#far righters have more in common than not

[holisticfansstuff]

And can I just say that it's beyond cowardly to use "It's my culture" as an excuse for shitty behaviour? First off, cultures evolve. Just like people do. Second off, everyone in the community isn't homophobic OR misogynistic even if it suits someone's agenda to pretend they are. If someone wants to espouse terrible values, that's on them. They have no business throwing everyone else under the bus with them.

#personal #rant tw #kuwait #india #poc problems #and this attitude isn't reserved to just Muslims btw no matter how much certain 'progressive' Islamophobes like to pretend that is the case #one only has to look at the reaction that one MP BJP politician had to that Dabur ad #and propped up and echoed by many BJP supporters #the truth is #far righters have more in common than not #across communities/borders #even if they support leftists/liberals if they move abroad because suddenly THEY are on the receiving end of similar oppression #basically #some people are raving hypocrites #indian politics #world politics

[aboutanancientenquiry]

My thoughts on the Bible as historical document and source (III)

In my last post I said nothing about the question of the historicity of the New Testament. Concerning this important topic, I will only refer to what I have written some weeks ago in an exchange on this subject (https://aboutanancientenquiry.tumblr.com/post/702658047788662784/they-understood-the-difference-between-fact-and ).

Now, the Bible is a literary monument of immense importance. It is a testimony on the first emergence in history of a monotheistic religion (with the only exception of the historically very brief Amarna period in Akhenaten’s Egypt), it is a reflection on the historical adventures and disasters of the Hebrew people in Antiquity, and it contains some of the greatest masterpieces of religious literature ever written.

However, the Bible is not a historical work, because whatever history is contained in it is submitted to and transformed by the overarching theological purposes of its authors. This does not mean of course that the Bible is nothing more than a bunch of lies and manipulations. I don’t follow such an unsympathetic approach to the Bible as historical source, because its authors were struggling with real and poignant questions concerning the collective identity of the Jews, the meaning of their history, and the hopes for their future, in a period of political and military disasters, loss of independence,  captivity, and exile. Moreover, tradition had already largely transfomed the historical memory to sacred history and, therefore, what the authors of the Bible as we know it today wrote was not a pure invention of theirs (although of course it is sure that they played a decisive role in the definitive shaping of this tradition). 

But I think that the important is to remember that the Bible is not a historical work and historical accuracy and objectivity as we understand them today were not among the main preoccupations of its authors (who, moreover, I remind again, worked on traditions which had already transfigured the historical memories on the basis of theological needs and conceptions). The Bible’s main aim is to highlight the omnipotence of the God of Israel, his special relation with his people and his demands from them, as well as to explain the historical disasters of Israel as results of disobedience to God and to show that obedience to the divine will and law is the only way toward restoration of the fortunes of the Jewish people. These aims and nature of the Bible restrict its value as historical source and document in the proper sense of these terms. Whatever historical reality is reflected and preserved in the Bible must be disentangled from a narrative which is mostly mythohistory and sacred history. And whatever information is provided by the Bible and is not confirmed by other sources must be seen with suspicion, especially if it is of deficient plausibility and it is obvious that it serves the theological agenda of the authors.

As I say, the Bible is a literary monument of immense importance. However, I am not at all sympathetic to the various movements of Biblical literalism and fundamentalism which spread in our days, movements mostly politically and socially reactionary and potentially dangerous. To cite only some examples, we see what is the role of the Evangelical Right in the USA, how politically and socially reactionary is the religious Right in this country, and how far to the right the Christian fundamentalists managed to lead the conservatism there, we see the role of the Protestant Biblical fundamentalists in the support of the far righter clown Bolsonaro in Brazil, we see how extremist is the Israeli religious far right. Common basis of these movements is the consideration of the Bible as unquestionable authority and provider of historical truth and the use of this authority and supposed historical reliability of the Bible to support right wing or far right policies today. I believe that the criticism of the Bible as historical source is necessary among other reasons also in order to counter this dangerous influence of the Biblical literalism and fundamentalism.

#the bible #history #israel #near east

[ms-demeanor]

What has actually been accomplished by black blocs? Cause it doesn’t seem to be social or political change in the direction you want, unless the goal is accelerationism.

To talk with any romance for the black bloc risks falling into the worst tropes of bombastic revolutionary writing. We don’t don black masks and become instant revolutionary subjects. We don’t necessarily achieve more with property damage than a larger, more subdued rally achieves. In every case, the standard of achievement depends on the aims of the action, and all of us are far from creating the rupture we want to see in the world. One broken window, or a hundred, is not victory. But nor is over half a million people rallying on the National Mall. Both gain potency only if they are perceived as a threat by those in and around power. And neither action will appear threatening unless followed up again and again with unrelenting force, in a multitude of directions. You don’t have to choose between pink hat and black mask; each of us can wear both. You don’t have to fight neo-Nazis in the street, but you should support those who do.

 - Natasha Lennard in The Nation

You aren’t required to be an anarchist to be in a black bloc. It’s not a proper noun. And having medicked protests with black blocs in several different states, I’ve only seen attempts to escalate protests that were not intended to escalate, rather than simply participate in them, a couple of times, and only when it was a small number of jerks and not a large organized bloc. There’s the tendency to claim that anything protesters did that you didn’t like was the black bloc. Other people can, and do, escalate situations, or behave in ways that show disregard for local activists who have to live with the aftermath of what they do.

One thing that people rarely talk about, that I have been trying to get into the discussion, is that it’s very common for black blocs to take protective roles at a protest. For example, at the DC protest of the DeploraBall, people from the black bloc were going into more dangerous spots with me to move injured people to safer areas. They were finding and flagging down medics for people who needed help. They and other medics were the ones circling around working medics to stop alt-righters or anyone else from getting to them, which a few people were trying to do. They helped me take someone to the clinic who needed more help than I could give in the field.

 - Street Medic Lirael Lowenstein.

I stood with a group of interfaith clergy and other people of faith in a nonviolent direct action meant to keep the white nationalists from entering the park to their hate rally. We had far fewer people holding the line than we had hoped for, and frankly, it wasn’t enough. No police officers in sight (that I could see from where I stood), and we were prepared to be beaten to a bloody pulp to show that while the state permitted white nationalists to rally in hate, in the many names of God, we did not. But we didn’t have to because the anarchists and anti-fascists got to them before they could get to us. I’ve never felt more grateful and more ashamed at the same time. The antifa were like angels to me in that moment. 

 - Rebekah Menning in Slate.

Also when people threaten to bloc up it makes Richard Spencer cry and convinces nazis to call off their armed marches.

Anyway, I got this ask after I reblogged this post: https://nunchler.tumblr.com/post/185611775686/check-this-out-lol-how-to-have-a-protest-and

Overwhelming police resources is a tactic that has worked before and that can be really effective.

That apparently wasn’t the goal of Extinction Rebellion; they tweeted that they were disappointed in the police for arresting them in the midst of their non-violent protest.

And look, I can see where a commitment to nonviolence is admirable (kind of) - but when you’re surprised that the state visits violence on your non-violent bodies AND don’t seem to understand that the state sees all protest as violence then your movement wasn’t really prepared to engage with the state.

Being peaceful and sunny and sitting in and singing kumbaya to look better than “violent” protestors doesn’t actually work.

Look at the violent destruction of property in the wake of the J20 protest black bloc action during Donald Trump’s inauguration:

Look at all this violence in the wake of the Extinction Rebellion protest:

Whoop, there it is.

Don’t think that licking their boots will prevent the police from kicking you.

[militant-holy-knight]

Islamophobia: A “Zionist Plot”?

In response to Hating Muslims, Loving Zionists: Israel a Far-Right Model, where Al Jazeera gets everything wrong

Al Jazeera penned an opinion piece trying to lump anti-Muslim terrorism, rational critics of Islamism with Zionism of all things. The “logic” goes that “x Israeli politician is a far-righter”, many leading political figures in far-right politics that criticize Islam have expressed affection and approval for Israel; Palestine is oppressed by Israel and as such all of these things are related to each other. They even used the censored picture of Brenton Tarrant to drive the point home that “See? if you hate Islam, you are also just like this guy and oh, you support Israel too”. 

I can’t even begin pointing out what is wrong with this “some x are y, some y are z, therefore x are y” fallacy, I am even more surprised that right-winged critics of Israel didn’t even try to debunk it. In one hand, it’s pretty observable that support for Israel is strong among mainstream conservatism than other movements across the political spectrum. On the other hand, there is one figure who is never discussed when the topic of alt-right and Zionism overlap, being very little-known outside of Israel.

This is Meir Kahane, a ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbi from the USA who migrated from to Israel and was a co-founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach political party. Also known as “Israel’s Ayatollah”, he urged the establishment of a Jewish theocracy codified by Maimonides (a Reconquista-era Spanish Jew), the immigration of all American Jews to Israel before a “second Holocaust” could take place and was very vocal about advocating the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, violence against Palestinians and those he deemed as “anti-semites”. He was extremely divisive: there were people who found his Jewish supremacist rhetoric intolerable and equated him to the Nazis, while in other camp you had those who supported him largely because of Arab aggression as The Los Angeles Times reported that “[he] is a reaction to the wanton murders of innocent men, women and children in Israel” (which you can find many parallels with modern day politicians supported by the alt-right). Kahane was arrested at least 62 times by Israeli authorities for inciting hatred.

While in prison, Kahane wrote a manifesto titled “They Must Go” where he advocates the complete exile of Palestinians and the necessary process how to do it arguing that if they didn’t they’d begin outbreeding the Jewish population and take over Israel in 20 years (he wrote it in the 80s). His manifesto reads a lot like the anxiety Europeans feel about Muslim migrants which isn’t alleviated in the slightest by them speaking out in the open how they will establish a European caliphate.

Kahane was popular enough with the Israelis that he was elected with one seat to the Knesset. However, he was never really popular with his fellow parliamentarians, whom he regarded as “Hellenists” (Jews who assimilated into Greek culture after being conquered by Alexander the Great), since Kahane thought they weren’t Jewish enough. Most of his proposed laws included: imposing compulsory religious education, stripping citizenship status of all non-Jewish citizens (including Christians) and demanding that relations with Germany and Austria being cut but monetary compensation for the Holocaust being kept.

In 1990, Kahane was assassinated by an al-Qaeda member (it’s believed he was one of the first victims of the terrorist group), who was initially cleared of the murder, but was arrested later for being implicated in the 1993 WWC bombing attempt, where he confessed his first crime and was jailed to life imprisonment. His death made him a martyr leading to Kach member Baruch Goldstein to swear revenge and in 1994, he walked into the Cave of the Patriarchs on the West Bank and shot up the place, killing 30 Muslims before being lynched by the survivors. Given the Cave of the Patriarch status as a important religious site to Islam, this atrocity would have provoked probably worse reactions than Christchurch.

While researching about these things, I couldn’t help but see so many parallels between that and the Christchurch mosque incident. Kahane’s manifesto reads a lot like Tarrant’s own. Even if they were not familiar with Kahane’s own views, it was probably not lost to those that really read into Tarrant’s manifesto that not once he denounces the State of Israel for the current state of Europe - instead he blames Angela Merkel, Reccep Erdogan and Sadiq Khan, straight up calling for their deaths. This seemed enough for many people to conclude Tarrant was an Mossad agent.

To those reading this you may be asking: you listed so many things in common with the alt-right, Islamophobia and Zionism, so what did Al Jazeera get wrong?

Ah, if you actually paid attention to the fringe discourse, you realize that nothing discredits you faster than declaring yourself far-right and voicing support for Israel. I sincerely doubt that white supremacists would have liked a Jewish supremacist like Kahane, specially his demands that Germany to continue paying reparations forever. The fringe right actually finds lots of solidarity with Palestinians and common ground with the liberal left than either side cares to admit. Sure many right-wing politicians happen to be Zionists, but those are the mainstream old guard. 

I also observed that they also are overwhelmingly in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in large part because he is an authoritarian model that stands up against Israel. Does it mean that all people who support Assad are also the same? No. Many support Assad because he is considered a bulwark against Islamism (even though he is a Muslim himself, albeit not considered one by terrorist extremists because he is Alawite). Despite his many flaws, normal people are willing to stand up for him because he represents stability in Syria.

I also take huge issue with Palestinians being referred to as exclusively Muslim because it erases their small and long-suffering Christian minority, which is never on anyone’s minds every time someone discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite the fact that Palestinian Christians played a huge role in resistance against Israel before the rise of Islamism ended up alienating them and Christians across the Middle-East aren’t necessarily thrilled about Israel either, not even Israeli Christians themselves.

It’s probably no coincidence that Al Jazeera, who denounces both Israel and the Assad regime who are antagonistic to each other, also happen to be big Islamist apologists which explains why they insist in portraying the Palestinian cause as a religious struggle rather than a nationalist one. It’s in their interest to denigrate critics of Islamism who run across the board in the political spectrum from atheists like Bill Maher and Sam Harris, Christians like David Wood, Brother Rachid and Zacharias Botros and Muslims like Majid Nawaz, Ed Hussein and Mohammed Tawid and many, many, many people worried about the dangers of Islamism, which they use so vociferously the term “Islamophobia” coined by the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization disguised as political party. This way they can lump all the opposition into one camp and paint them as Zionist Islamophobes.

With all that said, the rise of conservatism and nationalism across the world is co-related with the modern liberal left’s weakness to confront the Islamist Question. One of the key reasons that led to Donald Trump’s election were fears of Hillary Clinton increasing immigration as observed by the skyrocketing of sexual abuse cases in Western Europe. Even though he is a more despotic and authoritarian figure than Trump, Erdogan from Turkey is subjected to much less scrutiny from the Western media when he locks up more journalists anywhere in the world.

And this isn’t contained to the West either, the Bharatiya Janata Party characterized as Hindu nationalist and anti-Islamic continues being elected into power because of India’s spats with Pakistan and being formed in the first place because of Indian secularists appeasing to Muslims. And if the future is any indication, you can expect more persecutions of Muslims in Sri Lanka by Buddhists and Christians after the Easter bombings from this year. Those has less to do with Zionism and more with the fear of Islamism.

There is a good reason why I brought up Kahane into this editorial: much like modern day politicians, he was considered too radical by the status quo of the time yet gained the support of a silent majority like modern day because the current status quo proved intolerable. The same thing happened in my country with Jair Bolsonaro, who was already saying absurd things as early as the 90s and would never be considered as President of Brazil yet here we are, though Kahane was assassinated before he got the chance of being Prime Minister.

How many times are we going to deflect the problem like Al Jazeera before we confront it straight in the eye?

[philippmichelreichold]

#review #scifi Space Infantry by Dave Drake et al

#review #scifi Space Infantry by Dave Drake et al

Space Infanty is a Military Science Fiction anthology edited by Drave Drake, Charles G. Waugh and Martin Greenberg. It contains stories by a dozen authors spanning 3 decades. In order of appearance they are:

"The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears," by Keith Bennett; "His Truth Goes Marching On," by Jerry Pournelle; "But as a Soldier, For His Country," by Stephen Goldin; " Soldier Boy," by Michael Shaara; "Code-Name Feirefitz," by David Drake; "The Foxholes of Mars," by Fritz Lieber;

"Conqueror," by Larry Eisenberg; "Warrior," by Gordon R. Dickson; "Message to an Alien," by Keith Laumer;

". . . Not a Prison Make," by Joseph P. Martino; "The Hero," by George R. R. Martin, and "End Game," by Joe Haldeman.

Of the lot, Joe Haldeman, Gordon R. Dickson, Jerry Pournelle and Fritz Leiber are Hugo Award winners, though not for these stories. Mr. Drake and Mr. Haldeman served in Viet Nam. Their experiences color and inform their stories. Mr. Drake once said that his Hammers Slammers stories were partly therapy. Though clumped together as "Space Infantry," these stories run a wide gamut in attitude and outlook, and they need not strictly speaking be about Infantryman at all. Anyone simply seeking simple action adventure, bang-bang-your-dead, stories may be disappointed. There is so much more here than that. Anyone looking for high quality writing should read these stories. They stand out as excellent severally and separately. The book is essential to anyone with more than a superficial interest in Military Science Fiction-- especially anyone interested in the crafting or the history of Military Sci Fi.

The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears Mr. Bennett's story is not so much about ground sloggers as downed rocketeers who get the job done regardless of any obstacles and who coincidentally save their corps from absorption or disbandment. The basis for the title, according to Drake, is a song-- "The Mountaineeers Have Hairy Ears," whose lyrics I'll not reproduce here, and which carries the same emotional load of the Viet Nam Era, "don't mean nothin" in the context of having just had one's eye shot out. Mr. Drake was half a generation removed from Rocketeers, as I am from Drake's Slammers. In the context of today's milieu, the story is shockingly militaristic and imperialistic, much reflective of the attitude of the times in which it was written, 1950. No consideration is given to the real estate and no quarter to the natives. AS I said, the these admitted "Sons of bi-- er, Space" get the job done. There is of course a problem with some stories written in the 1950's. The idiom is changed. Readers of today may find it difficult to relate to.

His Truth Goes Marching On Dr. Pounelle is a Politcal Scientist and this story is as much a poli-sci treatise as it is a work of military science fiction. It is of course set in the Falkenberg's Legion universe before the collapse of the Co-Dominion and the ascension of Lysander to the Spartan throne, just prior to Ace Barton and Peter Owensford signing up with Colonel Falkenberg. Don't get me wrong, there's enough army life and gun play and slogging through mud for anyone's taste. There's also betrayal and a nuke.The story is well worth the read for anyone with a brain. But you won't know the truth till you read that last couple of paragraphs.

But as a Soldier, For His Country, Quoth the author, "It's a young man's story, venting frustration at the futility and lunacy of war." It grew into the novel, The Eternity Brigade. I'm one of those people made uncomfortable by this story. But guess what-- the purpose of good writing is not to make the reader feel good. Imagine the sheer unpleasantness and daily grind of war. Then imagine the worst parts. Imagine dying in battle. Then imagine being resurrected and even copied countless times for an age, till finally you meet yourself in battle. A well wriiten reductio ad absurdum.

Soldier Boy Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for The Killer Angels, a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg. "Soldier Boy" was also made into a novel; it tells the story of the lone soldier, at a number of disadvantages, that must come to grips with a superior opponent through his native intelligence and leadership skills. It's a well crafted story about a young man coming into his own. The antagonistis remarkable. Code-Name Feirefitz Despite being in law school, David Drake was drafted to serve in Viet Nam. He eventually became a member of a Battalion Information Center with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. His experiences there form the basis of his Hammer's Slammers stories. The prime movers in "Code Name Feirefitz" are not the highly capable Captain Esa Mboya or his Golf Company Slammers, but two civilans. Their conflict is key to Mboya's own conflict between duty and conscience. The story contrasts the grittiness and hardness of the soldiers as they set about doing their duty with the composure and quiet persistence of Esa's brother Juma as he does his. Their dedication contrasts with the desperate selfishness of ben Khedda as he seeks to sacrifice anyone to survive. The faith of Jooma plays against that of the Kaid who will risk anything to save his people, and both stand out against the faithlessness of ben Khedda.

The Foxholes of Mars Fritz Leiber has won numerous awards-- one of the great masters of Science Fiction. Leiber's opening imagery and setting creation is masterful. Leiber's prose is deep and lush with layers of meaning. War is just the setting for a deep and not terrible pleasnt look deep into a man's soul-- the soul of a budding demagouge. I find no indication that this story won Hugo or Nebula. It should have. It's shocking that an anthology containing this story should be available for a penny. This story in and of itsself is priceless.

Conqueror Eisenber crafts his story well, creating a believable setting and a sympathetic protangonis in a story that starts out being a story about the lone foot slogger a long way from home and in need of human contact, validation of his own humanity. Ends up as a story about successful psy-ops and asymmetric warfare against an occupying force.

Warrior The first Gordon Dickson I read was the short story "Soldier Ask Not" in The Hugo Winners. Warrior is a side piece to his Childe Cycle stories, about the Dorsai general Ian Graeme. It is included in the anthology Lost Dorsai.

Though the action of the story takes place far from the battlefields of the Splinter worlds, it is full of strategy, including the principle of calculated risk, and tactics. (Including Tactics of Mistake-- this is a Graeme we're talking about.) It portrays Graeme as the Dorsai archetype-- not only the consummate soldier, but a man who would cross all of Hell and half of New York City to pay a debt for good or ill. And all the more so to exact justice forhis soldiers. Dickson's prose can be a little pompous and overbearing-- his treatment of villains a little dismissive, mere stick figures lacking depth. But then he wants Graeme to be overpowering-- to his advesaries, to the helpless bystander cops, and to the reader.

Message to an Alien Keith Laumer is a Nebula Award writer who is porbably undervalued today. His Retief stories are based on his experiecnes as a military attache in Burma. His Bolo stories were part of the inspiration for Drake's Slammers. This story is about the lone and disgraced soldier who was turned out for being righter than his superiorsthe civillian authorities could ever admit. He acts alone again and totally without anyone else's support to nip an invasion in the bud and stop a war. Laumer's disdain those with authority but lacking the sense to use it shows through. Dalton's mastery of the situation, the authoirites, and of the invaders is a pleasure to read.

. . . Not a Prison Make Martino's novelette is based on the unique premise of guerilla warfare carried out by low technology aborigines. He builds the story thoroughly, exploring the occupying forces attempts to mount an affect defence. The key is to force to the negotiating table people who have no interest in negotiations. The solution is unique to he situation, and the resolution acceptable to all. The Hero The United States has reached the point in its decadence/decay where it is sometimes more convenient to ignore its veterans and treat them with disdain then to give them the consideration and rewards they deserve. And so it is in "The Hero." Kagan serves honorably and well. When his term of enlistment is up, he demands his desserts, and his superiors balk. Can't conceive of him going to Earth. George R. R. Martin uses overstatement to drive home his point, contrasting the soldier with his bosses. In the end, it's clear that they are as dishonorable as he is honorable, as undeserving of his service as anyone could be.

End Game Joe Haldeman won an award for The Forever War. In the End Game, we find out what it was all for. Time has past. A lot of time has past, and Man is more like the Taurans than veterans like Marygay and William. There's a place for people like them called Middle Finger, heh heh. Anyone familiar with The Forever War knows Haldeman is a great writer, that he despises the stupidity and waste of war, and that he makes his case very well.

Image cover art under fair use for the review. Contact publisher for reuse.

My text creative commons 4.0

[loki-zen]

The whole “far-righters and their love of cute lil woodland guys” thing is endlessly fascinating to me. Both on the level of having a lot in common with people that I wouldn’t expect to relate to, and that many seem better adjusted than many far-left people. Like, as long as politics isn’t brought up I’d be more comfortable hanging with Hyperborean_otter_appreciator than the average Twitter leftist. It’s weird, since progressives are supposed to be the nice ones.

Is this a thing? I assume it’s a thing.

In England I think they like gardens/gardening

#but sometimes they want to grow potatoes in said gardens

[keywestlou]

MORNING STEW #50

So much to share, analyze, etc. this morning. This will be the largest Morning Stew ever.

No special sequence. They are going into the blog as they come up in my notes.

CDC made a mistake concerning one particular number of Florida COVID data. The CDC admitted it had over counted Florida’s cases. Not intentional. A screw up.

The CDC counted last week’s new coronavirus cases as 28,000. Actually, 18,000.

The number will be readjusted next week when 19,000 will be entered in Florida’s mix in place of the 28,000.

Indiana University mandated mask wearing. A student group went to court to reverse the decision. Lost. Appealed. Justice Amy Corey Barrett of the Supreme Court denied  the students appeal on her own without consulting her colleagues on the Court and without a formal hearing. Proper under the circumstances of the case and how it reached the Supreme Court.

The matter will shortly be heard by the full Court.

An example of DeSantis’ head stuck up his derriere. Regeneron is an antibody treatment. It was given to Trump when he had the virus. Last thurdsday,  DeSantis recommended its use to help curb the COVID spread.

I ask: Why not get people vaccinated? Get to people before they are infected with the virus. There are tons of vaccines available. I question who beside DeSantis and Trump have recommended Regeneron’s use.

Texas Democratic House members on the verge of arrest. . The Texas Supreme Court overruled the lower court decision which said the Democrats could not be arrested. The new decision said it’s ok based on the House of Representatives’ 89-12 vote to permit the same.

What next?

The U.S. has been in Afghanistan 20 years. Biden said no more. Ordered U.S. troops out.

Taliban has moved swiftly to take over the country. They are totally in control of most major cities.

The Afghan troops the U.S. spent so much money and time to train are turning and running as the Taliban arrive.

Biden and the U.S. do not look good at all.

In the past 2 days, Biden has ordered 5,000 new troops into Afghanistan to get the problem worked out, if he can. The Taliban are in the driver’s seat. They have little reason to desire any negotiation which would diminish their new present power.

Where did the money go in the 20 years? It is now being revealed that the Afghan government is extremely corrupt and it is suspected significant U.S. dollars went into their pockets. Most of which was supposed to be used to train Afghan forces.

Senator Rand Paul is another politician with his head not on his shoulders. YouTube recently blocked his comments for one week over his representation that masks are ineffective against COVID-19.

Rand retorted, It is “censorship…..very dangerous…..anti-free speech…..and anti-progress science.”

Fred missed Key West. Moved westerly as it passed Key West. Key West experienced 24 hours of off and on heavy rain and some winds. Nothing of any consequence.

Fred still on the move. At the Panhandle today. Heavy waters expected.

Grace continues towards the U.S. Key West in the cone of certainty. If it hits, it will be as a tropical storm.

Hurricane reporting not as good as in previous years. Weather people reporting using the cone alone too long. Key West always in the center of the cone. From Africa forward. Spaghetti lines needed at some point 2-3 days earlier that anticipated landfall.

Last week, I reported a Catholic Church group or two would at some point finance some entity to go to court seeking an exemption from any mandate to wear masks on religious grounds.

Biden announced last week he intended to compel mask wearing for the military. Turns out the courts have already recognized the military’s right to refuse most things on religious grounds.

Mask are next. It is anticipated that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of the exemption.

Too many freedoms being used not as intended by the people of the U.S. nor the Constitution.  And being approved by the courts.

I am the first to say “protect our freedoms.” However the people and the courts are proceeding even more than a step too far.

Last year is repeating itself this year. Street demonstrations bordering on open warfare are becoming common place again. The issue is different, however. Last year it was BLM and other “democratic groups” protesting and far righters, white supremacists, etc. in opposition. The same groups who were insurrectionists on January 6.

The issue today “masks.” Would you believe?

The mask opposition groups are getting stronger. They also appear to be more organized as time goes on. The most recent example Los Angeles saturday. A protest between pro maskers and anti-maskers.

Violence developed. One person stabbed.

The anti-maskers seem to be getting stronger and better organized. I have this gut feeling that they are being helped by and used by the same groups behind the January 6 insurrectionists.

Such should be under investigation. The far right continues to organize well. They feed the venom. There must be some with money behind them. Lets find the ones supporting these groups financially and run their asses into jail.

Another Florida shark attack. Near Key Largo. A teenager. The bite(s) to his “lower extremities.”

Further facts unavailable.

The Afghanistan turmoil continues. Keep in mind the U.S. is not the only nation to have spent a log time there. Russia was in Afghanistan before the U.S. For 10 years, 1979-1989. Left with their tails between their legs as the U.S. is now.

Afghans must be some sort of special people. Strong minded and willed. They have in effect knocked off two international giants.

DeSantis opposition is growing. The recognition proof the man does not know what he is doing.

A Florida doctor has described him as a “medical authoritarian.” A school official as the “mad king of the COVID era.”

DeSantis is unquestionably seeking a “new” aid to help people with the COVID-19 problem. He has come up with a second solution. The first was Regeneron. The latest Monocolonial anti-bodies. The two could be one and the same. I do not know. DeSantis says it is a rapid response to fight COVID-19 by administering monocolonial anti-bodies treatments to those already infected.

More importantly, we have the avoidance already. Masks and the vaccine. Why look elsewhere? He merely is doing it because he cannot find a way to say he was wrong re masking and the vaccine.

He sounds much like Trump when he was pushing the Clorox cue. Drink or be vaccinated with a bleach. Would kill the virus within minutes.

Where do these guys come from?

Are you aware that 40 percent of the new cases in the U.S. come from Florida and Texas? DeSantis and Abbott birds of a feather.

Florida’s COVID numbers from last week revealing.

Nationally based on record keeping by counties nationwide, Florida’s Broward County ranked #1 and Miami-Dade County #3. Something to be proud of Governor!

New cases last week  found Florida to have the highest number of new cases week wise since the very beginning of the pandemic, 151,415. Breaks down to an average of 21,630 per day.

Nationwide, new cases soared 700 percent since July 1. In late June, there were 10,000 new cases a day. Now, 125,000.

People are becoming concerned. The numbers are going up as new persons are being vaccinated. Friday 50 percent of U.S. persons had been vaccinated at least once. The situation slowly improving.

Andrew Cuomo.

I was a New York resident till 2006. Cuomo not N.Y. governor yet. However, I knew of him by observing his political career. He impressed me while I was a citizen. He has impressed me in his years as governor.

He is presently an item of discussion.

In the past 2 days, I have discussed his current problem with 6 people. One a male and N.Y. resident. The other 5 ladies. A mix of N.Y. and Florida residents.

Their opinions re Cuomo interesting.

The man thought Cuomo did wrong. It was against the law. He had to be made to pay.

I did not expect his response.

The ladies likewise I did not expect their responses. Each thought Cuomo had gotten a raw deal. Two recalled having grabbed my ass on occasion. Three surprised me by recalling throwing their arms around me and kissing my on the cheek at a time I was totally unaware they were coming or what they intended to do.

It seems to me the politicians, male and female, may have said kill him because they are in the forefront of the public’s eye and are expected to speak thusly.

I am done for today. Glad I was able to catch up.

Enjoy your Sunday!

MORNING STEW #50 was originally published on Key West Lou

[cosmosbestiary]

Magical Mutants

With mystic life and spirits seemingly able to breed with any other form of life freely, widely known spells that cause transmutation, and free-floating manna that can cause all kind of effects it should come with no surprise that magically cause mutations are far from rare. And while more common in mystics then mundanes it is hard to find any world that doesn’t have a few mutants on it. Now of course there really no way to possibly categorize every single magical mutation for every single specie however there is a category system that is use to classify how mutation a creature is from a normal member of it species, and it is this system we will be talking about.

 Metas

                       Often the most widely accepted class of mutants, these mutants have no external and instead have purely power base mutations. Powers can be almost anything, from shooting fire to turning into a monster but they still leave the meta with a form that looks like a normal member of their specie. It should also be said that while powers may look like spells they aren’t, powers don’t drain the user of mana the same way spells do.

Sorcerers

           Counted as both a path of the mage and a class of mutant sorcerers are mundanes that can generate and absorb manna like they were a mystic of general magic, allowing them to learn and cast almost any kind of spell.  This normally means they have mystic ancestor in their family line but there are other ways to become one as well, like being exposed in utero to high levels of manna. Sorcerers are usual either treated as the elites of their society, the lowest of the low, or even sometime form secret shadow societies to keep hidden by from their normal kind.

Changelings

           Changelings are mutants with external mutations but can still be recognize as being a mutant of their species. Changelings are often heavily discriminated against to the point that they are often lucky if they are counted as second class citizens. There are cases of changelings mutations breeding true and becoming a new specie over time.

Abominations

           Abominations are mutants so mutation that it is nearly impossible, or is impossible, to tell what specie the belong to, assuming they are a mutant of a specie and not some unique creature. Naturally abominations are look upon by many as nothing more than mindless monsters no matter how intellect they made or made not be. Because of this abominations normally group together to survive no matter how sapient they are or aren’t as they somehow are able to sense that they are similar in their mutant status. Resulting in them interbreeding making ever more bizarre abominations, and sometimes creating a new specie.

Half-Breeds

While not true mutants in of themselves half-breed are often view by many as such. Half-breeds are what hybrids of mystic and mundane lifeforms are called as a whole. What their parents are really effects how they are treated but generally they are normally treated a little better then changelings. It should be noted that half-breeds do have a righter rate of mutation then either of their parents’ species.

Spirit-Touch

           Spirit-touch much like half-breeds are not mutants but are hybrids that are counted as mutants, partly due to their higher rate of mutation. In their case spirit-touch are hybrids of a spirit and living thing, however despite they are treated better then half-breeds. Because of they are part spirit many religions and cults view them as holy beings, in fact this belief that probably resulted in spirit-touch coming to be in the first place.

 Rursus

           Mystics come in all forms of live, including virus, and there is one very specialized class of mystic virous all mundanes should know of, transformation virus. Transformations have the ability to turn one species of mundane they infect into a kind of mystic, this of course varies per virus. These beings created this way are call rursus as a whole and are counted as mutants by all.

 Mutation Classification  

           There are many different kinds of magical mutations for every species making it impossible to talk about every kind of mutation as new ones are discover daily. But there is a system to classify mutations and powers, it is made in the terms on how the mutations aids the creature in surviving.

Pox

           A pox mutation is one that harms the chances of the creature with it to survive and reproduce, the key word there being harmful. If the mutation is fatal by itself then the mutant wouldn’t live long enough for it to harm their chances of living. This is the kind of mutation most beings think about when they hear the term mutant as they are sadly common. Example of a pox would be a mutation that removes the bones from one arm.

Alter

           An alter is mutation that chances the mutant looks or gives a truly useless power. These mutations have zero effect on a creature ability to live by themselves even if others may target them just for having them. They are without a doubt the most common kind of magical mutation and example of this would be a mutation that turns a creature eyes purple.

Grift

           Uncommon mutations that increases the chances of a creature ability to survive in small nut useful ways. A good example of this would be having an extra pair of fully working arms.

Blessing

           The rarest of all forms of magical mutation a blessing goes beyond helping a creature to survive by giving great powers and abilities. Being able to turn your limbs into blade weapons, a third eye that shoots lasers, and the power of a quantum computer for a brain are all great examples of a blessing.

#lore #cosmosbestiary #bestiary #rpg #scifantasy #fantasy #mutant #abomination #changeling #meta #sorcerer #half breed #spirit touch #rusus #alter #pox #grift #blessing #mutation #magic #mgical #monster

[jennaschererwrites]

How Instant 'Black Mirror' Classic 'USS Callister' Guts Toxic Fandom - Rolling Stone

It's a familiar image: a strapping, confident young white guy seated in the captain's chair of a spaceship, blaster at his hip, hair coifed just so, one elbow on the armrest, legs spread wide as if to say, "Mine is no tiny penis you are dealing with." He's a hero we all know, love and trust do the right thing in the end, whether it's James T. Kirk or variants like Han Solo, Peter Quill or Mal Reynolds. This is his story. He takes the lead. He gets the glory, and ever it shall be.

Except when it's 2018. And except when it's Black Mirror.

Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones' anthology sci-fi series kicks off its fourth season with an episode – "USS Callister" – that begins with what seems to be a loving homage to the original 1960s Star Trek. Then, slowly, methodically, the story starts unfurling its true form: a damning exploration of toxic masculinity and the dark side of fanboy nostalgia culture. Here, the heroic captain is anything but, and the misunderstood "nice guy" is the true monster lurking on the dark fringes of the galaxy.

We open on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise-like USS Callister, where the swaggering Captain Daly (Jesse Plemons) and his trusty crew are fighting a space battle complete with harrowing music, old-school special effects and lots of high-grade phlebotinum ("plasmorthian crystals," anyone?). True to every trope, the good guys win the day.

Naturally, this being Black Mirror – a show that revels in gut-wrenching turnabouts – nothing is as it seems, least of all the hero. Daly is a bit tooswaggering; his crew is a bit too trusty. After he defeats the bad guy with suspicious ease, the men launch into a round of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" while the women line up to be kissed by the good captain. Something is deeply wrong with this squeaky-clean scene: The crewmembers' smiles are plastered on, and there's a glint of malice in their fearless leader's eyes.

Cut to gray reality, where we meet the real Robert Daly: a whey-faced office drone with a receding hairline and the stooped posture of the pathologically insecure. He's the CTO of Callister Inc., a company that designs an immersive MMORPG called Infinity, in which players can explore a virtual cosmos in their very own virtual starships. The members of his "crew" are there too, belittling or ignoring him: The USS Callister's bowing and scraping second-in-command, James Walton (Jimmi Simpson), is the ultra-alpha head of the company; the communications officer (Michaela Coel) won't give Daly the time of day.

Our beta male is the brains behind the game, but everyone at his company treats him like gum stuck to the underside of their shoes. His office is decked out with posters and memorabilia from Space Fleet, a Star Trek-esque TV show from a bygone era whose aesthetic we instantly recognize from the opening scene. So is he a put-upon sweetheart, bullied by his peers, who escapes the drudgery of his day-to-day via a rich but ultimately harmless fantasy life?

Not so much. Turns out he's been secretly harvesting his coworkers' DNA in order to create digital clones to populate his own walled-off version of Infinity. We see him enact the process on Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti), a new employee who idolizes Daly for his coding genius but commits the grievous sin of not wanting to hook up with him. And so he finds a way to possess her the same way he meticulously collects his complete set of Space Fleet DVDs (and Blu-rays and VHS tapes, natch).

We discover along with Nanette, who wakes up aboard the Callister in a pastel polyester miniskirt, just how bad things are for Daly's digital prisoners. He's the god of this tiny universe, forcing his crew to LARP along with him using torture and intimidation. He's every disaffected nerd-bro with an X-Box and an ax to grind who delights in torturing NPCs (non-player characters) for the sheer sadistic thrill. Except these are real people, and Daly has knowingly trapped them in his own private Hell.

And to make matters worse, he's pedantic about it, lecturing them about the vintage show's moral code ("It is a belief system, founded on the very best of human nature") even as he brutalizes anyone who defies his will. Daly's rigid adherence to Space Fleet fandom extends to more than just words: Women don't get guns, no one ever really dies and unwholesome genitalia are morphed into the flat, undifferentiated physique of action figures. This is the last straw for Nanette, who declares in a moment instantly GIFed 'round the Twitterverse: "Stealing my pussy is a red fucking line."

And that's when "USS Callister," thrillingly, becomes a rip-roaring space caper in its own meta-narrative. Except the scrappy, charismatic hero isn't Daly, with his posturing and his forced Shatnerian speech patterns; it's Nanette, who's smart as hell and sick to death of putting up with his expectations.

The best Black Mirror episodes – of which "USS Callister" is definitely one – identify issues lurking beneath the surface of the real world and extrapolate them into a future where technology has given them form and heft. In this case, it's the fanboy backlash that's become an all-too-familiar presence in our pop-culture conversation. We're talking about legions of speculative fiction fans on the Internet who feel that, in expanding the worlds of beloved sci-fi properties to include more diverse representation and worldviews, something is being taken from them.

Their complaint, broadly, is founded on the deeply limiting idea that all narratives should center on straight, white men, who have been the unquestioned default protagonists up until very recently. This is an idea that's particularly ironic in the world of sci-fi, which is all about imagining potential futures in which anything is possible. Daly, on the other hand, builds himself a world that is incredibly constricted, based on his devotion to a retrograde narrative. Does any of this sound familiar?

It's only a step from there to the current, very loud backlash against The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson's addition to the Star Wars universe that takes on some of the franchise's sacred cows: It puts a largely non-white, non-male cast at the center of the narrative, takes aged golden boy chosen one Luke Skywalker in an unexpected direction and asks whether the Jedi Order is really all it's cracked up to be. Certain loud, angry corners of fandom hated Jedi so much that a petition was created to have it struck from the canon and a group of alt-righters (surprise!) launched a campaign to lower the movie's Rotten Tomatoes score.

Equal ire has been leveled at Doctor Who, another sci-fi institution that shook off the dust recently when the good Doctor, who's been played by a series of men since 1963, regenerated into a woman (viva Jodie Whittaker!) And then there's Star Trek: Discovery, CBS All Access's long-awaited return to Gene Roddenberry's universe that has faced unabashedly racist reactions for casting a black female lead (Sonequa Martin-Green).

And just like Daly, they're deeply missing the point. What Star Wars, Doctor Who and Star Trek have in common – aside from decades of canon and rabidly devoted fandoms – is a vision of vast, multifaceted galaxies and universes teeming with diverse societies and life forms. All three franchises have taken a great leap forward in recent months to make their central characters reflect that ethos, and it's far past due. There will always be Dalys, but there will also always be Nanettes, too, boldly going where no man has gone before. (Black Mirror itself did, too, in its way — all of Season Four's six episodes feature female leads.)

The denouement of "USS Callister" offers one of Black Mirror's rare hopeful endings — and a low-key revenge fantasy to boot. The Callister has escaped and left Daly trapped in the starless black of his own switched-off bubble universe. (Turns out he was never a god ... just an oversized kid burning ants with a magnifying glass.) Released into the vast, Net-connected cosmos of Infinity, the liberated crew is thrilled to make contact with someone from the real world. But "Gamer691" (voiced by Aaron Paul) turns out to be an all-too-familiar kind of asshole who threatens to "bomb them to shit" if they don't get out of his quadrant.

And rather than bothering to engage in this unwinnable, childish fight, Nanette claims the captain's chair and instructs her crew: "Stick us in hyperwarp and let's … fuck off somewhere." They're off to explore the universe, and Gamer691 is left shouting into the empty vacuum of his lonely corner of the galaxy: "You better run! King of space right here. King of space." But no one is listening to him anymore.

#jenna scherer #black mirror #uss callister #rolling stone #toxic masculinity #television #sci-fi #sexism #the last jedi #star wars #fanboys #misogyny #representation #doctor who #star trek discovery #star trek

[theculturalattachegent]

Call Me Kerosene

Issue 5, “The Romantics” The Tenth Magazine, January 2018

 A Romantic Voyage 

My dear friend An tells me that I feel life more deeply and violently than others. Inherently, I suppose we both do. 

One evening, I was hesitantly on way to romance a loveless romance. I sat in the yellow cab gazing through the window pane. I wasn’t looking at anything in particular. I was in a trance. As the African driver approached a turn at the corner of Manhattan’s Avenue of the Americas, I noticed his eyes deliberately peering at me in his rearview mirror. Once my eyes met his, he took that as his cue to break our silence, “I can see the sadness in your eyes,” he said. 

He got me together.

Yet, not right away. It took months upon months for that level of recognition of my spirit to impress itself unto me. 

After that moment, symbols became even more significant to me. The act of burning sage, having a born day, purchasing calla lilies from the florist for my environs, or keeping my favorite authors at my bedside table became intentional. At this juncture in my life, it is likely more important for my subconscious mind to know the symbols are there, just there, almost as a form of osmosis edifying my soul. When I first began to buy calla lilies to place in my home, I was moved by the representation and the simplicity. Its use in our events is symbolic of both endings and beginnings and the juxtaposition of masculine and feminine, a binary that constantly ruptures. Initially, I would only buy a single stem because a single stem was as far as I could stretch my coin. My choice in showcasing had nothing to do with irony or what would later become a trending hipster idyllic. For me, there was power in the single stem. Over the years, I kept the single stem in a tall, cylindrical glass vase alongside a large monstera leaf. On one occasion, a friend and mentor walked through my entryway and thought the display on my table was minimalist and beautiful. But, what she did not know was that necessity beget my creativity. In my mind, I could not digest life at the time. So, survival was my mode of transportation and modus operandi. How can I survive in the world with the least, but still look as though I’m doing the most—to the naked eye? It was less about abundance and more about the act of conveying a glory I could see, but could not yet touch.

My Laurel, Mississippi-born Bigmomma once told me, “There should be something living in your home.” I have always taken that to signify that there should be something living around you, even when you are not. Toni Morrison interrupts the sentiment that we did not ask to be here. “I think we did,” she says. Over time, I have agreed more and more with that sentiment. My notion is likely a bit more macabre than my grandmother or Morrison, but perhaps Bigmomma implored me to read between the lines and my interpretation is actually right on point. When I think back on that redefining evening with the cab driver, his words and the cadence in which he spoke to me are as vivid as the darkness when I close my eyes. I did not know this man. He did not know me. But something emanated so powerfully from my stature that he was compelled to address me, a stranger. He was firmly holding my black mirror. I was firmly turning it away. Did my lack of confidence compel him? Was it the underlying, visceral pain that seeped from my pores? No. I don’t think I conveyed any of that, in that moment. He spoke of the emptiness in my eyes. He spoke of my vision. He spoke of the one place I could not hide when I thought I was alone. 

He got me together. 

For me, the acting of giving or temporarily holding a flower is not an isolated occurrence. It is a ritual occasion that signifies birth and rebirth, hope, breath, and futurity. I must cherish visions of myself, myself. I must hold myself closely, otherwise, I’m too fragile if I begin to loosen the grip. When you begin to work at the age of thirteen, you learn earnest and how to labor. But, when you begin working at the age of thirteen because somewhere along the way in thirteen years, you’ve acquired the sense that you feel you need to take care of yourself—well, that’s a far different cry. It’s the kind of cry you spend the rest of your years trying to peel away, even when love does surround you, such as my mother who was in my childhood home. Today, I feel the antagonistic nature of that relationship and a similar sadness my mother felt when she was trying to raise an outspoken, gay, black young man, who was ready to be in the world. I was tasting the flames and she was already in them. Now, I understand. There is royalty, but there is also trauma inside [our] DNA. 

“Fuck Your Breath!” 

It was Thanksgiving Day when I first stepped foot into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History of Art & Culture in Washington, DC. Even with the ticketed passes, we all shuffled through the museum like cattle. It was an eerie symbolism for me as I remembered how slaves were jammed onto ships such as the Brooks or the São José. You enter through the bowel of the museum. It’s quite dark. But when I think of that very first visit, my mind always returns to the plaques on the wall that read the number of Africans taken and the number of Africans who survived and arrived at a port, only to then die a different death. In between those two numbers, I only thought of the storytellers, thinkers, artists, scientists, and healers we lost along the way. 

Just a month ago, Erica Garner died at the age of 27 years-old old from a heart attack. At this point, an autopsy is circumstantial evidence to me when you consider the trauma she endured by losing her father, Eric Garner, in such a vile way. We are not the wretched, but visual culture, media, and the populace would have us believe so. It is imperative to continue to push through black death as spectacle when we have so much life left within us yet. I don’t romanticize our past, but I must return to it every so often so that I am reminded of how we are not a pathology to be studied, but visions to be celebrated. Nostalgia, stemming from Latin, is not only remembering, but its literal meaning is a return to pain. Every black art movement is responding to the futurity of our race and of our breath—it is responding to nostalgia. You can call it Black is Beautiful. You can call it Négritude. You can call it 40 Acres and a Mule. You can call it magic. You can call it Black Lives Matter. You can call it Afrofuturism. But, what is consistent is that we have to keep giving a name to the preservation of blackness and black art. In order for me to pump through it, I need a sentimentality that is rooted in self-preservation, forming itself like Kevlar around my soul. 

There was and has been so much life lost in voyage. We’ve been romantics, because how else could you explain the fury, vision, and sentimentality of our steadfast survival? We flicker. The light dims. And yet, it burns still. A bit brighter with each generation. A bit righter with each passing year. A bit tighter with each verse and each song. 

During the summer of 2014, I spent a week in Grasse, France. While there, I looked out over the mountains in Chateaneuf one afternoon and grew nostalgic over Michael Brown. After Mario Woods was shot in Oakland, California, my heart was quite heavy for some time. The number of shots that poured into his black body was grotesque as he stood there, mentally ill, holding a kitchen butter knife. But that day, it was Michael Brown, and my heart seized as I looked over those winding, beautiful hills. The dichotomy of it all was grotesque. I felt guilty that I could sit atop this hill in a fit of escapism, while my kinsmen and kinswomen lay slain with no redemption.

During that trip in Grasse and through the winding hills of Saint-Paul de Vence, I began to fill with ire and love, simultaneously. After traversing the mountains during the day, I lay awake in bed that evening, alone, trying to string my feelings together. I was agitated that the deep thoughts I could not shake were my own and not necessarily those of the white companions I traveled alongside. The pain is what’s left for us to deal with. It’s left for us to pick. It’s left for us to sort. It’s left for us to leave behind. Trauma, and glory, is riddled in our bones from every stress fracture that black men and women endured through every reification of slavery, that exists even still. Freedom still hasn’t cut us loose yet, so I began to write: 

“Dearest Mike Brown: Now that you’re a shining star, as a brown boy, I know what could have been. And, what should have been. But, may your star illuminate the world, as the sun illuminates the Alps, as a catalyst not for what might have been, but what will be. I’ll look for you, tonight.

Je t’embrasse, Marcus” 

Shipwrecked

That day atop those hills. I needed to speak to Michael Brown. Or, perhaps he was speaking to me. Maybe, my great-grandmother or enslaved ancestors were calling me by a name I don’t even know, but I answered. When I close my eyes, I think of the voyage responsible for my existence. When Africans were transported in squalor across the Atlantic they recovered their namesake by listening to one another in song. They were captured, with each other’s heat to warm, and stripped of dignity and namesake. But, they sang. Singing was how common knowledge and collective identity was formed. The bone-deep artisanship in our bodies allowed us to find kin in each other. We passed along the work in this art form and continue to do so. With that understanding, I’ll use any art in my own capability to continue the tradition of contacting my ancestors, predecessors, and descendants. 

As I lay awake in bed on that August night in Grasse, only miles away from James Baldwin’s old home in Saint-Paul de Vence I thought of him. I thought of how he passed away there in 1987 in his bed surrounded by close friends after fighting the world with his art. Then, I thought of his clarion call to us: “I pray that somewhere in that wreckage they’ll find me. And if I’ve done that, then I would have accomplished something in my life.”

We found you Jimmy, we found you. 

[anaeeve]

Historical spg, aka just an excuse to put some of my favorite things together. Rabbit is first, of course, but I’m working on The Spine and Zero too!

(Disclaimer: I am not a historian pr a designer, just someone who is very interested in history, fashion, and historical fashion. I took a few deliberate artistic liberties, too)

First of all, the era! Since Rabbit’s style is described as steampunk and she was the first robot to be built, for me it was clear the era had to be Victorian/second half of the 1800s. I ended up focusing more on 1850 and 1860, but in hindsight maybe it would have been more accurate to choose the 1890s and early 1900s. Oh well.

Designing this dress was actually a bit of a challenge, which is unusual considering how much I love designing dresses. It was mostly due to the fact that I wanted something legitimately Victorian (rather than just a steampunky corset and gathered skirt) that was also a bit quirky to match Rabbit’s personality. I’m not sure if I succeded, but I tried.

Every Victorian dress seemed a bit too closed off and formal, with long sleeves and high collars (that was especially true in the 1890s, it seems, which just reinforces my choice of decades). Then I found out about evening dresses, and how they tended to have short sleeves and show the collar, which I liked and found a bit more like what I was going for. I doodled a bunch of dresses, but all of them seemed too simple, too much, or too “wrong”. I decided to go back to the source, and kind of took the outfits Rabbit actually wears and exagerated them, with a bit of mix and matching and extra Victorian-ness.

It worked! The dress seemed much “righter”, and after a bit of fine tuning, adding details and excluding others, I had something I actually liked, and fit Rabbit probably as well as those big formal dresses might.

I took a few liberties, of course. I don’t think the color pallete would be very viable back then. But I had already settled on kepping the red/black spg pallete, with some white and occasional accent colors for this series. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t common for women of any time period anywhere to wear cogs in their hats.

I did find that Victorian women wore fingerless gloves, though, and I think that’s pretty cool and unexpected.

(Also I had a idea that I like but is barely noticeable which is the pattern of tiny cogs in some of that red fabric, if you can notice. It’s not just circles.)

(Damn the impracticability of Victorian dresses and their impossibility for cool poses though)

If you read that far, thank you! I’m working on the other bots, but I have a lot to do right now and I’m not sure when they will be ready. I think I’ve settled for the 1940s/50s for The Spine, and the 1920s for Zero.

Edit: Hey I'm probably not working on this anymore

#steam powered giraffe #spg #spg rabbit #rabbit spg #rabbit the robot #ha ha ha I sure as hell hope no one out there is an actual historian who will tell me I got everything wrong #I keep looking at actual period dresses and thinking this doesn't look right #my art #my stuff #maybe i should have added more frills?

[dicecast]

Does this mean we'll get a 100 Days of Trump post on Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns? I get that most of the works so far are nominally against the things Donald Trump stands for but it would be interesting to see you take apart a work from a prototypical alt-righter.

I wasn’t planning to recommend it because I don’t want to recommend any of the work that is actually pro RIght wing, I am mostly recommending works that are an outside view of the right rather than right wing works themselves.  But Dark Night Returns is an basically one of the manifestos of the Alt Right, and if it is basically their Alt Right equivilant of the COmmunist Manifesto.  So lets talk about Dark night Returns as an a way of explaining the Alt Right 

    Firstly, just a minor detail a lot of people are like “Watchmen and DKR” and they are so unalike in my opinion, because DKR is awful.  Like it is a terrible comic, clumsy storytelling, really ugly art style, flat characters, terrible action scenes, and utterly simplistic. in fact you could read DKR as the anti Watchmen, because everything Watchmen is, DK is not.  Because the reason why Watchmen is good is because it presents multiple view points, complicated villiance, acknowledges systemic large scale problems and isn’t nothing more than awkward propaganda.  

    But lets look at Dark Night Returns as part of the Trump mentality 

1) There are simple solutions to problems

As much as Fascist Batman drones on about how dark gritty and complicated everything is but the solutions to all of the problems in his world are cartoonist easy to solve.  LIke Frank Miller was writing in NY during the height of its crime era and guess what?  NYC went to become one of the safest cities in the country not because of a hyper violent vigilante/police movement but because…Greater investment in social services.  Funny how works.  

2) The problems are simple 

Again, for all of the vaunted “Adultness” of this comic, its fucking Juvenile, because everything is very much just.. bad for its own sake.  Gang violence is caused by…psychopathic young people who kill for its own sake.  Which if you know anything about actual gang violence….lol no.   Gang warfare above all else is a business

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4HD1HgfKB4

The news casters are vapid and evil because…yeah.  THe mayor is useless and awful for its own sake,   the Psychologist is cartoonist stupid for its own sake, and the every day people are fucking morons just…because.  Its a world where evil happens for its own sake, which is nice and easy to solve.  

3) Macho, macho macho macho.  The more macho you are, the better, character’s morality is linked to how macho they are.  Not that the psychopathic gang leader who asks people to go out and do murder quotas is still viewed with respect by Batman, while the mayor and the therapist are given absolutely no respect.  The more violent somebody is, the more moral they are.  All of the normal things we consider virtues like 

Kindness

Thoughtfulness

Understanding

Being Friendly 

Intellectualism 

Complicated nuanced thought

Creativity 

Sensitivity 

Empathy

Simply aren’t present, pretty much every trait in Batman is something negative, and in fact are traits that batman has in common with the badguys.  Love of torture, sadism, rudeness, disrespect, close kindnesses.  Batman says he is doing this to protect the real people, who don’t need to use these methods, but we never see them as actual character (personified of course as women) and anybody who doesn’t display these traits is a weak sissy  

4) The world of the Dark Night is a world that Rightists think we live in, where mass murderers are let go because liberals feel sorry for them, while in reality…

Most criminals except due to money in the system 

Unarmed black teenagers are shot down for no reason.  

Like if you look at facts rather than the nonsensical rambling of right wing losers pretending to be macho, psychologists getting 

5) The characters act majorly tough but they never actual challenged, the narrative is so completely sewed in their favor that they just kinda win effortlessly.  Cause that is the thing about propaganda, you can’t ever let the protagonist fail because that implies the ideology could possibly fail.  Batman doesn’t have flaws or is ever wrong except if he fails to be as macho as everybody else.  And he knows  better than everybody mostly because he is just that righteously violent. 

And by the way, if you want a good use of the term Mary Sue, this book is a great example of it.  

Finally, this is a world where there isn’t a real morality, like there isn’t a code or limits on ethics, there are just 

THE GOOD GUYS

and 

THE BAD GUSY

and pretty much anything is justified if its aimed at

THE BAD GUYS

its a completely black and white world view that is also a really stupid one because the solution to every problem is the same…more violence.  

Terrible book, been saying that for years 

@randomshoes @zennistrad @afriendtokilltime

#Ask Dicecast #The Dark Night Returns #Alt Right #Trump

[nothingman]

When Mike Cernovich, one of the most prominent alt-right internet trolls supporting Donald Trump, was interviewed on 60 Minutes, he used the platform to spread conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton's health and to allege that she is involved with pedophilic sex trafficking operations. But he also declared his belief in single-payer health care.

"I believe in some form of universal basic income," he told CBS’s Scott Pelley, citing concerns about technological unemployment. "I’m pro-single-payer health care. Is that right-wing or is that left-wing anymore? Well, if you have a lot of people, a large swath of the company, or country, are suffering, then I think that we owe it to all Americans to do right by them and to help them out."

This might seem like a bizarre position for a far-right conspiracy theorist to take. Single-payer health care, after all, entails nationalizing most or all of the health insurance industry and having the government set prices for doctors’ services. Conservatives in America have spent the better part of the past century arguing that the idea is socialistic, would lead to long waits for lifesaving treatment, and would give the government power over the life and death of its citizens.

But Cernovich is less a traditional conservative than he is a Trumpist — and Trumpism in its purest, alt-right variety cares more about white working-class identity politics than traditional conservatism. More and more, Trump fans are seeing single-payer as part of that.

Alt-rightists and other Trump-loyal conservatives — Richard Spencer, VDARE writer and ex–National Review staffer John Derbyshire, Newsmax CEO and Trump friend Christopher Ruddy, and onetime Donald Trump Jr. speechwriter and Scholars & Writers for Trump head F.H. Buckley — all endorsed various models of single-payer in recent months and years.

Even elites in the alt-right mold who once deplored single-payer are changing their tune. Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative three-time presidential candidate whose white identity politics and fiercely anti-trade and anti-immigration stances helped inspire the modern alt-right, had free market views on health care in the 1990s and condemned Obamacare as a scheme to kill Grandma in 2009. This week, he told me in an email he has “not taken any position on single-payer, and [has] pretty much stayed out of the Obamacare repeal-and-replace debate.”

Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley programmer whose writings under the pen name Mencius Moldbug helped launch the neoreactionary branch of the alt-right, told me he welcomes the movement’s trend toward single-payer, viewing it as a “sincere effort to think realistically in the present tense rather than in abstract ideology.”

Insofar as the alt-right, and the Trump-supporting right more generally, have a coherent economic agenda, it’s a vehement rejection of the free market ideology crucial to post–World War II American conservatism. While Paul Ryan reportedly makes all his interns read Atlas Shrugged, figures like Cernovich, Spencer, and Derbyshire are trying to build an American right where race and identity are more central and laissez-faire economics is ignored or actively avoided.

This has been most obvious on immigration and trade, where libertarians’ opposition to most or any government restrictions is in tension with the alt-right’s economic nationalism. But it’s also true on health care, where the pure alt-righters are joined by more mainstream pro-Trump voices like Ruddy and Buckley and even some Trump-wary conservatives such as Peggy Noonan.

The Trump-supporting right’s case for single-payer is part of a vision of a party where ideological purity on economic issues is much less important, and where welfare state expansion can be accommodated if it serves other goals — like building a political base among working-class whites.

The welfare state has always been more popular with the Republican base than with its elected officials. Trump arguably won the presidency in part by being the first Republican in years to promise to protect Social Security and Medicare. My colleague Sarah Kliff has run focus groups with Trump voters where participants bring up their admiration for Canadian-style single-payer unprompted. The alt-right single-payer fad suggests that elites are finally catching up.

The ultranationalist case for single-payer health care

Some of the arguments that the Trumpists and alt-rightists offer for single-payer are the standard concerns about the plight of sick and suffering Americans that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Bernie Sanders speech — like Cernovich’s insistence that “we owe it to all Americans to do right by them, and to help them out.”

Other arguments are offered more in sorrow than in anger. Derbyshire, for example, laments the fact that Americans are unwilling to accept a true free market in health care — but argues that single-payer makes more sense than the current hodgepodge of insurance subsidies and regulations and tax breaks.

“Citizens of modern states will accept no other kind of health care but the socialized or mostly socialized kind,” he said on a 2012 episode of his podcast, Radio Derb. “This being the case, however regrettably, the most efficient option is to make the socialization as rational as possible.” Single-payer, he concludes, would involve “less socialism, and more private choice,” than “what we now have.” (Derbyshire doesn’t really explain why socializing insurance is less socialist than not socializing insurance.)

But the main argument offered by Trumpists is about their movement. Donald Trump famously promised in May 2016 to turn the Republican Party into a “workers’ party.” The implication was clear: Republican elites before him like Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney prioritized deregulation for businesses and tax cuts for the rich, and offered little or nothing for working-class people, specifically working-class white people. Instead, the party relied on social issues like abortion and immigration to earn their votes.

F.H. Buckley, the George Mason University law professor who led Scholars & Writers for Trump, even approvingly cites the leftist writer Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? on this point. “Frank asked how it was that the poor folks of his home state voted for a Republican Party that cared so little for their economic interests,” Buckley wrote in the New York Post. “Become the jobs and the health-care president, and you [Trump] will have answered Frank’s question.”

“Steve Bannon has said the Republicans will become a party of ‘economic nationalism,’” Buckley continued. “No one has bothered to define this, but here’s one thing it must mean: We’re going to treat Americans better than non-Americans. We’re going to see that Americans have jobs, medical care and an enviable safety net.”

Of course, the Trumpists are big fans of using racialized, not explicitly economic appeals on issues like immigration and crime to win votes. But whereas they see mainstream Republicans like Paul Ryan or Jeb Bush making those appeals as a smokescreen for unpopular economic policies, they want to pair the appeals with an nationalist economic agenda that is actually popular with these voters.

“Unlike Paul Ryan and Rich Lowry, who masturbated to Atlas Shrugged in their college dorms and have no loyalty to their race, Donald Trump is a nationalist,” Richard Spencer writes. “We can’t ignore the politics of this. If Trumpcare passes, leftists can credibly claim that Trump has betrayed his populist vision. They will recycle the hoary script about nationalism and ‘scapegoating’ immigrants as a means of pushing through a draconian agenda. And they’ll have a point!”

Single-payer, Spencer insists, would "serve our constituency" (read: white people), give the right an answer to the appeal of social democrats like Bernie Sanders, and encourage the growth of the alt-right movement: "So many writers, activists, and content creators on our side shy away from becoming more involved, not just out of fear of social punishment, but out of fear of being fired and losing their health insurance."

Moreover, as soon as health care becomes a public issue, an alt-right government could use that power to promote a more vigorous, healthy white race on a number of dimensions. "When single-payer healthcare is implemented, issues like food safety, nutrition, and obesity become matters of public concern,” Spencer writes. “It will draw more attention to the alternative we are presenting to America’s current lowest-common-denominator society."

Of course, single-payer would overwhelmingly benefit a lot of nonwhite Americans as well. But programs like Social Security and Medicare do too, and their universal nature and the fact that they’re tied to work have led them to be less racialized and stigmatized than cash welfare or Medicaid. Single-payer’s universality is appealing because it helps the white working class without making them enroll in means-tested programs traditionally associated with black and Latino beneficiaries.

This is a key strategy of the far right in Europe

Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images

Marine Le Pen on the campaign trail in Lille.

The ideological vision being offered here is hardly original. The political scientist Sheri Berman has argued that fascism and nationalism succeeded in Europe before World War II largely because unlike traditional conservative parties, fascist parties could provide a real challenge to the social democrats’ promise of relief from the suffering of the Great Depression.

"Across Europe nationalists began openly referring to themselves as 'national' socialists to make clear their commitment to ending the insecurities, injustices, and instabilities that capitalism brought in its wake, while clearly differentiating themselves from their competitors on the left," she writes in The Primacy of Politics.

And more recently, this strategy been adopted by some far-right parties in Europe. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Front National, has relied heavily on "welfare chauvinism” in her presidential bids, a promise to protect and expand social programs for (white) native workers against migrants who might exploit them and drain money that should be going to noble French citizens. Geert Wilders, the far-right leader in the Netherlands, used to be a small-government conservative but began publicly fighting cuts to health programs and calling for expanded pensions once it became clear that this appealed to the lower-income voters who loved his anti-Islam message.

This trend isn’t universal; the Freedom Party in Austria, for example, was a traditional laissez-faire party on economics. But it’s become a popular strategy for several parties, from the Finns Party in Finland to the Danish People’s Party to the Sweden Democrats, whose leader once tweeted, “The election is a choice between mass immigration and welfare. You choose.”

And American far-rightists have noticed. James Kirkpatrick, a fellow writer of Derbyshire’s at VDARE (an anti-immigration site named after the first white person born in the American colonies), has approvingly cited the nationalist, authoritarian Polish Law and Justice Party’s strategy of tacking left on welfare to tack right on everything else. The country’s “patriotic government,” he swoons, “outflanked the Left and strengthened its grip on power with universal health care.”

The difference between those parties and Trump’s would-be workers’ party is that European countries already have universal health care. And one thing that happened once it was established is that mainstream conservative parties got on board with its preservation. The British Conservatives and the Gaullists in France and the Christian Democrats in Germany don’t try to repeal their countries’ universal health care systems. At most, they push for market-based reforms that retain universality but maybe introduce some more copays or an increased role for private insurers and providers.

When that’s the mainstream right-wing alternative, a right-wing party that calls for expanding welfare and health benefits seems more plausible. More to the point, most of the countries enjoying a far-right resurgence employ some system of proportional representation, which allows new parties without much political base to quickly gain ground in the legislature. Tellingly, while Le Pen does well in France’s presidential elections, there are only two Front National members in its National Assembly, which elects by district à la the US or UK.

So even if Trump were to be persuaded by his followers and embrace single-payer, he’d face a tough task. He can’t form a new right-wing party and sweep the legislative elections; he has to change the policies of the existent Republican Party, which has spent decades fighting proposals for universal health care, and get a quorum of members in the House and Senate on his side. That’s much harder, and suggests that the Spencers, Buckleys, and Derbyshires of the world won’t get their wish on this anytime soon.

via Vox - All

#IFTTT #Feedly #Nothingman uses feedly

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

Regarding the alt-right

(reposted)

According to the SPLC, in the United States of America there are:

94 official Neo-Nazi groups,

95 official White Nationalist groups,

10 official Holocaust Denial groups,

190 KKK groups, and the list goes on...

Looking to online statistics...

The neo-nazi subreddit r/NationalSocialism has 2,777 subscribers.

The alt-right subreddit r/altright has 15,324 subscribers.

And, if you really think that the alt-right are not neo-nazis, let’s take a look at that subreddit...

they call their subscribers “fashy goys.” “Fashy” is short for Fascist, and “Goy” is Yiddish for Non-Jew. Thusly they are calling themselves Fascist Non-Jews. A specifically anti-Semitic fascist movement? Gee, I happen to remember one of those in Germany in 1933!

A banner at the top of the r/altright page bears the Iron Cross- a symbol used by Nazi Germany, in contemporary use by neo-nazis.

One of the top rated posts, with 100+ upvotes:

“communism was created by Jews” is one of the things that Hitler and the German Nazi party believed.

Let’s go further. Let’s check out the SPLC article on the alt-right. After all, they’re reputable and have already done research.

“The Alternative Right, commonly known as the Alt-Right, is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, Alt-Righters eschew “establishment” conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value.“

“The Alternative Right is a term coined in 2008 by Richard Bertrand Spencer, who heads the white nationalist think tank known as the National Policy Institute, to describe a loose set of far-right ideals centered on “white identity” and the preservation of “Western civilization.” In 2010, Spencer, who had done stints as an editor of The American Conservative and Taki’s Magazine, launched the Alternative Right blog, where he worked to refine the movement’s ideological tenets.

Spencer describes the Alt Right as a big-tent ideology that blends the ideas of neo-reactionaries (NRx-ers), who advocate a return to an antiquated, pseudo-libertarian government that supports “traditional western civilization”; “archeofuturists,” those who advocate for a return to “traditional values” without jettisoning the advances of society and technology; human biodiversity adherents (HBDers) and “race realists,” people who generally adhere to “scientific racism”; and other extreme-right ideologies. Alt-Right adherents stridently reject egalitarianism and universalism.”

“...at the end of the day, neo-Nazis like Anglin, coat-and-tie racists like Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor, and oddball figures like Yiannopoulos have more in common, in terms of sharing a vision of society as fundamentally determined by race, than they disagree about.“ -SPLC

In conclusion, I think we can all agree that the Alt-Right is a political group that knowingly espouses Nazi ideology and embraces Nazi symbolism.

#nazi #alt-right

[philippmichelreichold]

On Space Infanty by Drave Drake et al

On Space Infanty by Drave Drake et al.

Home

"Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben." "Dalai Lama," Rammstein Space Infanty is a Military Science Fiction anthology edited by Drave Drake, Charles G. Waugh and Martin Greenberg. It contains stories by a dozen authors spanning 3 decades. In order of appearance they are: "The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears," by Keith Bennett; "His Truth Goes Marching On," by Jerry Pournelle; "But as a Soldier, For His Country," by Stephen Goldin; " Soldier Boy," by Michael Shaara; "Code-Name Feirefitz," by David Drake; "The Foxholes of Mars," by Fritz Lieber; "Conqueror," by Larry Eisenberg; "Warrior," by Gordon R. Dickson; "Message to an Alien," by Keith Laumer; ". . . Not a Prison Make," by Joseph P. Martino; "The Hero," by George R. R. Martin, and "End Game," by Joe Haldeman. Of the lot, Joe Haldeman, Gordon R. Dickson, Jerry Pournelle and Fritz Leiber are Hugo Award winners, though not for these stories. Mr. Drake and Mr. Haldeman served in Viet Nam. Their experiences color and inform their stories. Mr. Drake once said that his Hammers Slammers stories were partly therapy. Though clumped together as "Space Infantry," these stories run a wide gamut in attitude and outlook, and they need not strictly speaking be about Infantryman at all. Anyone simply seeking simple action adventure, bang-bang-your-dead, stories may be disappointed. There is so much more here than that. Anyone looking for high quality writing should read these stories. They stand out as excellent severally and separately. The book is essential to anyone with more than a superficial interest in Military Science Fiction-- especially anyone interested in the crafting or the history of Military Sci Fi.

The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears

Mr. Bennett's story is not so much about ground sloggers as downed rocketeers who get the job done regardless of any obstacles and who coincidentally save their corps from absorption or disbandment. The basis for the title, according to Drake, is a song-- "The Mountaineeers Have Hairy Ears," whose lyrics I'll not reproduce here, and which carries the same emotional load of the Viet Nam Era, "don't mean nothin" in the context of having just had one's eye shot out. Mr. Drake was half a generation removed from Rocketeers, as I am from Drake's Slammers. In the context of today's milieu, the story is shockingly militaristic and imperialistic, much reflective of the attitude of the times in which it was written, 1950. No consideration is given to the real estate and no quarter to the natives. AS I said, the these admitted "Sons of bi-- er, Space" get the job done. There is of course a problem with some stories written in the 1950's. The idiom is changed. Readers of today may find it difficult to relate to.

His Truth Goes Marching On

Dr. Pounelle is a Politcal Scientist and this story is as much a poli-sci treatise as it is a work of military science fiction. It is of course set in the Falkenberg's Legion universe before the collapse of the Co-Dominion and the ascension of Lysander to the Spartan throne, just prior to Ace Barton and Peter Owensford signing up with Colonel Falkenberg. Don't get me wrong, there's enough army life and gun play and slogging through mud for anyone's taste. There's also betrayal and a nuke.The story is well worth the read for anyone with a brain. But you won't know the truth till you read that last couple of paragraphs.

But as a Soldier, For His Country,

Quoth the author, "It's a young man's story, venting frustration at the futility and lunacy of war." It grew into the novel, The Eternity Brigade. I'm one of those people made uncomfortable by this story. But guess what-- the purpose of good writing is not to make the reader feel good. Imagine the sheer unpleasantness and daily grind of war. Then imagine the worst parts. Imagine dying in battle. Then imagine being resurrected and even copied countless times for an age, till finally you meet yourself in battle. A well wriiten reductio ad absurdum.

Soldier Boy

Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for The Killer Angels, a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg. "Soldier Boy" was also made into a novel; it tells the story of the lone soldier, at a number of disadvantages, that must come to grips with a superior opponent through his native intelligence and leadership skills. It's a well crafted story about a young man coming into his own. The antagonistis remarkable.

Code-Name Feirefitz

Despite being in law school, David Drake was drafted to serve in Viet Nam. He eventually became a member of a Battalion Information Center with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. His experiences there form the basis of his Hammer's Slammers stories. The prime movers in "Code Name Feirefitz" are not the highly capable Captain Esa Mboya or his Golf Company Slammers, but two civilans. Their conflict is key to Mboya's own conflict between duty and conscience. The story contrasts the grittiness and hardness of the soldiers as they set about doing their duty with the composure and quiet persistence of Esa's brother Juma as he does his. Their dedication contrasts with the desperate selfishness of ben Khedda as he seeks to sacrifice anyone to survive. The faith of Jooma plays against that of the Kaid who will risk anything to save his people, and both stand out against the faithlessness of ben Khedda.

The Foxholes of Mars

Fritz Leiber has won numerous awards-- one of the great masters of Science Fiction. Leiber's opening imagery and setting creation is masterful. Leiber's prose is deep and lush with layers of meaning. War is just the setting for a deep and not terrible pleasnt look deep into a man's soul-- the soul of a budding demagouge. I find no indication that this story won Hugo or Nebula. It should have. It's shocking that an anthology containing this story should be available for a penny. This story in and of itsself is priceless.

Conqueror

Eisenber crafts his story well, creating a believable setting and a sympathetic protangonis in a story that starts out being a story about the lone foot slogger a long way from home and in need of human contact, validation of his own humanity. Ends up as a story about successful psy-ops and asymmetric warfare against an occupying force.

Warrior

The first Gordon Dickson I read was the short story "Soldier Ask Not" in The Hugo Winners. Warrior is a side piece to his Childe Cycle stories, about the Dorsai general Ian Graeme. It is included in the anthology Lost Dorsai. Though the action of the story takes place far from the battlefields of the Splinter worlds, it is full of strategy, including the principle of calculated risk, and tactics. (Including Tactics of Mistake-- this is a Graeme we're talking about.) It portrays Graeme as the Dorsai archetype-- not only the consummate soldier, but a man who would cross all of Hell and half of New York City to pay a debt for good or ill. And all the more so to exact justice forhis soldiers. Dickson's prose can be a little pompous and overbearing-- his treatment of villains a little dismissive, mere stick figures lacking depth. But then he wants Graeme to be overpowering-- to his advesaries, to the helpless bystander cops, and to the reader.

Message to an Alien

Keith Laumer is a Nebula Award writer who is porbably undervalued today. His Retief stories are based on his experiecnes as a military attache in Burma. His Bolo stories were part of the inspiration for Drake's Slammers. This story is about the lone and disgraced soldier who was turned out for being righter than his superiorsthe civillian authorities could ever admit. He acts alone again and totally without anyone else's support to nip an invasion in the bud and stop a war. Laumer's disdain those with authority but lacking the sense to use it shows through. Dalton's mastery of the situation, the authoirites, and of the invaders is a pleasure to read.

. . . Not a Prison Make

Martino's novelette is based on the unique premise of guerilla warfare carried out by low technology aborigines. He builds the story thoroughly, exploring the occupying forces attempts to mount an affect defence. The key is to force to the negotiating table people who have no interest in negotiations. The solution is unique to he situation, and the resolution acceptable to all.

The Hero

The United States has reached the point in its decadence/decay where it is sometimes more convenient to ignore its veterans and treat them with disdain then to give them the consideration and rewards they deserve. And so it is in "The Hero." Kagan serves honorably and well. When his term of enlistment is up, he demands his desserts, and his superiors balk. Can't conceive of him going to Earth. George R. R. Martin uses overstatement to drive home his point, contrasting the soldier with his bosses. In the end, it's clear that they are as dishonorable as he is honorable, as undeserving of his service as anyone could be.

End Game

Joe Haldeman won an award for The Forever War. In the End Game, we find out what it was all for. Time has past. A lot of time has past, and Man is more like the Taurans than veterans like Marygay and William. There's a place for people like them called Middle Finger, heh heh. Anyone familiar with The Forever War knows Haldeman is a great writer, that he despises the stupidity and waste of war, and that he makes his case very well.

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[englishchinesetranslations]

https://radicalcapitalist.org/2018/05/15/the-jewish-origins-of-communism/

Introduction

Communism, an ideology that killed 94 million people in the 20th century, is still far from dead. Despite the ghastly and bloody history of communism, many young people still hold to a white-washed, romanticized view of it. To them, communism was a morally commendable cause with noble intentions that just happened to go awry at the hands of unsuitable dictators. Recent headlines from the New York Times over the past year have served to legitimize this view. A common view among “moderates” and “normie” conservatives is that communism was “good in theory but failed in practice.” Despite the economic collapse of communism in the late 20th century and the accompanying mass bloodshed, both communist ideas and sympathies are alive and well. As such, it behooves one to understand the true roots of communism so that principled libertarians and other right-wing folk may combat it more effectively.

An inconvenient “hate-fact” expressed by paleoconservatives and alt-righters is that communism is an ideology with distinctly Jewish historical and ideological origins/overtones. That is not to say that all or even the majority of Jews are communists, but that Jews have been disproportionately represented in the leadership and funding of communist movements throughout history (for example in Russia, Hungary, Germany, and Austria between 1918 to 1923) (1), and that the communist ideology itself comports strongly with certain behavioral and ideological tendencies which have manifested themselves throughout Jewish history.

The Talmudic Nature of Marxism

To understand the Jewish connection to communism, it may be helpful to start at the beginning – with Karl Marx and his lesser known mentor, Moses Hess. Both were of Jewish ethnicity, although only Hess identified openly as a Jew while Marx attempted to distance himself from his Jewish identity and embraced atheism. From the work of these two men, one may trace a multitude of communist aspects that can be tied directly to Jewish philosophies, particularly those expressed in the Talmud – a collection of Rabbinic writings that constitute the authoritative text on Jewish theology and philosophy. While the Talmud covers a wide array of different topics, contempt for gentiles (particularly Christians) and a belief in Jewish supremacy are pervasive themes. This spirit of Jewish supremacy is decidedly materialistic and utopian, and it was precisely this attitude that characterized Marx’s thinking, even while Marx rejected the Zionism of his mentor. Nonetheless, as E. Michael Jones explains in his book “The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit,” Marx certainly inherited Hess’ Talmudic mindset and worldview (2):

The Talmud has led to revolution. You don’t have to be religious to be talmudic. Karl Marx was an atheist, but according to Bernard Lazare, he was also “a clear and lucid Talmudist,” and, therefore, “full of that old Hebrew materialism which ever dreams of a paradise on earth and always rejects the far-distant and problematical hope of a garden of Eden after death.” (p. 99). Marx was the quintessential Talmudist and the quintessential Jewish revolutionary, and as such he proposed one of the most influential false Messiahs in Jewish history: world communism. Baruch Levy, one of Marx’s correspondents, proposed another equally potent false Messiah, namely, the Jewish Race. According to Levy, the Jewish people taken collectively shall be its own Messiahs… In this new organization of humanity, the sons of Israel now scattered over the whole surface of the globe… shall everywhere become the ruling element without opposition…. The governments of the nations forming the Universal or World -Republic shall all thus pass, without any effort, into Jewish hands thanks to the victory of the proletariat…. Thus shall the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, that, when the Messianic epoch shall have arrived, the Jews will control the wealth of all the nations of the earth.

So, it turns out that there was basis in Jewish history for what Mahathir Mohammed said, as well as ample evidence—the creation of the state of Israel, for instance—that world Jewry had advanced considerably toward its goal of world domination in the century and a half since Levy wrote to Karl Marx. The Jews, quite simply, could not shake themselves loose from the notion that they were God’s chosen people, not even after they stopped believing in God. By rejecting Christ, they condemned themselves to worship one false Messiah after another—most recently Communism and Zionism. In their book La Question du Messie, the Lemann brothers, both of whom converted from Judaism to Catholicism, and both of whom became priests, compared present day Jews to the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai: “having grown weary of waiting for the return of Moses… they feasted and danced around the golden calf.” Zionism and Communism are two of the most recent false Messiahs which the Jews have fallen down to worship. Having rejected the supernatural Messiah who died on the cross, the Jews condemned themselves to worship one false natural Messiah after another and repeat the cycle of enthusiasm leading to disillusionment over and over again throughout their history. Those illusions both found fulfillment in and lent themselves to the creation of the birth of the Jewish state. On January 6, 1948, the chief rabbi of Palestine announced that “Eventually it [Israel] will lead to the inauguration of the true union of the nations, through which will be fulfilled the eternal message to mankind of our immortal prophets.” In the history of Jewish messianism, fantasies of racial superiority alternate with contradictory fantasies of universal brotherhood. “The great ideal of Judaism,” The Jewish World announced on February 9,1883 “is that… the whole world shall be imbued with Jewish teaching and that in a Universal Brotherhood of Nations—a greater Judaism in fact— all the separate races and religions shall disappear.”

It was from this Talmudic materialism that Marxism (along with other Jewish revolutionary/globalist ideologies like Zionism) came about. The fact that the Bolshevik movement featured so many Jews in its leadership cannot be dismissed as a mere coincidence – for the global communist revolution it promised is exactly what the Jewish elite have always wanted, and still continue to fight for to this very day. The ultimate failure of communism in the Soviet Union takes nothing away from this point – as Jones points out, the Jews “condemned themselves to worship one false Messiah after another – most recently Communism and Zionism.” In other words, the Jewish pursual of communism was irrational, but nevertheless pursued out of their ethnic interest – out of a desire for ethnic liberation from the “oppression” they have historically suffered in European countries. Ethnic liberation via human effort and historical “progress” leading up to revolution (as seen in Marxist theory) is a theme in Jewish thought that predates even Marx.

Jones explains how the Kabbalah – an ancient Jewish mystical/esoteric school of thought – gave rise to this sort of utopian revolutionary spirit. Without getting into all the specific details of Kabbalahic doctrine (which you can find in Jones’ book), it can be summarized by the idea that the purpose of Jews on earth was to bring “tiqqun,” or healing into the world by re-igniting the “holy sparks” of divine understanding which had been scattered throughout the world and suppressed. The suppression of the sparks had political implications as well, being represented by social/political oppression. This was how the Jewish Diaspora was explained – to facilitate the discovery of these “holy sparks” by the Jews. The long-foretold Messiah, rather than bringing about “tiqqun” himself, was instead the result of “tiqqun” being achieved by the Jewish people. Cosmic redemption via “tiqqun” was also tied to the national redemption of Israel, and from this one can see the roots of the Zionist ideology that Hess embraced, as well as his communism which Marx would later inherit. Jones has this to say about the Kabbalahic connection (3):

The political implications of the Lurianic Kaballah seem clear enough. The Messiah must now wait upon man’s efforts. He can only come once the process of tiqqun or purification and healing has been accomplished by man, i.e., by the Jews here on earth, who act as the vanguard of redemption much as the communist party at a later date would function as the vanguard of the proletariat. Without tiqqun, “it is impossible that the messianic king come.” From here it is but a short leap of thought to the conclusion that Israel had become its own Messiah, or as Scholem says, “By transferring to Israel, the historical nation, much of the redemptive task formerly considered as the messiah’s, many of his distinctive personal traits, as drawn in apocalyptic literature, were now obliterated.”

As mentioned before, this aspect of Kabbalah was used as a means of explaining the Jewish diaspora. Jones also explains in the preceding paragraph how it emerged specifically as a result of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, as a means of explaining how catastrophes like these fit into the grand scheme of Jewish redemption. Again we see the “Jewish revolutionary spirit” emerging in response to their expulsion from European societies. And again we see how Judaism operates as a “group evolutionary strategy,” adapting its philosophy and worldview in response to obstacles that stand in the way of the “redemption of Israel,” such as alleged “oppression” at the hands of European populations. The great Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s historical account “Two Hundred Years Together” (which will be looked at in more detail later) reveals that the Bolshevik Revolution was indeed perceived by Russian Jews as a means of ending the oppression they suffered under ethnic Russians and establishing Jewish hegemony in Russia, and eventually the world. The revolution was eagerly supported by many Jews, particularly Zionists. A Russian Jew named D.S. Pasmanik cited by Solzhenitsyn bemoaned the fact that many of his fellow Jews were so openly boasting about their role in the revolution, fearing that such a blatant display would forever ingrain anti-Semitism into the hearts of ethnic Russians (4).

D. S. Pasmanik evokes in 1924 “those Jews who proclaimed loudly and clearly the genetic link between Bolshevism and Judaism, who openly boasted about the sentiments of sympathy which the mass of the Jewish people nourished towards the power of the Commissioners.” At the same time, Pasmanik himself pointed out “the points which may at first be the foundation of a rapprochement between Bolshevism and Judaism… These are: the concern for happiness on earth and that of social justice… Judaism was the first to put forward these two great principles.”

As Pasmanik’s testimony indicates, the Marxist vision for global revolution to establish a classless egalitarian society would have had a natural appeal to the Talmudic, Kabbalahic Jew who wished to bring about “happiness on earth” and “social justice” for the ultimate goal of achieving “tiqqun.” Communism was both globalist and utopian, and as we shall see later, actually allowed Jews in practice to retain their Jewish ethnic identity while relegating the gentiles to a generic, deracinated, decultured mass. While Marx may have formally disavowed his Jewish religious traditions in favor of atheism, it was clear that the Talmudic influence of his mentor Hess likewise had a great impact on his own philosophy.

Moses Hess, the Communist Rabbi

Moses Hess served as the inspiration for many of Marx’s communist ideas, despite Marx himself later disagreeing with Hess on certain points of socialist ideology, namely in their evaluation of Zionism and Jewish identitarianism. In fact, Hess was sometimes referred to as the “communist rabbi” due to his connection with and influence on Marx. An article written in 1959 by British historian James Joll attests to this:

Although he can claim to have originated two of the major movements of our time, Communism and Zionism, and in spite of having streets named after him in Jerusalem and Tel- Aviv, Moses Hess is a disregarded figure, remembered mainly as a butt for Karl Marx’s attacks (The donkey, Moses Hess’), a comparatively unimportant member of the Young Hegelian circle from which the master sprang. Hess married a prostitute in order, as Professor Berlin tells us, ‘to redress the injustice perpetrated by society.’ The action was typical of his nature and beliefs; (it was typical too that the marriage should have turned out to be a happy one). Hess’s saintliness, his passionate belief in love and equality together with his belief in men’s capacity for co-operation and planned economic action made him a Communist before he met Marx in 1841. He differed from Marx in his belief that the end of the class struggle would not come about through violence, but as a result of a moral change, a spontaneous growth of solidarity and justice among men. What prevented him from becoming a Marxist was his belief, to quote Professor Berlin again, in ‘benevolence and love towards individual human beings and not just humanity at large’; but he also differed from Marx in his understanding of the ideals of nationality as expressed, for example, by Mazzini. It was this sense of the significance of nationality, and his own Jewish upbringing and experiences in Prussia and France, that turned him to the second great enthusiasm of his life— the advocacy of a national state for the Jews in Palestine and the undermining of the moral and intellectual position of those Jews who, as he himself had done when young, placed their hopes on assimilation into a liberal secular society.

With Hess’ thinking, we see a slightly different approach than Marx, but even despite their differing views on how a communist social order would be achieved and how they viewed their own Jewish identities, the overarching themes are the same. For all his disagreement with Marx’s vision of violent class struggle, his desire for a centrally planned communist economy was every bit as violent as Marx’s was (which should be obvious to libertarians who recognize that socialism in any form is institutionalized trespass and aggression). Hess, despite being a Jewish nationalist (i.e. Zionist), was decidedly a globalist in his thinking regarding the rest of the world, believing that communism could be achieved through feelings of “solidarity and justice” among “humanity at large.” Even more revealing is what Michael Hoffman explains in his book “Judaism Discovered” (5):

For Hess, the cardinal sin of the Judaic people was to abandon their heritage, while the cardinal objective of his Communism was to persuade all other people to abandon theirs…

Communism was the means for achieving Judaic supremacy over the gentiles. The gentiles were fated to be reduced to a faceless, deracinated mass. Capitalism was also capable of producing this effect, through free trade and the unfettered financialization of society, in which the management of money becomes a vast business in itself, and where the highest virtue, after obeisance to Judaism, is profit.

While Hoffman’s attribution of globalism to capitalism is misguided (as I have explained before in an earlier article) the salient point is that Communism was intended by Hess as a means to exert Jewish supremacy over the gentiles. In fact, Hess even viewed the French Revolution (in many ways a foreshadowing of the Bolshevik Revolution) as “Jewish revenge” upon their gentile “oppressors” (6):

The French Revolution was the beginning of the violent stage of the Judaic revenge. Hess set Communism in motion partly as ritual revenge on the goyim: ‘…you modern nations have denied these indefatigable workers and industrious merchants civil rights. What persecutions! What tears! What blood you children of Israel have shed in the last 1800 years! But you sons of Judea, in spite of all suffering are still here!…You have escaped destruction in your long dispersion, in spite of the terrible tax you have paid during eighteen centuries of persecution. But what is left of your nation is mighty enough to rebuild the gates of Jerusalem. This is your mission.

And unlike Marx his successor, Hess was far more open about the Talmudic influences on his thinking (which was likely the inspiration for his extreme hatred for the “goyim”) (7):

[Hess] was an unabashed, fanatical proponent of the Talmud…[ he] did not personally practice Judaism. Neither does Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz or Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in our time. Observance of ritual is beside the point. Over the centuries, allegiance to the Oral Traditions is credited with having preserved the purity of the Judaic race and that’s what counts:

‘You who declare the teachings and ordinances of our sages to be foolish inventions, pray tell us what would have become of Judaism and the Jews if they had not, through the institutions of the Talmudic sages, thrown a protecting fence around their religion, so as to safeguard it for the coming days? Would they have continued to exist for 1800 years and have resisted the influence of the Christian and Mohammedan civilization? Would they not long ago have disappeared as a nation from the face of the earth…?’

Aside from the Talmudic nature of Marxist ideology, what else motivates this “Jewish revolutionary spirit” that we see in both Hess and Marx? The answer can be found in the investigative work of Kevin MacDonald, an evolutionary psychologist who has studied the political and intellectual activity of 20th century Jews in detail. As the main thesis in his work “Culture of Critique” argues, Judaism is ultimately a group evolutionary strategy. As such, the behavior of Jews in society and politics tends to be geared toward the advancement of their ethnic group interests. One might wonder, then, why Jews (who tend to be economically well-off in Western countries today) might be drawn to radical leftism, which would seem to be contrary to their economic interests. And indeed, while Eastern European Jews during the 19th and early 20th centuries (both in Europe and in America) were generally of low socioeconomic status (thus making their affinity for leftist politics more understandable), economics alone is insufficient to explain Jewish leftism in general. MacDonald argues instead that cultural and ethnic factors are the bigger issues here (8).

The suggestion is that in general Jewish political motivation is influenced by non-economic issues related to perceived Jewish group interests., the latter influenced by social identity processes. Similarly in the politically charged area of cultural attitudes, Silberman notes “American Jews are committed to cultural tolerance because of their belief – one firmly rooted in history – that Jews are safe only in a society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. It is this belief, for example, not approval of homosexuality, that leads an overwhelming majority of American Jews to endorse “gay rights” and to take a liberal stance on most other so-called “social” issues.” A perceived Jewish group interest in cultural pluralism transcends negative personal attitudes regarding the behavior in question.

Silberman’s comment that Jewish attitudes are “firmly rooted in history” is particularly relevant: A consistent tendency has been for Jews to be persecuted as a minority group within a culturally or ethnically homogeneous society…. The point here is that the perceived Jewish group interest in developing a pluralistic society is of far more importance than mere economic self-interest in determining Jewish political behavior.

One can immediately see, therefore, why communism, a universalistic, internationalist, egalitarian ideology would be perceived by many Jews as serving their ethnic interests. The destruction of gentile nations and cultures (which inevitably must occur under communism) would have given Jews protection from the anti-Semitism which, as MacDonald has pointed out in a passage that will be quoted later, has historically taken hold mostly in societies which are culturally and ethnically homogeneous and stable.

A complication here is the common claim that many Jewish leftists do not self-identify as Jews (a claim which is strongly contested elsewhere in MacDonald’s book as well as by Solzhenitsyn). MacDonald addresses this objection by pointing out that even supposedly “de-ethnicized Jews” (i.e. those who do not openly display their Jewish identities) are still over-represented in radical leftist movements and underrepresented in right-wing movements. (Neo-“conservatism” doesn’t count as right-wing, by the way – sorry Ben Shapiro!) Even if some of these right-wing movements are “anti-Semitic,” it should be irrelevant to such “de-ethnicized Jews” – if indeed they are completely de-ethnicized as is implied by the objection. MacDonald argues that Jewish group interests are formed by what he calls “social identity processes” – to which not even supposedly “de-ethnicized” Jews are immune.

In summary, he holds that radical Jewish political activism is the result of strong identification with a Jewish in-group, paired with “very negative and exaggerated conceptions of the wider gentile society, and particularly the most powerful elements of that society, as an out-group. As an example he cites the “New Left” movement of the 1960’s which was marked by “radical social criticism in which all elements that contributed to the cohesive social fabric of mid-century America were regarded as oppressive and in need of radical alteration” (9). One can see, therefore, how “social identity processes” would give a globalist and utopian ideology like Marxism a strong appeal to Jews, as it granted them a positive self identification with a supposedly moral cause (thus enhancing their sense of in-group identity) while simultaneously reinforcing their “negative evaluation of gentile power structures.” In addition, he points out (10):

Psychologists have found that a sense of moral rectitude is an important component of self-esteem, and self-esteem has been proposed as a motivating factor in social identity.

The Jewish revolutionary spirit makes more sense in light of MacDonald’s analysis of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. In summary, Jewish affinity for radical leftism is motivated primarily by a survivalist instinct that developed over the course of their history of being reviled and persecuted by their host European societies. The development of Jewish affinity for radical leftism was in turn reinforced by social identity processes which strengthened their positive in-group identity as well as their negative perception of the gentile out-group. As radical leftist – especially communist – social revolutions are extremely destabilizing to the majority culture and society, Jews see such social fragmentation as beneficial to their prospects for survival within Western society. When in-group preference within the majority population is strong and its social/civic institutions intact and stable, so-called “anti-Semitism” becomes a bigger threat. But when in-group preference has been eroded by multiculturalism and white guilt, and social/civic institutions (like the nuclear family) have been uprooted, then the host population can no longer offer meaningful resistance to the social/political agenda of Jews.

When one looks at the history of Jews in European countries, a common theme emerges. Jews have been expelled from a total of 109 different countries in the past. Did all 109 of these countries suffer from irrational bouts of anti-Semitism? Or was there a basis for all these expulsions? The clannish behavior of Jews combined with their economically and politically subversive behaviors eventually compelled the host populations of these countries to kick them out. This in turn led Jews to re-adjust their behaviors and seek out ways to gain economic and political dominance in their host countries without generating resistance from the host populations. The pursual of this strategy is the basis for Jewish support of multiculturalism, open borders, and cultural degeneracy in Western countries. Interestingly enough, many of these same Jews support precisely the opposite concepts and policies when it comes to Israel, or even in their own communities formed within Western countries.

The motive here is indisputable. Jews attempt to undermine the social and cultural cohesiveness of the host populations of Western countries to prevent “anti-Semitism” from becoming a threat to Jewish existence in these Western countries, and to eliminate any real resistance to Jewish economic and political hegemony. 20th century communism was part and parcel of this agenda, and modern-day communism/radical leftism is no different.

Jewish Bolshevism and Trotskyism

The great Russian novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (who experienced the horrors of the Soviet gulags himself) recalls the nature of the violent Bolshevik Revolution that plunged Russia into totalitarian communist rule for nearly a century in an interview with David Duke in 2002:

You must understand. The leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. The October Revolution was not what you call in America the “Russian Revolution.” It was an invasion and conquest over the Russian people. More of my countrymen suffered horrific crimes at their bloodstained hands than any people or nation ever suffered in the entirety of human history. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism was the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant of this reality is proof that the global media itself is in the hands of the perpetrators.

The last line is revealing – just who are the people in control of the global media? It is undeniable that most of the mainstream media networks and publications are owned by Jews. Who, of course, have a strong motive to deny any connection between their ethnic group/interests and infamous historical atrocities like the Bolshevik Revolution. Solzhenitsyn’s historical account of the Revolution and the events leading up to it, titled “Two Hundred Years Together,” details the history of Jews and ethnic Russians in the Russian Empire. The first part, “Russian Jewish History,” is fairly innocuous – he describes the life of Jewish communities from the late 18th century up to the early 20th century just before the Russian Revolution. Those who are hypersensitive to “anti-Semitism” might take issue with Solzhenitsyn’s implication that Jews were no less oppressed in Tsarist Russia than average Russian peasants, but that’s about it. The second part, “Jews in the Soviet Union,” is the reason why the book has been blacklisted in most English-speaking countries. For it is in this section that the uncomfortable (and politically incorrect) truth is exposed: Bolshevism, the ideology that led to the deaths of millions of Russians, was indeed a Jewish-led movement. Solzhenitsyn continues (11):

Bolshevik Jews often had, in addition to their surname as underground revolutionaries, pseudonyms, or modified surnames. Example: in an obituary of 1928, the death of a Bolshevik of the first hour, Lev Mikhailovich Mikhailov, who was known to the Party as Politikus, in other words by a nickname; his real name, Elinson, he carried it to the grave. What prompted an Aron Rupelevich to take the Ukrainian surname of Taratut? Was Aronovitch Tarchis ashamed of his name or did he want to gain more weight by taking the name of Piatnitsky? And what about the Gontcharovs, Vassilenko, and others…? Were they considered in their own families as traitors or simply as cowards?

Observations made on the spot have remained. I. F. Najivin records the impressions he received at the very beginning of Soviet power: in the Kremlin, in the administration of the Sovnarkom, “reigns disorder and chaos. We see only Latvians and even more Latvians, Jews and even more Jews. I have never been an anti‐Semite, but there were so many it could not escape your attention, and each one was younger than the last.” Korolenko himself, as liberal and extremely tolerant as he was, he who was deeply sympathetic to the Jews who had been victims of the pogroms, noted in his Notebooks in the spring of 1919: “Among the Bolsheviks there are a great number of Jews, men and women. Their lack of tact, their assurance are striking and irritating,” “Bolshevism has already exhausted itself in Ukraine, the ‘Commune’ encounters only hatred on its way. One sees constantly emerge among the Bolsheviks—and especially the Cheka—Jewish physiognomies, and this exacerbates the traditional feelings, still very virulent, of Judæophobia.”

From the early years of Soviet rule, the Jews were not only superior in number in the upper echelons of the Party, but also, more remarkably and more sensitively for the population, to local administrations, provinces and townships, to inferior spheres, where the anonymous mass of the Streitbrecher had come to the rescue of the new and still fragile power which had consolidated it, saved it. The author of the Book of the Jews of Russia writes: “One cannot fail to evoke the action of the many Jewish Bolsheviks who worked in the localities as subordinate agents of the dictatorship and who caused innumerable ills to the population of the country”—and he adds: “including the Jewish population.”

The omnipresence of the Jews alongside the Bolsheviks had, during these terrible days and months, the most atrocious consequences. Among them is the assassination of the Imperial family, of which, today, everybody speaks, and where the Russians now exaggerate the share of the Jews, who find in this heart-wrenching thought an evil enjoyment. As it should, the most dynamic Jews (and they are many) were at the height of events and often at the command posts. Thus, for the assassination of the Tsar’s family: the guards (the assassins) were Latvians, Russians, and Magyars, but two [Jewish] characters played a decisive role: Philip Goloshchekin and Yakov Yurovsky (who had received baptism).

Thus, as Solzhenitsyn notes, Jews often took measures to conceal their Jewish identities as Bolshevik revolutionaries. This is because ethnic Russians were well aware of the relevance of the Jewish Question in their society even before the Revolution, as Solzhenitsyn describes in detail in the first part of the book. Yakov Yurovsky, as the last sentence in the above quote describes, even underwent a Christian baptism.

It is also worth noting the conflict which later arose between the Leninist-Trotskyist faction of the Communists, and the Stalinist faction. Lenin and Trotsky, both Jews, along with other Jews, enjoyed a very strong influence among the party leadership in the early years of the Soviet Union. Both were infected with the same kind of Talmudic idealism and globalism that characterized Marx’s thinking. Trotsky in particular advocated strongly for “permanent global revolution” to overthrow the bourgeoisie everywhere in the world and ultimately to establish a one-world state (which he denied would be a state, much like the “anarcho”-communists of today). One can see how if the comparatively more conservative and nationalistic Stalin had not purged the Trotskyites from the party, and Trotsky had gotten his way, the Soviet death toll would have far exceeded the 58 million that were killed historically. Countless more overseas would have been killed as well in Trotsky’s desired “global revolution.” Dan Michaels of the Occidental Observer explains, drawing from Andrei Burovsky’s book “Myths and the Truth about 1937: Stalin’s Counter-Revolution“:

The author refers to the war between the two devils as Stalin’s counter-revolution because, until Stalin undertook the great purge, the revolution and the Communist state had been overwhelmingly a Jewish enterprise with Lenin and Trotsky the leading lights. The goal of the Trotskyites, as demonstrated by the Comintern [Communist International], was to establish a permanent worldwide revolution “to fight by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet Republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state.”

By this definition, it was quite obvious that Trotsky and his cohorts were embarking upon a reckless and bloody adventure to establish a utopia based on nothing except their own fanciful dreams. To accomplish this, agents in every important country, usually citizens of those countries, either volunteered or were recruited to undermine the bourgeois government under which they currently lived and agitate for world revolution.

According to Burovsky, Stalin’s purge of the Trotskyites from the party leadership therefore represented the lesser of two evils. This is interesting because, as Michaels observes, Western historians tend to focus primarily on the crimes of Stalin while glossing over the atrocities committed by Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin, as Burovsky explains, was not necessarily less bloodthirsty or less committed to communist ideals than Lenin or Trotsky, but was decidedly less idealistic and much more calculating, preferring to establish and secure socialism in Russia first before embarking on “world revolution” as the Trotskyites were so eager to do. This relatively more conservative attitude with Stalin, therefore, is what made him the lesser evil compared to Lenin and Trotsky. Michaels goes on:

Burovsky notes that the end goal of both devils, Stalin and Trotsky, was the same — world communism, but the means chosen by Trotsky to achieve it would have caused worldwide mayhem and countless millions more deaths.

In addition, Michaels points out that although “Jews were prominent in both factions… Stalin insisted their loyalty be directed exclusively to his concept of a ‘socialist’ Soviet Union while their own interests and unrealistic goals be set aside. When, in his eyes, they did not comply, he had them killed.” Thus, we see that Stalin in some sense “de-Talmudized” the Soviet communists by partially forsaking the globalism and utopianism that had previously characterized its outlook under the more Jewish Leninist-Trotskyite leadership. This makes it all the more interesting, then, the fact that the crimes of Stalin are focused on to a much greater degree than those of Lenin and Trotsky. A coincidence? I think not.

Answering Some Objections

As the Jewish-Bolshevik connection is a politically incorrect “hate-fact,” much effort has been spent trying to deny its truth as an “anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.” While calling people anti-Semitic is not an argument, it may still be helpful to go through a few of the common objections to the “hate-facts” presented above.

First, the obvious one. Yes, we are all aware that communism was practiced in China, Vietnam, South America, Cuba, and various other mono-ethnic countries without significant Jewish populations. But the fact that some non-Jews have used communism as a means to achieve non-ethnospecific goals says nothing about the propensity for Jews to use the same means for their own ethnic interests in a different setting. As the subjective theory of value tells us, different actors can use the same means for varied ends. But nonetheless, the fact remains that communism has distinctly Jewish ideological roots, and was developed with Jewish ethnic interests in mind, as has already been shown. It is also a historical fact that the first real implementation of communism was by the actions of Jews during the Bolshevik Revolution. In light of these observations, the objection based on the existence of communism in settings that did not involve ethnic conflict is hardly an argument. Rather, it is a red herring meant to distract attention from the Jewish-Bolshevik connection.

Some will argue that the Jews suffered equally as much (if not more so) under Soviet communism as gentiles did – and therefore it cannot be said that Bolshevism was a Jewish movement. But neither the premise nor the conclusion drawn from it holds up under scrutiny. Solzhenitsyn recounts from his time in the gulag how many Jews actually had it much easier than their gentile gulag-mates. They were often assigned as “Idiots” (“an inmate slang term to denote other inmates who didn’t do common labor but managed to obtain positions with easy duties, usually pretending to be incapable of doing hard work because of poor health”) in a much higher proportion than ethnic Russians and also were shielded from disciplinary action by Jewish officers (who were also represented in higher proportion than ethnic Russian officers). These “free employees,” as Solzhenitsyn observes, demonstrated a much stronger degree of in-group preference toward the Jewish prisoners than Russian officers did toward Russian prisoners (p. 470-471). This testimony from Solzhenitsyn, corroborated by many of his personal sources who also suffered in the gulags, calls into question the popular narrative that it was the Jews who suffered the most. The reality was that because of the strong ethnic bonds between Jews that still existed even between boss and prisoner, and the fact that Jews were overrepresented among the “free bosses,” Jewish inmates ended up receiving better treatment from their overlords than did Russian inmates. Solzhenitsyn explains (12).

This particular Jewish national contract between free bosses and inmates is impossible to overlook. A free Jew was not so stupid to actually see an “Enemy of the People” or an evil character preying on “the people’s property” in an imprisoned Jew (unlike what a dumb-headed Russian saw in another Russian). He in the first place saw a suffering tribesman – and I praise them for this sobriety! Those who know about terrific Jewish mutual supportiveness (especially exacerbated by mass deaths of Jews under Hitler) would understand that a free Jewish boss simply could not indifferently watch Jewish prisoners flounder in starvation and die, and not help. But I am unable to imagine a free Russian employee who would save and promote his fellow Russian prisoners to the privileged positions only because of their nationality. Though we have lost 15 millions during collectivization, we are still numerous. You can’t care about everyone, and nobody would even think about it.

Is the in-group preference demonstrated by Jewish prisoners and the “free” guards by itself proof that Bolshevism was motivated by Jewish group interest? No, but it does cast doubt on the objection that Jewish suffering under communism disproves the existence of any connection between communism and Jewish group interest. Solzhenitsyn does not go into much detailed analysis regarding the ideological or sociological connections between Judaism and communism (he in fact denies that Judaism in general was responsible for the Bolshevik Revolution and argues that Jewish Bolsheviks were apostates from Jewish tradition rather than representatives of it), but the facts he presents in his historical work raise questions about these connections that other writers have since investigated with a more critical eye.

Kevin MacDonald has pointed out in a paper in The Occidental Quarterly that Jewish Bolshevism, in many ways, was actually a continuation of a common theme observed throughout the history of Jewish economic and political relations with their European neighbors in Western countries, with a slight twist.

This is the overarching generalization which one can make about Jewish economic behavior over the ages. Their role went far beyond performing tasks deemed inappropriate for the natives for religious reasons; rather they were often tasks at which natives would be relatively less ruthless in exploiting their fellows. This was especially the case in Eastern Europe, where economic arrangements such as tax farming, estate management, and monopolies on retail liquor distribution lasted far longer than in the West:

“In this way, the Jewish arendator became the master of life and death over the population of entire districts, and having nothing but a short-term and purely financial interest in the relationship, was faced with the irresistible temptation to pare his temporary subjects to the bone. On the noble estates he tended to put his relatives and co-religionists in charge of the flour-mill, the brewery, and in particular of the lord’s taverns where by custom the peasants were obliged to drink. On the church estates, he became the collector of all ecclesiastical dues, standing by the church door for his payment from tithe-payers, baptized infants, newly-weds, and mourners. On the [royal] estates…, he became in effect the Crown Agent, farming out the tolls, taxes, and courts, and adorning his oppressions with all the dignity of royal authority.”

Jewish involvement in the Communist elite of the USSR can be seen as a variation on an ancient theme in Jewish culture rather than a new one sprung from the special circumstances of the Bolshevik Revolution. Rather than being the willing agents of exploitative non-Jewish elites who were clearly separated from both the Jews and the people they ruled, Jews became an entrenched part of an exploitative and oppressive elite in which group boundaries were blurred. This blurring of boundaries was aided by four processes, all covered by Slezkine: shedding overt Jewish identities in favor of a veneer of international socialism in which Jewish identity and ethnic networking were relatively invisible; seeking lower-profile positions in order to de-emphasize Jewish preeminence (e.g., Trotsky); adopting Slavic names; and engaging in a limited amount of intermarriage with non-Jewish elites. Indeed, the “plethora of Jewish wives” among non-Jewish leaders doubtless heightened the Jewish atmosphere of the top levels of the Soviet government, given that everyone, especially Stalin, appears to have been quite conscious of ethnicity. For their part, anti-Semites have accused Jews of having “implanted those of their own category as wives and husbands for influential figures and officials.”

From MacDonald’s analysis, we see that the Bolshevik Revolution provided Jewish elites with an opportunity to expand their economic and political power over Russian society even further by abandoning their traditional “middleman” role and moving directly to the top of the hierarchy. All this was done while cleverly concealing their Jewish identities. Thus, contrary to Solzhenitsyn’s misguided claim, the revolution was in fact a continuation, not an abandonment, of the “Jewish revolutionary spirit” that has characterized Jewish activity in European societies even before the advent of communism.

Furthermore, MacDonald also points out that the advancement of Jewish group interests under Russian socialism as a whole was disguised by the claim that Marxism is a “universalist” or “internationalist” ideology that supposedly transcends ethnic and cultural boundaries (13). The apparently universalist nature of Marxism may be another reason why some have trouble seeing the connection between it and Jewish identity. Indeed, as MacDonald observes, Jews in Western societies both yesterday and today tend to campaign aggressively against nationalism for their host countries and populations in the name of universalist-sounding ideologies (ranging from individualism/liberalism to “tolerance and inclusivity” and appeals to the “universal brotherhood of man,” etc.) while at the same time embracing strong ethnic identitarianism for themselves. The Jew-dominated communist government that reigned in Soviet-era Poland is cited as a prominent example of this (14). Such a double standard, of course, cannot be pointed out in polite company for fear of being smeared as an “anti-Semite” (i.e. Literally Hitler™), which is precisely why so few have observed it.

Thus, far from being evidence against the presence of Jewish group interest in Bolshevism/communist revolutions, the universal nature of Marxism comports quite well with Jewish group interests. It simultaneously allows Jews to retain their own group identity while avoiding the scrutiny of gentiles, and subverts the national ties of gentile peoples for the universal cause of communist revolution.

Another objection to the Jewish-Bolshevik connection is that Bolshevism would have been antithetical to the economic interests of Jewish elites, especially those in the West who tended to be wealthy capitalists. However, MacDonald has demonstrated that Jewish political activity is driven more by sociological incentives rather than strictly economic ones (15). MacDonald also discusses how wealthy Jewish capitalists in Western countries supported the Bolshevik Revolution despite the apparent fact that communism was opposed to their economic interests (16).

The emphasis here on social identity processes is compatible with Jewish radicalism serving particular perceived Jewish group interests. Anti-Semitism and Jewish economic interests were undoubtedly important motivating factors for Jewish leftism in czarist Russia. Jewish leaders in Western societies, many for whom were wealthy capitalists, proudly acknowledged Jewish over-representation in the Russian revolutionary movement; they also provided financial and political support for these movements by, for example, attempting to influence US foreign policy. Representative of this attitude is financier Jacob Schiff’s statement that “the claim that among the ranks of those who in Russia are seeking to undermine governmental authority there are a considerable number of Jews may perhaps be true. In fact, it would be rather surprising if some of those terribly afflicted by persecution and exceptional laws should not at last have turned against their merciless oppressors.

In summary, the testimony of Solzhenitsyn, the social analysis of MacDonald, and the evidence of the open boasting of many Jews about their role in the Bolshevik revolution all serve to demonstrate that Bolshevism was indeed a Jewish movement. This truth, unfortunately, has often been obscured by political correctness. And as Solzhenitsyn said, the fact that the perpetrators of such a massive atrocity have not been unmasked and identified only goes to show that the global media is under their control. As it is sometimes said: to determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question – who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?

Even to this day, the perpetrators of the Bolshevik Revolution continue to exercise an insidious influence on world politics, but in a different form.

Internationalism, Zionism, and Neoconservatism

There is an interesting parallel between the radical leftism/communism that has characterized Jewish political activism in the past, and the Zionism/neoconservatism that many Jews embrace now. While neoconservatism is commonly associated with “right wing” politics, it is in fact only a variation of the globalist, internationalist ideology of communism. The fact that many of the founding neoconservative thinkers like Irving Kristol held Trotsky in very high regard (and in fact were influenced by his worldview) is a telling sign of this. Like Trotsky, neoconservatives support the idea of “global revolution,” albeit in slightly different form. They support military intervention by the US in countries all around the world to (in the words of Woodrow Wilson) “make the world safe for democracy.” That is, the neocon vision involves reconstructing the whole world into the “liberal democratic” image of the modern West – albeit inconsistently. This kind of global Messianism bears a striking resemblance to the globalist vision of Marxism – the only difference is that the false “Messiah” of the neocons is the American military carrying the torch of liberal democracy to the world, rather than working-class revolutionaries carrying the torch of communism.

Interestingly enough, while neoconservatives often make a show of condemning foreign dictators like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Bashar al-Assad, and Vladimir Putin who supposedly are “serial violators of human rights,” they turn a conspicuous blind eye to other countries who are arguably even worse violators of human rights. Two prominent examples are Israel and Saudi Arabia – the former which has recently been in the news for its massacring of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and has been displacing many more Palestinians from their homelands over the past few decades, and the latter (also a close military ally of Israel, interestingly enough, despite the fact that the Saudis are Sunni Muslims who historically have hated Jews) which enforces an extremely strict regime of Sharia Law and has also been bombing and starving the country of Yemen to death over the past few years (with the help of American weapons and airplane fuel). Why does the US not bomb Israel or Saudi Arabia for these atrocities? Why does the US not push for regime change in these countries? Perhaps to answer this question we ought to wonder which countries actually benefit from the endless US military intervention in the Middle East (hint: not America).

I have written an article in the past exposing the pernicious Zionist influence over American foreign policy. I will not attempt to rehash all of the same points here. There is another article, however, titled “Whose War?”, written by Pat Buchanan at the start of the Iraq War in 2003 which goes into much more detail regarding the Jewish interest in American warmongering.

The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers … that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?”

Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so.

Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these “Buchananites toss around ‘neoconservative’—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’” Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a “key tenet of neoconservatism.” He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush “sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.” (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)

David Brooks of the Weekly Standard wails that attacks based on the Israel tie have put him through personal hell: “Now I get a steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail and in my mailbox. … Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It’s just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite Right, but on the peace-movement left.”

Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan endures his own purgatory abroad: “In London … one finds Britain’s finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy.”

Of course, this piece was received with howls of “anti-Semitism” from the neoconservatives in addition to all the “reasonable moderates” and pro-war leftists who were all beating the war drums in unison at the time. Quite telling, isn’t it? The neocons seem to be fully aware of their own ideology’s Jewish connection (as is especially apparent in Max Boot’s comments cited above) and yet were foaming at the mouth at the very suggestion from Buchanan and co. that the Iraq War for which they had vigorously campaigned had anything to do with Jewish interests! Buchanan goes on:

They charge us with anti-Semitism—i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a “passionate attachment” to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America.

What Buchanan and the rest of the paleoconservatives correctly recognized was that these neoconservatives (whom he observes in addition to being Jewish, were composed mostly of “ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyites, boat-people from the McGovern revolution”) were actively promoting an Israel First foreign policy for the American government. And we see here that the same Zionist-Bolshevik theme recurs: nationalism for the “chosen ones” and internationalism (this time in the form of perpetual war in the Middle East) for the goyim (read: Americans). Just as communism was meant to destroy the culture, tradition, and identity of gentile nations for the purpose of furthering Jewish hegemony, neoconservatism entails the destruction of the Middle East (making the Middle East “safe for Israel”) and the subordination of the American military to Zionist interests, all at the expense of American taxpayers. Communism and neoconservatism are two sides of the same globalist coin.

In addition, MacDonald’s “Culture of Critique” also discusses neoconservative views on immigration, in fact dedicating an entire lengthy chapter to the issue (which I would highly recommend reading in full). Many neoconservatives, in contrast to the more nationalistic paleoconservatives and alt-right, tend to voice (nominal) opposition to illegal immigration while supporting a theoretically unlimited amount of legal immigration. They also tend to vigorously counter-signal those “dissident” conservatives who take more principled anti-immigration stances, treating them essentially the same as the left treats them (i.e. calling them “racist,” “fascist,” etc. etc.). MacDonald gives some specific examples (17):

Because liberal immigration policies are vital Jewish interest, it is not surprising that support for liberal immigration policies spans the Jewish political spectrum. We have seen that Sidney Hook, who along with the other New York intellectuals may be viewed as an intellectual precursor of neoconservatism, identified democracy with the equality of differences and with the maximization of cultural diversity. Neoconservatives have been strong advocates of liberal immigration policies, and there has been a conflict between predominantly Jewish neoconservatives and predominantly gentile paleoconservatives over the issue of Third World immigration into the United States. Neoconservatives Norman Podhoretz and Richard John Neuhaus reacted very negatively to an article by a paleoconservative concerned that such immigration would eventually lead to the United States being dominated by such immigrants. Other examples are neoconservatives Julian Simon and Ben Wattenberg, both of whom advocate very high levels of immigration from all parts of the world, so that the United States will become what Wattenberg describes as the world’s first “Universal Nation.” Based on recent data, Fetzer reports that Jews remain far more favorable to immigration to the United States than any other ethnic group or religion.

MacDonald also explains the general history of Jewish involvement in US immigration policy here, reiterating a point made previously regarding Jewish Bolshevism. Like the Bolsheviks, modern Jewish open-borders advocates wish to dilute Gentile culture so as to create a more pluralistic society. The thinking goes that since Jewish persecution has historically taken place in more culturally and ethnically homogeneous societies (i.e. European countries) as opposed to more heterogeneous societies (i.e. America), the dilution of the native-born and predominantly white populations of Western countries will make them safer for Jews (although one might question the accuracy of this kind of thinking given the results of the Islamization of Europe taking place currently). Here is what MacDonald has to say (18):

The Jewish involvement in influencing immigration policy in the United States is especially noteworthy as an aspect of ethnic conflict. Jewish involvement in influencing immigration policy has had certain unique qualities that have distinguished Jewish interests from the interests of other groups favoring liberal immigration policies. Throughout much of the period from 1881 to 1965, one Jewish interest in liberal immigration policies stemmed from a desire to provide a sanctuary for Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic persecutions in Europe and elsewhere. Anti-Semitic persecutions have been a recurrent phenomenon in the modern world beginning with the Russian pogroms of 1881 and continuing into the post-World War II era in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. As a result, liberal immigration has been a Jewish interest because “survival often dictated that Jews seek refuge in other lands.” For a similar reason, Jews have consistently advocated an internationalist foreign policy because “an internationally-minded America was likely to be more sensitive to the problems of foreign Jewries.”

There is also evidence that Jews, much more than any other European-derived ethnic group in the United States, have viewed liberal immigration policies as a mechanism of ensuring that the United States would be a pluralistic rather than a unitary, homogeneous society. Pluralism serves both internal (within-group) and external (between-group) Jewish interests. Pluralism serves internal Jewish interests because it legitimates the internal Jewish interest in rationalizing and openly advocating an interest in overt rather than semi-cryptic Jewish group commitment and nonassimilation, what Howard Sachar terms its function in “legitimizing the preservation of a minority culture in the midst of a majority’s host society”…

Ethnic and religious pluralism also serves external Jewish interests because Jews become just one of many ethnic groups. This results in the diffusion of political and cultural influence among the various ethnic and religious groups, and it becomes difficult or impossible to develop unified, cohesive groups of gentiles united in their opposition to Judaism. Historically, major anti-Semitic movements have tended to erupt in societies that have been, apart from the Jews, religiously or ethnically homogeneous (see SAID). Conversely, one reason for the relative lack of anti-Semitism in the United States compared to Europe was that “Jews did not stand out as a solitary group of [religious] non-conformists.” Although ethnic and cultural pluralism are certainly not guaranteed to satisfy Jewish interest, it is nonetheless the case that ethnically and religiously pluralistic societies have been perceived by Jews as more likely to satisfy Jewish interests than are societies characterized by ethnic and religious homogeneity among gentiles.

Indeed, Jews have a vested interest in promoting the “invade the world, invite the world” agenda that has largely characterized American foreign policy and immigration policy over the past few decades. The Jewish neoconservative lobby has successfully co-opted the American military for the pursual of Zionist interests, while Jewish radical leftists (along with neoconservatives) have shaped an American immigration policy geared toward ensuring a pluralistic society safe for Jews. Neither of the items on this agenda are advantageous for the American majority host population (i.e. White people), and neither have ever been considered traditionally conservative positions (at least by the standards of the American Old Right).

Neoconservatism is not conservatism at all, but rather a Jewish ideology that has hijacked true conservatism. It has led to the co-opting of the American military for the purpose of advancing Israeli rather than American interests. And like communism, it has led to the mass killings of many innocent people. Neoconservatism, like the Zionist ideology with which it is often coupled, means supporting ethno-nationalism for the Jews of Israel while simultaneously pushing internationalism for everyone else. This is yet another parallel with the Jewish Bolshevism of the twentieth century – an ideology meant to deracinate and denationalize the gentiles while allowing Jews to retain a strong sense of their ethnic identity.

Eastern Europe may have survived the horrors of Jewish Bolshevism, but Jewish political subversion is alive and well in the West. Whether in the form of communism or neoconservatism, this subversion must be stopped before private property norms are completely subverted in the West, and before the entire Middle East is plunged into irreversible chaos.

References:

[1] MacDonald, Kevin. Culture of Critique. Bloomington: 1st Books Library, 2002. p. 80, 99.

[2] E. Michael Jones. The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit. South Bend: Fidelity Press, 2008. p. 1066.

[3] Ibid. p. 443.

[4] Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. Two Hundred Years Together. Moscow: Vagrius, 2008. p. 297.

[5] Hoffman, Michael. Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit. Coeur d’Alene: Independent History and Research, 2008. p. 865-866.

[6] Ibid. p. 864-865.

[7] Ibid. p. 863-864.

[8] Culture of Critique. p. 84-85.

[9] Ibid. p. 81.

[10] Ibid. p. 87.

[11] Two Hundred Years Together. p. 286-287.

[12] Ibid. p. 471.

[13] Culture of Critique. p. 89.

[14] Ibid. p. 63-65, 89

[15] Ibid. p. 84-85

[16] Ibid. p. 81.

[17] Ibid. p. 245.

[18] Ibid. p. 241-242.