Wikileaks' primary Russian-language correspondent Israel Shamir met with Uladzimri Makei, the chief aide to President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Lukashenko's regime has been described as Europe's last dictatorship. According to the Belarusian pro-democracy group Charter 97:
In his interview to Interfax-Zapad news agency, Shamir confirmed the website possesses files on Belarus. According to him, WikiLeaks has several thousands of secret documents concerning Belarus to a greater or less degree. He added that the files on Belarus were “what the Americans report from Belarus and on Belarus. There may be interesting things.”
Shamir was photographed by an Interfax photographer on the steps of the Belarus Presidential Administation Building in Minsk earlier today.
In related news, Hal Roberts of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society reports that the Lukashenko regime has prepared for today's election by conducting a hijacking campaign against a long list of websites associated with opposition parties. People who try to view these websites are redirected to phony ones set up by the regime.
The Lukashenko regime has reverted to form. Yesterday, election day, at least 6 of 9 opposition candidates were illegally arrested, as were hundreds of their aides and supporters. Voters, protesters, reporters and observers were beaten by police. Now we await the results of the "vote count", by which I mean outright theft of the election. All this in spite of a promise of almost $4 billion of aid from Germany and Poland if Lukachenko allowed fair elections. Read the NY Times coverage here: Belarus Police Arrest Opposition Leaders. Human rights organization VIASNA has coverage here.
A note about the Holocaust denier Israel Shamir's working for Julian Assange as Wikileaks Russian correspondent:
When I originally posted about this on Facebook, I received outraged comments from a free-lance journalist who supports Assange. She claimed (without citing any specifics) that all the evidence of Shamir's working for Wikileaks was falsified, and that there was no indication of such a connection. She went on to absurdly claim that my asking if such a connection worried her was a calculated attempt on my part to label her as a Nazi. How silly.
And the rape charges:
In the past several days, we've seen liberals such as Bianca Jagger, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, Naomi Wolf and Naomi Klein (henceforth "the Naomis"), as well as the blog firedoglake, slander Assange's alleged victims as liars working in cahoots with the CIA to silence Assange. Now we have Andrew Krieg writing in the Huffington Post claiming without any evidence whatsoever that they're working not for the CIA but for Karl Rove. His "reasoning"? Rove works as a consultant to the Swedish PM Reinfelt, and
"This all has Karl's signature," a reliable political source told me a week and a half ago... He must be very happy. He's right back in the middle of it. He's making himself valuable to his new friends, seeing the U.S. government doing just what he'd like ─ and screwing his opponents big-time."
In spite of the fact that a Wikileaks spokesman, in a Swedish radio interview, has confirmed and defended Wikileaks employing Israel Shamir, and in spite of the fact that Shamir himself has confirmed this and has negotiated on Wikileaks behalf with the Belarusian regime, Assange's enablers deny that such a thing could be true and slander as liars those who report it. Meanwhile, Assange's enablers groundlessly slander the alleged victims of his sexual assaults as liars working for the CIA and/or Karl Rove. The sheer brazenness of this double-standard concerning evidence is breathtaking. More importantly, it is wrong to treat alleged rape victims in such a manner. These people feel that their actions support free speech and transparency in government, but support for any cause, no matter how just, would not mitigate their offenses. Assange's narcissism and recklessness seem to be echoed by some of his supporters. Good intentions is no defense.
The Guardian has coverage of Shamir and Wikileaks here. The Guardian also published details of the Swedish prosecutors' evidence for their charges against Assange here, and an interview with the attorney for Assange's accusers, one which addresses the Assange enablers' conspiracy theories, here. Have the enablers read this stuff?
About a year ago, I wrote a number of pieces on Cynthia McKinney's increasing connections to far-right bigots such as former Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Mahathir; his chief aide, conspiracy theory author Matthias Chang (read here and here); and Islamic Party of Britain leader David Pidcock (read here). I also wrote about her anti-Semitic interviews with hate bloggers Daryl Bradford Smith and Noel "Ognir" Ryan (read here). McKinney's supporters and representatives of the U.S. Green Party have defended her work with this motley crew, sometimes stating that condemning McKinney's work with them amounts to "guilt by association", acknowledging by implication that this group has some troubling beliefs or worse. At other times, McKinney supporters have actually defended the extreme views of this group.
Now I've found two additional far right figures for whom McKinney has expressed her support and with whom she's made common cause. I've also discovered that she's done another interview with the two hate bloggers about whom I wrote last year.
Non-denial denials
The information about McKinney's ties to Chang and Pidcock which I published here last spring appears to have been the basis at least in part for an article written by Rob Waters which was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in their December, 2009 Intelligence Report. (Read here.) For that article, Waters got Scott McLarty, a Green Party official, to go on the record to deny that McKinney shared the views espoused by her far-right associates, calling such a conclusion "guilt by association". However, McLarty failed to find any problem with a lengthy quote from Chang's book The Shadow Money Lenders which McKinney posted on a Green Party website, in which a long list of Jewish bankers were accused of plotting to destabilize the world in order to take control of it.
Anita Stewart, a Green Party official and staffer to McKinney (during the 2008 presidential campaign and, since then, with McKinney's Dignity Action Network), posted a gnomic comment to one of my articles about McKinney's ties to Chang. She defended McKinney's endorsement of Chang's conspiracy theories as intrinsically valid. Stewart's response, which, like McLarty's, failed to contend with the bigotry or far-right ideology of McKinney's allies, stated that, if McKinney agrees with them, they're probably right. (See comments here.)
As you read McKinney's praise of Chang, and McLarty's and Stewart's defense of that praise, keep in mind that Chang has written that he was inspired by "the American Free Press, The Barnes Review, The Spotlight, and the truth seekers that I have long admired, Harry Elmer Barnes, Willis Carto, Michael Collins Piper, Christopher Petherick, Eustace Mullins (whose life-long persecution by the Police State is a disgrace to the Constitution), (and) Col. Donn de Grand Pre..." That's a long list, and some of the names are obscure ones. Suffice it to say that there is a common thread of bigotry running through that list.
Also keep in mind that McKinney's connection to Chang is more than lip service. Chang, as chief aide to former PM Mahathir of Malaysia, runs a foundation purportedly devoted to the absolute pacifist position of making all war illegal. (Read here.) That foundation, far from actually campaigning to ban all war, focuses exclusively on falsely accusing Israel of crimes such as genocide. Cynthia McKinney has participated as a keynote speaker, presumably for pay, in at lest three of this foundations' international conferences (two in Kuala Lumpur and one in London) where she participated in this ritualistic hate in the name of peace.
Compared by her friends to Father Coughlin
While McKinney's supporters defend her by (falsely) claiming that she does not make anti-Semitic statements herself, the same defense cannot conceivably be made for those who interview her. In one of last year's "Ognir" interviews with McKinney, Ognir/Ryan introduced her with a lengthy discussion of "banking Jewry" having controlled the world for the past four centuries. In another, Ryan asked McKinney about Rahm Emanuel, saying "(h)e's got Jew nationality and Jew loyalties." Far from condemning this obviously bigoted remark, McKinney replied by saying "I think that what you're talking about is who controls the U.S. government". She went on to explain that she left the Democratic Party precisely because she believes it to be controlled by this conspiracy.
In last year's interviews, Ryan's questions to McKinney expounded elaborate, bizarre conspiracy theories concerning Jewish culpability for 9/11, the world financial crisis, capitalism, communism, and, absurdly, medical marijuana and gay marriage. McKinney failed to disagree with the interviewers' assertions once, sometimes going so far as to say that she knew what the interviewer meant by this drivel, thus giving her tacit support. On several occasions, she stated her explicit support. She also showed her own ties to reality to be a bit shaky, comparing herself to civil rights hero Rosa Parks. (Read my original posts on this for more details including transcripts.)
Since I last wrote about her interviews with Ryan and fellow hate blogger Daryl Bradford Smith, McKinney has returned to give them additional interviews. In one conducted by Smith and Ryan on January 14, 2010, Smith introduced McKinney as the best thing to happen in U.S. politics since the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic radio preacher Father Coughlin. (Listen below at about 6:20.)
This comparison, which most people would consider insulting, is a high complement for Smith, who features portraits of both McKinney and Coughlin and recordings of Coughlin's infamous post-Kristallnacht broadcasts on his website. (Read here. Smith also features on his website the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and conspiracy theories about Jews causing the swine flu epidemic.) If one of McKinney's critics were to denounce her by comparing her to Coughlin, that person would be swamped with passionate denials and vicious denunciations impugning the comparison as somehow motivated by a conservative, "Zionist" or even Jewish bias. When the person actually interviewing McKinney makes that comparison, we hear the sound of silence.
from Daryl Bradford Smith's iamthewitness.com website:
McKinney says she's a fan of anti-Semitic author Michael Collins Piper, he dedicates a book to her
Cynthia McKinney has played the double-game of working with increasing brazenness with racists of the far-right, even as she says through her spokesmen that we shouldn't judge her by her friends. I wonder how they explain the fact that McKinney has declared herself, via Facebook, to be a fan of the anti-Semitic author Michael Collins Piper. Piper has worked for decades in the employ of Willis Carto, one of the United States' most infamous far-right racists.
Author Leonard Zeskind describes Carto as one of the two foremost leaders of the U.S. "white nationalist" movement in the latter half of the 20th Century, and Piper as Carto's "loyal assistant". (Read here and here. A Piper interview with Carto is available here. [Link goes directly to RAM file.]) Carto is the founder of a number of extreme right wing groups such as the Liberty Lobby (which "appealed to both anti-communists and arch-segregationists", read here) and the Holocaust-denial group Institute for Historical Review, among his countless other similarly oriented projects. Piper has worked for the newspaper founded and published by Carto, American Free Press, since that paper's founding, and has participated in a number of Carto's Holocaust-denial conferences. (Read here and here.) Piper has also been described as a "far-right emissary to the Islamic world", attempting to unite Islamists and the U.S. far-right around the common causes of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism . (Read here and here. My earlier article on Piper can be read here.)
Piper, along with David Duke and a rogue's gallery of others, participated in Holocaust denial conferences hosted by far-right Russian Nationalists (read here), and, infamously, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who invited Piper to the Tehran Holocaust denial conference as his personal guest (read here). It would be fair to say of him that Piper has made the production of books, columns and radio programs fabulizing Jewish conspiracies to control the world his life's work. He has, among other things, accused Jews of assassinating U.S. presidents, secretly controlling the government, financial system and media, and, literally, practicing human sacrifice and cannibalism.
McKinney supporters might be interested to learn that Piper's employer Willis Carto worked in George Wallace's segregationist presidential campaign as a leader of Youth for Wallace and subsequently set up an organization which morphed into the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Both Carto and Piper have for many years worked with former-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and continue to do so. (For a recent example, read here.) Carto was a key backer both of Duke's 1988 run for U.S. president (read here) and Duke's 2004 "New Orleans Protocol" outlining a political strategy for U.S. "European Nationalists" (i.e. white supremicists). (Read here.) The ADL says that Carto is "one of the most influential American anti-Semitic propagandists of the past 50 years... he has been associated with nearly every significant far-right movement in the country, from neo-Nazism to militias, segregationism to Holocaust denial." (Read here. For Searchlight Magazine's take on Carto, read here. Examples of Carto's racist letters to Verne Kaub, a Liberty Lobby board member and author, are available here and here.)
Not only has McKinney now declared her support for Carto's assistant, Michael Collins Piper, Piper has reportedly declared his support for Cynthia McKinney by dedicating his bookThe Judas Goats: The Enemy Withinto her as follows. (Read here.)
To the Honorable Cynthia McKinney
Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia
. . .For daring to speak out and raise questions about what really happened on 9-11 and about the dangerous U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world — a policy that has made America many enemies around the globe — Cynthia McKinney was driven from the U.S. Congress in 2002. Judas Goat — a former Republican, no less — was recruited to run against Miss McKinney in the Democratic Party primary.GOP organizers moved into the Democratic Party to assist the Judas Goat. Tons of Zionist money poured into Georgia to help Miss McKinney’s challenger. In the end, Miss McKinney was defeated.But two years later Cynthia McKinney made a comeback and she sits in the U.S. Congress today — a voice for sane policies and one who still does not hesitate to speak the truth. And as this is written, they are moving against her once again. Her voice is one for all good people. Dear God: Let there be more like Cynthia McKinney!
Piper's Judas Goats book alleges that the Jews control the world via dual Zionist and Trostkyite conspiracies, both under the control of the Rothschild family. Piper describes it as supplement to a book called Synagogue of Satan by Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, which Piper calls "an overwhelming detailed history of how Jewish power and influence -- particularly through the venue [sic] of the Rothschild banking dynasty -- how that influence came to rule supreme". (He's nothing if not consistent.) He talks about the book at length in an interview with far-right radio hate preacher Texe Marrs, audio of which is embedded below.
(Listen here at 6:30.)
Michael Collins Piper also has at least one connection to the previously discussed anti-Semitic blogger Noel "Ognir" Ryan. The below-embedded video, which I found on Ryan's website TheInformationUnderground.com (here), features audio from a recent Piper radio program. In that program, the administrator Ryan's internet forum and radio programs (under the name "LordLindsey" -- he goes by "Lindsey" here), tells Piper how pleased he was with Ognir's McKinney interview. (At about 3:20 of the video below.) The reason? McKinney alleged in that interview (at great length) that (in Lindsey's words) "Zionist Jews control more than 99% of the United States Congress". (You can listen here, at first link, to that McKinney interview.) [NOTE: Among the ever-growing list of incredibly offensive material available on the TheInformationUnderground.com, is a video which attempts to glorify Holocaust Museum murderer Jim von Brunn. View here.]
Considering that Michael Collins Piper does little else but promote the grossest bigotry, I would be very interested to hear from McKinney what it is about him that she supports. Maybe there's some aspect of his work that's escaped public notice that McKinney would like to draw attention to with her praise of him. I would also be interested in hearing the reactions of progressives to McKinney's support for this advocate of the racist far-right.
"I am in Turkey with Israel Shamir!!!"
That's how Cynthia McKinney giddily headlined her article on her meeting with Israel Shamir in Ankara last year (read here). She writes (here):
I can hardly believe this moment!! Israel Shamir has written about me and lifted my spirits when I was most down. Even from faraway Israel, he understood my plight and dared give voice to the truth. They say that sometimes distance gives clarity--and certainly in Israel's case, in observing my serial targeting, he saw what many inside the United States could not see. Despite his writings, I never met him until this moment, just a few minutes ago!! We are speaking together this afternoon in Ankara, Turkey. He has already sent his message out on his list and so I include it here for you. I will send my message to you later. I will bring these contacts from around the world that I have made on behalf of peace, home to the United States so that we can more easily achieve our objectives for justice and peace and dignity in the area of policy where we and the world need it the most. We are a part of something much bigger than us individually, and our moment is now.
I guess they hit it off. For those who don't know of Shamir, he's a shady character who got his start working as journalist for a prominent Russian, far-right, ultra-nationalist newspaper under the pen name "Robert David" . (His legal name has, at various times, been Jöran Jermas or Adam Ermash.) He spent some time living in Israel under the assumed name "Israel Shamir". After this, he Portrayed himself in the West as an Israeli and a leftist, and has focused largely on producing anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda. He has meanwhile continued to maintain an ideological double identity, publishing in Eastern European languages and Russian from an overtly far-right perspective. Although he is ethnically Russian and a naturalized citizen of Sweden, he touts the fact that he lived in Israel under his assumed name (read here and here and here and here), and is frequently cited as an "Israeli journalist" when used as source. This identity is useful to writers who either want to put an acceptable face on what they know to be anti-Israel disinformation, or are credulous enough to believe in the fairy tales he promotes. I wrote about one such instance, Alison Weir's reliance on Shamir's promotion of literal truth of the blood libel, here and here. Weir cited him as an "Israeli journalist" working to uncover what she and Shamir describe as Israel's campaign of murdering people to steal their organs. Both Weir and McKinney still work with Shamir and cite him as an authority in spite of his having been denounced as an anti-Semite by Hussein Ibish and Ali Abunimah (read here), and as an impostor and charlatan by countless others.
To cite one out of countless examples of Israel Shamir's extremism, he counts among his close ideological allies the infamous Horst Mahler, whom Shamir calls "(a) friend of Palestine and anti-zionist, an anti-imperialist freedom fighter". Read here. Mahler, formerly a leader of the far left Red Army Fraction, has been for many years a leader Germany's racist far right, largely motivated by extreme anti-Semitism (as evidenced here). In 2003, Mahler founded a Holocaust denial organization he called Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten. (Read their press release here. Co-signers of the organization's charter included Ernst Zündel, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, and Frederick Töben.) In subsequent years, Mahler has been convicted several times of crimes connected to his activism connected to denial of Nazi war crimes. In a 2007 interview with the German edition of Vanity Fair, an English translation of which "Shamir" makes available on his website (read here), Mahler said of Jews that they "are the embodiment of a god, who according to our understanding is Satan, and they play a tragic role in the corruption and negation of the life of all the other Peoples". (In that interview, Mahler greeted his interviewer by saying "Heil Hitler!”, and went on to praise Hitler, defend his own father's Nazism, and equate it with leftist opposition to "American imperialism".)
Horst Mahler and "Israel Shamir" in 2008
Mahler (second from left) with sign reading "There was no Holocaust"
"Israel Shamir" has found a very willing subject for his disinformation in Cynthia McKinney. With the instincts of a gifted con artist he found the sweet spot where her prejudices intersect with his agenda. Via McKinney, Shamir promotes the idea that Europe's neo-Nazis and Russia's ultra-nationalists are funded by Jews as part of a global war on Islam, and that this purported covert war is intrinsic to Israel's existence. This is a bit of misdirection that someone with Shamir's connections to Russian ultra-nationalists -- connections he has been careful to conceal -- might find very useful.
Shamir's writing style can be a bit diffuse, but while following his train of thought might be tricky, you can be certain as to its destination. Here's a portion of the text of his Ankara speech as posted by McKinney on her Facebook page:
The problem is the Jewish state. Not only does it besiege Gaza and destroy a football stadium in el Bireh. These are local problems, painful but local. The Jewish state (It is not a Jewish state. It is a Zionist state. S1000+) focuses Jewish power all over the world into action. Without a Jewish state, this power would disperse; it would remain local, it would remain chaotic, probably it would be subdued by the forces of assimilation. Israel focuses these chaotic forces and concentrates them into action.
This action is against Islam. Not only against Islam, but Dar ul Islam (the Islamic world) is a prime target. In the US , the Jewish Neocons led their country into a crusade against Iraq and Afghanistan ; now they are spearheading the push against Iran.
They have formed a powerful front against President Obama and have turned him into a laughing stock after he uttered a few words of wisdom about Palestine .
In Europe , if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim neo-Nazi groups, you'll find that they thrive on Jewish support. In Russia , Jewish nationalists and Zionists try to rally the Russians against their Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of the Russian Church , or of Russian nationalism. I wrote about this recently, as I had discovered that the most fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised by crypto-Zionists.
Even if a Palestinian state were to be established and recognised, it wouldn’t stop Israeli attempts to undermine its neighbours, to bomb Iran , to sow the seeds of discord from Russia to France , from Turkey to India . Israel 's too powerful intelligence services would keep meddling. Neither would it neutralise the armed forces of Israel , and you know as well as anybody that the generals do not give up their toys, their privileges or their influence easily. The Israeli military machine is so powerful that it would seek to exercise its might.
Consider that the source for this incoherent conspiracy theory has been associated with precisely the far-right Russian nationalist movement most ardently connected to both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic violence in Russia. I tend to believe that McKinney (like the rest of Shamir's audience in Ankara) is oblivious to this fact and is taking him at face value to be an Israeli leftist. But that sort of gullibility is no excuse for the promotion of this sort of deranged and hateful conspiracy theory. Regardless of whom McKinney believes Shamir to be, the intent of this string of lies is clearly stated: to drive further wedges between Muslims and Jews, to oppose a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel and to deny Israel's right to exist. In promoting these views, McKinney, like Shamir, should be regarded as an anti-peace activist.
"Guilt by association": a catch-all defense for supporting the indefensible
Cynthia McKinney and her supporters may call any condemnation of her work with Matthias Chang, Michelle Renouf, David Pidcock, Mahathir Tun, Michael Collins Piper, Jöran "Israel Shamir" Jermas, Daryl Bradford Smith and Noel "Ognir" Ryan guilt by association, but by doing so, they help legitimize racism, anti-Semitism and far-right extremism, as does McKinney herself. While guilt by association might be a legitimate defense to merely talking with, attending the same meetings as, or even belonging to the same organizations as bigots, it is quite another matter to support them politically, tout their writings, promote their views, or actually work in their employ. By doing this, and by doing this with increasing frequency, McKinney has made precisely her association with bigotry the centerpiece of her message.
More importantly "guilt by association" refers to a legal standard for criminal acts: people cannot be held legally responsible for the acts of others unless they criminally participate in those acts as well. The standard by which we judge the character of political figures should be much higher than that. McKinney's supporters, in defending her work with racists and extremists, say "only hold her to the standard by which we judge criminal acts". A political figure whose followers hold to such a low standard must be doing something wrong. Besides, as I have shown above and in my earlier articles, this defense ignores what is now painfully obvious. McKinney is not just associating with people who do and say bad things, she is actively supporting those malicious acts and participating in them herself.
Other McKinney supporters defend her differently, claiming that she is well-intentioned, but is recklessly making ill-advised alliances. As the number of these alliances grows, and the connections grow deeper, this defense becomes less and less plausible. The fact that Cynthia McKinney has made common cause with bigots of the far-right with at least some knowledge of who they are indicates that her actions are based on a malice she shares with them. Cynthia McKinney has done nothing to distance herself from the overtly bigoted views espoused by so many of those she works with, even when they espouse these views to her in public forums. On the contrary, she has gone out of her way to agree with many of these views, and even to publish them on websites maintained by her or by the Green Party on her behalf. While in the past she mostly avoided using the word "Jew" in favor of "Zionist", with her publication of Shamir's speech, even this thin veil of propriety has disappeared. If McKinney had sincerely wished to distance herself from these views, she would have denounced her friends' bigotry long ago; instead, she has repeatedly gone out of her way to support it.
The idea that her guilt is merely "by association" is laughable. Her guilt is sometimes that of a silent, grinning supporter of her friends' racist rants, and at other times that of an active promoter of those views herself. Sometimes she has couched her feelings about Jews in language vague enough to hypocritically disavow ill intent, but no one with any pretense of opposing bigotry should be deceived. Nor should they tolerate the fact that she claims to support peace for Israel and Palestine while campaigning against a peace settlement. Those who have supported McKinney or have been drawn to any part of her message owe it to themselves to speak out against this.
Screen shot from Cynthia McKinney's Facebook page.
(NOTE: I've revised this article to include a paragraph about Horst Mahler's connection to "Israel Shamir" and two additional photographs. Thanks to Karl Pfeifer for much of that information. Pfeifer's 2005 article on "Shamir" and Mahler can be read here. Thanks as well to Gene of Harry's Place for his kind words and his link to this article -- read here.)
"History teaches us that the most universally inspiring Jews, I mean, those who contributed something to humanity rather than merely to their own people or even just themselves, were motivated by some form of self hate." --Gilad Atzmon
It's not exactly news that jazz musician and blogger Gilad Atzmon advocates anti-Semitism by both Jews and non-Jews -- he's been playing that tune for several years. But his advocacy has become both more blatant and more pathetic recently, as evidenced by his promotion of the Israeli organ theft libel. The products of his fervid imagination on that subject have now been broadcast around the world, along with the twisted fantasies of Israel Shamir, T. West, al-Manar, and Alison Weir (read here and here and here), and thanks to those like Baroness Jenny Tonge who take those fantasies to be reliable information.
Bigots are said to use their targets as scapegoats for shortcomings they fear having themselves, projecting their sins onto those they hate. But the self-hater has a special problem which calls for extraordinary measures. When he looks in the mirror, his scapegoat stares back. The self-hater feels a need to continually prove that he is different from -- better than -- the others of his group. For Atzmon, this need to differentiate compels increasingly extreme demonizing of the Jewish community; and as his critique becomes stronger, it verges on overt opposition to Jewish existence.
Atzmon recently wrote a review of the film "Defamation" which is noteworthy for both for its anti-Semitic opposition to Jewish participation in public life and its attempt to blame Jews for European anti-Muslim sentiment. (Read here.) That review includes the following defense of anti-Semitism:
"Unlike Uri Avnery and Norman Finkelstein who appear in the film and argue that anti-Semitism is exaggerated, I actually believe that resentment towards Jewish politics is rising rapidly and constantly. However, I do differentiate between the Judeo-centric notion of anti-Semitism and political resentment towards Jewish ideology. I do not regard anti-Jewish activity as a form of anti-Semitism or racial hatred because Jews are neither Semites nor do they form a racial continuum whatsoever. The rise of hatred towards any form of Jewish politics and Jewish lobbies is a reaction towards a tribal, chauvinist and supremacist ideology."
Atzmon first admits that he sees that anti-Semitism is on the rise, then that he supports it, although he would prefer that it not be called anti-Semitism. Atzmon writes that he supports opposition to "Jewish ideology", a vague term which can mean virtually any manifestation of Jewish existence in public life. This is an extraordinary limitation to which no ethnic or religious group should be subjected. Opposition to "Jewish ideology" comes very close to opposing Jewish existence itself. Atzmon goes on to deride the term "anti-Semitism" as a "Judeo-centric notion", as if opposition to this particular brand of bigotry (his brand) is itself a form of bigotry.
Atzmon justifies this form of discrimination by saying that he merely wants to protect the rest of the world from the "tribal, chauvinist and supremacist" Jews. What could possibly be wrong with that?
The musician, jazz writer and blogger David Adler wrote about Atzmon in Jazz Times in October 2005. (Read it in pdf here.) David wrote in that article that, in spite of Atzmon promotion of Holocaust denial literature and other manifestations of extremism on his part, music writers tended to portray Atzmon's activism in polite terms, such as, amazingly, "a plea for understanding". David has emailed to tell me that the journalist John Pilger has written recently in support of Atzmon, citing him outrageously as "being at the heart of a battle for a better world"! Adler provided me with a link to Oliver Kamm's column on this. (Read here.) Kamm writes of Atzmon that
(h)e wrote (in a passage on his website that he later partially sanitised):
"American Jewry makes any debate on whether the 'Protocols of the elder of Zion' are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least."
The least objectionable aspect of this remark is that Atzmon regards it as an open question whether the Protocols, a notorious Czarist antisemitic forgery, are an authentic document. And the whole sentiment is quite moderate when you compare it with the rest of Atzmon's output. Consider his belief that Hitler has been unfairly maligned:
"To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook."
That says it all, doesn't it? According to Atzmon, Jewish discussions of the worst forms of anti-Semitism are part of a "Zio-centric" plot to expunge their own, far worse, crimes. That is pathetic.
UPDATE: David Adler writes about this on his blog here.
