Valerie Plame and antisemitism

Valerie Plame is running for Congress for the third district of New Mexico. Yair Rosenberg writes about her: "Many know Plame as a former CIA officer who rose to anti-war fame in 2003. (Her cover was blown after her then-husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson, publicly questioned the U.S. rationale for going to war in Iraq.)" 

She's recently posted a video pushing her candidacy, and some of my friends have been wowed by her.

A couple of years ago, however, Plame was discovered to have published tweets with blatantly antisemitic content. The Forward reported on this earlier this year:

One early obstacle for Plame Wilson, should she choose to run, is an anti-Semitism controversy: She was criticized in September 2017 for tweeting links to anti-Semitic articles, including a column titled “American Jews Are Driving America’s Wars” and another called “The Dancing Israelis” that insinuated the Mossad was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Plame at first defended her sharing of the “Jews drive wars” article, arguing, “many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.” [Links to both articles are below].

Here are the two tweets that were discovered, one from 2015 and one from 2017:

After her tweets were discovered, she apologized:

(JTA) — Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson resigned from the board of the Ploughshares Fund days after she retweeted an article accusing American Jews of pushing the U.S. into a war with Iran. 

Wilson, who[se] paternal grandfather was Jewish, made the announcement on Sunday in a series of tweets. “Actions have consequences, and while I have been honored to serve on the board of the Ploughshares Fund…to avoid detracting from their mission, I have resigned,” Wilson said in consecutive tweets. “I take full responsibility for my thoughtless and hurtful actions, and there are no excuses for what I did.” 

She also tweeted that she was “horrified and ashamed” for retweeting articles from the Unz Review website “without closely examining content and authors.” 

The article, titled “America's Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” included several anti-Semitic tropes including that American Jews are guilty of dual loyalty to Israel, and that Jews control the media, the entertainment industry and politics. 

Ploughshares Fund, where Wilson has served as a board member, issued a statement condemning Wilson’s original tweet of the article. Ploughshares works to reduce nuclear threats and to prevent a new arms race.

Yair Rosenberg's comments are apposite here:

At the time, Plame defended her tweet, calling the article “provocative, but thoughtful.” She later apologized, claiming that she hadn’t read the piece whose contents she’d just been defending. Of course, given that the headline—which she tweeted—was “America’s Jews are Driving America’s Wars,” this was not a very convincing excuse. Moreover, as the indefatigable journalist Yashar Ali quickly uncovered, this was not the first time Plame had shared anti-Semitic material. In another instance, she had promoted the notorious conspiracy theory that a group of Israelis celebrated while 9/11 transpired (a canard that candidate Donald Trump later revived and applied to Muslims). [I added the link to the "America's Jews are Driving America's Wars" article].

She linked to the first article named in Rosenberg's article on September 21, 2017 - that's the one that forced her to resign from the board of Ploughshares and delete her Twitter account. The second one, about 9/11, was from 2015.

Both of these articles were published in the Unz Review, which is published by Ron Unz. It's clear that she didn't suddenly discovered this "news" source in September, 2017, since she also tweeted the article about the conspiracy that five Israelis in New York celebrated the 9/11 attacks (link to this article - http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-dancing-israelis/).

Both articles were written by Philip Geraldi, a prolific contributor to the Unz Review, and an obvious antisemite and Holocaust denier. Here's a sample of his Holocaust denial:

The imposed holocaust narrative is full of holes and contradictions in terms of who was killed and how, but it is impossible for genuine academics to critique it if they want to stay employed. Books like Wiesel’s “Night” are largely works of fiction. The narrative exists to perpetuate the belief in Jewish suffering, which brings with it a number of practical advantages....

Third, holocaust guilt is used in the United States to counter any criticism of what Israel and Jewish groups are up to, as they use their wealth and access to power to corrupt America’s institutions and drive the country to needless wars. One might well ask, when confronted by the taxpayer funded holocaust museums that appear to spring up like mushrooms, why so much interest in a possible crime that has nothing to do with the United States? 

Why was Valerie Plame reading and posting articles by Philip Geraldi? His antisemitism is hardly hidden in these articles. I don't believe her apology that she hadn't "closely examined content and authors" - something obviously drew her to Geraldi's articles, and to the Unz Review itself. Why was someone who claims to be a progressive even reading the Unz Review? It's not a progressive publication. Plame may have a Jewish grandfather, but that doesn't seem to have sensitized her to the existence of antisemitism. If I lived in New Mexico, I wouldn't vote for her - and I'm certainly not giving her any money.

 

Normalizing antisemitism in American life

Today was a pretty good day for me personally, but a rotten day for me as a Jew in America.

Three reasons:

1) The attack on the Chabad synagogue today, in Poway, California, by a murderous white nationalist who spewed the same ideology as the murderer of 50 Muslims in New Zealand a month ago. He also claims to have committed arson at a California mosque, so he is clearly a hater of anyone he thinks threatens white supremacy. If you look at his manifesto (not something I recommend if you'd like to be cheerful the rest of the day), you'll see that he espouses the Nazi ideology that blames Jews for all the ills of the world, including immigration by brown people to the United States (legal or undocumented); he's very much like the man who attacked the Pittsburgh synagogue exactly six months ago, who was motivated by the fantastical belief that Jews are responsible for migrants from central American (and other parts of the world) seeking asylum in the US. His manifesto is also full of hate for African Americans and Arabs (not going to repeat the slurs he uses).

2) Learning about the antisemitic cartoon published on Thursday in the international edition of the New York Times. Of the New York Times! Have they fired all their editors? Or decided to hire only antisemitic ones? How did this cartoon even get printed?

The cartoon shows a blind Donald Trump, wearing thick eyeglasses (with black lenses), wearing a black yarmulke, with Benjamin Netanyahu as his seeing-eye dog, with a blue star of David around his neck - with the obvious message that Bibi the Jew controls Trump. I think the yarmulke on Trump's head is meant to convey the idea that he has surrendered to the Jews and even identifies with them. Or perhaps it's meant to refer to the fact that his daughter Ivanka is Jewish and that he has Jewish grandchildren - in any case, it's antisemitic.

As the following commenter responds on Twitter:

In the NYTimes international: Bibi Netanyahu characterized as a dog leading a blind, Jewish Trump.
When did the @nytimes hire David Duke as an editor? pic.twitter.com/7bGf1jLrri

— Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) April 27, 2019

The same commenter also wrote, "The cartoon doesn't even have anything to do with the article below. It's as if the editors went, "interesting article, but we need more anti Semitism."

How did the Times respond?

An Editors' Note to appear in Monday’s international edition. pic.twitter.com/1rl2vXoTB3

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) April 27, 2019

Not an apology, or even a statement of "regret" - just an "error of judgement." Whose error of judgement? Who drew this cartoon, and which editor approved its placement in the international edition? At least the statement acknowledges that the cartoon "included anti-Semitic tropes." I will be interested to read what Bari Weiss and Bret Stephens have to say about the cartoon, since they are both eager to decry antisemitism when it occurs in other places.

3) There is a Facebook page called "Rise Up Ocean County," set up by someone who is upset that ultra-Orthodox Jews who live in Lakewood, New Jersey, are moving out of Lakewood and buying houses in nearby towns (because the population of Lakewood is growing quickly and people are seeking somewhat less expensive housing). About 11,000 follow the page, and there are posts both by the admin and by followers. Some are about real issues of overdevelopment, but there are frequent antisemitic posts and comments.

The admin of the page posted earlier today about the antisemitic cartoon in the Times.

A number of people in the subsequent comment thread wrote that they did think the cartoon was in bad taste or antisemitic, but there were a number of antisemitic remarks.

One woman wrote, "Antisemitic and in poor taste," to which the page admin replied, "Help me here. How is that anti Semitic?"

Another response was an antisemitic cartoon:

Just browsing quickly, I found a couple of other antisemitic posts by followers of the page (names of the posters not included - my purpose is not to target any individual, but to indicate that this page has no trouble publishing obvious antisemitism while claiming really to be concerned about overdevelopment and corruption).

Another post was a complaint about ultra-Orthodox Jews going to nearby beaches. Complaining about people littering on beaches is not antisemitic. But calling them "gods chosen people" is.

A couple of years ago NJ.com published a series about Lakewood and issues with housing, overdevelopment, busing of Orthodox students to private Jewish schools, and corruption - without stooping to the antisemitism frequently found in this Facebook group. For the first article, and links to subsequent ones, go to https://www.nj.com/news/2017/08/window_on_lakewood_inside_the_fastest-growing_comm.html.

What are the lessons to learn from this evidence of antisemitism in a variety of American venues: 1) at this moment, the most violent and dangerous form of antisemitism is to be found among white nationalists; but 2) antisemitism is not restricted to people on the extreme right, although that may be the most murderous version of it; 3) even well-respected American institutions like the New York Times can be blind to the very antisemitic tropes that they publish; 4) ordinary Americans who don't belong to the white nationalist right or the anti-Zionist far left are also prey to antisemitic stereotypes, and employ them when encountering visible Jews doing things they don't like.

White nationalist terrorism is obviously the most immediate threat to Jews - we've now had two murderous attacks in six months. How many other killers are now planning to attack synagogues or other Jewish places? These killers are part of the same racist white nationalist movement that attacks LGBT people, Muslims, Sikhs, African American churches, and Latinx people, and it offers distinctive threats to members of each group. The killer in Poway hated many of these groups, and claims to have attacked a mosque as well as the synagogue. 

The kind of antisemitism espoused by the Times cartoon could come from either the right or the left, and belongs to the conspiratorial antisemitism that believes "the Jews" run the world and are responsible for everything evil in the world. It's also dangerous, because it underlies murderous white nationalist antisemitism (as well as far left antisemitism that blames Jews and Israel as "imperialists" in league with the US and other western powers).

The antisemitism displayed in Rise Up Ocean County seems to be composed of various stereotypes of ultra-Orthodox Jews combined with classic denunciations of Jews being clannish and sticking with their own exclusively, as well as bitter remarks about how rich they must also be, and snide antisemitic remarks like the one about the "chosen people." In my opinion, this is the kind of antisemitism that is more likely to result in Jews being discriminated against in housing or employment, not in violent reactions (but I could be wrong - there have been a number of anti-Jewish hate crimes reported in Lakewood). There is a real conflict going on over scarce resources - housing and tax dollars - but some people express this in antisemitic terms.

It's exhausting to have to deal with all of this, and I'm quite apprehensive about the future in America.

Some additional articles on the New York Times cartoon:

https://sethfrantzman.com/2019/04/27/tracking-the-fallout-reactions-and-details-of-the-nyt-antisemitic-cartoon-scandal/

Apology from New York Times Opinion:

We apologize for the anti-Semitic cartoon we published. Here’s our statement. pic.twitter.com/nifZahutpO

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) April 28, 2019

Criticism from CNN's Brian Stelter:

NYT staffers are alarmed and dismayed by this anti-Semitic cartoon AND by the paper's initial response.  It started on Thursday when print editions of the international edition of The New York Times ran an anti-Semitic cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog on a leash held by a blind POTUS. Most US staffers knew nothing about it until they read about this editor's note on Saturday. The note admitted that the cartoon was an "error in judgment," but didn't go into any detail about what went wrong. Some news outlets inaccurately called the note an "apology," which it wasn't, which led people to wonder why the NYT hadn't actually apologized.  Jake Tapper commented on Sunday morning that the cartoon "could just have easily appeared in ISIS or neo-Nazi propaganda."  Per three plugged-in sources at the NYT, staffers were alarmed to see the image in the first place -- and dismayed that the initial response was so feeble. They told me that they wanted a more detailed explanation...  Awaiting more info...  After a barrage of criticism,The Times issued a statement on Sunday afternoon saying "we are deeply sorry" for the cartoon, and "we are committed to making sure nothing like this happens again." The NYT said the decision to run the syndicated cartoon was made by a single editor working without adequate oversight. "The matter remains under review, and we are evaluating our internal processes and training," the statement said. "We anticipate significant changes." The paper is out with its own news story about the situation... And Bret Stephens, one of the paper's op-ed columnists, has a clear-eyed column titled "A Despicable Cartoon in The Times." Stephens said he is certain that the Times is not guilty of institutional anti-Semitism, but he said the cartoon was a sign of the Times' ongoing criticism of Zionism and the Israeli government. Here is his column... And our news story...

See also: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/28/media/ny-times-anti-semitic-cartoon/index.html.

New York Times article about the cartoon: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/business/ny-times-anti-semitic-cartoon.html.

More Antisemitism in the Republican party

People obsess about whether Trump or his family members are anti-Jewish. I think it's more important to pay attention to the many other people in the Republican Party who are displaying their open antisemitism, about whom there's no question.

Jim Hagedorn, a Republican running for Congress in Minnesota, "once wrote that former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman supported the Iraq War because Lieberman is Jewish." (He's also a bigot against many other groups of people, including Native Americans, LGBT people, African Americans, and Irish Americans).

Two Republican members of Congress, Dana Rohrabacher of California (R-Kremlin) and Matt Gaetz of Florida, have once again shown up at a public event with a Holocaust denier, Charles C. Johnson,
"who wrote on Reddit last year that he did not believe that the Auschwitz gas chambers were real or that six million Jews died." Gaetz gave Johnson a ticket to the State of the Union address this year.

This is what Johnson said on Reddit:

During an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit’s alt-right section, Johnson had been queried, “what are your thoughts on the Holocaust, WW2, and the JQ in general?” (“JQ” is neo-Nazi shorthand for the Jewish Question.) Johnson replied, “I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware [sic] crime. I agree…about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real.”

So why is it that antisemites and people who hang around with Holocaust deniers are so easy to find among Republican candidates or office-holders? While I think it's a good idea to keep an eye on the far left for antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism (as I often do on this blog), we have to be equally attentive to how certain people are trying to mainstream antisemitism in the Republican party (which is not to say that the party itself is antisemitic or that more Republicans than Democrats hold antisemitic views).

Antisemitic postings on FB group Labour Party Supporter

I joined the Facebook group "Labour Party Supporter," which Jeremy Corbyn used to be a member of (he's not anymore, although he was a member for seven years). The group is rife with antisemitic postings, which are sometimes challenged by members of the group and other times are defended. Here are some examples (with names of posters removed):

This is the antisemitic mural by Mear One that was removed several years ago, but which came up once again recently because it was discovered that Corbyn had written a comment on it that did not note in any way how antisemitic it was. One member of the group asked "Is the Jewish State like (Russia on the USA) conducting an attack on the Labour Party?"

This is a comment posted on a discussion about the mural.

One of the admins posted a link to a blatantly antisemitic Youtube video:

This same admin Sheem Bari, identifies himself on his Facebook profile as a "campaign manager at the Labour Party." I wonder why he's still a campaign manager after posting such vile antisemitism, since the party is supposed to be kicking out its antisemitic members.

On his own page he posted some other unambiguously antisemitic material. He's a fan of David Icke.

Another member posted an FB post from George Galloway, who has been expelled from the Labour Party, and who typically said it's all about Palestine:

Another member posted from the vile Tony Greenstein. She's posted other items from his blog as well (as have other members of the group). He's also been kicked out of the Labour Party.

One of the moderators posted a statement from the Jewish Voice for Labour group, inviting people to their Monday counter-demonstration.

He also posted this question about the infamous mural:

Another member put up a blog post from Tony Greenstein, this time an attempt by Greenstein to deny Adam Bull's antisemitism and Holocaust denialism (which Bull has been suspended from Labour for).

And on and on. How did Corbyn manage to be in this group for 7 years and not notice the blatant antisemitism?

Jeremy Corbyn's favorite antisemites

Liam Hoare on Twitter has assembled a greatest hits list of Jeremy Corbyn's association with blatant antisemites. Jeremy Corbyn is the head of the British Labour Party, and if Labour wins the next election, he could become the Prime Minister.

The latest row about his patience with antisemites arose because of a response he made on Facebook in 2012 to an antisemitic mural that had been painted in London. I remember when the whole issue of the mural arose in 2012, but Corbyn wasn't involved then (since he wasn't the head of the Labour Party then).

In 2015, the Jewish Chronicle asked: Did Jeremy Corbyn back artist whose mural was condemned as antisemitic? They didn't receive an answer.

This is the mural and Corbyn's response in 2012:

The leaders of the British Jewish community have called for a rally at Parliament tomorrow to protest against the lax attitude towards antisemites and antisemitism in the Labour Party.

Here's the list:

Just a note: another founder of Deir Yassin Remembered is Daniel A. McGowan, who lives in Geneva, New York, and is also an antisemitic Holocaust denier. I've written about him several times on this blog: https://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/search?q=daniel+a.+mcgowan. Here's an article on Corbyn's connections with Paul Eisen and DYR in Britain: Jeremy Corbyn's links to Paul Eisen.html.

George Soros on "When Hate Surges"

George Soros has just published an excellent essay in the New York Times, When Hate Surges, fiercely attacking Trump's assault on immigrants. He writes, "I am an immigrant and an American citizen, and, as a philanthropist, have supported migrants all over the world for more than 30 years."

[T]argeting immigrants and minorities with false and prejudicial rhetoric, as Mr. Trump has done during the campaign and in the early weeks of his presidency, has spurred a surge in hate acts against them. The Southern Poverty Law Center found that hate incidents reported in the first few weeks following Mr. Trump’s victory were at levels normally seen over a six-month period. No community appears safe from this rash of hate — with reports like school bullying against Muslim children, stories of Latinos being harassed on the street and told to “go back to your country,” attacks on blacks and gays, and the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. This is a country that prides itself on neighbors looking out for one another. In Donald Trump’s America, we are increasingly at one another’s throats.

Soros has provided $10 million to "provide legal and social services to victims of hate crimes, to encourage local organizations across the country to do the same and to propose improvements and new ideas." 

The essay ends with these words:

Having survived the Nazi persecution of Jews in Hungary, I escaped from Soviet occupation at age 17 and made my way first to Britain and then to America. This is not the America that attracted me. I have seen the damage done when societies succumb to the fear of the 'other.' And I will do all I can to help preserve the openness, inclusiveness and diversity that represent our greatest strength.

Norman Manea on Mircea Eliade in his essay "Happy Guilt"

Norman Manea published an important article about Mircea Eliade, "Happy Guilt," in the August 5, 1991 edition of the New Republic. Unfortunately, the article is no longer available in the journal's online archive. I just read it in his collection of essays, The Fifth Impossibility: Essays on Exile and Language (Yale University Press, 2012). Norman Manea is a Romanian writer, now living in the United States, and teaching at Bard College. He was born in the Romanian province of Bukovina in 1936, and when he was five years old, he and his family were deported to a concentration camp in Transnistria, a part of Ukraine that the Nazis handed over to Romania during the Second World War. He survived and returned to Romania after the war and he lived there under the Communist regime until 1986, when he left first for Germany and then for the United States, in 1988.  

Charles Simic, in a review of Manea's memoir, The Hooligan's Return, in the New York Review of Books (October 23, 2003) describes what happened to the Jews of Bukovina:

In October 1941 the entire Jewish population of the province was deported to labor camps in Transnistria, a place that previously did not exist on any map or in any geography book. It was a newly carved region in Ukraine, north of the Black Sea and Odessa that extended as far as the rivers Dniester and Bug. The Romanian army of Marshal Ion Antonescu, which participated in the Nazi attack on Russia, was given the land as spoils of that campaign, and Antonescu soon after set aside the region to be the graveyard for Romanian Jews. The order for expulsion in 1941 required the Jews to hand in immediately to the National Bank all the gold, currency, shares, diamonds, and precious stones they owned and to report on the same day to the train station with their hand luggage. Everything else was to be left behind and was promptly pillaged. 

Manea was five years old when he, his parents, and grandparents made the journey in sealed freight train cars. Back in Romania, Premier Antonescu declared:

Our nation has not known a more favorable moment in its history…. I am in favor of forced migration. I do not care whether we shall go down in history as barbarians. The Roman Empire committed many barbaric acts and yet it was the greatest political establishment the world has ever seen.

Out of 200,000 Romanian Jews who were sent to Transnistria half perished, Manea’s grandparents among them. There were no gas chambers and crematoria; people were either shot, hanged, slaughtered, burned, starved to death, or died as the consequence of infectious diseases and the weakening of the body. Nazis were not involved since Romania was not an occupied country. This was an operation carried out by the local Romanian police and gendarmerie. Antonescu was an ally of the Iron Guard, the extreme rightwing nationalist movement of the 1930s, whose ideological father was Nae Ionescu, a professor of philosophy at the University of Bucharest much admired by Eliade.

Manea was, therefore, a child when Eliade was working in the Romanian embassies in London and Lisbon.

"Happy Guilt" is described by David Mikics in his review of The Fifth Impossibility for for the New Republic in 2012:

The troubled heart of Manea’s book is his well-known essay “Happy Guilt” (first published in The New Republic in 1991), an examination of the pro-fascist sympathies of the great religious scholar, fiction-writer and memoirist Mircea Eliade. Although Eliade disdained Hitler’s anti-Semitism in 1934, by 1937 he had changed his tune, asking, “Can the Romanian nation end its life … ravaged by poverty and syphilis, overrun by Jews and torn apart by foreigners?” In 1939 he wrote that “The Poles’ resistance in Warsaw is Jewish resistance. Only yids are capable of blackmail by putting women and children in the front line”; and he concluded that “rather than a Romania again invaded by kikes, it would be better to have a German protectorate.” Eliade went from village to village campaigning for the Iron Guard; during the war he spent much of his time in Portugal, where he became an admirer of the right-wing dictator Salazar. After 1945, Eliade was clear in his disapproval of both Marxism and Fascism, but he avoided the details of his own past complicity (as did Cioran, who once wrote that if he had been a Jew he would have committed suicide). 

Manea rightly points out the shocking contrast between Eliade’s violent fascist prejudices and “the free play and dreamy compassion of his writing.” The genial, open-minded professor of the history of religion at the University of Chicago, where Eliade taught from the 1960s on, was hard to reconcile with the champion of the Iron Guard. But there were also reasons why Eliade, given his mystical bent, might have been attracted to fascism’s promise of “sudden and magical history” (in the words of Robert Ellwood, Eliade’s student). Eliade was attuned to the appearance of the sacred within the profane, seemingly secular modern world; fascism, he seems to have thought, was a potential source of sacredness. Mihail Sebastian loved and admired Eliade in the 1930s (along with Eliade’s teacher, the die-hard anti-Semite Nae Ionesco—no relation to the playwright). But Sebastian was bewildered by the gulf between himself and Eliade: the fearful Jew faced with an anti-Semitic tidal wave and the exultant advocate of a new, Christian-fascist Romania. Manea writes that Eliade’s attraction to men in uniform, to “the compensations of vitality, mystification, martyrdom, and all manner of excess,” baffled Sebastian.

When Manea’s essay about Eliade’s fascism was published in Romania in 1992, it sparked a campaign of hatred against Manea. Eliade, whose rehabilitation began during the latter half of the Ceauşescu era, had become a hero to Romanians, an intellectual saint. Interviewed on Romanian television programs, Manea was asked about the “Jewish cultural mafia”; he was called a fundamentalist, a witch-hunter. The grotesque nationalism and anti-Semitism that has sometimes sprouted in post-Communist Romania, visible in the Eliade affair, the official honoring of Antonescu, and elsewhere, is a grab for identity in the confusion and the loneliness of the newly chaotic, newly capitalist era.

Manea's article is not just about Eliade's affiliation with the Iron Guard and Romanian fascism more broadly conceived, but about how Eliade never publicly acknowledged or recanted his actions during the fascist era. He contrasts Eliade with Andrei Sakharov, who in his youth admired Stalin and admitted that in his memoirs.

When he is called a Nazi or an anti-Semite, when he meets the stony weight of accusations that simplify the story of his life, Eliade’s tendency to withdraw is even more marked. To be sure, there is dignity in silence, and there is delicacy, not just cunning, in evasion: but in silence and in evasion there is also much that is reprehensible. To retract one’s former beliefs, to denounce the horrors, to disclose the mechanisms of mystification, to assume the burden of guilt—probably few are sufficiently clear-eyed and courageous for this. But it is precisely those few who do have the courage for such a confrontation with the past who justify the stature of the intellectual. 

 In order to be truly separated from the errors of the past, one must acknowledge them. Is not honesty, in the end, the mortal enemy of totalitarianism? And is not conscience the proof of one’s distance from the forces of corruption, from totalitarian ideology? In his Memoirs, Andrei Sakharov confessed without embarrassment his youthful admiration for Stalin. The honesty of that admission was precisely the honesty that enabled that great scientist and humanist to achieve a profound understanding of the nature of the communist system, and to become its unyielding critic.

The whole essay is worth reading, both for the information it gives on Eliade's beliefs and actions in the 1930s and 1940s, and for its analysis of the consequences of Eliade's lack of honesty about his past.

Do not say that you did not know: Antisemitic hate crimes and political antisemitism

Just in the last few days.....

A few days before the election, Racist, anti-Semitic and pro-Donald Trump graffiti was found on Mount Tom, in Massachusetts: "Trump 2016," "Gas the Jews," "Fuck the Jews," and "Kill all niggers," plus two swastikas.

At Oberlin College, the home of a Jewish professor was vandalized and an antisemitic note was left on his porch.

OBERLIN, OH (WOIO) - (November 18) 

Oberlin College says that there was an anti-Semitic hate crime against one of their professors and his family Wednesday night. 

Police said that Benjamin Kuperman, an associate professor and chair of the computer science department, called around 3:40 a.m. when he heard a noise outside his home. He told officers that he found the sea shells on his porch were smashed and a note had been left behind a mezuzah he had hung up on his door frame.

The note was a ripped piece of paper that appeared to have letters glued on reading "GAS JEWS DIE."

And on Saturday, at an "alt-right" meeting in Washington, DC, hosted by the National Policy Institute, of which he is the head, Richard Spencer spoke in explicitly Nazi and antisemitic terms:

But now his tone changed as he began to tell the audience of more than 200 people, mostly young men, what they had been waiting to hear. He railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were “awakening to their own identity.” 

As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute. When Mr. Spencer, or perhaps another person standing near him at the front of the room — it was not clear who — shouted, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” the room shouted it back....

At the conference on Saturday, Mr. Spencer, who said he had coined the term, defined the alt-right as a movement with white identity as its core idea....

Mr. Spencer’s after-dinner speech began with a polemic against the “mainstream media,” before he briefly paused. “Perhaps we should refer to them in the original German?” he said. 

The audience immediately screamed back, “Lugenpresse,” reviving a Nazi-era word that means “lying press.” 

Mr. Spencer suggested that the news media had been critical of Mr. Trump throughout the campaign in order to protect Jewish interests. He mused about the political commentators who gave Mr. Trump little chance of winning. 

“One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem,” he said, referring to a Jewish fable about the golem, a clay giant that a rabbi brings to life to protect the Jews.

Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Spencer said, was “the victory of will,” a phrase that echoed the title of the most famous Nazi-era propaganda film. But Mr. Spencer then mentioned, with a smile, Theodor Herzl, the Zionist leader who advocated a Jewish homeland in Israel, quoting his famous pronouncement, “If we will it, it is no dream.” 

The United States today, Mr. Spencer said, had been turned into “a sick, corrupted society.” But it was not supposed to be that way.

“America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity,” Mr. Spencer thundered. “It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.” 

But the white race, he added, is “a race that travels forever on an upward path.” 

“To be white is to be a creator, an explorer, a conqueror,” he said.

In July of this year, Steven Bannon, who has now been appointed the chief strategist by Donald Trump, said,"'We're the platform for the alt-right,' Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July." 

Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon's target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon's leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an "eclectic mix of renegades," accusing President Barack Obama of importing "more hating Muslims," and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of "political correctness."

A former Breitbart employee, Ben Shapiro (who is Jewish) described the alt-right as a "movement shot through with racism and anti-Semitism." He called Breitbart News "a party organ, a pathetic cog in the Trump-Media Complex and a gathering place for white nationalists."

The reception he and another conservative Jewish Breitbart critic, Bethany Mandel, have experienced in the Bannonosphere is revealing: In May, when Shapiro, who became editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire after leaving Breitbart, tweeted about the birth of his second child, he received a torrent of anti-Semitic tweets. "Into the gas chamber with all 4 of you," one read. Another tweet depicted his family as lampshades. Mandel says she has been harassed on Twitter for months, "called a 'slimy Jewess' and told that I 'deserve the oven.'" 

After Shapiro called out the anti-Semitism, Breitbart News published (under the byline of Pizza Party Ben) a post ridiculing Shapiro for "playing the victim on Twitter and throwing around allegations of anti-Semitism and racism, just like the people he used to mock." 

Back at the RNC, Bannon dismissed Shapiro as a "whiner…I don't think that the alt-right is anti-Semitic at all," he told me. "Are there anti-Semitic people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. Are there racist people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. But I don't believe that the movement overall is anti-Semitic."

Antisemitic professor Joy Karega has been fired from Oberlin College

Statement from the Oberlin College Board of Trustees:

The Oberlin College Board of Trustees, after extensive consideration and a comprehensive review of recommendations from multiple faculty committees and Oberlin President Marvin Krislov, has voted to dismiss Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Joy D. Karega for failing to meet the academic standards that Oberlin requires of its faculty and failing to demonstrate intellectual honesty.

The dismissal is effective Tuesday, November 15, 2016.

As a Board, we agree with President Krislov and every faculty committee reviewing this matter that the central issues are Dr. Karega's professional integrity and fitness. We affirm Oberlin's historic and ongoing commitment to academic freedom.

During this process, which began with Dr. Karega's posting of anti-Semitic writings on social media, Dr. Karega received numerous procedural protections: she was represented by counsel; she presented witness testimony, documents, and statements to support her position; and she had the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses testifying against her.

The faculty review process examined whether Dr. Karega had violated the fundamental responsibilities of Oberlin faculty members - namely, adherence to the "Statement of Professional Ethics" of the American Association of University Professors, which requires faculty members to "accept the obligation to exercise critical self-discipline and judgment in using, extending and transmitting knowledge" and to "practice intellectual honesty." 

Contrary to this obligation, Dr. Karega attacked her colleagues when they challenged inconsistencies in her description of the connection between her postings and her scholarship. She disclaimed all responsibility for her misconduct. And she continues to blame Oberlin and its faculty committees for undertaking a shared governance review process.

For these reasons, the faculty review committees and President Krislov agreed on the seriousness of Dr. Karega's misconduct. Indeed, the majority of the General Faculty Council, the executive body of Oberlin's faculty, concluded that Dr. Karega's postings could not be justified as part of her scholarship and had "irreparably impaired (her) ability to perform her duties as a scholar, a teacher, and a member of the community."

In the face of Dr. Karega's repeated refusal to acknowledge and remedy her misconduct, her continued presence undermines the mission and values of Oberlin's academic community. Thus, any sanction short of dismissal is insufficient and the Board of Trustees is compelled to take this most serious action.

"I hadn't been called a kike since fourth grade. Donald Trump changed all that" - Bradley Burston

Bradley Burston of Ha'aretz on the antisemitism that Donald Trump has permitted to enter into the public realm in the US, for the first time since the late 1940s. He writes, I hadn't been called a kike since fourth grade. Donald Trump changed all that.

“What Trump has brought to the surface is, in many ways, the first blatant anti-Semitic experience for the vast majority of American millennials,” Ohio State sophomore Zach Reizes, 19, told Politico Magazine.  

The quote is from an extraordinary report this week by Politico's Ben Wofford. In an allusion to the large numbers of Jewish organizations who have refrained from challenging Trump on the anti-Semitism issue, Wofford notes that among Jews the pro-Trump outrages of the alt-right have "heightened a divide between young and old, left and right: Progressive young Jews learning to form the words 'anti-Semitism,' often for the first time — even while they take umbrage at their right-leaning scolds who, now into October, have kept up a deafening silence on the topic of Trump." 

Through it all, Jew-hating Trump supporters have reserved some of the most toxic of their venom for staunch Republicans and conservatives who happen to be Jewish. They've even coined an obscenity just for them: Kikeservatives. As in this headline on the Infostormer website: "Kikeservative [Susan] Goldberg Defends Kikeservative [Jonah] Goldberg From Patriotic Jew Exposers.".... (I don't recommend clicking on the link).

Trump helped throw the holding tanks of anti-Semitism wide open in July, when he gave national exposure to, and then proceeded to defend, a white supremacist-designed meme in which Hillary Clinton appears flanked by a red six-pointed star on a background of a pile of hundred-dollar bills....

Donald Trump may be the grandfather to a Jewish baby. But if that baby grows up in a nation ruled by Trump, one day he may be the one Jew at that dinner table to ask why his grandfather helped make anti-Semitism American again.

Beginning of the Jewish Quota at Harvard University in 1922

Today in my class "Contemporary Jewish Identities: Gender, Race, and Power," we discussed, among other things, the establishment of Jewish quotas at Ivy League universities in the 1920s. The first to propose this publicly was President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard. The New York Times got ahold of correspondence between Lowell and a Jewish alumnus named Alfred A. Benesch about an announcement that had been made the previous week on the issue of restriction of Jewish enrollment at Harvard. This is the New York Times article of Saturday, June 17, 1922.

LOWELL TELLS JEWS LIMIT AT COLLEGES MIGHT HELP THEM 

Says It Might Tend to Combat the Increasing Tendency to Anti-Semitism. 

ANSWERS JEWISH GRADUATE 

40 Per Cent. Proportion, He Says, Would Make Harvard Prejudice Intense. 

CAN’T DODGE THE PROBLEM 

Favors Direct Action Instead of Indirect Methods Adopted by Other Institutions 

Special to The New York Times 

CLEVELAND, June 16. – The text of correspondence between President Lowell of Harvard and A. A. Benesch, a local attorney, on the question of race discrimination was made public here today.

On June 7 Mr. Benesch wrote to President Lowell as follows:

“My Dear Dr. Lowell: In common with other Jewish graduates of Harvard, I was astounded at the official statement issued last week with reference to the restriction of enrollment. Even had the statement made no especial mention of students of the Jewish race, it would have been objectionable because of the undoubted implication. Containing, as it did, however, particular reference to the Jews, it is tenfold more objectionable because of the direct suggestion made to those who might not otherwise perceive its purpose.

“It is utterly impossible for me to comprehend how an institution of learning which has throughout its history received contributions from men of all religious faiths, and which has enjoyed an enviable reputation for non-sectarianism, can even contemplate the adoption of a regulation obviously designed to discriminate against the Jews.

"The late Jacob H. Schiff for years maintained a deep interest in Harvard and was loyal to Harvard’s traditions. Do you think that he would remain silent, were he alive today, in the face of such action on the part of the university authorities?

"Felix Warburg and other eminent Jews of New York City and elsewhere were liberal contributors to the Harvard Endowment Fund. Are their feelings not to be considered?

“I am a graduate of more than twenty years' standing. I have contributed to the Endowment Fund and am contributing now annually to the Scholarship Fund established by my class, the class of 1900. You would criticise me with poor grace, were I to withhold any further contributions under the existing circumstance.

“Shortly after my graduation I wrote an article entitled, ‘The Jew at Harvard,’ in which, I think, I successfully combated the notion then prevalent that Harvard was anti-Semitic. I hope that l shall not be under the necessity of writing a similar article with a changed point of view. I hope, too, that the regulation, which has unhappily stirred up so much unpleasant publicity for Harvard does not find its origin in the fact that Jewish students, numbering perhaps 10 per cent. of the student population at Harvard are the successful contestants of perhaps 50 per cent. of the prizes and scholarships. Students of the Jewish faith neither demand nor expect any favors at the hands of the university; but they do expect, and have a right to demand, that they be admitted upon equal terms with students of other races, and that scholarship and character be the only standards for admission.

“I am still hopeful that the newspaper reports are not based entirely upon fact, and that I may hear from you soon a true statement of the situation.

“Very respectfully yours,

"ALFRED A. BENESCH."

Dr. Lowell's reply follows:

“Dear Mr. Benesch: There is no need of cautioning you not to believe all that you see in the newspapers. As a colleague said to me yesterday, there is perhaps no body of men in the United States, mostly Gentiles, with so little anti-Semitic feeling as the instruction staff of Harvard University. But the problem that confronts this country and its educational institutions is a difficult one, and one about which I should very much like to talk with you. It is one that involves the best interests both the college and of the Jews, for I should feel very badly to think that these do not coincide.

“There is, most unfortunately, a rapidly growing anti-Semitic feeling in this country, causing, and no doubt in part caused by a strong race feeling on the part of the Jews themselves. In many cities of the country Gentile Clubs are excluding Jews altogether, who are forming separate clubs of their own. 

“Private schools are excluding Jews, l believe, and so, we know, are hotels. All this seems to me fraught with very great evils for the Jews, and very great perils for the community. The question did not originate here, but has been brought over from Europe – especially from those countries where it has existed for centuries.

“The question for those of us who deplore such a state of things is how it can be combated, and especially for those of us who are connected with colleges, how it can be combated there - how we can cause the Jews to feel and be regarded as an integral part of the student body. The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews.

“If their number should become 40 per cent. of the student body, the race feeling would become intense. When, on the other hand, the number of Jews is small, the race antagonism was small also. Any such race feeling among the students tends to prevent the personal intimacies on which we must rely to soften anti-Semitic feeling.

“If every college in the country would take a limited proportion of Jews, I suspect we should go a long way toward eliminating race feeling among the students, and, as these students passed out into the world, eliminating it in the community.

“This question is with us. We cannot solve it by forgetting or ignoring it. If we do nothing about the matter the prejudice is likely to increase. Some colleges appear to have met the question by indirect methods, which we do not want to adopt. It cannot be solved except by a co-operation between the college authorities and the Jews themselves. Would not the Jews be willing to help us in finding the steps best adapted for preventing the growth of race feeling among our students, and hence in the world?

“The first thing to recognize is that there is a problem – a new problem, which we have never had to face before, but which has come over with the immigration from the Old World. After the nature of that problem is fairly understood, the next question is how to solve it in the interest of the Jews, as well as of everyone else.

“Very truly yours,

“A. LAWRENCE LOWELL.”

In answer to this Mr. Benesch sent the following letter:

“My dear Mr. Lowell: I find myself in complete harmony with some of the statements in your letter of June 9 but in complete disagreement with others.

“I hope and believe it is true that the instructing staff of Harvard University is not anti-Semitic at heart. I am apprehensive, however, that the wave of anti-Semitism which has been inundating the country during the last year or more has not left the members of the staff untouched. I am apprehensive, too, that some members of the Harvard alumni have not been inactive in expressing and making felt their anti-Jewish and unsocial proclivities.

“Although I agree with you that, unhappily, there is a rapidly growing anti-Semitic feeling in this country, I must take issue with you upon the proposition that this feeling is caused in part by a strong race feeling on the part of the Jews. Is not the strong race feeling on the part of the Jews the result rather than the cause? In other words, has not the strong race feeling been developed as a measure of self-defense?

“You throw out the suggestion that ‘if every college in the country would take a limited proportion of Jews, I suspect that we should go a long way toward eliminating race feeling among the students, and, as the students passed out into the world, eliminating it in the community.’

“Carrying your suggestion to its logical conclusion would inevitably mean that a complete prohibition against Jewish students in the colleges would solve the problem of anti-Semitism. Moreover, it might lead to the establishment of a distinctively Jewish university, a consummation most sincerely to be deplored.

“If it be true – and I have no doubt that it is true – that the anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, should it not be the function of an institution of learning to discourage rather than to encourage such a spirit? If certain members of the alumni and certain members of the student body foster so un-American a spirit, Harvard University, which has always stood for true democracy and liberalism, should be the first to condemn such a spirit, and exert every effort to prevent its growth. 

“If it is at all possible for you to call a meeting of a group of Jewish graduates, together with the members of the corporation and such other graduates or undergraduates as are interested in this vital problem, such meeting to be called within the next ten days or two weeks, I shall be very glad personally to make the sacrifice of time and money to attend such meeting. I believe, as do you, that a matter of this character can best be discussed by word of mouth.

“Respectfully yours,

“ALFRED A. BENESCH.” 

President Lowell's final letter to Mr. Benesch, received today, said:

“Dear Mr. Benesch, You are quite right – It is the function of an institution of learning to discourage anti-Semitic feeling, and the question is how is it to be done? It does not seem to me that we shall reach such a result by ignoring the problem of race. It exists in the Old World and it is rapidly coming here. The first step, it seems to me, is to recognize that is a problem and then try to discover what its cause and its cures my be. It is just the result that you point out that I wish to avoid – that of distinctly Jewish and distinctly Gentile universities. We want exactly the opposite. We want to have both Gentiles and Jews in all our colleges and universities and strive to bring the two races together.

“A committee to consider this subject will be appointed in a few days and one of their first duties will be get into communication with the thoughtful Jews in this country.

“Very truly yours,

“A. LAWRENCE LOWELL.”