That is just meant to incite Dave. Really awful. By even putting these words into print you are doing EXACTLY the kind of gate keeping task that is being talked about here. Awful, Awful, Awful. My best friends in life happen to be Jewish, and to even read such a thing makes me sick. Don't even try to explain yourself, at least for my sake, because I won't read it. I don't read anything you write anymore.
If I understand it correctly, a fundamental premise of SP's argument is that
"Neocons are causing big problems."categorically does not mean
"Jews are Evil."and he has taken great pains to indicate as much.
The obtuseness shown by some about this very simple point is breathtaking.
debu-
The obtuseness shown by some about this very simple point is breathtaking.There are two separate bits I'm referring to. (And admittedly, I did simplify things down so nobody got bewildered they way they did last time. I guess I swapped bewildered for breath-taken. I'll give it one last go.)
Here's Bit #1 - from SP:
Isaiah 2:1-4 is taken as a biblically prophesy that in the last days the world would be united in a single world government in peace and prosperity and that this one world empire would be ruled from Jerusalem. I suspect that this vision of the one-world government ruled from Jerusalem is the central motivating myth of the Zionist/Neocon faction and is the source of buy-in from so many Jewish people.Right. So for so many Jewish people to buy in, they must all more or less agree that a one-world government ruled from Jerusalem is the coolest thing ever. However, I don't get the sense this is central to Jewish culture. I just don't. As a contrast, Evangelicals are pretty clear about their focus on End Times as one of their central motivating beliefs. Its actually pretty hard to miss.
See, for it to be central, it is something that this culture or group spends a whole lot of time talking about. Its not hidden or secret.
I did find evidence in support of the belief of "God giving this land to the Jews" in polls taken of US Jews (I think the number was at about 50%). Likely that's the source for the support of Zionism in general - that plus the holocaust. "Bible says we were given this land…plus Hitler tried to kill us all. Maybe its time to take God up on it, what do you think?" But there was zip about "ruling the world."
This "ruling the world" meme does tie in quite nicely to the whole "Fear the Jews, they run everything" meme which is a pretty popular one in some circles. No denying they have an outsized influence, but the "ruling the world" bit is just over the top - my opinion.
It is widely considered a violation of social norms for an outsider to critically analyze another’s religion.Ok, so my conclusion from this is that it is required that we investigate Jewish culture to figure out just what bits of that culture are responsible for all the evil wrought by the neocons. SP's attempts to understand the culture are a necessary first step in identifying the bits where the evil comes from. (My guess is, his friends sense this motivation - and so are reluctant to play along.)I also understand that ethnocentric identification runs very, very deep in the Jewish culture, and ANY criticism of ANY aspect of Judaism might be experienced as “a knife in the heart.” It is also painful to me personally to be viewed as an enemy by my Jewish friends and to have my honest attempts to understand the Jewish culture immediately characterized as bigotry. But, this is the very heart of that needs to be examined.
Ultimately, the theory here is there are seeds of evil within the culture, and locating these evil seeds is absolutely critical.
I boiled this down to the "Jews are Evil" myth which was simplistic. Perhaps I should have said "SP believes that elements of the Jewish culture is at the root of neocon evil - and Jews identify with and support both this culture, and the neocons so therefore…Jews are either wittingly or unwittingly expressing this evil too." Yes, that sounds more nuanced.
So - quick summary:
- Jews love the idea of them ruling the world from Jerusalem. They all buy in to that (supplying appropriate bible evidence as required), and that's the central reason why the neocons have such large support in the US.
- There is evil somewhere inside Judaism, it must be investigated; without such an investigation, there can be no "cure" to the problem of the neocons.
Me, I say we just focus on exposing stamping out the neocons, and not try to sort out which specific bits of Judaism are allegedly responsible for the neocon evil. I just don't think this "Judaism/Jewish culture is the root of the problem" approach will sell well at all.
Plus I don't think we should give them a pass. Personal responsibility and all that.
I think you all will interpret this as me somehow being a gatekeeper, or a hasbara something-or-other, I just think I'm using common sense. Properly phrased, I could sell all of this to the Israeli left.
But if I go off into a deep dive of the culture and fish around and pull up the bits I claim are responsible for the whole mess - good luck with that approach. It would be DOA.
Man #1: " Why are you Jews always asking such difficult questions"?
Jew: " Give me one good reason why we shouldn't?
Edit: Has anyone else found the closing paragraph of MacDonald's book, cited by SP as a key text, to be noteworthy?
History also suggests that anti-Jewish reactions develop as Jews increase their control over other peoples. As always, it will be fascinating to observe the dénouement.Do you guys understand what this suggests about MacDonald's view of the Holocaust? When you gloss over stuff like the passage above, then you do indeed seem to fall into the trap of making statements that qualify as what I have already called theoretical anti-Semitism. You think I'm a gatekeeper because I say that? No, I just read SP's statements about Jewish culture and two of the texts that are key to his interpretation and characterizations and stated what is really quite obvious.
When you're a learned guy with a wide vocabulary, as MacDonald is, and, out of all the adjectives at your disposal, you choose to describe the Holocaust, the pogroms of Eastern Europe, and the anti-Jewish aspects of the Spanish Inquisition as "fascinating," and you support a presidential candidate who is an open white supremacist, and found a journal that is also openly white supremacist, then it's reasonable to ask SP why he has not bothered - even once - to separate the parts of MacDonald's and Guyenot's work that are clearly bigoted from the parts that he finds useful.
Yet so far Debu, Jim, SP, Bankers Slave or T2H have not seen fit to do that, although I actually thought that SP's last post was bringing things forward. Then we had a bunch of posts about gatekeeping.
Bringing up specific examples of bigotry in the work of MacDonald and Guyenot is not gatekeeping. It's engaging in the conversation in a specific way, supported with passages from books that SP has cited.
Once SP asserted that it was necessary to look into the nature of Jewish culture, he went beyond 9/11, the Neocons, and Deep State. So far, none of his boosters have bothered to make these distinctions. This is one example - but not the only one - of how Jim's and Debu's claims that we are mindless (or Machiavellian) gatekeepers are undermined by the facts.
And the fact is, that at least two of SP's key sources, as well as some of SP's assertions, are bigoted by most definitions of that word.
When Debu or Jim or T2H dig into Guyenot and MacDonald and start separating the wheat from the bile, then we'll be making progress as a community of inquiry. Right now, the conversation seems to be in a holding pattern. Let's move forward.
JimH-
You've got lots of Jewish friends, that's fantastic. So how about this: give them a copy of MacDonald's book, tell them it is your go-to source on neocon influence in the US, and see how they react when they read it. I'm sure they'll be willing to pull out the good bits - or maybe you'll end up losing your friends and then you can label the ones that react negatively "gatekeepers" or "the hasbara swarm."
I have Jewish friends too. ("Some of my best friends…") I imagine how they'd react to an attempt by me to dissect their culture and religion to look for the bad bits that have somehow resulted in the neocon evil. I already know my friends would find this a disagreeable experience - and they'd most likely reassess whether or not they wanted to remain friends with me. Since I wouldn't do this to their face, I certainly won't do it "behind their backs" here either.
I have said literally dozens of times, go after those neocons by all means, but don't go after the culture or the religion.
If you persist in thinking going after Jewish culture is a fantastic idea, I dare you, go try it out yourself on just one of your Jewish friends. You're ever so brave here, calling me "awful." I'd like to see how you act when you talk to your many Jewish friends about this subject, armed with your go-to books.
I know. I'm being a gatekeeper by even suggesting such a thing.
Going back to the initial ideas on this thread and the Neo-con thread:
I find the theme of “oh my God, there was a secret, foreign controlled, religiously motivated, group manipulating the government” to be somewhat disingenuous. The Neo-cons have not acted in secret, nor are they all Jewish. Since the founding of the Project for a New American Century and their Statement of Principals in 1997 the Neo-con view point and political aims have been quite overt. They believe in a strong defense, to the point of offensive actions, by the United States. They see the interests of the United States and Israel as being intertwined with mutual support being necessary for the survival of both countries. They have been pushing this agenda for two decades and have convinced Democratic and Republican members of Congress and Presidents to follow their plan. Bush II, Obama, Clinton and Kerry all have adopted large portions of the Neo-con platform.
Take the Neo-cons at their spoken word and their actions. They want to project American power anywhere and everywhere possible. They believe that the world needs a Pax Americana. This plan and the political actions taken to bring about world-wide American hegemony are enough to show us that these are dangerous people who would bring us to ruin. We should be rejecting, for its own lack of merit, the idea of a world policed and controlled by a United States, superpower. Regardless of who engineered and carried out 9/11, we have enough examples of Neo-con sponsored actions run amok to keep the historians busy for the next two or three generations without probing their spirituality, or lack thereof.
As a result of 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror, the amounts of money (mostly our taxpayer money) changing hands has been incredible and continues to be so. There are many who profited and continue to profit from this cash flow. If we decide to “blame” the history of the past twenty years on only the Neo-con group we will be doing ourselves and the world a great disservice. Beyond the Neo-cons there are plenty of other parties benefiting from the perpetual warfare status quo. There is much to review concerning the connections of the Bush clan to oil interests and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and numerous other power players are well connected with Halliburton and the other military industries. Focusing solely on the Neo-cons allows these others to slip away without being called to account for their actions.
We are also neglecting the other large group of responsible parties. We Americans will in effect be exonerating ourselves from responsibility for the actions of our politicians, government and military. Engrossed in our private lives, in our quest for mac-mansions, suvs, vacations and fat 401Ks, we ignored what our political class was doing. So long as the good times rolled on we did not care that our government was drone bombing wedding parties, engineering the destruction of civil society in Iraq, Libya and Syria, helping overthrow an elected government in the Ukraine, arming those who have now become ISIS and provoking the Russians. We have been more intent on following American Idol and football than in paying attention to the growing animosity, promoted very often by our side, with much of the world, and particularly with the Russians. By focusing on the Neo-cons as some type of alien group, secretly attempting to seize or manipulate power, we are saying that there is no blood on our hands, that we were duped. Like three year olds caught in the act we search for someone to point to and say “It was them, not me.”
Please don’t tell me there was nothing we could do. That the “force” was carrying us forward and no objection from the public could have stopped it. Black Lives Matters has grown in a couple of years from several people to an organization that appears to be able to get out hundreds to thousands of people in almost any place in the country. They are reaching the point of being able to disrupt normal traffic and life in nearly any city they choose. You can believe or not believe in their objectives but you have to admit they know how to organize and to bring an issue to the media forefront. The sudden popularity of Trump and Sanders, much to the horror of the established politicos, are other examples of how the people can capture the news and the attention of the public, if they are willing to work to do so. While there were some who protested the wars, the public in general never seemed interested in the cause.
I hate to be the one to bring the wake-up call. It was us. The world knows it was us. Payback will not be pretty.
JT
Guess who introduced & edited MacDonald's book, Understanding Jewish Influence, recommended by Sandpuppy?
Samuel T. Francis
Here's an example of a Francis position. Note that he described himself as a paleoconservative:
Hence, common paleoconservative goals should include (1) a long-term moratorium on all immigration, (2) the withdrawal of the federal government from involvement in all racial issues, and (3) the repeal of all federal laws and court decisions (including the civil-rights laws of the 1960’s and the rulings of the Warren Court) that authorize such involvement. SourceTranslation: The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1964 and Brown v. Board of Education (a Warren Court decision) should all be repealed/overruled.
No, I'm not going to trust MacDonald's characterizations about the nature of the Jewish people or culture based on his own background and the background of his intellectual associates. Clearly the underlying theory they share is white/Christian supremacy.
This is the team that the "JewsinPower" party, as Michael Rudmin has labeled you after being a called a gatekeeper, is inadvertently batting for. I realize that's because you don't seem to have read or researched carefully in this case, but all the same, these are the ideas you're working to share.
You don't want to be the "JewsinPower" faction any more? No problem, then separate the wheat from the bigotry once and for all. It's high time you did so, and your analysis so far is really quite hobbled - debilitated really, when you insist that Jewish culture be on the table for discussion yet you haven't bothered to address that MacDonald (and Guyenot) are clearly writing from a Eurocentric bigoted perspective.
This is not coming from some left-wing university student diatribe. Anybody who thinks that we have to worry about whether or not the Jews killed Jesus or whether or not Machiavelli was, deep down, a Jew (Guyenot) or who helped to found a white supremacist party and who labels Jews as psychologically aggressive (MacDonald) is a bigot. Plain and simple. I'm not saying you guys are bigots. I am saying that you haven't done your homework and therefore have inadvertently adopted some bigoted claims about Jews when you give some of SP's posts that repeat MacDonald's or Guyenot's claims about Jews the thumbs up; i.e. theoretical anti-semitism.
Note: MarkBC I don't include your post in this response. Your challenge to me is well-founded in some ways. It's hard to address it, though, when there is this other cross-current of noise and misunderstanding running through the thread.
I have not read Kevin MacDonald so will make no attempt to proclaim on his work one way or the other. This exchange from 2007, however, at Jewcy.com published by Tablet ("an American Jewish general interest online magazine": Wiki) suggests a more nuanced take on MacDonald's writing may be more appropriate than the one that has HughK up on his soapbox in such a high dudgeon.
Hoping this will help us move forward from self-righteous virtue signalling to an actual community of enquiry…
For the record, it was the odious neo-con Michal Ledeen who orginally speculated about Machiavelli being a secret Jew which Guyenot references in this article from Veterans Today.
You bang on about your extensive readings of Guyenot and MacDonald and how the rest of us haven't done our homework, etc but in about 10 minutes of googling I have found 1) a take on MacDonald's work on Jewcy.com that is considerably more measured and nuanced than yours; and 2) a misattribution to Guyenot of a theory put about by someone I hope that even you agree is a nasty piece of work, i.e. Ledeen.
This, it seems, somewhat undermines your credibility in this discussion as it does the basis of your rush to judgement of all and sundry who disagree with you.
In fact, it may behoove you to dial back on the hectoring and issue an apology to SP for what has amounted to an ongoing character assassination.
I have been asking around with my Jewish friends and find that the mythology of the "end times" doesn't seem too prominent in their thinking. Also, a watcher of the Israeli political scene wasn't too impressed by this thinking either.
So, I would like to formally announce that I have changed my mind and see that "ruling the world from Jerusalem" just doesn't seem to be a big deal.
I have also become very aware just how much distress this discussion thread is causing people. And for many different reasons.
Soccer or Football
In soccer, you are only permitted to attack the ball but may not kick the player controlling the ball. In football, the opposite is the case. To stop the advance of the ball you destroy the person carrying it. You intend to injure him. Hurt him so badly he won't get up. Some discussion boards like ZH are "fight clubs" and go by football rules. I don't enjoy that. The ideas becomes secondary to having one's viewpoint "win" dominance. Ideas that are nuanced or complex simply cannot be explored in a fight club.
Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is a skill set that is internationally acclaimed and taught for use in business, political and international negotiation. It has some rules. The more touchy the subject, the more essential the rules be followed rigorously.
A few general general communication principles that seem important to me:
1. It is fine to disagree. Each person is always welcomed to inhabit their own unique viewpoint.
2. When someone talks, listen deeply.
3. Ask for clarification "It sound like you believe the world is flat. Am I understanding you correctly?"
I'm going to take a break from this forum as I don't seem much understanding coming from it.
If anyone would like to continue in a respectful exploration of some of these topics, maybe we can set up a group PM thread.
So, I would like to formally announce that I have changed my mind and see that "ruling the world from Jerusalem" just doesn't seem to be a big deal.Thanks for clearing this up. It was one of my biggest problems with your viewpoint. Seriously, thanks.
Here's one last thought for you. Have you considered that the act of trying to deconstruct someone else's religion and culture looking to find the source of the evil will always be perceived by them as an attack, especially if you are an outsider?
As a matter of tactics, I happened to agree with you that focussing on the neo-cons (and possibly Zionism as well) SP could have made a more accessible case.
But the fact that certain lines of enquiry are awkward or threatening for some doesn't necessarily invalidate them as legitimate lines of enquiry.
My sense was that SP was less concerned with point-scoring than actually reaching some deeper understanding of the issues. There may have been one or two missteps (eg. the "rule the world from Jerusalem" notion) but in my view SP did us a great service in connecting many dots.
For his trouble he suffered relentless cyber-bullying from certain quarters so it is understandable that he chooses to disengage from the topic at this point.
Thank you SP for having the courage to raise this difficult, important topic and soldiering on with such dignity through all the abuse you received . It has been a revealing exchange.
debu-
I agree too, the whole neocon thing and the dot-connecting has been very interesting for me as well. The whole situation was not something I was aware of, and I am glad you guys brought that to the surface here for us.
Paul Craig Roberts is writing on this same topic as Chris did last month--the provocation of Russia by NATO
His source article is here:
Germany Preparing for War Against Russia
Eric Zuesse, June 6, 2016
According to a report issued on June 6th in German Economic News (Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or DWN), the German government is preparing to go to war against Russia, and has in draft-form a Bundeswehr report declaring Russia to be an enemy nation. DWN says: “The Russian secret services have apparently thoroughly studied the paper. In advance of the paper’s publication, a harsh note of protest has been sent to Berlin: The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, Alexei Puschkow, has posted the Twitter message: ‘The decision of the German government declaring Russia to be an enemy shows Merkel’s subservience to the Obama administration.’”
Back on February 17th, DWN had reported that German Chancellor Merkel “will develop a new military doctrine” declaring, “The ‘annexation’ of Crimea by Russia is the basis for military action against Moscow.” Apparently, that prior report will soon be fulfilled.
Not mentioned in the DWN articles — nor anywhere in Western ‘news’ media — is a crucial fact, that the head of America’s ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor acknowledged only when addressing a Russian-speaking audience: that (in English) the overthrow of Ukraine’s President in Russia’s neighboring nation of Ukraine during February 2014 was “the most blatant coup in history.” Extensive video documentation exists demonstrating that it was a coup, and even demonstrating that the Obama Administration had selected Ukraine’s post-coup leader 22 days prior to his being formally appointed by the Ukrainian parliament. Furthermore, the only detailed scholarly study of the evidence that has been performed came to the same conclusion — that it was a U.S. coup. The last month before the coup was incredibly violent, with Obama’s hired fascists attacking the government’s security forces brutally: Here is some of the bloodshed from the prior month, on January 21st, then January 22nd, then January 25th. Moreover, immediately after the overthrow, when the EU sent its own investigator into Kiev to report back on how the overthrow had taken place, he too reported that it had been a coup. Subsequently revealed was that the Obama Administration had started preparing the coup inside the U.S. Embassy in Kiev by no later than 1 March 2013 — almost a year prior to the coup. Also, the even earlier preparation for the coup, extending through decades, on the part of CIA-affiliated ‘nonprofit’ or NGO organizations (funded by Western aristocrats and their corporations), laying the groundwork for this coup, has been brilliantly documented at some online sites. None of this information has been widely published — it’s virtually not at all published in the West.
Russia Trumps USA Energy War in Mideast (New Eastern Outlook)
[quote]With the advance of the Turkish Stream project, Turkey and Russia are now positioned to trump repeated efforts of Washington and their NATO allies to force Russia and Gazprom out of the EU and open the door for US control of the huge EU natural gas market.
The first step in the US effort to break links between Russia and Western Europe was Washington’s February, 2014 coup d’ etat in Ukraine, referred to by Stratfor’s George Friedman as the “most blatant coup in US history.” In an interview with Moscow’s Kommersant paper that he perhaps today regrets, Friedman, then a Pentagon and CIA consultant, openly admitted that the geopolitical aim of the entire US-led Maidan Square Color Revolution was not at all to force “democracy” on Ukraine, but rather to block growing ties between Germany and Putin’s Russia.
As Friedman noted, “the most dangerous potential alliance, from the perspective of the United States, was considered to be an alliance between Russia and Germany. This would be an alliance of German technology and capital with Russian natural and human resources.” And gas pipeline wars are at the center of that US effort to block Russia economic links in the EU.[/quote]
Turkey's National Security Council calls for extension to state of emergency (DW)
[quote]Turkey's top national security body has called for an extension to the controversial state of emergency imposed after the July 15 coup. Some 32,000 suspects remain in custody in the unprecedented crackdown.
"The emergency should be extended to ensure the protection of our democracy, rule of law, rights and freedoms of our citizens," the National Security Council (MGK) said in a statement after a meeting on Wednesday chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his presidential palace in Ankara.
The statement reportedly makes the announcement of the new state of emergency a formality. The MGK did not say whether the next period should also last three months.
The ongoing three-month state of emergency declared on July 20 less than a week after the failed coup has provided the legal framework for the biggest crackdown in Turkey's modern history.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told NTV television on Wednesday that 70,000 people had been investigated after the attempted putsch on July 15, with 32,000 of them remanded in custody.
Bozdag said that there could be new arrests but gave no no indication as to when trials might start.
Turkish media reports say the authorities plan to build 174 new prisons over the next five years, which would increase the country's current prison capacity of less than 200,000 by another 100,000.
The council also recommended that July 15 should in future years be marked as Turkey's annual "Day of Democracy and Freedoms" the statement said.[/quote]
U.S. close to suspending Syria talks with Russia as Aleppo battle rages (Reuters)
[quote]The United States is close to suspending talks with Russia on a ceasefire in Syria, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday, as the Kremlin vowed to press on with an assault on the city of Aleppo.
Moscow and Damascus launched a campaign to recapture the rebel-held sector of Syria's biggest city this month, abandoning a ceasefire a week after it took effect to embark on what could be the biggest battle of a nearly six-year war.
In the first significant government territorial advance of the Aleppo campaign so far, Syrian forces captured the Handarat camp north of Aleppo on Thursday.
Rebel fighters have launched an advance of their own near the central city of Hama, where they said they made gains on Thursday.
The United States and European Union accuse Russia of torpedoing diplomacy to pursue military victory in Aleppo, and say Moscow and Damascus are guilty of war crimes for targeting civilians, hospitals and aid workers to break the will of 250,000 people living under siege in the city.
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari rejected accusations that his government was killing civilians.
But U.S. officials are searching for a tougher response to Russia's decision to ignore the peace process and seek military victory on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad.
"We are on the verge of suspending the discussion because it is irrational in the context of the kind of bombing taking place to be sitting there trying to take things seriously," Kerry told an audience in Washington.
"It is one of those moments where we are going to have to pursue other alternatives," he added.[/quote]
Catherine Austin Fitts has been saying for some time that the neocons are taking down Trump’s lieutenants one by one and eviscerating his team.
The Saker says the same and that the loss of Flynn was key.
The globalist bankers of Goldman Sachs have taken much more ascendance.
Wow things change quickly.
So. If you were Russia, what would you do now?
sand_puppy wrote:
Wow things change quickly.
So. If you were Russia, what would you do now?