it is a sign that anti-Semitism is differently constituted from other kinds of prejudice, so that to those who harbor it, it doesn’t feel like a prejudice at all. Instead, it feels like an idea. ...

The German intellectual Wilhelm Marr coined the term “anti-Semitism” in a book published in 1879, the same year that The Brothers Karamazov began to appear as a serial in a Russian magazine. For Marr, anti-Semitism wasn’t a heart-hatred but a principled hostility to “Semitism,” an ideology supposedly espoused by all Jews. In The Victory of Judaism Over Germandom, Marr wrote that “the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world,” echoing Dostoevsky’s complaint that Jews were responsible for the triumph of European “materialism.” ...

In treating the Jews as a synecdoche for all the developments in modern civilization that they detested, anti-Semites belonged to a very long tradition. As David Nirenberg shows in his excellent book Anti-Judaism, Jews were being used for this purpose even in ancient times. But it was Christianity that made it one of the fundamental habits of the European mind. Starting with the apostle Paul, who said that Judaism was based on the letter that killeth and Christianity on the spirit that giveth life, Western self-criticism has often taken the form of attacking its own Judaizing tendencies. This useful technique makes it possible to recall Christians to their duty while suggesting that they are not really at fault, since they have been led astray by Jews or Jewish values.

Thus for Dostoevsky, the rise of capitalism in the 19th century meant that Christians were giving into the Jewish vice of “blind, carnivorous lust ... for personal accumulation of money.” Similarly, Marr wrote sarcastically that “the Jews are the best citizens of this modern, Christian state,” meaning that Germany had institutionalized the Jewish vice of materialism. Today, Israel often serves the same rhetorical function for Europeans, who like to accuse the Jewish state of the things they are most ashamed of in their own history, from nationalism to colonialism to genocide. ...

An example of age-old Jew-hatred masked as secularist liberal/progressive critique

“Matt Morley” on Facebook, as engaged by “Olaf Errwigge”

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October 17

THE ENTIRE WESTERN WORLD IS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY. GIVE PALESTINE BACK TO ITS PEOPLE!

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Olaf Errwigge
One state, then.

Matt Morley
I think we may be past that now, the people of the lie might have to leave! I'm personally in favour of methodically defunding and dismantling the "Jewish state", but perhaps if there was a policy of mandatory intermarriage then the Khazars might at least have partial authenticity! And I'm only half-joking!

Dale Dickinson
Bad idea

Matt Morley
There are very few good options, my friend!

Иван Спасић

Historically Palestine belongs to Jews also, they are settled there for at least 3000 years. They were genocide by Muslims (religious exile, not national, if you do not except that being Muslim is nation as people from Bosnia want it to be true) in last 1000 years. The problem is that they have to live together, none of them have the right to ethnically clean state. The Middle East was the original melting pot of nations thousands of years before the USA took that label.

Also, a huge part of the problem is that western secret services are putting oil on fire in the Middle East for the last 100 years to be able to control it, so just pull Anglo-Saxons out of there and leave people to deal with their troubles alone and we can have peace. Most people in the Middle East just want to be left alone, there was almost no terrorism there before western money made it. They were warrior nations, but from the times they all become Muslims there were no major wars until GB took some of the land in North Africa and Middle East.

Matt Morley

Иван Спасић Ivan, the notion that the "Jews" even exist is a fabrication, as is their fictional "history" in the "Bible". I put all these things in quotation marks because too many take them as established facts when they are far from such! The problem is that there is a difference between what most people think when they hear "Jews" compared to, say, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus etc. They know perfectly well that the latter terms are devoid of ideas of "race", and are reckoned only in terms of faith and sometimes culture.

This is exactly how we should be thinking of "Jews", but instead we have this introduced notion of "race" or "ethnicity" which underpins the continuing falsehood that there is some connection with the "Jews" or (God preserve us!) "Israelites" of the "Bible". No such connection exists, as many truthful "Jewish" scholars will tell you quite openly. Modern "Jews" are simply a converted cult made up of various proselytized groups, across the Mediterranean coast into Spain, Ethiopia and Yemen, but mostly from the various Turkic peoples who populated the kingdom of Khazaria, which was contemporaneous with Byzantium and the early Arab Muslim expansion.

All these were converts to an abominated version of the Judaic Pharisee cult of Roman-occupied Palestine, the word "Jew" and the term "Judaic" springing from the Roman word Judea as a small eponymous province which encompassed roughly the southern half of the area within the current West Bank borders, according to most accounts. That is to say, the Hebrew cult of Jehovah (one of many) had found a home there during the later Babylonian period and set up a temple, naming themselves after the "biblical Judah", eldest son of "Jacob-Israel".

By the time of the Romans the original beliefs had become refashioned into an unrecognizable form, and the original people and whatever gene-pool there had been were swallowed up into the melting-pot of the Greco-Roman Middle East. The language they spoke was not Hebrew but a mixture of Aramaic, Greek and Latin, and very likely this would have been the language of "Jesus" and his "apostles". This is where the fictional account of a "lost people" arises from, and THIS gained new currency amongst the converted Khazarians when their kingdom collapsed, as they spread out across Eastern Europe from the Baltic to southern coasts of the Black Sea.

The rest has become, in this case, Ashkenazi history...

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October 19

Codified "racial purity", a "chosen people", grab for "living space", hateful "othering" of humanity...remind you of anything? 🐍

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Olaf Errwigge
The expulsion of Jews from Muslim countries throughout the 20th century? Not to mention of course the Nazi genocide culminating a millenium or so of scapegoating and pogroms?

Matt Morley
The so-called "expulsion of Jews" from Muslim countries was, for the most part, a voluntary migration driven by the reward of jobs, money and land in Palestine, unlike the forced exodus of Palestinians from the very same land! As for the "millenium or so of scapegoating and pogroms", we must begin with the fact that the "Jews" are nothing more than a nation of Turkic religious converts who follow the amoral precepts of a long-expired fanatical Judaic cult, precepts to aid in the struggle to hold power in a small province of the eastern Roman Empire, with whom they have NO genetic or direct historical connection, nor of culture or language. There is NO such thing as a "Semitic people", and therefore NO such thing as "anti-semitism". These are the people of the lie, behind whom the collective West hides its collective guilt for its invention and the atrocities it has produced!

Matt Morley
Besides, either you have missed the obvious point of my post, or clumsily attempted to avoid it by invoking one of the many falsehoods used to justify that which can never be justified!

Olaf Errwigge
Ah, so Jew-hatred is both wholly justified and nonexistent! All those pogroms, including the one last week in Israel itself, aren't real because the victims themselves are lies!

Matt Morley
Hatred between peoples is only hatred, you can't give it special status by adding another name to it. Do you think it more likely that Palestinians hate "Israelis" because they're "Jews", or because they have unjustifiably colonized, terrorized and abused them in the name of a fictitious history, and engineered the theft and destruction of all that was once their nation? Don't try to be clever, there is only one original violation of human rights here, no quid pro quo!

Olaf Errwigge
Their nation? They lived under Ottoman rule and then British. That doesn’t justfiy their displacement, but their claim of a nation is no more valid than that of the Zionists. Jews always lived in Palestine as well. And the Arab Palestinians would have had a nation alongside the Jews in 1948 but wanted more. Then all of Israel’s neighbors attacked the Jewish state in 1948 and again in 1967. They rather blew it.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge You're cherry-picking to avoid getting at the heart of the problem. Of course people of many faiths lived together in Palestine, that was precisely the virtue of being a land that was part of what was essentially an empire that was itself the expression of a fraternal faith. That is NOT the same thing as an organized group of religious thugs in league with arrogant Christian mysticists in a far away place, making deals and drawing up contracts based on nothing but lies!

Olaf Errwigge
One-fourth of the Israeli population is not Jewish.

Barry Schier
Olaf Errwigge. About 3/4 of the Israeli population is Jewish. (About 1/5 of the Israeli population is Arab / Palestinian, whose average income is only about 2/3 of similarly educated / situated Israeli Jewish counterparts, according to Israeli Jewish media, e.g., Jerusalem Post). Moreover, a significant (and growing) percentage of Israeli Jews ({10%)) are Haredim (I e. Orthodox Jews, many who devote full-time (with rabbis comprising a tiny percentage) reading, etc., Jewish texts instead of working for a paycheck and whose female household members usually are homemakers / baby makers in that very sexist subreligion.). Also included in the statistics (thus pulling down the Israeli Jewish "average" figures are Sephardic and North African Jews, near Eastern (especially emigrants from Iran and Arab countries) who are subject to discrimination among Israel Jews. Moreover, during one self-billed protest-march, 30,000 in this country claiming to be non racist and democratic chanted and carried banners against the immigration admission into Israel of Falashim (as Ethiopian / Black Jews call themselves, while Israel's dominant (i.e., of Euroamerican background / ancestry);population calls them "Schwartza,'s" -- Yiddish /Hebrew word with translation / connotion of "darkies".

Olaf Errwigge
Meanwhile in Muslim-majority countries, Jews were expelled.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge Please provide sources for that statement?

Olaf Errwigge
It’s obvious that you know nothing.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge It's obvious you just like saying sh*t without backing it up, it's obvious you're prone to ad hominem attacks whenever someone makes a statement you don't agree with, it's obvious that you're an attention-seeking pathetic little jerk!

Olaf Errwigge
It's not a hidden history. Jewish exodus from the Muslim world - Wikipedia

Medina Cheatle
Olaf Errwigge Educate yourself bro’.

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October 22

ON THE NOTION THAT THERE IS A "SEMITIC RACE" OF "CHOSEN PEOPLE" AND THAT THEREFORE "ANTI-SEMITISM" EXISTS AS A COROLLARY OF "RACISM" AND "HATE-SPEECH"

The word "Semitic" originated as an arbitrary designation for a group of similar languages assumed to have been spoken across the near or middle east in pre-Christian times, i.e. before the influences of Greek, Latin, Turkic and formalized Arabic. While the Bible and the Koran are principally codified fables, exaggerated to compel cohesion against paganism and a destructive, anarchic society, both are based on the supposed Mosaic traditions and the Torah of the "Jewish faith". Through a complex series of actual historical macro-events (which need not be told here), this almost entirely unsupported and tenuous group of writings introduced a number ideas which have been twisted into modern misconstruction. In this case, returning to the word "Semitic", we find that the inventors of the term were engaged in the attempt to identify the ancient figures and peoples of the Christian Bible in terms of modern linguistic "descendants".

They decided to reference the fable of Noah and the "Great Flood" as the starting point, using his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth as the precursors. Hence Shem becomes Semite and Semitic, bound up with false notions of language and ethnicity. Ancient Hebrew, which was an aural language (these were illiterate times, for the greater part of the population!), has NO CONNECTION to modern "Israeli" save that which comes from the scant and far more recent writings of the Christian era. Most material has, at its root, the Greco-Roman "Judaic" culture, and the Pharisaic cult which was the last remnant of that expression. Those who point to the Khazars and Sephardic groups are correct, for all these were proselytised converts, with no genetic, historical, cultural or linguistic lien with the fables they inherited. "Judaism" is a religious cult, not a race or ethnicity!

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Olaf Errwigge
A people that don’t exist, yet hated as a people for millennia. You only prove the need for a Jewish state, a refuge from hate like yours.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge Excuse me, but...where is the "hate" in anything I've said?

Olaf Errwigge
Maybe it was your complete denial of Jewish history and identity.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge That comes down to a matter of historical accuracy versus belief! It has nothing to do with irrational ideas of "hate"! You seem to be dedicated to belief in a "Jewish history and identity" while I have my own, qualified opinions about those things. If anything, you have a hatred of the contradiction I and others present to you, since it clearly impacts on your fixed perspective. You defend this to the point of aggression and insult and I strongly suggest you consider the level of your own "hate" before accusing others!

Olaf Errwigge
You're telling Jews what to think about themselves, that their own sense of identity is a lie.

Medina Cheatle
Olaf Errwigge He is just explaining history.
What kind of id*iot are you?

Medina Cheatle
Olaf Errwigge Get a brain bro’.

Medina Cheatle
Olaf Errwigge Zionism is the issue here. It is a political, secular movement. Has nothing to do with true Jews who have lived in peace with Muslims and Christians for hundreds of years.
Get yourself educated!

Olaf Errwigge
Medina Cheatle — Except when those Muslims and Christians have needed a scapegoat. Except when the Arab Palestinians decided they couldn’t tolerate them. That’s history, too. Even so, Jews and Muslims live together in peace in Israel, where about 20% of the population is Muslim.

Medina Cheatle
Olaf Errwigge 10% of Palestinians are Christian, in fact the oldest in the world. If you google who caused the most wars in history it is the Christians, followed by Buddhist with Muslims
way down on the list.
The people causing the trouble are the Zionists who are Khazarian or Ahkenazi Jews.
They are from the area of Turkey and Khazakstan.
This is why they are white.
They have no genetic link to Hebrews.
Historically they converted to Judaism for political reasons.
It is interesting they claim ‘God’ gave them this land when in fact 90% of Israelis are non rabbinical.
Many Israeli rabbis are against the Zionists and are speaking out on social media. One well known one is Rabbi Weis.
Netanyahu is immensely unpopular.
It is interesting that there were huge protests planned in Israel against him. Now he has immense support. Hmm!
There is absolutely no way security failed. Even a fox cannot get through it. Six hours for a soldier to respond.
Really?
This is to ‘justify’ genocide.
This was either a False Flag operation or a deliberate stand down.

Olaf Errwigge
Medina Cheatle — Historically, they were persecuted for centuries, even when they were completely integrated. You may well be right about Netanyahu allowing the latest pogrom to occur, but the fact is it did occur.

Medina Cheatle
Olaf Errwigge True Jews were persecuted. However, not Zionists as their movement is around one hundred years old. Zionism is a secular political movement.
These are the trouble makers. Khazarian
Jews were from Turkey and converted to Judaism for political reasons. They have no genetic link to Hebrews. That is why Israelis are white. They claim their ‘God’ gave them the land and yet 95% of them is non rabbinical !
What a joke.
They are the true terrorists!
Rabbi Weis is just one of many rabbis who has spoken out against these thugs, along with Professors Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky, who have both been banned from entering Israel or Gaza by the Israeli government.

Olaf Errwigge
Medina Cheatle — Now do Muslims and Christians.

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October 24

Almost without exception, those who attack my posts on "Israel" with the greatest vitriol will end by saying something which alludes to their "history", their "identity" or special status in the world. This is tantamount to saying "because God says so!", no matter which way you break it down.

It is an insult to humanity !

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Olaf Errwigge
What is so special about the Arab Palestinians, then? They didn't have a nation before 1947, either.

Helgrit Bruce
Olaf Errwigge the so called israel is on the land whichwas palestina. you confound something

Olaf Errwigge
Yes, it was a region of the Ottoman Empire.

Kirsty Allen
Olaf Errwigge History of Palestine - Wikipedia
The occupiers may change, but the people that remained there are the indigenous people

Olaf Errwigge
Well, Jews, descended from the original Canaanites, had remained there.

Kirsty Allen
Olaf Errwigge and do you see the Jews that remained there championing Zionism? No! Because they are Palestinian!

Matthew Fox
The land was populated with people who were olive and darker complected. Europeans were placed there. walk through tel aviv and you will see blonde hair and blue eyes everywhere.
how did that Happen in under 100 years time?

Olaf Errwigge
Matthew Fox — Maybe pogroms and persecutions and expulsions contributed.

Matthew Fox
enough to become 86% of the population?
that's a Lotta blue eyed, pale complected people being persecuted

Olaf Errwigge
Well, yes.

Catherine Atchison
Olaf Errwigge yes they did. Which is why Israelis are cutting down their olive trees, because it proves they've been there for generations

Catherine Atchison
Olaf Errwigge Ashkenazi jews are European and their dna can be traced to 4 maternal dna lines- all from ukraine/Poland region

Olaf Errwigge
Catherine Atchison — And the other Palestinians?

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Matt Morley
Welcome Olaf everybody, one of my biggest fans! As you can tell, he comes from the "because God says so" side of the argument, and he'd like to know what is so special about the Arab Palestinians. Let's start with the fact that they've never demanded something which wasn't already theirs to begin with, and never needed to think of themselves as a nation until the British and the Zionists had already hoodwinked them out of the greater part of their national heritage! Anyone else like to chat with Olaf?

Lynn Faulkner
Matt Morley It's a waste of time to have a meaningful conversation with anyone whose mind is closed.

Rhonda Even Weber
Olaf Errwigge What are you a jew?

Matt Morley
Ouf! It's always a good idea to put such words in quote marks! Helps fool the algos and posits the terminology as arguable from an existential point of view. This allows debates such as "how can there be such a thing as "antisemitism" when there is no such thing as a "Semitic race"...", for example!

Olaf Errwigge
Lynn Faulkner — You can say that again!

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November 22

There is no "Jewish race"!

Even if we accept that "Jews" have an "identity", it is simply wrong to suggest that this should give inalienable rights over another's property and heritage based upon invention. The only correct way to describe what is essentially an adherent of just another mythocentric cult is not "Jew" or even "Jewish". The word we should use is Judaist, which I do not place between speech marks since this is the proper parallel to the terms Christian or Muslim.

There are no "histories" that hold up to scrutiny, nor is there any meaningful connection between modern "Jewish" people and whatever comprises the fables told about ancient kingdoms and personalities. In short, you cannot hold both the myths and the secular reality of "Jewish" expression to be true, and this is the very sophistry which Zionism has delivered, to our chagrin!

You will note the direction in which this leads us: to remove the power wielded by those who use "antisemitism" as a blunt instrument to defend the Zionist cause, it is necessary to tell the whole truth. There are no "Jews", no "Semites", no "chosen people", there is no "Israel", no "Judah and Samaria", no "right to exist" and no "Yahweh"! To reiterate, there is NO "Jewish race"!

There is nothing but a dangerous, conflated fiction constructed out of whole cloth by a Pharisaic cabal sequestered in Greco-Roman Judea, a part of an empirical province long known as Palestine. And, of course, there is no such thing as "antisemitism", so when we say "from the river to the sea", we mean the reinstatement of a land for people of all faiths without Zionist overlords and modern-day Pharisees!

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Olaf Errwigge
Then there are no "Palestinians" either.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge That is a different discussion, and is not relevant here!

Olaf Errwigge
But the argument against Jewish identity is being made on behalf of those Palestinians. Why bother, if both are fictions?

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December 9

Reality check:

NO-ONE is "born Jewish", just as no-one can be "born" Christian or Muslim. So let's talk about Zionism...again!

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Olaf Errwigge
Well, actually one is. It is not a matter of religion.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge It is entirely a matter of religion, and the cult behaviour instilled by the Talmudist tradition from birth. You have been taught to think of yourself as a "separate people", and to behave in a manner which is hateful towards the rest of humanity, as well as insulting the intellect by pretending this is a question of race. This is so close to Aryanism it's unfunny, and most of the world has no tolerance for it anymore. Every time you claim to be a "chosen race", every time you invoke the angry God of a twisted, fabulist history with which you have NO connection, you are simply pissing people off, mightily!

Olaf Errwigge
Nobody asks whether you're "religious" during a pogrom. As you so clearly express it, the caricature is that every Jew, including those pretending not to be – by changing their name and converting to the preferred religion, even joining the anti-Jew mob – is a threat and needs to be purged. You even throw in those who question your assumptions and reasoning.

Alfred Cassis
Olaf Errwigge no olga it is not, it's a mater of who's in charge imposing an attitude

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge How long is it going to take to get through to you? Your ingrained habit of throwing up the "antisemitism" argument at every turn simply does not have any credibility to it, and never did! As long as you insist on conflating your cult religion (Judaism) with an entitled racial characteristic (linguistic semitism) people will feel insulted when debating you. This means YOU are responsible for the impression YOU create in the minds of "others", especially since that "othering" (using words like "goy"') is the STARTING POINT of every argument you make. If we were dealing with just another weird religion that held no implied threat we would merely have debates about the nature of God, and how ridiculous it is to insist that yours is superior to anothers. Perhaps we might have to invent the word "Judaophobia" for antipathy towards the cult, and as with "Islamophobia" remember that we are talking about a faith which informs a culture that is universal and multicultural (like Christianity). But the way you're going right now you are inviting hatefulness by CREATING IT FIRST!

Olaf Errwigge
Matt Morley — That's rather the defining characteristic of bigotry: blaming the victim for your hatred of them. How can you seriously deny that Jews have been hated for centuries? And when did I ever use the word "goy"? I'm not the one "othering". I'm not the one justifying historic bigotry with paranoid fantasies.

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Dale Dickinson
Here is the reality Mat, your prejudicial hatred aside, one can be born a Jew and never actually follow Judaism. It's an odd bit of nomenclature can mean a both a people and a religion.

Matt Morley
That belief is PRECISELY what is wrong, and saying so does NOT constitute "prejudicial hatred", merely disdain of sophistry and assumed privilege. It's not about people, it's about what they do to others without conscience, something which comes under a different kind of "nomenclature" eg. "war crimes"! Tell me, and everyone else for that matter, is it Arabs you despise, Muslims in general, or both? Your expressions of "prejudicial hatred" have been quite clear at times, especially when you reference your operational experience in the field!

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December 14

Steve Dench
December 6

Dr. Areilla Oppenheim at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, did the first extensive DNA study in 2001 of Israelis & Palestinians, and concluded that the emigrants on ships to Palestine before it became Israel were of Mongol 40% & Turkish 40% genome. There was no Semetic blood associated to the original Hebrews from the Middle East of 4,000 years ago in Jerusalem or Biblical territory.

This was confirmed by another DNA project by Dr. Eran Elhaik at the McKusick-Namans Institute of Genetic Medicine at the John Hopkins University of School of Medicine in 2012. His conclusions were the same!

The Askenanzi did not ever migrate out of the Middle East!

At the same time extensive DNA evidence found the Palestinians to be 80% more or less, Semitic blood in their ancestors who were found therefore to be the real Israelites.

The white Jews whose ancestors embarked on ships in 1882 to Palestine before it was named Israel aren't Israelites. These White Eastern European descendants of German, Russian, Polish, Austrian, Georgian, etc., are impostors claiming to be Gods Chosen Ones, but are descendants of the old Khazars from the Khazarian Caucus, & they have been denying this scientific evidence as they have made up myths of their own histories, which already many Americans believe throughout one whole century, i.e. Scofield Bible.

The real history of the new established "Israel in 1947" is no secret today!

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Olaf Errwigge
So what? "White" people aren't allowed in the Middle East? But the fact is, there are many genetic studies showing that Arab Palestinians and Jews are more closely related to each other than to any other groups.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge There ARE NO "JEWS", only Judaists, a religious cult no different to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism...or Mormonism for that matter. There IS NO "JEWISH RACE", not even a distinct ethnicity. The history is bunkum, the "language" an invention, and the tenuous genetic links are due to intermarriage more than anything else. No-one is listening to your lies any more! And if you think you can twist ANY of that into some rant about "antisemitism", I tell you that doesn't exist either. We can, and we WILL IGNORE YOU, and continue to insist on restoring Palestine to those who were robbed of it!

Olaf Errwigge
Then what were all those pogroms about?

Matt Morley
Ignorance, division, conquest...and "The invention of the Jewish People", to become an un-lanced boil on arse of humanity, driving everyone mad to this day!

Olaf Errwigge
I suppose you think the Nazi murder of some 6 million Jews was another self-serving tall tale?

Matt Morley
I believe the true story is tragic enough, not just for the "Jewish" victims, and if 6 million is the accepted round number (I don't accept), then about a quarter were shot and buried in Ukraine (that I DO accept) along with a significant number of others in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Roumania, Ruthenia, Moldova, Hungary and Bulgaria. I also believe that the Zionists worked hand in hand with the Nazis to decide who would and who would not be allowed to leave Germany, a plan which involved influence and large sums of money, and promises of oil from the Middle East and the Caucasus when Nazi Germany took on the Soviets. And I believe that, yes, since the end of the war the truth has been buried under the Zionist obfuscation that is the "self-serving tall tale" of the "Shoah", and all the policies they continue to push for to prevent open and honest debate!

Olaf Errwigge
And you accuse Jews of making things up. Good reminder, though, that Jew-hatred was (and obviously is) widespread, that the Nazis had (and would still have) a continent full of willing executioners.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge Nothing stated above is "made up", it speaks very directly to the historical facts regarding the deaths of around 2 million "Jewish" people at the hands of actual Nazis in those countries! Moreover, none of those people would ever have thought of themselves as being "Jewish" first and, say, "Ukrainian" second if no-one had attacked them for their faith alone! Don't you get it?

Olaf Errwigge
Matt Morley — That's exactly my point. No matter how integrated or secular you may be, society will always define you as a Jew. And when it needs a scapegoat, you're it. That's not a myth created by Jews, but historical reality driven by myths like yours.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge That IS the point indeed, and it is caused by ignoramuses, right-wing rabbis, Zionists and the "Jewish" media, all of whom continually rehash the false history of "Jewish" continuity and superiority, all bound up in the perpetual pseudo-tragedy of a "lost people", abused wherever they go for being who they are NOT! The whole damn thing is a fraud!

Olaf Errwigge
You see? You're scapegoating: The Jews deserve what they get, because they insist on reminding people how they've been persecuted for centuries. Or just insist on being Jews. Or are simply seen as Jews because their history hasn't been completely erased. Most of all for you, probably, they reject your pseudohistories as laughable on their face, which sense of identity you point to as an air of superiority. I think I asked earlier if you apply the same contempt for a group's self-identity to others, particularly for example the Arab Palestinians? Because if "the whole damn thing is a fraud", then it is indeed "the whole damn thing". Until you need a scapegoat to be able to live with yourself.

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January 8 (2024)

The next time somebody accuses you of "antisemitism" or "sympathy for terrorists" in regard to your support for Gaza and the Palestinian people, just say this:

"It is the Judaist-Talmudic cult and its modern expression in the century and a half old Zionist movement that is responsible for all of this. "Israel" is a dangerous fiction which needs to be quashed, and the land claimed for the "Jews" returned forthwith to the Palestinian people and their descendants. This is simple historical justice, a perspective which even a great many "Jewish" people agree with.

What do you have to say to them?"

Olaf Errwigge
He sez, proving himself to be a proterrorist antisemite.

Matt Morley
Olaf Errwigge Since that is the only perspective you have, you are a pathological supporter of actual state terrorism, ethnic cleansing and mass murder. I do NOT support Hamas, and have never said anything that could be interpreted as such. As for "antisemitism", that is a meaningless concept which has been discussed before, and your cynical use of that falsehood underscores your own uninformed bigotry. You have no originality and no opinion worthy of engagement. GFY!

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Note: Matt’s denial of Jewish ties to Palestine echos a recent speech by Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria, as reported here and with comment here.

Resolution reaffirming the State of Israel’s right to exist

Whereas the Jewish people are native to the Land of Israel;

Whereas throughout history and across the reign of multiple kingdoms, the Jewish people were persecuted and expelled from the Land of Israel, forced to live as minority diaspora communities in other lands;

Whereas Jewish diaspora communities were historically violently persecuted in, and in some cases expelled from, other countries throughout the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia due to their religion;

Whereas the Nazis attempted to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe during the Holocaust, murdering 6,000,000 Jews during this time;

Whereas this genocide provided new urgency to re-establish a Jewish homeland for the Jewish people following the Holocaust, where they would not be a vulnerable minority, where they could freely practice their faith, and where something like the Holocaust could never happen again;

Whereas the modern State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948;

Whereas even after the establishment of the State of Israel, other countries and terrorist entities continued to attack Israel, reject its right to exist, and call for its destruction; and

Whereas Israel is the only Jewish State, and therefore, despite persistent external threats, the existence of Israel provides Jews a place to live free from persecution and discrimination: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) reaffirms the State of Israel’s right to exist;

(2) recognizes that denying Israel’s right to exist is a form of antisemitism;

(3) rejects calls for Israel’s destruction and the elimination of the only Jewish State; and

(4) condemns the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolution/888/text

A Brief History of Palestine Since World War I

The lands currently known as Palestine/Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon were regions of the Ottoman empire for some 400 years.

The Ottoman empire ended with, along with internal challenges, its defeat in World War I. France took control of Syria & Lebanon (as a single entity), and Britain of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine (as separate entities) (Treaty of Sèvres, 1920). Palestine was intended for “the establishment ... of a national home for the Jewish people, ... it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” (Balfour Declaration, 1917).

Jordan (Transjordan) was established as independent from Iraq, and Lebanon as independent from Syria, all of these countries recognized as increasingly independent through the 1920s and ’30s until the final withdrawal of France and Britain after World War II.

The League of Nations mandate for Palestine (1920) was superseded by the United Nations partition plan (1947) for two independent states, Jewish and Arab. Civil war between Jewish and Arab communities ensued. When the British Mandate expired in 1948, the Jewish state of Israel was declared, and the recently formed (1945) League of Arab States, including Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, as well as Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, invaded, resulting in an expansion of Israel (recognized internationally as the 1949 “Green Line” and later the “pre-1967” border) and occupation of the remaining areas meant for an Arab state by Jordan (West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza).

Arab militants continued raids through the 1950s and ’60s, with corresponding responses by Israel.

In 1956, Israel joined Britain and France to attack Egypt in their attempt (which failed) to regain control of the Suez Canal after its nationalization by Egypt. While in Gaza, Israel killed hundreds of Arab militants (or just young men) in Khan Younis and Rafah.

In 1967, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran (the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba from the Red Sea) to Israeli shipping, and Israel attacked Egypt (the “Six-Day War”). Jordan and Syria joined with attacks on Israel. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza from Egypt. The Arab League reiterated its policy of no recognition of and no peace or negotiations with Israel.

In 1973 (the “Yom Kippur War”), Egypt attempted to retake the Sinai Peninsula and Syria the Golan Heights. The rest of the Arab League helped them, as did the Soviet Union. Israel pushed them back, but eventually both Israel and Egypt decided to make peace. Israel withdrew back to roughly the Golan Heights as before. With the 1978 Camp David Accords, Israel ceded the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt recognized Israel. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981.

In 2005, Israel removed Jewish settlers and withdrew from the Gaza Strip.

In 2006, the Hamas movement became the elected government for the Arab Palestinians and in 2007 expelled the rival Fatah movement from Gaza. Israel and Egypt put Gaza under blockade. In 2014, Hamas launched attacks on Israel and Israelis, and Israel attacked Gaza to destroy Hamas’s military infrastructure and operations.

Hamas, as well as the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, continued rocket attacks and incursions against Israel and Israelis.

In 2023, Hamas attacked Israel with thousands of rockets and an invasion by some 2,500 fighters, killing more than 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages.

Forgotten, but not yet gone

Forgotten, but not yet gone.

Progress is the insult done by each generation on the previous one.

(The first line is from Our Like WIll Not Be There Again: Notes from the West of Ireland by Lawrence Millman (1975). The second line paraphrases a line from The Trouble With Being Born by Emil Cioran (1973) that was used as an epigram to one of Millman’s chapters.)

“The Blasket people call their departure from their island “the vanishing.” … In a sense, they are living beyond their own disappearance.’

Ag caint ar gaoil

Ó Caisleáin Óir le Séamus Ó Grianna (1924):

« ‘A mháthair mhór’, arsa Séimí, i ndiaidh a theach chun an bhaile, ‘an bhfuil gaol ar bith againne do bhunadh Mháirtín?’

« ‘Is fada amach é’, ar sise. ‘Fan go bhfeice mé. Seáinín Mór agus Conall Ó Fríl clann an deirféar is a dearthár; Micheál Sheáinín agus Tarlach Chonaill an dá ó; d’athair agus Máirtín an dá fhionnó; tusa agus Babaí [iníon Mháirtín], dearfaidh mé, an dá dhubhó. … Tá fréamh eile ghaoil nó dhó ag Séimí anseo do chlann Mháirtín. Tá mise agus Síle Chuirristín — go ndéana Sé a mhaith ar na mairbh — clann an bheirt dearthár; fear an tí seo agus Máirtín an dá ó; Séimí agus clann Mháirtín an dá fhionnó. … Tá tuilleadh ann. Gaol mhuintír na Brád. Bríd Chéillín agus Nualaitín an clann is ó; Peigí Tharlaigh Dhuibh agus Croíán ó is fionnó; bean an tí seo agus bean Mháirtín fionnó agus dubhó; Séimí anseo agus clann Mháirtín dubhó agus glún taobh amuigh de sin.’ »

(Seáinín Mór and Conall Ó Fríl are the children of a brother and a sister [1st cousins], their sons Micheál Sheáinín and Tarlach Chonail are 2nd cousins [dá ó], their sons, your father and Máirtín, are 3rd cousins [dá fhionnó], and you and Babaí are 4th cousins [dá dhubhó]. … Síle Chuirristín and I are the children of brothers [1st cousins], the man of this house and Máirtín 2nd cousins [dá ó], Séimí and the children of Máirtín 3rd cousins [dá fhionnó]. … The Bráds: Bríd Chéillín and Nualaitín are child and grandchild, Peigí Tharlaigh Dhuibh agus Croíán grandchild and greatgrandchild, the woman of this house and Máirtín’s wife greatgrandchild and greatgreatgrandchild; Séimí and the children of Máirtín greatgreatgrandchildren and further out.)

(The first relation is established through the fathers (who are 2nd cousins), the second through the fathers’ mothers (who are 1st cousins), and the third through the children’s mothers (who are 3rd cousins once removed.)

[[[[ ]]]]

“Cousin” in Irish is col ceathar. Col refers to impediment to marriage (the reason Séamí is asking how related he is to Babaí), and ceathair refers to 4, that is, 4 degrees of separation: self, parent, grandparent, parent’s sibling, cousin. Col cúigar (5) is 1st cousin once removed, col seisar (6) is 2nd cousin, col  seachtar (7) is 2nd cousin once removed, col ochtar (8) is 3rd cousin, col naonúr (9) is 3rd cousin once removed.

Similarly, the degree of relation can be expressed as, for example, Tá siad a dó is a dó, They are cousins; Tá siad a dó is a trí, They are cousins once removed.

Also: Is iad an treas glúin iad, They are second cousins (of the 3rd generation). This derives from the simple use of glúin for generation of descent, for example, an dara glúin ó Micheál Sheáinín, the 2nd generation after Micheál Sheáinín. (Glúin also means “knee”.)

In the above passage, yet another way of describing relations is used, based on ó (originally úa), meaning “grandson” or “grandchild”, as in surnames, for example, Ó Grianna, as mac means “son”, which is also used in surnames. (For women’s surnames, Ó and Mac are replaced with Ní and Níc, respectively. Second cousins, both grandchildren of the same grandparents, are an dá ó. Fionnó is “great-grandchild”, and 3rd cousins are an dá fhionnó. (Iarmhó is another word for great-grandchild.) And dubhó is “great-great-grandchild” and 4th cousins are an dá dhubhó.

Dinneen actually quotes the above passage extensively in the dictionary entry for ó. He provides some other examples of usage as well: Táimíd i n-ó le chéile, we are cousins; Táimíd i n-ó amháin, we are first cousins; Táimíd ar (or idir) dá ó, we are second cousins; Táimíd i dá ionn-ó le chéile, we are third cousins; Tá siad i dá dhubh-ó, they are fourth cousins.

A third cousin may also be referred to as dhá ó and a fourth cousin as trí ó.

An etymological question is the origin of fionnó and dubhó, which appear to mean white cousin and black cousin. Fionnó was originally ionn-ó (as in the example provided by Dinneen), suggesting legitimacy, that is, marriage is possible. Perhaps as ionn became fionn, so dú became dubh. Dú-ó would suggest what is natural, that is, marriage idir dá dhubhó is proper, fitting.

From Caisleáin Óir: « ‘Ta sibh saor ar cháin’, arsa Donnchadh Mór, ‘ó rachas sibh taobh amach de na fionnóí.’ » (You are free from censure since you have gone past 3rd cousins.)

Excerpts from a couple of essays in Tablet magazine

From “The Culture of Transgression,” by Michael Lind, July 31, 2023

Everywhere we see our political, cultural, and financial elites bankrolling activists to dismantle traditions. While flags and slogans celebrating racial or sexual identity are proudly displayed by Western governments and corporations, overt displays of national patriotism are regarded by establishmentarians on both sides of the Atlantic as vulgar and distasteful. Religions tend to be viewed with distrust and contempt by the trans-Atlantic elite, unless their premodern teachings have been modified into alignment with the views of the campus left. The Western canon, instead of being enlarged to include unjustly excluded authors, has been jettisoned, and liberal education has been replaced by ideological indoctrination in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).

Iconoclasm is nothing new in history. The term was coined to describe the controversy over icons in medieval Byzantium, and has come to mean any attack on cherished traditions and familiar imagery. Radical Protestant reformers broke the stained glass and smashed the statues of Mary and the saints. The Taliban dynamited Buddhist statues in Afghanistan in 2001, and later ISIS destroyed many ancient Mesopotamian monuments and statues.

In most historic cases, programmatic iconoclasm has been temporary and accompanied or followed by the fabrication of new traditions and the imposition of new orthodoxies. In communist Russia, the statues of the czars went down and statues of Lenin and Stalin went up. ...

But the cancellation of the Great Books curriculum has not led to a new consensus canon featuring minority, female, and nonbinary authors along with a smaller number of “dead white males” who are deemed acceptable. Instead, much of the energy of woke jihadists goes into purging or censoring existing works of art and thought—rewriting the novels of Roald Dahl, for example—or randomly parachuting nonwhite or “queer” characters into movie remakes instead of creating something new.

The cultural ferment in contemporary North America and Europe does not feel like an interregnum between one cultural regime and a stable successor. It feels like a permanent revolution.

Put another way, the Western elite culture of transgression is an example of antinomianism, not iconoclasm. Unlike iconoclasm, antinomianism is not a temporary campaign of destruction of older iconography and traditions to clear the way for the imposition of new canons and orthodoxies. Derived from the Greek words meaning “against” and “law” or “norm,” the term antinomianism refers to the view that all laws and norms are oppressive always and everywhere, and that the act of transgression in itself is virtuous, if not holy. ...

At the moment, the fashionable justifications invoked by the elite antinomian vandals attacking Western society from within are climate change, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and “anti-fascism” as a catchall category. Upper-middle-class young men and women who throw paint at artistic masterpieces or glue themselves to trains claim they are defending the earth’s environment, but they could just as well say they are fighting white supremacy or patriarchy. They are acting out the ethos of a Western elite culture that believes the act of transgression itself is virtuous; the alleged goal of the transgression is merely an excuse.

Call it “the culture of transgression” of the dominant overclass in North Atlantic democracies. The three saints of transgression are the illegal immigrant, the transsexual, and the woman who proudly celebrates abortion. All three are idealized by our revolutionary ruling class precisely because they violate traditional norms—the traditional norm of patriotism, based on the legitimacy of the city-state or nation-state or kingdom and its laws and borders; traditional gender norms; and traditional family norms, which celebrate the capacity of women to give birth and to nurture their infants and of men to provide for them. Most of what is called “progressivism” today is really transgressivism.

y now the antinomians in Western nations have won their war against tradition in every realm. The members of the credentialed corporate-government-nonprofit-academic-media oligarchy, along with billionaire entrepreneurs and bankers who themselves are usually born into managerial-professional families, are almost all modernist in their aesthetics, libertine in their views of sex and recreational drug use, and dismissive of nationalism and patriotism and religion, which they regard as mental diseases of the lower classes. They work in offices designed by trendy “starchitects” decorated with abstract art, and often live in postmodern homes designed to be sterile, off-putting, and the very opposite of petty bourgeois comfort.

Having vandalized every premodern tradition, the elite antinomians of the modern West now don’t know what to do next. What should rebels against the bourgeoisie rebel against when the bourgeoisie has fallen?

The answer, it is increasingly apparent, is to rebel against the proletariat. Instead of shocking the bourgeoisie, our post-bourgeois managerial overclass now delights in shocking the working class. ...

Whatever working-class “normies” believe and enjoy, the most influential tastemakers of the trans-Atlantic ruling class denounce and seek to ban, using one of their three or four specious all-purpose justifications. ...

By declaring the democratic preferences of the working class a danger to society, the West’s oligarchs justify subjecting their enemies to pervasive surveillance and other counterextremism measures originally designed for foreign terrorist groups. ...

From “The Obama Factor,” by David Samuels, August 02, 2023

[Note: There’s a lot of (counterfactual) anti-Putin/Trump crap in this piece, which rather plays right into the very stuff the authors critique. Samuels is also offended by Obama’s supposed minimization of American exceptionalism, but he equates that exceptionalism with empire, which Obama clearly embraced (to great harm).]

... By then, it was clear to any informed observer that the Obamas’ continuing presence in the nation’s capital was not purely a personal matter. To an extent that has never been meaningfully reported on, the Obamas served as both the symbolic and practical heads of the Democratic Party shadow government that “resisted” Trump—another phenomenon that defied prior norms.... The election of Joe Biden in 2020 gave the Obamas even more reasons to stay in town. ...

Near the end of June, for example, Politico ran a long article noting Biden’s cognitive decline, with the coy headline “Is Obama Ready to Reassert Himself?”—as if the ex-president hadn’t been living in the middle of Washington and playing politics since the day he left office. Indeed, in previous weeks Obama had continued his role as central advocate for government censorship of the internet while launching a new campaign against gun ownership, claiming it is historically linked to racism. Surely, the spectacle of an ex-president simultaneously leading campaigns against both the First and Second Amendments might have led even a spectacularly incurious old-school D.C. reporter to file a story on the nuts and bolts of Obama’s political operation and on who was going in and out of his mansion. But the D.C. press was no longer in the business of maintaining transparency. Instead, they had become servants of power, whose job was to broadcast whatever myths helped advance the interests of the powerful. ...

At bottom, Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama [by David Garrow] is a tragic story about a young man who was deeply wounded by the abandonment of both his white mother and his Black father—a wound that gifted him with political genius and at the same time made him the victim of a profound narcissism that first whispered to him in his mid-twenties that he was destined to be president. It is not hard to see how Garrow has come to believe that Obama’s ambition proved to be toxic, both for the man and for the country. ...

My own read of Obama has always been that he was a skillful elite-pleaser with a radical streak that did in fact emerge from the anti-imperialist politics of the 1970s, the foundational claim of which was that equality trumps freedom. ...

Progressive theology is built on a mythic hierarchy of group victimhood which has endured throughout time, up until the present day; the injuries that the victims have suffered are so massive, so shocking, and so manifestly unjust that they dwarf the present. Such injuries must be remedied immediately, at nearly any cost. The people who do the work of remedying these injustices, by whatever means, are the heroes of history. Conversely, the sins of the chief oppressors of history, white men, are so dark that nothing short of abject humiliation and capitulation can begin to approach justice.

It goes to say that nothing about the terms of progressive theology is original. It is the theology of Soviet communism, with class struggle replaced by identity politics. In this system, Jews play a unique, double-edged role: They are both an identity group and a Trojan horse through which history can reenter the gates of utopia.

Ghettos were invented for Jews. Concentration camps, too. How can Jews be “privileged white people” if they are clearly among history’s victims? And if Jews aren’t white people, then perhaps lots of other white people are also victims and therefore aren’t “white,” in the theological sense in which that term gains its significance in progressive ideology. Maybe “Black people” aren’t always or primarily Black. Maybe the whole progressive race-based theology is, historically and ideologically speaking, a load of crap. Which is why the Jews are and will remain a problem. ...

[Obama] was the guy chosen by history to put something in the American goldfish bowl that made all the fish go crazy and eat each other: America’s emerging oligarachy cementing its grip instead of going bust. The rise of monopoly internet platforms. The normalization of government spying on Americans. Race relations going south. Skyrocketing inequality. The rise of Donald Trump. The birth of Russiagate. It all happened with Obama in the White House. ...

[The interview:]

DS: What do you see as the connection, if any, between the personal lives of powerful men and their public lives, based on your years of research on Dr. King, and your experience writing about Obama?

DG: I think one can in large part, in King’s case, say these were sort of two separate lives. Because he lived it that way. He lived it as two separate lives.

DS: Might one make the same case about Obama, but in reverse? It seems clear that Obama leads an exemplary, highly controlled private life, consuming exactly seven almonds while watching The Man in the High Castle or Draymond Green highlights on ESPN for stress relief.

DG: Right. Yes.

DS: In fact, I can make the case that Obama’s public life was the amoral part, beginning with the toleration of genocide in Syria and the extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens, and extending to wide-scale illegal surveillance and spying, and his now becoming the spokesperson for gutting the First Amendment in favor of government censorship of large tech platforms. ...

DS: So Obama starts out as an eloquent opponent of the Patriot Act, etc., etc. By the end of his presidency, his people are unmasking intercepts of his political opponents every day, and the FBI is spying on Donald Trump.

DG: That’s right. ...

DS: What interests you most about Obama today?

DG: The number one thing about Barack this past five years is how completely he’s vanished.

DS: Why is he living in the center of Washington, D.C., then?

DG: Well, how much time is he spending there as opposed to Martha’s Vineyard? I have no idea.

DS: Between July Fourth and Labor Day, sure. The rest of the year, he lives in a large brick mansion in Kalorama. Doesn’t it strike you as weird that he’s an ex-president, he’s comparatively young, and he’s living in the center of Washington, D.C.? The original excuse was that Sasha had to finish school. Then you could say, “Well, the opposition to Trump needs a figure to rally around.” But now Sasha has graduated from USC, Trump is gone, Joe Biden was elected present, but he’s still there.

DG: I never see any mentions of him.

DS: Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, I have heard from more than one source that there are regular meetings at Obama’s house in Kalorama involving top figures in the current White House, with Secret Service and cars outside. I don’t write about it because it’s not my lane. There are over a thousand reporters in Washington, and yet there are zero stakeouts of Obama’s mansion, if only to tell us who is coming and going. But he clearly has his oar in.

DG: I don’t follow the Iranian stuff super, super carefully, but I have been puzzled at the Biden administration’s continuing attachment to the Iran deal.

DS: The easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn’t.

DG: Rob Malley was the guy on that.

DS: Rob Malley is just one person. Brett McGurk. Dan Shapiro in Israel. Lisa Monaco in Justice. Susan Rice running domestic policy. It’s turtles all the way down. There are obviously large parts of White House policymaking that belong to Barack Obama because they’re staffed by his people, who worked for him and no doubt report back to him. Personnel is policy, as they say in Washington.

Which to me is a very odd and kind of spooky arrangement. Spooky, because it is happening outside the constitutional framework of the U.S. government, and yet somehow it’s been placed off the list of permitted subjects to report on. Which is a pretty good indicator of the extent to which the information we get, and public reactions to that information, is being successfully controlled. How and by whom remain open questions, the quick answer to which is that the American press has become a subset of partisan comms.

DG: I’m going back to something you said 20 minutes ago. From the get-go, I know enough intelligence community stuff that from the first time I saw it, I realized that Christopher Steele’s shit was just complete crap. It was bad corporate intelligence, even. It was nonsensical.

DS: What scared me back then was coming to understand that a new milieu had been created consisting of party operatives, the people in the FBI and the CIA who are carrying out White House policy, and the press. It is all one world now. And that’s something people still seem loathe to admit, even to themselves, in part because it puts them in a state of dissonance with this new kind of controlled consensus that the press maintains, which is obviously garbage. But if you question it, you’re some kind of nut. ... Now the question becomes, why are they still fixated on Iran after the Iran deal failed, its premises are exploded? And who are “they,” exactly?

DG: Well, for Barack, everything has to be a success. Everything has to be a victory. I mean, I’m not a health policy expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve always thought that the whole Obamacare thing was, in large part, a fraud. It’s a great achievement for the health insurance industry.

DS: Obama reluctantly started talking about health care because it was Hillary Clinton’s issue in 2008, and then they were like, “Well, you have to have a healthcare plan, because Hillary has her big healthcare plan.” It was like, “All right, fine, I’ll have one too.” ...

DS: I think future historians are going to look at the Obama presidency and see it as the moment when this new oligarchy merged with the Democratic Party and used the capacities of these new technologies and the power of this new class of people, the oligarchs and their servants, to create a new apparatus of social control. How far they can go with it, what the limits are … you see them trying to test it out every week or so. ... So if Obama is the first U.S. president from the periphery of empire, he’s also the first president from the billionaire-foundation-NGO complex, which makes him the perfect mediating figure between the progressive part of the party, the billionaires, and the security state. ...

DS: As someone who has been a serious student of this subject for the past 45 years, how consequential is the court’s decision to overturn Roe?

DG: It’s a class issue. That’s the number one thing. Even before Roe [and https://kirbymtn.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-threat-to-abortion-and-reproductive.html], if you were a woman who had your life together and could get yourself to New York, you were fine. If you had the time and the ability to buy yourself a plane ticket to New York City, you were fine. Anybody from the Rio Grande Valley needed to get, past tense, to San Antonio or Austin to get an abortion. And that’s what we’re looking at now, is that it’s a travel challenge, because there’s going to be this whole swath of states—Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas—where folks are going to need to get to New Mexico, Colorado, or Illinois. ...

[T]he problem with the reproductive rights movement, going all the way back to Mrs. Sanger in the teens and the ’20s, is that the activist population has no connection to the beneficiary population. Because the beneficiary population is generally poverty-class women who have messed-up lives—and, in some circumstances, abusive life situations. But they are working-class or poverty-class people for whom the ability to get out of Pittsburgh, just to use the local geography, to fly out of Pittsburgh, would be a humongous challenge for them. They can take the bus around Pittsburgh, but how do you get to the airport? How do you get a ticket? Where do you go? Do you have an internet connection at home? ...

DS: So how do you talk all this foundation-land, community-organizer shit and then preside over the transformation of the country into a Gilded Age oligarchy? Maybe I just answered my own question: Obama is the Magic Negro of the billionaire industrial complex. And targeting Jews as outsiders and pushing them outside the circle was the way that the Gilded Age oligarchy consolidated itself in America, back then and also now. ...

DS: [I]magine telling Harry Truman, “Hey, why don’t you sell that old house and buy three or four huge mansions in Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii and Washington, D.C., and rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in sweetheart deals with big corporations while you’re vacationing on rich people’s yachts?” ...

DG: Everybody, especially white folks, thought that having a Black family in the White House would be cure for the legacy of American racism. Now there’s no question in anybody’s mind that on that score, that scale, the presidency was a total failure. But why are race relations, at least as people perceive them or imagine them, ostensibly well worse today post-Floyd than they were in 2008? ...

DS: [T]he point where race relations in America turned sour wasn’t with George Floyd in 2020; it was with BLM in 2014, and that’s squarely during Obama’s second term ...

DG: I think it’s inescapable that Barack’s success in ‘08 is rooted in white people seeing him as an easy ticket toward racial absolution. It’s a need that white people in this country have. And what we’re still seeing week after week now for these past two or three years, especially with places like the Times and the Post, is that this white need for absolution was not cured by the Obama presidency. ...

DS: The protagonists of the grand drama of race in America are the cultural and actual descendants of the Puritans, not Black people—who, as Americans, mainly desire the same things that other Americans do, like safe streets and decent jobs and health care and not to die prematurely from heart disease. White Puritans have more elevated concerns.

DG: Exactly. For them, 200-year-old statues are more important than five-year-old Black children. ...

DS: What do the Obamas and their circle have in common with each other? They are Ivy League people, who ran away from whatever they came from in order to become members of the credentialed elites, whose loyalty is to the system that gives them prestige—or rather, gives prestige to their degrees, of which they are the holders. Once they pair off and reproduce under the seal of Harvard or Yale, they may find it seemly to donate money to an NGO that offers microloans to female entrepreneurs in Pakistan. So why should Obama, the ultimate winner, carry on the charade that he’s part of a community, whatever that means, with these people? He’s happy to go on NPR and talk about meaning or Marilynne Robinson novels or whatever, to make the wine moms identify with him, so he can put one over on them. Just don’t ask him to visit the hospital when you get cancer, because he’ll be hanging out on someone’s yacht, with the other winners. ...