Friday, May 16, 2008

The Causes of Anti-Semitism: Preliminary Discussions

The Fjordman Report

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.



As I have mentioned in another essay, Andrew G. Bostom, author of the excellent The Legacy of Jihad, has asked me to do a review of his upcoming book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, which I will publish in early June. Before this, however, I intend to write about the causes of Christian anti-Semitism. I will probably publish the full essay about this at Atlas Shrugs, the website of Pamela Geller, but before I do so I will arrange a preliminary debate at the Gates of Vienna blog.

Eccentric Culture by Rémi BragueI know this is a sensitive subject, but writing about sensitive subjects is our business. In his book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, Rémi Brague explains how the Romans admired the earlier culture of the Greeks. Christians also recognized that the Jews had an older religious tradition than they did themselves and that they were greatly indebted to it. Christian Europeans thus inherited a twin “cultural secondarity“ in relation to their Greek and Hebrew parent cultures. Brague sees this phenomenon of cultural secondarity as the very essence of the West, and dubs it “Romanity.” As he says, Christians recognize that the Hebrew Bible (the “Old Testament”) is still valid and authentic, and Jews recognize that Christians have adopted the entire Hebrew Bible unchanged. Muslims, on the other hand, believe that Christians and Jews have falsified their texts, which accordingly have no specific value in themselves:

One should be careful, therefore, not to make an implicit analogy between what one calls, with an expression that besides is quite superficial, the “three monotheisms.” Islam is not to Christianity (not even to Christianity and to Judaism) what Christianity is to Judaism. Admittedly, in both cases, the mother religion rejects the legitimacy of the daughter religion. And in both cases the daughter religion turned on its mother religion. But on the level of principles, the attitude toward the mother religion is not the same. While Islam rejects the authenticity of the documents on which Judaism and Christianity are founded, Christianity, in the worst case, recognizes at least that the Jews are the faithful guardians of a text that it considers as sacred as the text which is properly its own. In this way, the relationship of secondarity toward a preceding religion is found between Christianity and Judaism and between these two alone.

MaimonidesTo name one example, the leading Jewish medieval physician and philosopher Maimonides directed that Jews could teach rabbinic law to Christians, but not to Muslims. For Muslims, he said, will interpret what they are taught “according to their erroneous principles and they will oppress us. [F]or this reason… they hate all [non-Muslims] who live among them.” But the Christians, he said, “admit that the text of the Torah, such as we have it, is intact.”

Maimonides lamented the aggression and humiliation Jews faced from Muslims: “You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us… No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have… We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.”
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This is quite interesting, given that he lived in the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic occupation and that we are now told how Spain and Portugal under Islamic rule were beacons of tolerance. Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong says that “until 1492, Jews and Christians lived peaceably and productively together in Muslim Spain — a coexistence that was impossible elsewhere in Europe.” The U.S. State Department has proclaimed that “during the Islamic period in Spain, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace and mutual respect, creating a diverse society in which vibrant exchanges of ideas took place.”

A PogromNevertheless, it is certainly true that Jews did suffer from repeated attacks and pogroms in Christian Europe over many centuries, and they were expelled from Spain and Portugal after the Reconquista. Because of this, Rémi Brague believes that although individual Jews have been important throughout European history after Rome and have in some cases been intellectually influential (Maimonides, for instance), Judaism as a religion was forced to play a low-key role in European societies:

Judaism as such has only been able to exercise an influence on European culture from a rather late date. The Jewish communities have been excluded for a long time from any participation in political power that goes beyond the private role of certain of its members. In order for Judaism to make itself understood publicly and get away from the confidential character imposed on its written productions by the exclusive use of Hebrew, one had to await the emancipation. This arrived in the eighteenth century, first in Germanic countries (Austria and Prussia), and then continued on in the wake of the French Revolution. During this period, Europe was already a cultural reality, and it was already conscious of its unity on this particular level. In this way, Judaism has been able to leave its mark, a decisive mark, on an already constituted Europe, but it has contributed only a little to making Europe.

The chess playersThe emancipation led to an explosion of Jewish creativity in nineteenth century and pre-Holocaust twentieth century Europe. By far the most important reason for this was the secularization of the Christians, which allowed the Jews a more equal place in society, but was it also a result of a secularization of the Jews themselves? According to The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy by Joel Mokyr, “the failure of European Jews over many centuries to contribute to useful knowledge (as defined here) in anything like a proportional amount in view of their literacy and learning remains something of a puzzle.” To Mokyr, the creation of useful knowledge presupposes that the research agenda “is not entirely dominated by knowledge with no conceivable immediate application (as was the case, for instance, for Jewish rabbis).” He also writes that “Many societies in antiquity spent a great deal of time studying the movements of heavenly bodies, which did little to butter the turnips (though it helped work out the calendar). For many generations Jewish sages spent their lives on the exegesis of the scriptures, adding much to wisdom and legal scholarship but little to useful knowledge as defined here.”

I think Mokyr is being a little bit too harsh here. There is not necessarily a contradiction between being a religious scholar and a secular scholar. A number of Christians have managed this well, and so have quite a few Jews, both in ancient and in modern times. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that Jews have in certain periods focused too much on scriptures alone, as opposed to secular knowledge. A similar example on a much larger scale is to be found in medieval and early modern China, where the imperial examination system ensured that a significant proportion of talented men had access to literacy and learning. However, these examinations tended to focus on Confucian classics instead of engineering, mathematics and science, and thus added less to the development of useful knowledge than might otherwise have been possible.

Was the Nazi Holocaust during the Second World War an extension of traditional anti-Semitism in Europe? Robert Spencer in Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t argues that it was not, although the Nazis certainly tapped into traditional anti-Semitism to shore up support for their actions. According to Spencer:

Robert Spencer: Religion of Peace?Historian Daniel Jonah Goldenhagen minces no words: ‘The main responsibility for producing the all-time leading Western hatred [of Jews] lies with Christianity. More specifically, with the Catholic Church.’ However, Rabbi David G. Dalin, a historian of the Catholic Church’s relations with the Jews, says this is ‘bad history and bad scholarship.’ Malcolm Hay, who chronicles in searing detail the mistreatment Jews suffered in Europe at the hands of Christians, notes also that the most basic right, the right to live, was ‘one which no Pope, no Catholic theologian, has ever denied to the Jews — a right which no ruler in Christendom ever denied to them until the advent of Adolf Hitler.’ Clearly, however, the Nazis sought justification for their actions from Christian anti-Semitism.

Dalin points out that the papal record is not monochromatic: “The historical fact is that popes have often spoken out in defense of the Jews, have protected them during times of persecution and pogroms, and have protected their right to worship freely in their synagogues. Popes have traditionally defended Jews from wild anti-Semitic allegations. Popes regularly condemned anti-Semites who sought to incite violence against Jews.”

Pope Leo X ordered the entire Talmud to be printed by a Christian printer in Rome so as to discourage anti-Semitic rumors about its contents. This is good, but it is also indirectly a testimony to the fact that anti-Semitism was widespread enough to constitute a real problem in many parts of Europe. In early Christian times, clear anti-Semitism was expressed by some Christian leaders, for instance John Chrysostom.

According to Robert Spencer, “the Nazis reprinted John Chrysostom’s words in support of their activities. There is nevertheless a large gulf between the anti-Judaism of Chrysostom and other Christian leaders, and that of the Nazis, who were for the most part anti-Christian and certainly anti-Catholic. Their anti-Semitism was rooted in Darwinian racial theories that posited the Aryans as the master race and the Jews as untermenschen.” He also points out that “While Christian anti-Semitism has been minimized, it still exists, particularly in the Middle East where some Christians have absorbed the anti-Semitism of the Islamic culture which surrounds them.”

The rabid rhetoric of the Nazis regarding Jews is widely supported by Muslims today. The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Jewish state of Israel a “filthy bacteria.” This is now sometimes presented as something Muslims have “imported” from Europeans. Historian Bernard Lewis in his book What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East states that “The earliest specifically anti-Semitic statements in the Middle East occurred among the Christian minorities, and can usually be traced back to European originals.”

This is clearly nonsense. Christian hatred of Jews does exist, but Jew hatred has a much stronger scriptural basis in Islam than it has in Christianity. The Australian Jihadist David Hicks, who has trained with Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, writes that “Muslims fight against Jews and they kill them.” He can base this directly in Islamic religious scriptures, both the Koran and the hadith. For instance, one authentic (according to Sunni Muslims) hadith states that: Allah’s Apostle said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.” (Bukhari 4.52.177)

There is nothing like this in the Christian Gospels. After all, Jesus of Nazareth was himself as Jew, as were many of his early disciples. Muhammad was not. He spent his days murdering many Jews, among them the Medinan tribe of Banu Quraiza. Jesus never killed anybody, nor did he encourage others to do so for him.

101 comments:

Diamed said...

Hitler opposed jews not just because they were a different race, but because they were the main supporters of communism, which was at the time trying to usurp the government and create another tyranny in germany/europe like the bolshevik hell in the USSR--which by that time had already seen all the worst of Stalin's atrocities.

The Jews have not stopped their socialist crusade. They are still the bulwark of the left wing in every country they reside. This leads to stuff like unlimited immigration, gay marriage, wealth redistribution, 'hate speech' laws, etc, etc. Antisemitism as a natural backlash to this agitation is sure to repeat as well.

This is why so many right-wing groups are 'anti-semitic.' I only wish so many semites weren't anti-Western.

Sagunto said...

@diamed,

Hitler was both a racist and a (third way) revolutionary leftist.

[quote: diamed]
"..Hitler opposed jews not just because they were a different race.."

Oh my, never heard of The Nuremberg Race Laws? Hitler was no exception to the many socialist leaders before him, starting with Marx/Engels, who were racists. His racism was exceptional though, even for leftist standards.

[quote: diamed]
"..but because they were the main supporters of communism.."

This was the usual accusation by nazis. The other one accused Jews of being "big finance capitalists" plotting world-wide against socialism. Hitler was a revolutionary socialist fighting socialists from a rival revolutionary leftist sect, a.k.a. the commies (after having first teamed up with them, studying the "art" of genocide in which the commies had a decade's head start).

[quote: diamed]
"..The Jews have not stopped their socialist crusade.."

I'd like to reshuffle your eerie quote a bit, to the more truthful one. How about this:
"..many different socialists are still continuing their anti-Jewish crusade, now under the guise of 'care for the Palestinians'.."

[quote: diamed]
"..This is why so many right-wing groups are 'anti-semitic.'.."

Come again? Right-wing groups? You'd seriously argue that free market individualists and upholders of traditional freedoms, are anti-Jewish?
Perhaps you refer to neo-nazis of sorts, but these groups are "old school" leftists, i.e. the ones who still haven't caught-up with the restyling of the left after WW-II when being openly anti-Jewish wasn't any longer considered the proper fashion among socialists. So neo-nazis are in fact "nostalgo"-nazis and their so-called "counterparts" the "anti"-fascists are the actual, up-to-date neo-nazis. All leftist factions, fighting among each other again, and Lo' behold: all anti-Jewish. No surprise here.

Sag.

Félicie said...

diamed, why did the Nazis kill Catholic nuns of Jewish descent? How did it advance their fight against communism or "pernicious" Jewish religion with its evil Talmud?

The fact is that people were killed simply because of their DNA and not because of any ideology or religion they espoused.

Félicie said...

I'll just add one thing. It doesn't make sense to ascribe an agenda to an ethnic group that is not otherwise politically organized. One could ascribe to them certain typical characteristics of which one could be critical. Alternatively, one could legitimately criticize their religion. But ascribing an agenda to a group based on their ethnicity alone and regardless of their adherence to a religion or political movement is demonization.

KGS said...

Sagunto has Diamed's rationale firmly pegged down, it's faulty from beginning to end. I would hope that Diamed would further reflect on the matter, and understand how he or she is putting Jews into such an untenable position, being the creators and promoters of International socialism, while knowing full well that they are blamed by the Marxists & Socialists for being behind the rise of global capitalism. With Diamed's logic, the circle of hate is complete, Jews are blamed for everything.

What about the Finns? Why on earth didn't you bring up up their role in international Marxism/Socialism? I would suggest that you take a look at the leadership of the various Communist/Socialist parties within the US at the turn of the century, and see just how over represented Finns were in leadership roles, in relation to their actual numbers. I'm sure that there are a host of other interesting comparisons to be found from different nationalities and races when it comes to Communism/Socialism, but Jews just happen to be the easiest pick of the litter, let's face it, it's just too easy to pass it on by.

I would choose rather to focus on the ideology itself -not on the background of the people- when castigating a Communism/Socialism. There is much blame to go around, and every ethnic group has had a hand in it. Perhaps Jews saw in socialism an escape route from their own persecution, the melting mass of the proletariat would ensure that "being an ethnic Jew" would no longer serve as an issue of future interest ... and of conflict. But with hindsight, we all know that the Jews bacame targets once again once the Communist machinery started eating its own.

If Diamed wishes to maintain the same line of reasoning, and exclude all other race and ethnic groups from being responsible for promoting socialism, then one will have to conclude that he or she has an axe to grind against Jews, and no matter what evidence is offered to the contrary, nothing will change that kind of hardened attitude. Pity.

X said...

Hitler also welcomed socialists and communists into the nazi party and his government, as long as they were Bolshevik. How many times does it have to be pointed out that Hitler was a socialist? His policies would be considered left-wing today, let alone 70 years ago.

This is a very good essay on the subject. Read it. Digest it. Think about the pernicious lie we've been fed of Hitler being "right wing" and think about what that lie achieves for the multiculturalists.

Unknown said...

Felicie, I agree that Hitler's demonisation of the Jews on the basis for their support for communism was unfair since not all Jews supported communism. And certainly, the Nazis murdered non-communist Jews.

But to be fair to Diamed, the attempt by Jews *as a group* to undermine Western societies by supporting anti-establishment causes such as communism is very well documented and surely had a great influence on the Nazi's hatred for the Jews.

Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Luxemburg and Solkolnikov were all at least part Jewish. That these people had a clear Jewish identity is obvious from how they aligned in the 1920s power struggle for control of the Soviet Union, a struggle which generally involved Jews on one side and gentiles on the other.

In the murderous Hungarian communist government of 1919, 95% of the leaders were Jewish (MacDonald's Culture of Critique, p99), a dominance which presumably had some impact on Hitler's attitudes.

Fjordman's article seems a good analysis at the religious basis between Jewish-Gentile conflict. However, Jewish political opposition to Gentile establishments should not be ignored as an influence on Gentile attitudes towards Jews.

Unknown said...

kgs,

Certainly the Finns (and other Balts) as a group opposed the Tsarist government because of the Tsarist domination of their own country. This led many Finns to be sympathetic towards Bolshevism BEFORE the Russian Revolution. The motivation is quite clear: Bolshevism opposed the Tsar and the Tsar was opposed to Finnish patriotism. However, after the Russian Revolution, Finnish support for Bolshevism plummeted. Likewise easy to understand - it was a Bolshevist government which opposed Finnish ethnic interests, those being patriotism and independence. And in fact, the Finns as a people were willing and able to secure their independence from the Soviet Union through force of arms.

BTW, a good book which describes this period of this region's history is Freeing The Baltic by Geoffrey Bennett.

The mistake you seem to be making is to assume that ethnic identity is irrelevant to an individual's support or otherwise for an abstract political concept such as communism. In general however, this is not the case. Political movements are or are not closely associated with the group interests of particular ethnic groups and receive disproportionate support or opposition from members of those ethnic groups. Of course, such support or opposition is not always recognised explicitly, Westerners especially attempt to appeal to non-ethnic universal morality to justify their political loyalties.

As an illustration, please consider the communist government of Poland after the Second World War. Despite Hitler's decimation of Poland's Jewish population, the first three leaders of this government were Jewish! Hardly a coincidence - typical Poles justifiably saw communism as contrary to their ethnic interests. Typical Jews however, saw Polish patriotism in opposition to theirs.

Consider this particular political murder, typical of communist repression in Poland around this period:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570494/Polish-enemies-fight-over-Gen-Emil-Fieldorf.html

Such people were not killed over abstract political theory or arguments about economics. The real motivation for such murder is ethnic conflict, ie. an ethnic struggle for dominance and power.

KGS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KGS said...

I beg to differ Dougie.

1.) Far greater numbers of Finns were opposed to both the Czar, and to Bolshevism. Far greater number of Finland's Bolshevist symapthisizers hated the ruling Finnish elite more than the Czar himself. Now when it comes to the Communist Finnish support for the Blosheviks plummeting, at least within Finland, it had far more to do with tens of thousands of their fellow Reds being executed by the victorius Whites, then a sudden loss of interest in Lenin's party.

2.) Ironically it was Lenin and the Bolsheviks that gave Finland its independence, or rather, rubber stamped or nodded "da" to the Finnish unilateral declaration of its independence. In other words, contrary to what you said, "the Bolshevist government was opposed to Finnish ethnic interests" it was much the opposite.

3.) Regardless of whether an ethnic identity defines itself by its politics, that is not the point here, but the exclusion of ALL OTHER GROUPS by Diamed, who chose just to mention... Jews.

Félicie said...

Dougie: "the attempt by Jews *as a group* to undermine Western societies by supporting anti-establishment causes such as communism is very well documented"

This is the part I don't understand - the "as a group" part. There was the Bund society, for example - that of Jewish socialists. It is valid to criticize Bund as a group or other such groups. But Jews, as a whole, are not a group as far as any political agenda or global strategy is concerned.

Fjordman said...

Diamed: The Nazis killed Jews because they hated Western civilization and wanted to destroy it. If they thought that by eliminating Jews they could weaken the West, this demonstrates that they actually had a better grasp of what is "Western" than many brainwashed university students do today.

The West has at least two parent cultures, as Brague indicates: The Greek and the Hebrew ones. In my view, the essence of the Greek achievement is rational debate as exemplified by Socratic dialogue. The essence of the Greek achievement was thus rejected by the Nazis (they were clearly not great believers in free speech and unfettered debate), but also by the Muslims. This is one of the main reasons why Muslims failed to fully internalize the Greek spirit, whereas Christian Europeans did.

The essence of the Hebrew parent culture is the moral component, which was transferred in a major way to Christianity, a religion founded in the tradition of Judaism. Adolf Hitler seriously despised Christianity, with its weakness and compassion. Nazism was essentially a new religion of Jihadism, which had more in common with the ruthlessness of Islam than with the silly compassion of Christianity. The Nazis killed Jews because they represented the moral dimension of Western culture. By eliminating Jews, they could also cut Christianity off from its roots, and thus weaken it and make it more like Islam.

The Eurabians are continuing this policy today, one of many areas where they have a lot in common with the Nazis.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

When they take polls about "Do you support how Bush has handled the war" you get two different groups saying "NO". One group are the peacniks. The other wish we would just nuke em.

The same with the question "Do you like that there are Jews in your country".

When it comes down to disliking Jews, you have the pathological hatred that seems to come from Islam, and then you have folks like me who notice that every time you turn around, there is a Jewish lawyer or judge trying to assault our culture. You have every major anti-American or anti-Christian group in the US is either founded and supported by jews, or represented by Jewish Lawyers (Flying Imams, Gitmo prisoners etc).

Jews are less than 2% of the US population, yet they dominate the leadership of everything vile in the US.

Don't think you can have a meaningful discussion about Jews and anti-semitism while whitewashing this.

And any group that votes 90% or so in lockstep can be identified as a political group. Any group that generates so many victories for the socialists, ant-Christians, Anti-Americans, anti-Family and anti-straight factions is a group to be hated. The 10% that aren't worthless just have to suck it up.

Félicie said...

"And any group that votes 90% or so in lockstep can be identified as a political group."

Where does this figure come from? Can you substantiate it?

Jews are often statistically over-represented in different kinds of movements, not just on one particular side of the political spectrum. Like KGS said, they are also blamed for capitalism. Maybe there is something about Jewish temperament that makes them so active. But throw out all Jews from the US - and you would still have socialists and capitalists.

Fjordman said...

Regarding anti-Semitism and Christianity: Are you familiar with the story about Frankenstein's monster from 1818, by the British author Mary Shelley? She had visited Lord Byron by Lake Geneva in Switzerland and been inspired by German ghost stories. In her story, the scientist Victor Frankenstein builds a new creature by taking parts from various dead bodies, combining them and bringing the new creature to life by electricity. (This was in the days of experiments with electricity, from Benjamin Franklin to the Italian physician Luigi Galvani, who demonstrated that you could make dead frogs move by adding a spark of electricity). The end result was a monster, not the beautiful creature he imagined it would be.

If we assume that Christian anti-Semitism is partly a reflection of a Christian Oedipus complex vis-à-vis its parent religion, Judaism, which is a plausible hypothesis, this opens up new perspectives on the hatred against Christianity by Multicultural, post-Christian Westerners. Since their creed is a secularized version of Christian ideas, a Christianity without Christ, some of them hate their parent religion, this outmoded and abrogated creed that still dares to exist.

Our guilt complex does have its roots in Christianity, but it has been transformed into something else. Christianity believes in sin, but it also believes in forgiveness and redemption. According to the new post-Christian creed, we are told to feel vaguely guilty all the time for some unnamed sins. This makes us weak to resist attacks from outside because we will always feel that any act of aggression is justified. This guilt complex is destroying us, leaving us mentally disarmed in front of every enemy.

Unlike in Christianity, where Christ sacrificed himself to wash away your sins, in this new Christianity without Christ, there is no possibility of redemption. And since it's unbearable for us to live with this guilt for real or perceived past sins (again, a secularized version of the Christian concept of original sin), the only way we can free ourselves of this sin is to rid ourselves of our culture and everything that makes us "us." We thus end up sacrificing ourselves. This secularized, post-Christian version of Christianity clearly isn't sustainable. If left unchanged it will leave us powerless in front of Islam, and we will lose.

Armance said...

Antisemitism is documented before Christianity, in the Roman Empire and the Hellenistic world. The first pogrom took place in 38 BC, in (the Hellenistic) Alexandria. Pagan Roman historians and writers could be quoted saying some things about the Jews which today would send them in prison immediately, for inciting ethnic hatred (the most renowned examples are Tacitus of and Seneca). Notice that they didn't refer to the Jews living in the Roman colony from the Middle East, but to the Jews in Rome. They perceived the Jews around them as The Other, The Foreigner, a menace, through their monotheistic faith and strange customs, to the faith and traditions of the City.

But the Greeks and the Romans had the same view on any other foreigners, "the barbarians", and later on, on the Christians. We know how they treated the Christians at some point.

Which leads to the conclusion: the antisemitism which we make such a fuss about today consists in the fact that we recognize immediately somebody who is different. Any community which exceeds a certain percentage of the population or a certain degree of influence in a society where they do not form the majority will face hostility sooner of later. I distance myself from the theological interpretation of Jewishness in the first millennium of Christianity, as well as from the Nazi persecutions based SOLELY on race. Race and transcendence are bad points for this discussion and definitely it is not what I mean. But speaking in cultural terms, the Jews will always be among The Others for a Christian, as well as a Christian for the Jews. There are different degrees of Otherness, of distance between cultures and that's why I think a Jew is more related to me than a Muslim, which represents the extreme Otherness.

If we state otherwise, we just fool ourselves. That's why I understand why so many Jews sympathize with an open-border society: it is beneficial for their survival. I fully understand them. I recognize immediately what is beneficial for my survival either.

So, what is the solution? I guess the creation of the state of Israel is a good thing for both parts, regarding the Europeans and the Jews. The Israelis have all the rights and reasons to do whatever they please with their land, the same being valid for the others. Anyway, the number of the Jews in Europe is not so high today. But if the members of the Jewish community do not like some things which happen around them (including, at some point, the disappearance of a multicultural world), they are free to leave - they already have a land to be masters. I wouldn't like to see an important or influent Christian minority in Israel either. In my opinion there are already too many Muslims there and I want that state to survive as it was formed.

What I want to say is that even if it is hypocritical to pretend that we love each other, we can respect each other, admitting the obvious differences.

Regarding Hitler: the situation of that time was more complex than we think today. Read the newspapers in the 20's and 30's. Before Hitler and independently of the Nazis, nationalistic movements gained votes all over Europe. The Nazis themselves enjoyed a lot of sympathy from the occupied populations. The Ukrainian peasants kissing the boots of the Nazi soldiers in a religious gratitude for their "liberation from the communists" is not a legend. I don't believe the main reason was the traditional Christian antisemitism or racism. They had the same feeling I described above: too many, too influent. When a group forms 8% of the population and 30-40% in the higher structures of an oppressive party, you don't have to be a genius to predict big troubles. On the other hand, the Jews themselves, in order to survive, had no other option than to join the communist movements. Hitler transformed it into a matter of race.The vicious circle was formed. Looking back, I think the first thing that should have been done was a stronger support for the Sionists and encouragements for going to Palestine since the beginning of the 20th century. The bloodshed would have been avoided. Isn't the same thing that we feel today for the Muslims in Holland, the Mexicans in the USA or the Romanians in Italy? Of course, the Jews are more civilized than the Muslims, but this is how the Jews and the Christians were in the times of Seneca, compared to other "barbarians". Those who believe that "deportation to the country of origin" equals extremism should imagine that the mental equivalent of a Hitler or a Nero would become popular in the current situation (which might happen). Actually, the only humane and realistic measures that can be taken today to avoid a bloodshed are the resolute ones.

Fjordman said...

cont.:

I've stated that post-Christian ideologies, arguably even Marxism, have expropriated ideas derived from Christian cosmology. However, they have been highly selective in which elements to use and which to discard. Christians believe in right and wrong, good and evil, something which Multiculturalists do not, except perhaps racism and discrimination, which is the only sin and one for which there can be no forgiveness. They have rejected crucial components of Christianity. Likewise, Socialists tend to view criminals as misguided individuals, at best in need of proper ideological guidance by Leftist social engineers, at worst as victims of society that should get an apology from us. They don't believe in evil, except perhaps those who reject their ideological guidance and wisdom.

Marxists substituted God as the engine of history with the impersonal forces of class struggle, but their religion contains no afterlife. The reason why Marxists find it easier to accept Islam than Christianity is first of all because they can continue their hatred for traditional Western culture under a different garb, but also because Islam, with its sharia and its desire to regulate all aspects of society in minute detail, has stronger emphasis on establishing its Paradise in this life as well, as opposed to Christianity.

By claiming that post-Christian ideologies have adopted elements of Christian thought I am in no way implying that they are in any sense identical to Christianity, just as a kidney transplant from one individual to another doesn't make the two bodies identical. It could be useful to think of them as a sort of ideological Frankenstein monster made up of haphazard combination of body parts from a variety of sources, some of which in the post-Christian West happen to be from the newly slain corpse of Christianity. Seeing the number of dead corpses in Socialist regimes, one could argue that the religion of Marxism more closely resembles the religion of the Aztecs, with its human sacrifice, than Christianity.

Evan said...

As he says, Christians recognize that the Hebrew Bible (the “Old Testament”) is still valid and authentic, and Jews recognize that Christians have adopted the entire Hebrew Bible unchanged. Muslims, on the other hand, believe that Christians and Jews have falsified their texts, which accordingly have no specific value in themselves:

I think you err here, Fjordman. The key tenet of Christianity is that Christ is the final redemption of man, and that the Mosaic laws in particular are rendered obsolete by His sacrifice. That the Jews obstinately refuse to accept this, and continue to wait for the Messiah, is to the Christian anti-Semite a repudiation of all he believes in. This explains the bitterness of Christian anti-Semitism, when it occurs.

Most Christians do not possess this kind of anti-Semitism now, but the historic Christian belief in Jewish obduracy is the exact analogue of Islamic contempt for the rejection by Christians and Jews of what Muslims see as the final revelation of the Koran.

OTOH, something that clearly distinguishes anti-Semitism in the Christian West is the obsessive charge of cosmopolitanism. Perhaps because the rise of the European nation-state was so entwined with first papal sanction and then with the Wars of Religion, the monarch often had to legitimize himself with the religious authorities. That Jews rejected these authorities left them nakedly vulnerable to charges of disloyalty to the monarch, and interested only in post-national universalism. This charge was common in 19th-century anti-Semitism, extended even to the Soviet Union ("cosmopolitans" were the euphemized target of the periodic anti-Semitic campaigns in the Soviet empire) and, as we can see, is found even on this thread. AFAIK anti-Semitism based on hatred of Jewish cosmopolitanism does not have a historical analogue in the Islamic world.

Some claims of the inherency of Christian anti-Semitism are misplaced. While 1900 years of Christian doctrine and action made the soil fertile for the Nazis, the Holocaust itself was clearly a post-Christian act. Hitler himself had contempt for Christianity, and many Christians (including Pope Pius) did much to try to save and protect Jews. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church, as has already been mentioned, has sometimes been unfairly criticized, just as their sometime defense of the Indians in Ibero-America is often ignored by people who see the Spanish/Portuguese colonial experience as a sort of Catholic-inspired genocide. But any argument that, over the long span of history, Islamic anti-Semitism was clearly worse than Christian anti-Semitism does not, I think, withstand serious scrutiny.

Fjordman said...

Mr. Smarterthanyou:

It is true that there are quite a few Jews among prominent Multiculturalists. That's not "anti-Semitism," it's a factual statement. I've never been able to understand why American Jews vote so overwhelmingly for the Democrats, even for Obama, but they do. I don't see how that makes Jews different from Christian or post-Christian Westerners, though. There is a suicidal streak to Western culture right now, and it's almost universally shared by all groups.

Those who think that Jews are "conspiring against us" and that's the reason for Multiculturalism should reflect over the fact that Jews are disproportionately represented among those defending European civilization (think Andrew Bostom, Bat Ye'or, David Littman, etc.), despite the fact that millions of Jews were killed in Europe only a few decades ago.

Also, many of the most prominent "suicide Jews" are suicidal on behalf of Jews, not Gentiles. Notice how Noam Chomsky meets with leaders of Hizbullah, an organization that wants to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish state of Israel:

U.S. Linguist Noam Chomsky Meets With Hizbullah Leaders in Lebanon

Félicie said...

"I've never been able to understand why American Jews vote so overwhelmingly for the Democrats, even for Obama, but they do. "

True. Very stupid. But there is also jewsagainstobama.org

Unknown said...

Fjordman, I agree that Nazism shares similarities with modern Islam however I disagree with your claim about why the Nazis hated the Jews. From all I've read, there were the following reasons:

Obviously, they regarded them as racial competitors, a threat to Aryan racial purity and in a Darwinian sense, competitors for resources (bearing in mind that many Germans starved to death in the naval blockade of the First World War).

Secondly, they hated them for their anti-establishment agitation (especially their support for communism).

Thirdly, they considered the Jewish influence on German culture to be corrosive, ie. the Nazis considered that the Jews diluted or corrupted the more ancient ideals and themes of German culture.

Related to the above points, they considered that the Jews undermined the racial solidarity of the German population.

If you can direct me to primary sources where Nazi philosophers or policy makers themselves attack the Jews for being "moral" I'd love to read about it. Because more generally, the Nazis attacked the Jews for being immoral.

Please note, I'm not condoning or justifying any of the Nazi's arguments other than the point that Jews strongly supported communism.

Unknown said...

Felice, I certainly don't mean to suggest that every single member of any particular ethnic group ever supported a particular political cause.

However, it has been the case that at particular times in particular places, an overwhelming proportion of particular ethnic groups have followed particular religions or political causes.

For example, if I were to say "that as a group, Iraqis are Islamic", how could you possibly object? I'm aware that not every single Iraqi is pro-Islamic, some are secular, some are Christian etc. The point is that if you group them all together, collectively, that group is Islamic.

And so it *was* with the Jews as a group being sympathetic to anti-Western, anti-establishment left wing agitation because I'm talking about a particular historical period, ie. the formative period of Nazism.

Unknown said...

kgs.
In your first point you write that many Finns were opposed to both Czar and Bolshevism. Of that I have no doubt! Yes, many Finns hated the "Finnish" ruling elite. And may I ask what the ethnic makeup of this ruling elite was? Swedish and Russian! If you're arguing that a White massacre of Red Finns increased Finnish support for the Whites, I'm sorry but that's hard to take seriously.

Certainly the Bolshevists agreed to Finnish independence when they had no choice - while they were still fighting for survival in Russia itself.

Please read especially the first paragraph of the section "Finnish sovereignty" here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

It's quite unambiguous that after the Reds became established in Russia itself the pro-Bolshevist forces (ie. Social Democrats) and Lenin himself only agreed to independence because they had to, not because they wanted it.

I'm sorry I'm having to use wiki here as a source so if you've got better sources available, feel free to correct me. But this wiki article makes it quite clear that the Finnish population supported independence which reinforces my main point - the popularity of a political movement within an ethnic group heavily depends on that movement's alignment with the ethnic group's interests.
(doesn't it seem obvious when put like that?). The Finns being a case in point - their support for Bolshevism was high when Bolshevism was opposed to the neighbouring foreign oppressor and dropped when the neighbouring foreign government became Bolshevist itself. And of course, by the start of the Winter War, Finnish popular support for communism was negligible.




On your last point, of course Diamed chose to mention the Jews, the article is discussing anti-Semitism! My question to you is can you really not see anything significant in the two most important leaders (ie. Trotsky and Lenin) and a great number of the remaining leadership of a political revolution in Russia coming from a fairly small ethnic group? And consider my example of the 1919 Hungarian revolution.

Fjordman said...

Dougie: Well, according to his architect Albert Speer, Hitler was fond of saying things such as: "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"

Regarding the Germanic aspects: I'm Germanic too (Scandinavian). What is generally considered to be the oldest still functioning parliament in the world is the Althing on Iceland, founded in 930 AD by people of Norwegian, which means northern Germanic, descent.

This was an age where Christianity grew rapidly in the Nordic countries, which now enjoyed frequent contacts, peaceful or not, with continental Europe. However, the blueprint for this institution was not the Greek model of "democracy," it was an indigenous, pre-Christian one. These Germanic societies had regional governing assemblies called ting or thing already in the Middle Ages. Some of the parliaments in these countries, the Althing on Iceland, the Folketing in Denmark and the Storting in Norway, have retained this legacy in their names to this day.

The point is: Creating a totalitarian state is not a specifically "Germanic" thing to do. Traditional Germanic societies, all the way back to Roman times, probably had more freedom for women than many other, more "civilized" cultures had at the time. The repressive state the Nazis created has no precedent in traditional northern European history. Which means that the Nazis didn't just attack the Greek and Hebrew components of Western civilization, but also the Germanic one.

Unknown said...

Fjordman, I agree with all of your directly above post; I agree that the Nazis hated Christianity and were very selective in what they considered to be genuine German culture. Although before Hitler, there's no precedent in Germanic societies for Nazi totalitarianism, traditional Prussian society seemed to have approached it in some respects, in its authoritarian nature.

Regardless, I don't think you've substantiated your claim that Hitler hated the Jews because they were too "moral". In fact, Kevin MacDonald makes the strong case that Jewish ethical thinking is more racially exclusive than (relatively) inclusive European ethics. Perhaps it would help if you were to find a specific quote from Hitler’s speeches or Mein Kampf or from another leading Nazi that explicitly criticises the Jews for being too “moral”.

Félicie said...

Dougie: "However, it has been the case that at particular times in particular places, an overwhelming proportion of particular ethnic groups have followed particular religions or political causes.

For example, if I were to say "that as a group, Iraqis are Islamic", how could you possibly object? "

It all depends on the context of this information. It is certainly true that there are statistical averages concerning a group's behavior. It is a fact that 2/3 of the American Jews vote for Democrats. That's not good, in my opinion. (The good news is that, among the young Jews, the majority is more conservative and support Republicans. So, hopefully, one could expect the percentage to change in the future). But it is one thing to say that Jews' voting record reflects their collective (and very misguided!) perception of self-interest. And it's another thing to ascribe to them a specific agenda personified by the idea of Jewish conspiracy or a premeditated strategy to destroy the Western civilization. An analogy would be to look at the female vote. Women tend to vote liberal. But, with the exception of feminist activists, women are not an organized group or some evil entity who conspires to undermine Western values. They are just bleeding hearts.

I argue against the idea of a premeditated agenda ascribed to a demographic group which makes it look like a politically organized entity when it is not so. Muslims have an agenda because of the tenets of their religion and what they are taught in the mosques. It is not so with the Jews.

I agree with Fjorman's statement: "There is a suicidal streak to Western culture right now, and it's almost universally shared by all groups."

Unknown said...

Some similarities to consider between Nazism and pre-Weimar Prussian society:

- Bondage of labour, not much better than Mediaeval serfdom.

- Strict hierarchy of authority with little tolerance of dissent or capability for democratic experssion.

- Strongly militaristic.

- Subservience of individual rights and interests to the perceived collective interest.

Evan said...

dougie,

My question to you is can you really not see anything significant in the two most important leaders (ie. Trotsky and Lenin) and a great number of the remaining leadership of a political revolution in Russia coming from a fairly small ethnic group?

Lenin was not Jewish.

Since you attach great importance to the claim (often seen in discussions like this) that he was, what is your view now of the probative "significance" of any random individual's membership in that "fairly small ethnic group"?

Flanders Fields said...

There are some aspects to this question which are very deep under the current of both the philosophy and the physical dimensions of leftism. The transnational nature of the leftist movement are deeply rooted both in financial and corporate structures and in social institutions.

I have recently begun to question whether the continuity and monolithic nature of leftism may come from the jewish involvement or whether it is due to the institutions of power in the leftist movement using jews as a diversionary "target" by utilizing them in a prominent way, in order to disguise those true powers. That prominence is apparent in media ownership and in financing. It is also clear in some of the "American" groups such as SPLC and other anti-white, anti-American crusaders, who operate as alliance points for immigrants, minorities and the leftists.

The "disapora" nature of those considering themselves jews is similar to the transnational nature of leftism. It is the universality of the "stealth" leftism which is simultaneously confronting formerly free countries of the West which makes it seem to be so suddenly overwhelming. I don't know the answers yet, but I do know that questions need to be raised and examined. The stakes are too high to stand by and disregard any answers just because some feelings are "offended".

One former Zionist had a speech in which he explained his views, and the reasons for them, that the jews were responsible for US entry into WWI, and that what happened there, and thereafter, set the stage for WWII. He is firm in his belief that the Germans had reasons to mistrust and to have grudges against jews. His view is that they had "sold out" their own country (Germany) by their actions.

Benjamin Freedman (1961): Short segments (1 of 5):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5473636880998801752&q=&hl=en

Longer version (about 47 minutes)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5224839731207532170&hl=en

KGS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KGS said...

Dougie,

1.) Your response doesn't make an ounce of sense, sorry, but it doesn't. What's in question here is the singling out of Jews as being over represented in leadership roles of influence in Communists movements. When I bring up Finns as an excellent example, you (appear to) try to bring up unrelated issues or events that have no bearing whatsoever on the original premise, that being, ethnic Finns were over represented in US labor unions and communist organizations, in relation to their overall numbers. It's a fact.

2.) I never said that the White forces massacre of Red Finns increased Finnish support for the White, but that Red Finnish Support for the Bolsheviks waned, solely because their numbers were decimated by Gustav Mannerheim's White forces, and no longer deemed it wise to be openly supporting the Soviets. It also explains the Finnish Reds reluctance (in part) to side with Stalin's forces during the Winter War and the Continued War. The brutal civil war memories were still very fresh in their memories, and the ruling elite was keeping a watchful eye out for any signs of fidelity between the two Red camps.

3.) The Bolsheviks accepted Finnish independence with the hopes of keeping it in its Soviet orbit. Offering independence to its Red Finnish affiliate, then supplying it with arms and troops to help route the Finnish Whites was the chief aim, nothing more.

4.) Yes the article was discussing anti-Semitism, but he carefully left out any mention of other national ethnic groups that over represented themselves at the highest level of communist power and intellectualism. That is what I was referring to.

5.) When Diamed as well as yourself speak of Jews, you are pointing to Jews who had long distanced themselves from their Jewish heritage. For all practical purposes, these Russian Jews, as well as German Jews viewed themselves not as Jews, but as Russians and Germans. Ironically, you and diamed are reminding them of their jewishness that they were all too willing to do away with themselves.

So the entire issue of whether a person was "Jewish or not" concerning Communist ideology is entirely irrelevant, it is the ideology itself that is at issue, not the many different races and ethnic backgrounds of the people that supported it.

KGS said...

Word of wisdom, Benjamin Freedman is an anti-Semite. a self hating Jew and anything he has ever said has to be viewed under that rubrik.

Afonso Henriques said...

"No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us."

Rome. Nothing is more European than Rome and no Nation or Empire "harmed Israel" the most than Rome.
It was because of Rome that the "diaspora" began.
And why Fjordman started to talk about Jews, Europe and Antisemitism from the times of the Reconquista is beyond my understanding.
Remember that the Reconquista was a 800 year long war between CHRISTIANS and MUSLIMS where the Jews were struck in the middle.

"we are now told how Spain and Portugal under Islamic rule were beacons of tolerance."

Of course this is false. It was 800 hundred years of premenant and continuous VICIOUS WAR. The muslims struck in the North were abused as well were the Christians in THE MAJORITY Christian South. The difference was: the muslims could escape southwards. When they saw the Christian knights they could fled, the Christians had nowhere to escape. They couldn't go over North as the moviment of the Reconquista was Southwards and the muslims went South and South and South...

But one thing remains important. Jews were not, and never were, the enemy. Jews were an highly influent group in both sides: The muslim and the Christian.

Of course there were attacks on Jews but as a whole, Jews were a previleged group in the Al Andaluz, being friends and advisers of Kings (muslims or Christians), and important thinkers.
The Jews were targeted after, by the Christians. The comunity of Jews in Toledo (one of the most "produtives" of all Europe (world?)) thrived during the Al Andaluz but were expelled from Spain by the Catholic Kings and after that, by Portugal by D. Manuel I, "The Fortunate", of Portugal, Algarve and the Overseas.

"The U.S. State Department has proclaimed that “during the Islamic period in Spain, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace and mutual respect, creating a diverse society in which vibrant exchanges of ideas took place.”"

This is disgusting and I as a Portuguese am offended by it.
I believe that any good Portuguese or Spanish, any good (real) Hispanic: Catalan, Castilan, Basque, Portuguese, and especially those from the south: Andaluzians, Valencians and Alentejanos, should be offended by such words.
800 hundred years of non stop war is something Americans can not imagine and, unfortunateley many of us here have forgot.

What is even more offensive, is hear Portuguese and Spaniards speaking those words. There are a lot of that human scum around here...

"The Jewish communities have been excluded for a long time from any participation in political power that goes beyond the private role of certain of its members."

This is false!
Until the end of the XV century, where all (most all) the Jews were expelled from Portugal and Spain, almost every king, especially the Christians, had advisers from "the Jewish comunity". They were not simply individual Jews, they were advisers "of" the Jewish Comunity. (A Jewish Lobby, maybe the first). The Catholic Church did not like it, many members of the Nobility did not like it and especially the people did not like it. No other "ethnic minority" had such a privilege.

From the XVI century untill the beggining of the XVIII, with the advent of the Santa Inquisição (Inquisituon) and some "radical Catholic" (the Opus Dei is for children when compaired to those) orders were the Jews "really opressed".
Not obstanding, many individual Jews were (privileged) workers of the crown and bankers.
Which infuriated the Christian people.

"During this period (XVIII century), Europe was already a cultural reality"

Europe was a "cultural reality" even earlier. If you do not like Rome to see the link between the Roman-Germanic culture, and if you can not see the evident Greek-Slavic links of Byzantium I will not mention those early periods.
Of course you people are aware of those Greco-Roman ties but I will only mention "The Christandom."

It was because of this "cultural reality" that many Brittons, Irish, French and Germans went here to help the Portuguese, the Castillans, and the Catalans fighting the muslims.
This is also why, Santiago the Compostela was already in the X century one of the three biggest peregrinations of "Europeans", despite the peril the moslems posed. All this taking Italy as "the heart" and Rome as "the Eternal City" (of Europe).

Unknown said...

Felicie
Whether I agree with you or not depends on whether we're talking about the present time or the formative period of Nazism :)

Even now, Jews still have a strong sense of ethnic interest (in America) and if the vote is split more than it used to be between Democrat and Republican, a plausible explanation could be that neither of these two parties unambiguously supports (or opposes) Jewish ethnic interests more than the other.

But it’s clear that American Jews and certainly British Jews are far more integrated into mainstream society than they were a hundred years ago. Relatively high intermarriage rates for example demonstrate this. So it's unsurprising that voting patterns or other political behaviour is closer to that of the general white population.

100 years ago, the situation was very different. Ethnic groups in Western society were generally more exclusive and ethnic divisions (including between different white groups) were stronger. If you look at intermarriage rates between religious groups for example, they were fairly low in most countries. Certainly Jewish intermarriage rates with Gentiles were very low compared to today.

Unlike today where the link between Jewish ethnicity and political ideology is relatively weak, during the formative period of Nazism, Jews *overwhelmingly* supported anti-Western left/liberal/communist movements - to the extent that these movements would have made an insignificant impact on world history without Jewish involvement.

It's impossible to conceive of the Russian revolution for example without Marx, Lenin or Trotsky!

If you want to read details, I can strongly recommend Kevin MacDonald's Culture of Critique and Yuri Slezkine's The Jewish Century (I must confess I haven't finished the second fully yet).

You make the point that there was no centralised "Jewish" conspiracy to subvert Western society. I agree with you here. Yet the end result of this very clever, very ethnocentric minority within Western society pursuing their own perceived ethnic group interests without a centralised directing body has still been very harmful to European/European American society, history and ethnic interests.

I think it's important to point out (as Kevin MacDonald does) that at no point did ALL Jews support anti-Western causes. However in the past (though not necessarily now), Jewish attitudes have converged to the extent that I feel justified in grouping Jews together in a political context.

Afonso Henriques said...

"Judaism has been able to leave its mark, (...) on an already constituted Europe but it has contributed only a little to making Europe."

Nice you can see it as I do and as everyone should.

"the failure of European Jews over many centuries to contribute to useful knowledge"
This never happened in Spain and Portugal and especially not in the Muslim controled Portugal and Spain. Despite the Jews were expelled, Portugal and Spain went out to controle the world but had help from their former Sefardic Jewish comunities in Morocco and in the Otoman Empire. Thos Jewish comunities acted in two different ways:
1)Helped Portugal and Spain, providing knowledge in navigation from the Arab, Persian and Indian traditions;
2)Some Sefaridc Jews were capitains in muslim boats that had for missions capturing the most Christians possible (to slaves or concubines) in the costs of Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy. They (the muslims) eventually (if Jews I can not tell) reached Norhtern Europe, like Iceland, Ireland, England and, I guess Norway or Denmark.

" the right to live, was one (that) no Catholic theologian, has ever denied to the Jews — a right which no ruler in Christendom ever denied to them until the advent of Adolf Hitler.’"

The edicts in Portugal and Spain for the expulsion of Jews (based in the Catholic Church) mentioned that the Jews had to conver to Christianity, fled or face death.
The next step, the Inquisition, also both in Portugal and Spain and with the support of the Catholic Church aimed to find out "Cristãos Novos" (New(recently converted) Christians) aka JEWS and the punishment for them was to burn in a public fire like Joana d'Arc so, I guess that it implies that the Jews could have the right to live, but not in Christian lands. Like Hitler, Jews could not live in Germanic (European, maybe) lands. Aso, I think that every single European Nation behaved this way against the Jews. Portugal, Spain and Germany were not the only ones to go after Jews for being Jews, and to kill them as they intended to.

"Pope Leo X ordered the entire Talmud to be printed by a Christian printer in Rome so as to discourage anti-Semitic rumors about its contents."

Ok, but one Pope does not make the Church. The Holly Roman Apostolic Catholic Church was more anti-Semitic than the SS.

"Nazis, who were for the most part anti-Christian and certainly anti-Catholic."

From what I get it, there was something in XIX century and early XX century Europe (especially among Germanic countries) called "Spiritual Anti Semitism". That was the stand the Nazis had concerning the Vatican and Christianity. It was "the Jew that has to be killed from inside of us" to which Hitler refered to. The "Jewish/Semitic" spirit of Europe, encarnated in the Catholic Church. I think this is too metaphysical for normal people to understand.

"Their anti-Semitism was rooted in Darwinian racial theories that posited the Aryans as the master race and the Jews as untermenschen."

In what anti-semitism concerns, the spiritism was stronger than the "racial darwinism".
Go search it on Nietzsche... The gross majority of Jews in Germany that time were "racially" indistinguishible from their "Aryan" neighbours, or almost.

"The rabid rhetoric of the Nazis regarding Jews is widely supported by Muslims today. The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Jewish state of Israel a “filthy bacteria.”"
This is not truth. As I have said (and even Conservative Swede was shocked), imagine the Jews were white.
Imagine that Israel in composed of Boers and other Christian Europeans and the muslims say: That European Cruzade State in our holly Jerusalem is a "filthy bacteria". Would this be anti-semitism as well?

The Jews are not targeted, and especially not by muslims, for being Jews, they are targeted for ocupying what muslims see as muslim lands. Are Anti-Serbian Albanians and Bosnians Anti-Semites?
And in France, when white Christian French women are raped in the train stations in predominant muslim neighbourhoods by muslims, are the prepetrators being anti-semite?
Imagine the Jews were white, and half of the people (even) here would stand against Israel. This is nonesense.

"This is clearly nonsense. Christian hatred of Jews does exist, but Jew hatred has a much stronger scriptural basis in Islam than it has in Christianity. (...)
There is nothing like this in the Christian Gospels."

It is not all that nonsense when one sees that for muslims, Jews are only foreigners who will not accept Islam and thus disearve to be killed (no, wait, Jews can be Dihmis so, even according to the Koran, they are better treated than say, pagans or Africans from Darfur); Wheras Christianity is an anti Jewish moviment, Jesus was a Jew who was not considered by Jews as the real profet but even so, was able to convert all Europe (once he failed to conver his people). So, Christian are from the beggining "bad ass Jews", or worst "Europeans wannabees who want to be bad ass Jews". So, it is more anti-Jewish than Islam per se. Also, Jews killed Our Lord Jesus Christ, and we Christians have never forgiven them, have we?

Every Christian (European) blames the Jews for killing Christ, never Rome. Hasn't this metaphysical implications?

Unknown said...

Evan

I never claimed that Lenin was exclusively Jewish however he had more Jewish ancestry than Russian! The importance of this is that he felt a general affinity for Jewish interests and far more contempt for Russians that he would have had he have been Russian by race.

Lenin lauds the "great, universally progressive traits in Jewish culture: its internationalism and responsiveness to the advanced movements of the age" which is quite a contrast to how he described the Russian and Ukrainian peasant - as "savage, somnolent and glued to his pile of manure"!

Maxim Gorky quotes Lenin as saying "A smart Russian is almost always a Jew or somebody with an admixture of Jewish blood."

Was Lenin pursuing a specifically Jewish ethnic interest? Not necessarily. But it's very likely that his Jewish background contributed to his contempt for the Tsarist regime and the Russian people.

KGS said...

Afonso: "The Jews are not targeted, and especially not by muslims, for being Jews, they are targeted for ocupying what muslims see as muslim lands. Are Anti-Serbian Albanians and Bosnians Anti-Semites? And in France, when white Christian French women are raped in the train stations in predominant muslim neighbourhoods by muslims, are the prepetrators being anti-semite? Imagine the Jews were white, and half of the people (even) here would stand against Israel. This is nonesense."

Yes indeed, Jews were in fact targeted by Muslims solely for being Jews. You need to read Dr.Andrew Bostom's scholarly work "The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism". Jews were targeted especially becuase the Qur'an itself admonishes the Muslim faithful to do so, as well as sanction it. The rest of your point eludes me.

Unknown said...

Flanders Fields,
In Culture of Critique, Kevin MacDonald addresses some of those very questions you're considering rigorously and with careful documentation. Given your interest in these questions, I strongly recommend this book.

KGS said...

Dougie cut the nonsense.

You have yet to credit your sources about Lenin's supposed heritage, and yes you did indeed at first allude to Lenin being a Jew.

what's with the facination here, I fail to be impressed with any of its relevance.

Flanders Fields said...

According to KGS:

"Word of wisdom, Benjamin Freedman is an anti-Semite. a self hating Jew and anything he has ever said has to be viewed under that rubrik".

That is a line of demonizing propaganda. Of course, Freedman was against Zionism. He said so. I don't think he professed to hate himself, however, and leaves that to others.

Maybe you should listen to him again. Or, maybe listen to him for the first time.

Unknown said...

kgs
I don’t dispute that Finns supported Bolshevism BEFORE the revolution. The point is, they supported Bolshevism when Bolshevism supported their own ethnic interests. They (collectively because obviously there’ll be individual exceptions) stopped supporting Bolshevism when it became clearly opposed to their own ethnic interests.

You claim Finnish support for the Reds waned *solely* because of Mannerheim’s military success. So you don’t think having a large foreign Communist neighbour with territorial and historical claims on their country had anything to do with it? My judgement suggests you’re wrong but you’re welcome to back up your claim with facts.

Lenin recognised Finnish independence because he had to. At the time he didn’t have the military resources to oppose it and was more interested in appeasing Germany and other foreign powers so that he could consolidate in Russia. The communist satisfaction with this state of affairs is demonstrated by Stalin’s actions in 1939.

You claim that the Jewish people Diamed and myself have in mind viewed themselves not as Jews but as assimilated members of their parents societies. In some cases that may be true, in other cases most certainly not and in the remainder, it’s impossible to tell. Certainly, Jewish communists didn’t want to emphasise their Jewish background because they wanted to appeal to the general population of the countries in which they were agitating. Sorry to repeat myself but In Culture of Critique, Kevin MacDonald explores in depth the way in which Jewish dominated movements have sought to hide their Jewish dominated character in many ways, for example by appointing sympathetic gentile spokesmen, by adopting Gentile names and the outward appearances of Gentile culture.

Given the Jewish dominance of the Communist leadership during the Russian revolution I’m quite mystified as to why you think the ethnic character of this political movement is irrelevant.

Unknown said...

kgs

I'm trying to have a serious discussion here and I don't appreciate "cut the nonsense" coming from somebody who provides references for nothing that he writes but criticises me for not documenting Lenin's ethnic background. Can you not use google yourself? Are you familiar with wikipedia?

To humour you, may I refer you to The Jewish Century page 163, 338 by Yuri Slezkine (incidentally a Jewish author)

OR

A. S. Lindemann - The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs

But of course, you could just check wiki within 20 seconds.

Evan said...

I never claimed that Lenin was exclusively Jewish however he had more Jewish ancestry than Russian!

LOL.

The importance of this is that he felt a general affinity for Jewish interests and far more contempt for Russians that he would have had he have been Russian by race...But it's very likely that his Jewish background contributed to his contempt for the Tsarist regime and the Russian people.

Ah, the Judaism of blood and not of actual religious confession. Where have we seen this kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder before? Hint: not in traditional Christian anti-Semitism (e.g., in Inquisition-era Spain), where the stain of Judaism could be at least somewhat obviated by conversion.

As an aside, Lenin was the child of two Christian parents.

Are you willing to go on the record and specify exactly how much "Jewish background" it takes to create "general affinity for Jewish interests" and "contempt" for Russians or other host majorities? Have the distinguished scientists of the caliber of Kevin MacDonald that you place such great stock in come up with some sort of precise scientific formula?

Fjordman originally asked us to contemplate "the sources of anti-Semitism." What you think they are is rapidly becoming clear.

Armance said...

"The "disapora" nature of those considering themselves jews is similar to the transnational nature of leftism."

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I believe this is an explanation. I guess the instinctive sympathy of a majority of the Jews for transnational structures derives from that.

Diamed said...

I only mentioned jews because this is an article about anti-semitism. Second, Lenin was 1/4 jewish, which is the same standard Israel uses to allow jews to immigrate to Israel, so that seems to be the consensus of what makes one a jew.

Third, latvians and the like all put together couldn't match the jewish involvement in communism, especially the bolshevik USSR. Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, Radek, Litvinov, Kamenev, Uritsky. . .

Here is what Winston Churchill had to say about jews/communism:

'There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate, Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combatting Counter-Revolution [the Cheka] has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses'

To the extent that jews are heading the modern day Chekas, ACLU, ADL, SPLC, etc, etc--the backlash will be the exact same. Instead of looking at the west as morally diseased whenever they harbor any animosity to jews, and treating jews like perfect angels who have never done anything wrong in all history, (a perfectly liberal world-view of victimology) reasonable blame should be placed on both sides and antisemitism should cease being a bogeyman which dictates our actions. The idea that the west should be preserved because we are better friends of the jews than muslims is so self-effacing, so groveling, I don't care whether it's true or not. No matter how friendly we are to jews, we have a right to live and be whoever we please in our own land. If the scholars decide jews really are better off to live in muslim lands, just hypothetically, is that sufficient cause to hand over Europe to Islam? If so, we are lapdogs not men. If not, why do we care?

John Savage said...

Dougie wrote:

"Even now, Jews still have a strong sense of ethnic interest (in America) and if the vote is split more than it used to be between Democrat and Republican, a plausible explanation could be that neither of these two parties unambiguously supports (or opposes) Jewish ethnic interests more than the other."

This is an important observation. The bone that the Republicans hold out to the Jews is a hawkish, pro-Israel foreign policy; the Democrats cater to Jews with the idea of a diverse, tolerant society. About 1/3 of Jews wind up prioritizing the former, and the other 2/3 the latter. Marxism and neoconservatism are both mainly Jewish movements -- they just don't completely agree on what's best for the Jews. That does not mean that they don't both define the best policies according to the standard of what benefits Jews.

Indeed, you could find areas where the Jewish ethnic interest is clear, and so 90%+ of Jews are in agreement. Most Republican Jews would agree that Jews benefit from a "diverse" and "tolerant" society, and that Western societies ought to be "open societies" in the George Soros sense. They only vote Republican because they put the security of Israel higher on their list of priorities. So what we have is two mainly Jewish movements competing for Jewish votes.

Sagunto said...

[quote=afonso]
"..Ok, but one Pope does not make the Church. The Holly Roman Apostolic Catholic Church was more anti-Semitic than the SS.."

I won't ask you to corroborate this "statement" of yours with some sound scholarly evidence, but limit my response to the first part. One Pope doesn't make the Church? Okay then, here's a short list of a few more popes who were decidedly philo-semitic (source: rabbi David G. Dahlin, the historian also mentioned by Fjordman):

First a few quotes:

From historian Thomas Madden: "of all medieval institutions, the [Catholic] Church stood alone in Europe in its consistent condemnation of Jewish persecutions." Prof. Madden adds to this "the only safe place in Europe to be a Jew was in the lands of the pope."

Renowned scholar in Jewish history Cecil Roth, editor in chief of the Encyclopedia Judaica. Roth was the most prolific Jewish historian and 20th C's preeminent Jewish scholar of papal-Jewish relations. And what was his verdict?
Roth:
"Of all the dynasties in Europe, the papacy not only refused to persecute the Jews.. but through the ages popes were protectors of the Jews. The truth is that the popes and the Catholic Church from the earliest days of the Church were never responsible for physical persecution of Jews and only Rome, among the capitals of the world, is free from having been a place of Jewish tragedy. For this we Jews must have gratitude."

Note that this highly esteemed scholar speaks about 'the papacy', not just one Pope.

So, Afonso pay attention, here's the list then:

Pope Gregory I (590-604), a.k.a. 'the Great', praised by Jewish 14th C philosopher Judah Mosconi as "a great philosopher who delved into Hebrew books.. and loved Jews very much and made for them grat deliverances [from harm] in his days." He wrote the historic decree Sicut Judaeis, which introduced all subsequent papal edicts defending the Jews. He affirmed that the Jews "should have no infringement of their rights.. We forbid to vilify the Jews. We allow them to live as Romans and to have full authority over their possessions."

Pope Calixtus II (1119-1124): this pope's promised defense of the Jews (in urgent need of reinforcement after Crusade I) was reissued at least twenty-two times by successive popes between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries (apparently this was needed. If only some people in that period had been more "papist")

Pope Gregory X (1271-1276)
Pope Clement VI (1342-1352)
Pope Boniface IX (1389-1403)
Pope Martin V (1417-1431)

Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484): deeply interested in Hebrew literature. One of the most philo-Semitic Renaissance popes.

Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503)
Pope Julius II (1503-1513)

Pope Leo X (1513-1521): Roth has pointed out that Leo X was so well regarded by the Jews of his day that it was said that the Jews of Rome considered his pontificate "a presage of messianic times."

Pope Clement VII (1523-1534)
Pope Paul III (1534-1549)

Pope Benedict XIV: produced an official report, known as "one of the most remarkable, broad-minded and humane documents in the history of the Catholic Church -a document which will always cause his memory to be cherished in gratitude and affection by the Jewish people." [Roth] It was a scholarly investigation of all reported cases of Jewish ritual murder in history. It established the complete lack of any basis for the accusation.

Pope Clement XIV
Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903)
Pope Pius X (1903-1914)
Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922)
Pope Pius XI (1922-1939)

Pope Pius XII (1939-1958): this pope and his "papist organization" managed (according to Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide in his meticulously researched 1967 book Three Popes and the Jews) "to save at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands." It is now certain that he personally managed to hide many Jews in his papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. Of course there always will remain some who would rather listen to the accusations and myths of non-historians like Mr. Goldhagen or German playwrite and friend of Holocaust-denier Irving, Herr Rolf Hochhuth. I'd only say to such people "think again", probably to no avail though.

Pope John XXIII (1958-1963)

Pope Paul VI (1963-1978): refused to accept award for his rescue work on behalf of Jews during the Holocaust. He declined, saying, "All I did was ny duty, and besides I only acted upon orders from the Holy Father [Pius XII]."
Pope John Paul II (1978-2005)
Pope Benedict XVI (2005- )

Unknown said...

Evan

You've found an important point of misunderstanding here. I'm discussing Jews as an ethnic group and a cultural identity. If you wish to consider Judaism only as a religion then ok, go ahead. It's a great source of trouble in the English language that generally the same word is used for an ethnic group and its corresponding nationality or in this case religion.

The problem is, thinking solely in terms of religion is going to prevent you from understanding one of the decisive forces of history and politics: ethnicity.

No, I don't think it's a matter of Nazi style calculating somebody's racial background (although it's indisputable that Jews have racial characteristics and genetic markers which non Jews don't share). What's important here is ethnic identity and allegiance. So the answer to the question of how much racially Jewish background it takes to determine somebody's ethnic identity or loyalty is going to depend on each individual.

I don’t think that for somebody to have Jewish ancestry makes that person anti-Gentile. But it is likely to conflict with explicit racial loyalty (or patriotism if you prefer) to the Gentile civilisation he lives in. It’s certainly going to influence that person towards having a more universalist political viewpoint rather than a patriotic or nationalistic one.

It’s quite clear that in Britain, the universalist instincts of Jewish (or part Jewish) politicians has had an important impact on opening immigration, propulsion of multi-culturalism and subversion of British culture.

As for the sources of anti-Semitism, I've tried to be dispassionate and objective about human history. I'm convinced that ethnic conflict is an innate human instinct - though not necessarily shared by all races to the same degree. Given that ethnic conflict is innate, there's little exceptional about ethnic conflict involving Jews and Gentiles - only except that they've historically shared the same territory so conflict is exacerbated.

Anonymous said...

With regard to why Hitler hated the Jews, there's a very interesting passage in Albert Speer's Spandau: The Secret Diaries. On pgs 29-30:
"It is generally admitted that Hitler admired what he hated; it is really more accurate to say he hated what he admired. His hatred was admiration that he refused to acknowledge. That is true of the Jews, of Stalin, of communism in general."

I think that quote can apply to more people than Hitler. I would say that most anti-Semites are jealous of the success of the Jews. It seems to me that Jewish people are often more educated and successful (I don't mean that in a bad way at all) and have contributed so much to civilisation. Some (i.e. anti-Semites) people just can't stand this.

Of course, there are also stupid people who just hate Jews for no good reason at all.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

Jewish voting trends are clear.
They are as monolithic in their voting as are blacks. But Jewicidal tendencies also involve taking out Christianity with them. Why else would there be so many Jewish lawyers representing the Jihadis?

As cruel as is is to say, I sometimes think the only jews to survive the Holocust were those with Sonderkommando in their blood, because the vast bulk of the US Jewish population seems to be just that, Sonderkommandos. And that includes any Jew stupid enough to vote for the Democrats, who are truely anti-semetic, and have consistantly backed those who would perpetrate more holocusts.

Flanders Fields said...

My consideration of the arguments against leftism are not against jews, nor for them. I think few of us have previously considered the questions in regard to jewish influence being a predominate factor in the advance of leftism. Maybe it is past time that we did. It may or may not be for the benefit of jews "as a community" and maybe it is something that they should consider themselves. There may be more to the answer than anyone expects. I have the impression that many of the jews operate with an attitude which can be called an instinctive self-defense mechanism and fail to consider the larger questions for themselves.

One article I recommend on considering the nature of the leftist structure is:

http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/idealogical_war.pdf

This writer takes a view, which I share, that the Israeli's and the jewish supporters of Israel are being treated in the same manner as the rest of us in the West. The advances of Islam in the West are another aspect of the "equality" which we share. The thrust of the article is toward the organizational structures and the goals of leftists. It does a good job in identifying the general major aspects of leftism.

That doesn't mean that there is not a "jewish" (or other) component to the leftist structures. In this age of the "post-Christain" West, the prevelant structures of leftism, with cooperation of media, are able to influence the thought processes of many specific groups as well as the general masses. It is a science which may lead to "post-Western" paganism, unless we find the answers and the antidote. The leftist movement against free speech is designed to prevent us from ever finding the answers.

If it is jewish communiatarian culture or the influence from other sources which are feeding the anti-American and anti-Western mentalities being spread in our own cultures, we need to reverse whatever is feeding it. Jews who are interested in reversing what is happening will be as interested in the answers to these questions as the rest of us. They are among those who will be in the bowing serf position along with other patriotic, nationalistic or ethnic Western peoples who will all be answering to oligarchiac rulers.

Afonso Henriques said...

Please, do not limit this debate to the Third Reich.

@Felice,
"why did the Nazis kill Catholic nuns of Jewish descent? How did it advance their fight against communism or "pernicious" Jewish religion with its evil Talmud?"

Was this before or after the War of 1939?
War is war, no rules. We have to be ruthless in war, as Americans were in Iwo Jima and other areas of the Pacific, like Nagasaki.

"It doesn't make sense to ascribe an agenda to an ethnic group that is not otherwise politically organized."

The Jews were/are no less politically organised than the muslims are today. I'd add that they were mcuh more so (and I am not Anti-Semitic, I am pro Israel).

"ascribing an agenda to a group based on their ethnicity alone and regardless of their adherence to a religion or political movement is demonization."

Hitler wanted an all German Germany. If you forget this basic principle, you will not be able to discuss the "Jewish question".

@KGS

What happens with the Finns? They are a people with no History, no Tradition and had made a great XX century, since the begging, fighting the Soviets towards the end, founding Nokia. What's their secret?

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

I lack the language skills to find out, but I often wonder if 1920's Germany had Jews using the courts to spit on Christianity the way they have been doing it in the US for the last 30 years. I wonder why the German people could be so behind the destruction of a religion. Could it be that they saw it as self defense, a second strike?

Modern Jews better wake up. They are so heavily hedged in anti-Christian activities that the lid could blow, and never again could become once again.

But first, they will rush to hand us over to the Muslims, bound and gagged, as so to trade us for a few more years of miserable existance for themselves. The race is on, will they be successful, or will we wake up first?

Bela said...

I would like to add my comment from street level thus staying clear from abstract rationalization which rather obfuscate than elucidate the subject.

The horror of Nazi Germany was clear to the greatest Germans of the time like Marlene Dietrich, E.M.Remarque, Thomas Mann, Willi Brandt etc. and all these Germans had the moral fortitude and courage to stand up and publicly denounce the abject bestiality what their fellow Germans committed.
In the end the inventors and purveyors of Nazi ideology were hanged at Nurnberg.

The Communist genocide and terror was equally cruel causing the death of millions worldwide, I was one of the countless victim.
Please show me ONE prominent Jewish individual who stood up and denounced the Jewish George Lukacs and the Communist terror in the name of the Jewish people.

( "Lukacs, who was considered the most brilliant Marxist theorist since Marx himself, said in 1919, "Who will save us from Western Civilization?" He also theorized that the great obstacle to the creation of a Marxist paradise was the culture: Western civilization itself."
http://www.academia.org/lectures/lind1.html

This guy was a cruel Communist leader in Hungary in 1919 killing many and the Co-inventor of the infamous "political correctness". No prominent Jewish leader ever distanced the Jewish people from these a animals who were the equivalent of Goebbels. Chomsky the Commie Jew was never criticized by the Jewish community for his anti-Americanism and support of genocide (Khmer Rouge).
Instead of putting them on trial for instigating murder they are called Intellectuals and getting deferential treatment.

As soon as we say they were 90% Jewish...the spin starts: But they were not religious...they were atheist...
So if George Soros (Schwartz) mother and father was both Jewish then what is this guy ethnicity?

Unless our plan is to be a Scholar in History we'd better look around in the today's world and accept the salient reality:

DIAMED you are correct by stating:

"The Jews have not stopped their socialist crusade. They are still the bulwark of the left wing in every country they reside. This leads to stuff like unlimited immigration, gay marriage, wealth redistribution, 'hate speech' laws, etc, etc. Antisemitism as a natural backlash to this agitation is sure to repeat as well."

Felicie: You are correct too:"
The fact is that people were killed simply because of their DNA and not because of any ideology or religion they espoused."
In Europe not the professed religion that counts but the family lineage - even today - I am European I can attest it.

dougie:
"In the murderous Hungarian communist government of 1919, 95% of the leaders were Jewish"

I am of Hungarian descent: You are absolute right. In 1945 they returned from the Soviet Union and continued the Red terror at the point where they abandoned in 1919.
The uprising of 1956 swept the top away but the Party apparatchnik remained in place.

kgs:

5.)" When Diamed as well as yourself speak of Jews, you are pointing to Jews who had long distanced themselves from their Jewish heritage."

Hogwash. When the Western German gov. - back then - offered financial compensation to the Eastern European Jews, all the rabid Commie Party members reverted to their Jewish origin to get the money. Do you think that they put on the application questionnaire as "Atheist?"

The classic saying that "the revolution devours its own children" is becoming a lasting paradigm:
The most vicious antisemitism bordering the sinister call for the physical annihilation of Israel is coming from the Hardcore Left, including the Jewish Left...and from this point on the future appears to bleak for all of us.

Whiskey said...

Fjordman -- Jews vote Democratic out of loyalty. Truman recognized Israel despite great domestic opposition, and Eisenhower was opposed to it, killing the Suez agreement with Israel, UK, France to seize the Suez and defeat Nasser.

That is slowly eroding as the contradiction of Democratic coalition politics (Blacks are anti-semitic) takes place, but it is slow.

What is interesting is to compare the history of anti-Semitism and the societies. Neither Cyrus nor Pharoahs cared much one way or the other about Jews other than a subject peoples, nor did the Greeks who ruled them after the Persians. The Romans were ruthless (typically Roman), but anti-Jewish sentiment happened in Rome only when Jews presented a threat.

Jews suffer persecution often/always, presumably there is something about being Jewish that has a strong appeal and keeps people who are Jewish staying Jewish despite strong outside pressures. Jews do not seek out converts. But Rome had a problem -- too many were becoming Jews, with the criticism implied of polytheism, worshiping the State/People instead of God, and the desire for a love-based relationship with God. This was the same problem Mohammed had with Jews who were in the Arabian peninsula. They were gaining too many converts, from people who wanted simple, generous, moral rules and emotional comfort in brutal times.

Throughout History, Jews present a critique by existing of the worship of the State (Nazis, Rome, Communists, Islamists), the ethnic "volk" (Nazis, Blacks, various European nationalist movements, perhaps some Islamists). Therefore it is not surprising they are persecuted. The corrupt, cruel, bankrupt, and uncertain ideologies do have much to fear from these critiques.

It is interesting that groups that were secure, confident, believing in themselves, their history, their destiny, had little if any anti-Semitism: Greek post-Alexandrian kingdoms, England circa 1750-1900, and America. Heck Disreali became Prime Minister in the 1800's. George Washington and a Rhode Island synagoge exchanged respectful letters.

IMHO Anti-Semitism is the leading indicator that a polity is "broken" and fearful, corrupt, brutal, and knows it too. It is a symptom of something so profoundly bad at the core of a society that only the fixation on critiques (by people living another life among them or around them) and the desire to kill those living that other life will do.

Afonso Henriques said...

@ Fjordman:

C'mon!!!

"The Nazis killed Jews because they hated Western civilization and wanted to destroy it."
"The West has at least two parent cultures, as Brague indicates: The Greek and the Hebrew ones."

So, Fjordman, in your opinion who was in power in Europe for the last centuries that did not work against Western Civilisation?

Also, are the West just a mixture of Greek and Jewish culture?

Damn, you must hate Rome...

"The essence of the Greek achievement was thus rejected by the Nazis (they were clearly not great believers in free speech and unfettered debate)"

Can you please be more specific?

" Nazism was essentially a new religion of Jihadism, which had more in common with the ruthlessness of Islam than with the silly compassion of Christianity."
What???

I am wondering what you'll say in that essay about the "Indo European roots of Europe".

"The Nazis killed Jews because they represented the moral dimension of Western culture."

More or less, they (and Christianity) represented the "Semitic" overthrown of a spiritual "Aryan" Europe.

I read your essay "Christianity, part of the problem or the solution" and I thought you followed my conclusion.

Christianity, especially since the Coucil Vatican II has become too "Semitic" spiritually speaking.
What we need is a more Indo-EUROPEAN Christianity, able to realise Cruzades, be a light in the dark when Rome fall, and to persue the ideal of the nobel knight.
It is too metaphysical.

Of course the Holocaust was an aborent event but at least, the Nazis loved Germanic (European) culture and did not imported immigrants to destroy Western culture so,
people, do not demonise the Nazis, please. They had many flaws so, stick to reality and criticise their flaws.

"When it comes down to disliking Jews, you have the pathological hatred that seems to come from Islam, and then you have folks like me who notice that every time you turn around, there is a Jewish lawyer or judge trying to assault our culture."
by Mister Smarterthanyou.

So, you see, Jews are not (so) hated for being Jews (as white males are for being white), they are hated for what they have done.

You can call me a Communist again, Conservative Swede, I am prepared now. :)

Flanders Fields said...

The following article discusses "norm-creating" behavior in regard to the international left and how this is potentially fatal to American sovereignty. It is very similar in reasoning to what seems to be most widely charged against the jews, under a community-concept, for their behavior in influencing American policies to the left.

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=15193&t=New+UN+doctrine+forces+US+to+act


R2P is very similar to PC. We can see how destructive, or even fatal, it can be to our national ability to resist domination on the national levels by the UN. A similar effect is claimed to result from jewish community concepts, irregardless of considerations on the national and international levels.

Fjordman said...

Mr. Smarterthanyou: You're clearly on the wrong website. I just pointed out that the persons mainly warning against the Islamization of the West are actually Jews, including, but by no means limited to, Bat Ye'or and Andrew Bostom. You're a textbook anti-Semite. Take a hike. You don't belong here.

Dougie: I would like to hear you explain anti-Semitism prior to the twentieth century. Those Jews who were killed during the Middle Ages, was that due to Communism, too? I've read Kevin MacDonald. I don't like him, and I don't consider him to be a credible source.

Flanders Fields: Again, why is this man relevant here? And no, anti-Semitism is not a reaction to modern Zionism. It existed a long, long time before this.

Afonso Henriques: Your idea that the Islamic rhetoric about Jews is not caused by anti-Semitism is so ridiculous that I don't take you seriously. Try reading Andrew Bostom's latest book. I already have.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...
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Mr. Smarterthanyou said...
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Afonso Henriques said...

Armance,
"That's why I understand why so many Jews sympathize with an open-border society: it is beneficial for their survival. I fully understand them."

Benefical how?
Interesting concerning "how open" Jews have been in Gaza.

Armance, I agree with some 85% of what you said about Hitler and when I said it, people asked me "So, do you want all Jews to be expelled to Israel?" and the sort. People do not get that if the Jews had a state, they had somewhere to go. It would be avoided.

"Jews are disproportionately represented among those defending European civilization (think Andrew Bostom, Bat Ye'or, David Littman, etc.)"
Fjordman, this is, defending Israel, defending their interests. Nothing especial...

"I agree that Nazism shares similarities with modern Islam"

Yes, both are destructive...

Sorry once more Fjordman:

"I'm Germanic too (Scandinavian). (...) the oldest still functioning parliament in the world is the Althing on Iceland, founded in 930 AD by people of Norwegian, (...) descent. (...) the blueprint for this institution was not the Greek model of "democracy," it was an indigenous, pre-Christian one. These Germanic societies had regional governing assemblies called ting or thing already in the Middle Ages. (...) Creating a totalitarian state is not a specifically "Germanic" thing to do. Traditional Germanic societies, all the way back to Roman times, probably had more freedom for women than many other, more "civilized" cultures had at the time. The repressive state the Nazis created has no precedent in traditional northern European history. Which means that the Nazis didn't just attack the Greek and Hebrew components of Western civilization, but also the Germanic one."

Yes, the Northerners had the "thing", the Celts had an autochratic system all over Western Europe where a family was represented by a man and all man (with families) were considered equal and there was no King, just a very sapient religious philosopher (the Druid). The warriors were usually young man with no family and the fathers also did fight to protect the group. The fathers elected the cheif of the army. Every people had it's own model and in Indo-European/Christian societies, it was pretty much the same. I think you should not claim democracy to be Germanic or something.

Also, creating a totalitarian State is the Human thing to do. It is also the European thing to do when things are not good, and in 1933, things were not well in Germany.

The Romans used to consider a dictator to be a usefull and legitimate vehicle to achieve order and the normal function of society. It was only temporary. Also, Nazi Germany were not all that repressive was it? I mean, to "real" non Communist Germans.

"Traditional Germanic societies, all the way back to Roman times, probably had more freedom for women than many other, more "civilized" cultures had at the time."
That myth about the freedom of Germanic woman, is just it, a myth.
I am yet to see an evidence of it, and, by the way woman are raped in Oslo, it seems that that freedom is almost equal with despize.
But comparing Ancient Rome to Germania of the time and call the Germans civilised...
The question is, democracy is not good per se and a "totalitarian" state is too European and does not have to go against Europe. Look at Rome.

" find a specific quote from Hitler’s speeches or Mein Kampf or from another leading Nazi that explicitly criticises the Jews for being too “moral”."

No, the Jews were considere imoral by the Nazis. Many Nazi propaganda attest this.

Fjordman said...

Mr. Smarterthanyou: You don't seem very smart, considering that name. I've said before that you're not welcome here. I suggest you go somewhere else. There are millions of websites on the Internet. You're not welcome here.

Unknown said...

Fjordman, you ask me to explain anti-Semitism before the 20th century. Firstly, I think specifically Jewish agitation against Western societies started long before this.

But your question supposes that there's something unusual or exceptional to explain. I don't think there is. I think racial conflict is inevitable when different races try to live in the same societies. I don't want to completely discount religious influences on anti-Semitism. Of course it's all part of the mix.

The point is, even if Jews had adopted Christianity, the mere fact that racially and culturally different people are trying to share the same territory would have been sufficient for conflict and violence.

I live in Scotland where Irish immigration from almost 200 years ago still leaves a simmering legacy of ethnic violence, ie. people still die for being of the wrong ethnic group. Certainly, religion is used as a badge by both sides of the conflict but the most violent people from both sides know nothing of religious details, in fact few of them would ever go to church at all. Just as with much of the problems we see with Islam in Europe, most of the conflict is of ethnic rather than religious nature - even if many people posting here would prefer to deny it. Put it like this: the vast majority of the immigrant "youth" rioting through Paris or Bradford don't go to a mosque and don't really care about Islam other than as a badge of ethnic identity.

Note that I'm NOT saying Islam doesn't contribute to the problem at all - of course it does. But even if all the North Africans and Asians and Arabs were Christian, the cultural and racial differences would still cause conflict.

Likewise with Jewish/Christian interaction in previous centuries. To be fair another influence is likely the different economic niches that Jews and Christians used to fill - I’m prepared to believe that economic jealousy may have been a minor factor in some instances too. Certainly the exclusive nature of traditional Jewish society must have contributed, ie.different ethical standards for dealing with their own ethnic/religious group relative to wider society.

I think it’s interesting to consider relations between Gypsies/Roma and European people relative to the Jews. Generally speaking relations were also very poor and often involved violence. Likewise the relations between the Diaspora Chinese and their host societies throughout South East Asia, the Indians in Kenya, the whites in Zimbabwe etc.

I’m not sure why you’re distrustful of MacDonald, his work seems far better researched and substantiated than any criticism of it I’ve seen. If you’re aware of inaccuracies I’d be interested if you could point them out.

In summary, it’s not typical for an otherwise ethnically homogenous society to have good relations with an ethnic minority in any circumstances. If that minority becomes conspicuously successful economically or agitates against the host majority establishment, it’s logical to expect that relations will worsen.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...
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Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

PS.

Fjordman, you seem incapable of defeating my argements. So in telling me to go away instead, you unmask yourself.

And from what I understand, Baron and Dymphnia run this site, and I have been careful to stay within the bounds of what they want. You are an excellent poster, however, you are gun shy from being slapped by the PC police yourself, and are now reaching out to slap others to prove yourself to them. To prove yourself to the enemy. You are turning into Charles Johnson.

Afonso Henriques said...

KGS,
"When Diamed as well as yourself speak of Jews, you are pointing to Jews who had long distanced themselves from their Jewish heritage. For all practical purposes, these Russian Jews, as well as German Jews viewed themselves not as Jews, but as Russians and Germans. Ironically, you and diamed are reminding them of their jewishness that they were all too willing to do away with themselves."

Just as African-Americans are for all the purposes, Americans;
And Waloons in Belgium are for all the purposes Belgians;
And Muslims in Marseille are for all the purposes Marseillese;

But the Jews were also Jews, religiously speaking. Jews were a ethnic minoriy. It is a fact. I recently saw somewhere that the Nazis tolerated "Germans" who were a quarter "Jewish". And this Jewish did not meant racially Semitic. It had to do with ethnicity/religion. In a word, Semitic vs Aryan spirit.

The Jews are not this or that. They are Jews, than comes the rest. Gypsies in Romania are Gypsies, they are not Romanians first. It's normal. Try to blend the Jews into the mainstream by force is not.

"the entire issue of whether a person was "Jewish or not" concerning Communist ideology is entirely irrelevant, it is the ideology itself that is at issue"

Agreed one hundred per cent.
But it can nonetheless lead "gentiles" to misstrust "Jews".

In Bolivia, all the Indians and Mestizos are mainly Communists, the whites are mainly capitalist and pro American.
There are an ethnic division behinde a ideological one. Accept the facts.

Fjordman said...

Mr. Smarterthanyou: You don't have arguments, which means there is nothing to defeat. You're a classic troll.

Afonso: What do you mean by "Semitic spirit"? Christianity is based on "Semitic spirit," which is precisely why the Nazis hated it. You're proving my point.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Afonso Henriques said...

As I said KGS, the Jews have dihmi status in the Koran, so they are treated better than many other ethnicities/religions.

Also, in the Al Andalus, Jews were less mistreated by muslims than Christians were.

And it seems that Christians treated Jews worst after the Reconquista than muslims did.

I firmly believe that, before 1948, muslims treated worst Christians than Jews in such an extent that when the Moors first came to invade the Iberian Peninsula, the Jews looked to the muslims as brothers who were there to liberate them. After all, aren't Arabians ant the "core" of islam semites as well?

The rest of my comment was a provocation. "Imagine the Jews were white".

Do you think that Arabs see the Jews as you do? Don't you think that when they see an Ashekanazi, they see an European? Don't the third worlders who hate Israel see Israel as an European colonie? A place where Europeans can dump their Jews?

Imagine the Jews were white. Imagine the Jews were an all European ethnicity and were Christians. Were they be aloud to stand as they do?

Concerning the Serbs and the French women.

When there is violence against an ethnic minority, there is violence against an unproptected "member" of the society.

When there is violence against a Jew, it is Anti-Semitism (even when it is practiced by fellow Semites or fellow Jews), it is Hitler coming back from the grave, it is everybody helping because one of the people of God was hurted. (Though when it comes to Israel...)

When there is violence against white the reaction is:
It's white, who cares... it time for the peoples of Europe to burn in flames for being for century so apparantly superior to third worlders.
From Serbia to France, it's all the same.

Fjordman said...

Dougie: OK, I don't agree with you on everything, but you're more logically coherent than certain other people here. You are right that there are some parallels with ethnic minorities elsewhere. The Chinese in Southeast Asia are sometimes called "the Jews of Asia." The do disproportionately well in the financial sector, and are sometimes hated and envied because of this. There were vicious attacks against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia some years ago, although this is hard to separate from the fact that the majority population are Muslims whereas the Chinese usually are not. The same for Singapore and Malaysia.

There is frequently mistrust and envy against distinct ethnic minorities that do better, on average, than the majority population does. This also goes for Indians in East Africa, yes. However, there is something special about the hatred against Jews, more than just envy. I suspect this is because both of the largest religions in the world, Christianity and Islam, claim to have the same God as the Jews, but that their texts abrogate the Jewish texts. There is thus a religious dimension here as well.

Fjordman said...

Afonso: I agree that there is vicious racism and violence against whites, which is considered perfectly OK in the media. I disagree with you on pretty much everything else. You have the annoying habit of talking about Jews and Gays in pretty much every single thread here, even those which have absolutely nothing to do with either of these groups, which is most of them. Do you have a Jew fetishism?

Afonso Henriques said...

Evan,
"Ah, the Judaism of blood and not of actual religious confession. Where have we seen this kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder before? Hint: not in traditional Christian anti-Semitism (e.g., in Inquisition-era Spain), where the stain of Judaism could be at least somewhat obviated by conversion."

First, I have to say that during Inquisition times in Portugal and Spain, Jewish blood could not be "obviated" by conversion.
The first edicts of expulsion, were laws called "Limpeza de Sangue" meaning "Cleaness of Blood". In this edicts, Jews had to "convert or fled, otherwise they would face death".

However, when the Inquisition came, it especialised in founding "Cristãos Novos" (New Christians), Jews who had converted to Christianity.
Those "New Christians" were then torturated untill they confess they were practicing Jewish rituals. The "obviation" did not come from conversion but from money.
Many Jews paid and were protected by the King or the authorities. The Jews lived in "Judiarias" (Jewish Neigbourhoods?) away from the Christians once one detraction was enough for the Inquisition to act.

Second, I want to say that, if one is not "Jew" by blood and religion, one is more attached to the people, for instance, Russians, than if one is Jewish by blood OR by religion. It is a very European concept, to have Nations, that means, a united demos.
That's why Nationalism pops in so many times in Gates of Vienna.

--------------------------

"The idea that the west should be preserved because we are better friends of the jews than muslims is so self-effacing, so groveling, I don't care whether it's true or not. No matter how friendly we are to jews, we have a right to live and be whoever we please in our own land. If the scholars decide jews really are better off to live in muslim lands, just hypothetically, is that sufficient cause to hand over Europe to Islam? If so, we are lapdogs not men. If not, why do we care?"

Amén Diamed, amén!

Diamed said...

Isn't their resentment of minorities who do worse as well? Gypsies, blacks, etc? If you're a minority who goes on welfare a lot, does a lot of crime, litters and trashes a neighborhood, I doubt you instill much love.

So I guess we'd need a minority that is exactly like us in every way to avoid being disliked. Or you could just say diversity always leads to mutual hate and distrust and leave it at that?

Sagunto said...

@Fjordman,

First of all, I admire you for having taken on the Herculean task of shedding some light upon the vast subject of anti-semitism in the short space of an essay.

I'd like to step back a bit from the "Uncle Adolf"/(National) Socialism discussion, and ask a few things that might be up for discussion, this being a preliminary piece, open to debate.

Here goes:

- the title announces a search for the causes of anti-semitism, which in the txt gets narrowed down to Christian anti-semitism. Yet what follows is sort of a documented opinion-piece about the history of anti-semitism in Europe. I have read very little about ideas concerning actual causes.
I believe you've read some of the work by Rodney Stark. He offers some hypotheses about probable causes for religious intolerance to increase during periods of intense religious strife. The mechanism he offers is of course open to debate but it is about causes. Perhaps the essay you're working on would be more aptly titled: history of Christian anti-semitism? Or perhaps "sources" instead of causes? Anyway, when it reads "causes" one thinks of a lot more than just a selection from the historical research on the subject.

- About this quote:
"..Rémi Brague explains how the Romans admired the earlier culture of the Greeks. Christians also recognized that the Jews had an older religious tradition than they did themselves and that they were greatly indebted to it.."

I understand the analogy Brague constructs in order to offer some kind of explanatory perspective. But what immediately comes to mind is the fact that there's a flipside of the same construction which says that the Romans did have somewhat of a cultural "inferiority complex" in relation to the Greeks; so Christian/Jewish culture likewise? Moreover: when anti-semitism is concerned, why not mention the vast body of Greek anti-semitical literature (originating from Alexandria) that later was merely rehashed by Roman historians, like Tacitus? Christian culture/religion is partly a continuation of the Roman empire, so there's an obvious link here one would reckon. And to do justice to both the Greeks and Romans one should not forget that there were always a lot of "god-fearers" that admired the Jewish idea of a single God. These people supported the Jews throughout the Empire.
Here's a link on the subject of Ancient anti-semitism that might interest you. Christian anti-semitism didn't fall out of the sky and mentioning some ancient roots, however briefly, would not harm your essay i.m.o.

- Since the essay is about Christian anti-semitism, then surely the mentioning of the lasting legacy of Martin Luther's Jew hatred, should not be left untouched. His influence has been tremendous, and reading his three infamous pieces full of rabid Jew-hatred has really been a sobering experience for myself. His colleague-reformers were appaled by it, because he actually expressed genocidal sentiments and made direct calls to persecute the Jews, burn down their synagogues and so on. I understand now why Hitler consistently called Luther one of his few truly great examples. Perhaps the piece is just the beginning of a series in which Luther will at some point feature after all. In that case my amazement about the current ommission has been premature.

Kind regards from Amsterdam,
Sag.

Unknown said...

Fjordman, something special about the hatred of the Jews within Western society? Something hard to explain given their well documented efforts to undermine Western society over the past hundred years and more? Given their cynical murder of European nationalists/patriots throughout Eastern Europe, given their political, financial and media dominance throughout the West especially in the USA, given the way they’ve used that dominance to undermine Western societies, given their hypocritical treatment of the Palestinians (I do support Israel and I oppose Islam but there’s outrageous hypocrisy amongst Jews on this issue nevertheless) I don’t think there’s anything surprising or special to explain.

I don’t discount your esoteric theological explanation. But you shouldn’t discount the present and past actions of Jews either.

Fjordman said...

Afonso: If what you say is correct, then maybe some of the criticism against Spain and Portugal on this issue is actually justified.

While we're on the subject: Why did Catholic Italy do substantially better in science than did Spain and Portugal during the past 500 years? Any theories?

Unknown said...

Fjordman and Smarterthanyou, you both seem to be making unnecessary personal attacks here. You're both clearly well informed and intelligent, you've both got points to make worth reading and most of all, we're all fighting on behalf of the same Western civilisation in danger from the dangerous enemy of Islam.

Since Islam also opposes the Jews, Fjordman's instincts seem to be to embrace this third party as an ally, ignoring past and present conflict between Jews and ourselves.

Fjordman, I certainly agree that we (ie. Europeans or European Americans) should cooperate with Jews who oppose Islam - and on this basis, I support Israel.

But is it really wise to seek to shut down criticism and investigation of Jewish influence as you appear to want to do? If Jews have their own ethnic identity and ethnic interests separate from ours (and I don't think anyone here has seriously suggested they haven't) then surely, a sober analysis of Jewish actions and interests and past behaviour is sensible, especially considering the cynical way they've behaved towards us in the past.

Well, I’ve got to sign off now, it’s been an interesting and informative thread. No hard feelings Fjordman, if it means anything I think you’re doing an excellent job analysing what’s happening in Europe and Norway especially. I just think for whatever reason you’re being naive (or maybe disingenuous) on this issue.

Anyone who wants to take anything offline, please email dougie.hall@yahoo.co.uk

Afonso Henriques said...

"You have the annoying habit of talking about Jews and Gays in pretty much every single thread here, even those which have absolutely nothing to do with either of these groups, which is most of them. Do you have a Jew fetishism?"

I haven't read all the comments trough this one but going to comment I read this.

Yes, I talked about gays once or twice, I was rude (very) at least once, I have already apologise for that. I am a bit (very) homofobic in what concern homosexual male relations despite the fact that I believe gays have the right to do whatever they want in their homes. Only there. I think that public homosexuality should be, at least, opressed. I think gays should not marry and they should not adopt children. I think support gayness is sickening and frankly it is a (great) evidence of our decadent society.
In which countries have you seen gay parades and such? Why were all those countries inhabited mainly by Europeans or, in some cases colonised by Europeans or even (though I doubt it) just "Westernized".

But I usually do not talk about gays.

"Do you have a Jew fetishism?"

Jews are different. (And good for them!)
I wouldn't say that I have a fetish for Jews (nor the even about the girls at IDF) but I must say that I admire the Jews. Jewish History is unique and the way they come to become an elite in the most advanced societies of the world (the West/Europe) is fascinating. Even more so where they were so many times persecuted.
Also, we could speak about Jewish cuture (that I am not so familiar with) and the great contribution the Jews have made to Western science, for example. The saga of the Zionists and Israel is increadible.

But the reason I talk about Jews so much is the following:
1) My views on Jews (or Europeans's actions towards Jews) are polemical to say the least. And as so, when I speak the word J-e-w, I have too many people calling me this or that and a discussion arouses.
2) I am disgusted by the way people see the Jews as the eternal victims and on how it seems to be more important to serve Jewish interests than European peoples interest. I think the Jews should be treated equal with the other fellow humans. I do not see Jews as inherently especial (more or less. Nor inherently).

Did I answer your question, Fjordman?

A read once this on the net:
"Being a Jew is like being the lowest scum of all and at the same time, being the most subime form of Human existance"
Tending to understanding this paradox as somehwat/somehow real, maybe I do fetischise.

It is not my intention to offend any Jew, and if there are Jewish persons offended by this statement, I am sorry.

P.S.- I do not mention Jews all that often, do I?
------------------

Sagunto,
"Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503)"
Wow... it changed my Historical preception...

Thank you very much for this information. Though I am now very confused about it. This Pope in question was the Pope who "ordered" us to expell the Jews and establish the Inquisition.
It is very strange for him to be philo-Semitic. I did firmly believe that the Catholic Church was the most Anti-Semitic institution conceivable.

Félicie said...

Dougie: "If Jews have their own ethnic identity and ethnic interests separate from ours (and I don't think anyone here has seriously suggested they haven't) then surely, a sober analysis of Jewish actions and interests and past behaviour is sensible, especially considering the cynical way they've behaved towards us in the past."

Well, I, actually, question this. What are the Jewish ethnic interests that are inherently incompatible with or run counter to Western interests? How does their ethnic identity endanger the European identity, given their small numbers?

Fjordman said...

Dougie: There is no "Jewish media dominance" in my country, or in most European countries. We have rather few Jews. Despite this, we have rabidly Leftist media. To a normal, sane person, this would indicate that Leftist Multiculturalism is not caused by a "Jewish conspiracy," and that people obsessed with Jews cloud the real issues.

When reading these comments, and others online, I understand why Zionism was born in the first place. My main beef with anti-Semites, in addition to the fact that I think they are immoral, is that they show poor judgment on this issue and are thus likely to show poor judgment on other issues. Take Le Pen. He's a rabid anti-Semite. Recently, he has actually started allying himself with Muslims. Le Pen doesn't care about France, he cares about Le Pen. His anti-Semitism is an indication that he's unreliable in general.

Since Muslims frequently are rabid anti-Semites, Western anti-Semites are already a bit like our enemy, and thus unreliable as defenders of our civilization. For this reason, they should be treated as ideological enemies.

Fjordman said...

Afonso: To be quite honest, if you cannot make comments on a single thread without talking about Jews or Gays, then you are undermining the very purpose of this website. What about making your own blog, called "I hate Jews and Gays" or something similar? I just checked, and http://www.ihatejewsandgays.blogspot.com/ appears to be available. It would take you a couple of minutes only, and its free.

Afonso Henriques said...

"The most vicious antisemitism bordering the sinister call for the physical annihilation of Israel is coming from the Hardcore Left, including the Jewish Left...and from this point on the future appears to bleak for all of us."

Indeed Bela, ideed.

-----------------------------
Fjordman,

"Your idea that the Islamic rhetoric about Jews is not caused by anti-Semitism is so ridiculous that I don't take you seriously."

I am (still) a big fan of you so please take this serious:

The muslims attack everything that moves:
Black Africans, Hindu Indians, Budhist Thais, Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Timorese, etc.
All this is "Islamic Imperialism".

muslims atack Europeans in Europe, they have reached Tours in France in the past as well as Vienna, Austria. They destroyed Constantinople and erected Istambul.

And you, Fjordman, think that the muslims would offer their lands, lands which they consider especially sacred, to a bunch of people coming from Europe in an epoch where people from Europe were abandoning vast parts of the World and give them to the must unsucessfull cultures in History?

Do you sincerley think, Fjordman, that a culture like Islam, that has threathened "the West" for more than a thousand years, would acept this?

And then you have the discernment to say that the muslims opose this just because the people colonising muslims land - for which many muslims have died during the Cruzades. In which muslims have a enormous pride for having beat "the West" in the Middle Ages - are Jews.

How can you say that? Isn't that offensive?

According to your logic - and you, Fjordman, you(!) are basing your logic in what is written in the Koran(!!!) - despite the muslims atacking virtually every people they neighbour, you are still capable of stating that muslims don't like Israel due to Anti-Semitism?

If it were Norwegians in Israel, would the muslims became peacfull, or would they continue to be Anti-Semites?

Well, you may not take me serious - anyway, I am virtually a nobody - but if you do not take THIS serious, maybe I'll have to consider what I think of you, Fjordman. And I am afraid, many people will follow.

I would really like you Fjordman, to adress this particular issue.
Thank you very much.

Baron Bodissey said...

Mr. Smarterthanyou --

I come back from a little yard work and find that you have been gratuitously insulting people in this comment thread while I was gone.

This is a clear violation of Rule #1 (civility), and I won't have it.

You're right: this blog does belong to me and Dymphna. But Fjordman has my proxy, and I agree with him.

I've deleted all the obnoxious comments that I noticed. If I missed any, someone please let me know.

If the behavior on this thread continues to deteriorate, I will close it for comments. Which will be too bad, because it's a topic that's already closed in most places, even for rational discussion, due to the strictures of PC.

But now I can see why people don't want to allow it to be discussed -- it's not worth it when the conversation becomes dominated by those who argue by using the most base and hackneyed calumnies.

To repeat: I won't have it here. This is a civil blog, and such behavior is most emphatically uncivil.

Fjordman said...

Afonso: If somebody says that Israelis are attacked ONLY because they are Jews, then this is clearly wrong. They would still be attacked if they were Thai Buddhists, and we should still have supported them if they were, just as we should support anybody threatened by Islamic Jihad. But Muslims hated and attacked Jews long before Zionism or the state of Israel was invented. Have you read about Muhammad's treatment of the Banu Qurayza in Medina? Thats was 1400 years ago. Muslims hate everybody, but they hate Jews even more than others.

Tanstaafl said...

Fjordman, plaudits to you for broaching this subject.

The meme of anti-semitism is intimately related to memes of egalitarianism, racism, and hate - which are in turn principle values of the ideologies of political correctness and marxism, of both the economic and cultural flavor. It is my opinion that these ideas, and the ideologies built on top of them, are more than false. They are mendacious. This has undermined Western civilization and is largely responsible for its radical transformation and likely death via immigration.

The idea of equality, taken to an extreme by egalitarians, is a lie. The idea that there is no such thing as race is a lie. The idea that anyone who notices significant differences (like race) must therefore be a "hater" is a lie. The idea that when conflict arises between jews and non-jews that the non-jews are always and completely responsible is a lie. The idea that jews deserve this and other special consideration is not only a lie - it contradicts egalitarianism!

Like many other people I've had enough of these lies. The problem is that these lies have been repeated so many times that they have become Big Lies. Most people respond to them like Pavlov's dogs. We see it in this thread. To criticize jews you must be an anti-semite, which is a special synonym for racist. It is a smear which by definition (see Evan and Natalie) means you hate jews because you are defective; eg. jealous, crazy, and/or stupid.

The lies are obvious to anyone capable of objective reason. What keeps most objective thinkers from acknowledging this is the pain of heresy - whether the supposed nazi vortex society will fly into if we embrace certain realities, or the very real vortex of hate that will take away your employment and social standing and possibly your liberty if you dare speak out against certain dogmatic principles.

By the way, Francis Parker Yockey was a heretic who wrote and died after the seeds of political correctness and multiculturalism had been planted, but before they had blossomed. His insights into the roots of Europe's civilization and its problems may be enlightening to any who share those interests.

Afonso Henriques said...

Dougie,
"Just as with much of the problems we see with Islam in Europe, most of the conflict is of ethnic rather than religious nature - even if many people posting here would prefer to deny it."

Exactly Dougie. Some people here like to think that there are no tensions in Europe against blacks or certain "American Hispanics" or even non muslim Asians.
Thats the same people who thinks Romanis are half muslim or the sort. But I guess that muslims have it all, I also think (know) that muslims are converting certain ethnicities and that targeting on muslims is easier, so be it!

" I’m prepared to believe that economic jealousy may have been a minor factor in some instances too."

It is not minor. Leftists call it, social unfairness, at least in my country.

X said...

I'm ignoring the whole "jews are out to get us" thing because personally I find it a little silly. "All white people"...

I agree it's not wrong to criticise someone who is jewish for their actions, but it is wrong to then say that a few examples prove the whole lot are the same... you know what they say, put three jews in a room and you'll get four opinions. Expecting them to march in lock-step, to all be thinking the same thing - or even 90% as someone here has claimed, is stupid. I'd say the majority of jews don't give a flying fig either way.

Yes, there are jews in positions of prominence who may beleive they're acting in the best interests of the jewish people, but I could definitely find plenty of jews who would very strongly disagree with them right down the road from where I live.

The problem is that you're keyed into seeing jewish names. A spy ring with an american or european sounding name doesn't register but a jewish name sticks in the mind because it's proof. Unfortunately you're falling into the trap of positive reinforcement, the same as the "science" of socialism was proven by simply noting all the bad news in the world and ascribing it to capitalism. That's no way to prove anything because it trains you to reject non-conforming data. That's how socialism got its foot in, how the global warming scam got its foot in and how, lets face it, multiculturalism got its foot in. It doesn't allow for falsification of a thesis because falsifying evidence is simply rejected. So, whenever someone points out that there are jews working for the antijihad, that's rejected; when someone points out that most of these "jews" are not religious, that's rejected; or when it's pointed out that most of these jews are actively opposing Israel, it's rejected.

I'm not precisely philosemetic. I have a friend who's married to an israeli, and I like chicken soup but that's about it. I like Israel. They've got this knack of surviving and they're nationalistic in a way we're not allowed to be... beyond that it's neither here nor there, they're just another bunch of people. But this idea that jews are somehow trying to destroy the west? I find it laughable. History doesn't support it all too well.

Now, on to other things. Fjordman, I'm taking issue with this:

Christianity and Islam, claim to have the same God as the Jews, but that their texts abrogate the Jewish texts. There is thus a religious dimension here as well.

Nowhere in the scriptures is there a specific abrogation of the entire Jewish canon of scripture. Subsequent christian doctrines have progressively abrogated large portions of the old ANE semetic law and customs, generally as they came in conflict with contemporary european law and customs, but the old testament is not abrogated. Jesus said "I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil the law", implying that the law of God, the actual law rather than the various additions made over the course of Israel's history, would not be significantly altered.

The majority of the old testament is historical and prophetic and not concerned with law. None of that is abrogated. In examination of the scriptures, all that was changed was an abandonment of dietary laws and the abolition of capital punishment for adultery. Such things as the customary status of women and the various onerous restrictions placed on the sabbath by the Pharisees were not a concern of the law in scripture - indeed it was scripture that was used to disprove those laws of men. So I take issue with it, in that a strict interpretation of christian scripture would not abrogate jewish law in general.

Of course if you're talking in terms of subsequent christian tradition then I might agree... :)

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bela said...

fjordman
"We have rather few Jews. Despite this, we have rabidly Leftist media"

Christianity's teachings lives on even in absence of the founding Apostles...Buddha is dead yet Buddhism is well alive.
Marx, Gramsci and Lukacs might be dead but their ideology keeps on infesting the mind.

In the blogosphere your intellect commands respect but I am probably the only Eastern European on this tread so I have a different take on the subject.
As you know the modern saga of the Jewish question originated in Eastern Europe, and with no exception, all the protagonist were born there. Most of the posters here like to go back to the Middle Ages, even Roman times, there is all kind of references to abstract ideas but the most fundamental ideology of the time not even mentioned.
Marx-Engels: Das Kapital.

Please take look at this sentence from Wiki on George Lukacs who is regarded as the best after Marx and founder of the PC:

"He was born Löwinger György Bernát to a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest. His father was József Löwinger b. Szeged) (1855–1928), a banker,"

A wealthy banker!
All of the revolutionary Communist ideologues were well off intellectuals of Jewish descent: H. Marcuse, Adorno etc. from the Frankfurt School.
They invented the idea of "Let's destroy the Western Civilization" as a mind game akin to Jim Jones' cult in Guyana because of the societal-political problems that engulfed both Russia and the Austro-Hungarian monarchies after WWI, so the field was receptive to anything new.
Same for today's Soros machinations: he has money and time, invent some crazy ideas, fling them into the air, many idiots swallow the crap and the blood bath starts.
And now the sad part. When the crazy idea turn into catastrophe usually with death and destruction, the people who were cheated rise up and want to go after the culprits who are nowhere to be found...
When we went after the murderous thugs in Hungary in 1956 during the uprising, they all disappeared to Moscow where they received the "Lenin Order Prize " and comfortable life.
What left?
To turn against the Jewish neighbor who joined and supported the Commie Party because of personal gains, or fear from being accused of belonging to the "enemy of the people" or by sheer opportunism.

The Antisemitism now came to existence.

Now you ask: Why did you go after the Jewish communist for there where many other non Jewish Party members as well... Why pick on the Jews?

If you ever saw a Leftist protest in -say- Los Angeles, then you could see that the big crowd consists of illiterate, third world, primitive underclass scum, shouting slogans that they cannot even comprehend. You know at once that somebody put those slogans into their mouth and they just parrot it as they were told to do.
You have no feeling of animosity toward the proletarians, instead you want to get at the boss who, very often a rich Jewish guy behind the curtain.

Nobody was angry at the illiterate , uneducated Party members because everybody knew that who were the instigators, the bosses who gave the orders.

So sometimes is unnecessary to delve into esoteric philosophical explanations where every word has 10 different interpretations according to every individual.

Conclusion: The few dozen or so Bolshevik took over the leading edge of the society some 50 years ago and they created a huge crowd of followers who are probably not Jewish. Yet the memory of the "Founding Fathers" will stay with us.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

The 90% number is a good one. In recent presidential elections, Jews trend 90% Democrat.
Democrats:
Support gun control (it has been used against jews in Germany and the USSR)

Support Palestinians over Israel

Support making deals with Muslim nations that hurt Israel

Single out Israel for "human rights" violations, ignoring the atrocities committed by their accusers

Support banning free speech when it offends them (double edged sword to be used against all, including Jews)

Contain another group that HATES Jews, the Reverend Wright faction of blacks.

Contains the only former KKK official.

Supports human rights violators all over the world, including Castro and Chavez, not exactly jew-friendly guys.

So when I say what the heck is up with Jews, don't pretend that a small number of Jews, just as there are a small number of everybody, that are screwed up. Jews overwhelmingly vote for those who would oppress them. When it comes to Dhimmification of the west, they are on the front lines offering their services to their would-be masters.

WHY???

Sodra Djavul said...

I have recently been out due to a serious health condition of a family member.

But no more apt a thread to make my return than this, I feel.

My opinion on why Jews trend leftward is that for the past 2 millenia (give or take a century) they have been without a state of their own. Whatever ideals of patriotism and nationalism that might have once existed, and did in fact historically exist when faced with the occupying Romans 2 millenia ago, has been jettisoned from the collective Jewish psyche in the interests of absorbing themselves into the nation of their residence.

Therefore, they trend to leftist thought like moths to a flame. Not because it benefits them, but out of a very real sense of necessity.

The actions taken against them under Hitler's Nazi regime only reinforced this. There are "Jewish ghettos" in every major European city, including quite a few nations that were Allied in their confrontation with the Axis, that predate by several centuries even Hitler's birth.

My $.02.

- Sodra

Barbara said...

Mr. Smarterthanthou:
Jews have historically placed great value upon education and scholarship. This high value placed upon education did not end when they immigrated to the United States. The children of Jewish immigrants sought higher education also as a way of getting out of the ghettos and a way of having a share of the American dream. Most of them yearned to be a part of American culture.

Those of us who are disgusted with the multi-culti quota system in jobs and in education forget that Jews also had quotas--except that these quotas were always AGAINST them. During the first half of the 20th century, many American colleges and universities set a limit (usually a percentage) on the number of Jewish students they would admit. Jews applied for admission out of all proportion to their numbers.

Today, among those with undergraduate and gradutate college degrees and among those in the professions, Jews are represented in higher proportions than their numbers in the population.

Hmmmm . . . people with graduate degrees and in the professions.

It is the educated "elite" (as well as African-Americans) who support Obama. So the question you should ask is: WHY????

Sodra Djavul said...
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Baron Bodissey said...

What is it about this topic that makes people forget how to be civil??

Sodra -- you could have made your point without descending to gratuitous insult. I'll demonstrate:

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Sodra Djavul said...

Barbara,
Indians (from India) outrank Jews both in terms of education and median income. They are the largest single bloc of buyers of suburban Washington, D.C. real estate. And they all trend toward Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama.

To be honest, I'm sick of having the guilt trip placed on Americans as being "racist" and "intolerant." If it weren't for Americans volunteering the lives of their own sons and daughters 50 years ago, there would be NO Jews left.

- Sodra

Ypp said...

I'd like to expand the idea of Oedipus complex as the source of antisemitism. Shortly, the land, the country is always the "mother" to its people, whereas God is father. All "native" peoples have the direct connection to their countries, by simply being born there. Jews instead have the indirect connection, through God-father, who gave that land (Israel) to them. And this is the point to dislike Jews and their right to possess the land of Israel: the unwillingness to admit the role of father in one's connection to his mother. Reluctance to understand, that without father, their mother would not be their mother. Which is exactly the Oedipus complex.

Sodra Djavul said...

My apologies Baron. It was not vulgar, but it was confrontational.

Thank you for cleaning it up. I honestly felt bad about those last three words. I'll watch it in the future.

- Sodra

Unknown said...

Sodra: And 50% of Africans (from Africa) hold university degrees. Good metric.

Also, it doesn't appear to me that Barbara was trying to insult or guilt anyone unless they happen to be offended by the mentioning of long corrected slights.

Perhaps a nice vacation is in order? Try Hawaii; you'll be glad we took it by force.

Sodra Djavul said...

Arkon,
50% of Africans holding university degrees was not the point. The point being that Indians actually do hold higher educational credentials per capita than Jews, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and yes, Africans.

And that's backed up by the marketplace. They outearn, as best we can tell, all said groups when placed within the best metric, home purchases.

Love me or hate me, I'm here to stay.

- Sodra

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...
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Sodra Djavul said...
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Baron Bodissey said...

At Fjordman's suggestion, and with great regret, I am closing this thread to further comments.

It's unfortunate that some commenters couldn't make any coherent points without resort to unpleasant invective.