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WHEN VICTIMS RULE A Critique of Jewish Pre-eminence in America
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INTRODUCTION
"All critics of Jews should not be tagged as anti-Semites. We are not a nation of Christs, Spinozas, and Einsteins; that the Nazis are brutes does not make us angels ... Criticism is not the same as hatred, and critics are not our enemies. The greatest friends of a people are not those who praise but those who honestly find fault. A people without criticism is either a dictatorship or a community so deeply embedded in smug self-satisfaction as to be on the road to decadence."
-- William Zuckerman, Jewish author [written before World War II,
in Goldstein, D., p. 119]"The far-reaching consequences of the [Jewish] martyr complex go beyond any effect of the individual Jew ... and do not leave unmarked even the most sympathetically inclined Gentiles. Since the Jew is hypersensitive on the subject of his Judaism, Gentiles fear to offer constructive criticism lest they be accused of prejudices. Thus the Jew is denied the benefit of honest evaluation of the very real differences and prejudices existing ... I believe we Jews will never be normal individuals so long as we foster our martyr complex, so long as we remain evasive of self-appraisal and self-improvement, and so long as it is easier to blame the other fellow for our own faults."
Maurice M. Feurlich, Jewish author
-- in "Children of the Martyr Race," The Forum, NYC, September 1937; cited in Goldstein, D., p. 116
"By accusing western democracies of anti-Semitism, the Jews put them on the defensive. As long as guilt feelings can be profitably mined, advantages can be gained. But the lode is not likely to last forever."
-- Moshe Leshem, former Israeli diplomat, p. 253-254]"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own government must arm themselves with the power which knowledge brings." -- James Madison
It is a daunting task to write a book, knowing full well that it swims counter to one of the strongest contemporary currents, and that it will automatically and categorically be rejected without investigation by the cultural, educational, and political machinations of modern western society, not for failings in its intellectual, scholarly, or moral rigor, but because its subject matter is publicly configured (by militantly enforced convention tended to by a powerful "special interest" group) to be beyond the pale of criticism. The subject matter in this volume is individuals, by virtue of their identity within an extremely politically active group, who are rendered completely free from the responsibility of such group association. It is further daunting, and disturbing, that such a volume is -- by blanket dictate -- condemned, even in its mere conception, to be an immoral, innately prejudicial, and even evil, enterprise.
We are all socialized in Western society to resist judging any individual by his or her ethnic/group association. It's a noble ideal: Why prejudge anyone about anything? Let any individual be completely evaluated upon his or her respective merits. America is educationally, and legally, configured as a "tolerant" society, champion of a variety of multicultural perspectives. As reasonable as this may seem, however, there can be a profound double standard subliminally at work here. What about when the "individual we must not prejudge" is part of a subcommunity that itself prejudges all who are not part of that group's boundaries of identity, a group that consistently acts by its self-protective, self-expansive biases? Is it "prejudicial" to criticize individuals who maintain -- actively or passively -- such group allegiance, within, and transcending, the American matrix? And is it not morally reasonable, and in fact morally necessary, to criticize any collectivity, to the degree it deviates, at core, from the inter-ethnic tolerant, and universalistic, ethic of the American sociopolitical framework? And what about when such a group can, alternately or collectively, self-configure as a racial, ethnic, religious, nationalist, and political organization? Does such a community merit categorical immunity from criticism?
Herbert Spencer's well-known quote about prejudicial intolerance seems especially written for this volume:
"There is a principal which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principal is contempt prior to investigation."
Jewish scholar Samuel Dresnev, speaking about academia's failings on another subject, wrote something which also has application here:
"The hesitancy to speak out is understandable, but it is not pardonable. Safety is no substitute for honesty. History will ultimately judge those who failed their responsibilities as scholars and human beings." [DRESNEV, p. 221]
What you are about to read may be shaped by some to be another Satanic Verses, another forbidden topic, this one American-style -- guaranteed magnet to those manning the censorial posts of free speech American democracy. But, unlike Salmon Rushdie's work, this is not a fictionalized attack on Islam that is assailed by narrow-minded Ayatollahs; it is a real-life investigation of those of great strength, and thereby guaranteed to incur emphatic condemnation -- not by dictatorial regimes across the world, but here at home.
This book aims to methodically present a virtual encyclopedic collection of facts towards decontructing the many myths about Jewish history and identity, and to investigate the ways in which these myths are used towards enormous economic, cultural and political advantage, extremely detrimental to non-Jews. The book also deconstructs the artifice behind incessant Jewish accusations of the generic "anti-Semite," accusations that are ceaselessly wielded as a political tool towards further Jewish empowerment. It also addresses Jewish pre-eminence in American (and, hence, world) popular culture, including the mass media (TV, film, radio, newspapers, book publishing, music, et al), academia, the international art world, and the profoundly disturbing hold of pro-Israel Zionism within the American government. It explores the reasons why who is identifiable as Jewish in the upper echelons of power is important, why it is necessary to have open public discussion about this subject, and why such an investigation is not an immoral and prejudicial enterprise, but rather its antithesis: an enterprise of solid moral and rational worth. Knowing full well that such assertions will be relentlessly assailed as recycled "anti-Semitic canards," this work is meticulously footnoted every inch of the way, overwhelmingly citing Jewish scholarship itself as authoritative sources, as well as the popular mass media (of whom most authors on Jewish subjects are also Jewish). This book, representing over 2,000 book-form pages, gleans evidence using approximately 10,000 citations from about 4,000 bibliographic sources (books, magazines, newspapers, government documents, and scholarly journals), relying heavily upon what is commonly known in academic jargon as "secondary sources" (i.e., not "first source" archival documents and so forth). This is purposeful, for a crucial concern of this volume is what the Jewish community understands and says about itself, and how so much of these beliefs are spread as popular opinion for all others.
The chapter about anti-Semitism in this volume was the original section which led me to dig yet deeper and deeper into all realms of Jewish identity, history, economics, politics, and power. The more I dug at a range of university libraries, the more disturbed, stunned, I became at what I was finding. And why was this not part of common public discourse? Again and again I shook my head at what I found: the systematic historical revisionism and successful Jewish lobbying efforts to canonize Jewish religious myth (rooted in its cosmology of consummate victimhood) in secular form, reshaping the complexion of everything from the history of the world to the very premises of American democracy itself.
While Jewish censorial dictate decrees that no one should even begin to read such a volume as this, let alone expose the issues herein to public forum, this author suggests (however bizarre it may seem) an open, democratic approach to the issue. Choose any ten currently popular books about the Jewish community. Read them. And then read this one. Think for yourself. Look deeper into the differences between this volume and the others. What do these differences mean? Is this a work of irrational bigotry? Have Jews always been history's pre-eminent, and saintly, victims? Is noting who is Jewish in the President Clinton administration a manifestation of "prejudice?" There are few books that can completely change a reader's opinion about its subject. As I have been well advised, this is one of them.
The immunity from questioning and debate that is afforded the modern Jewish community reflects a stupendously lofty position of influence and privilege; one might notice it holds a rank generally reserved for the likes of despotic potentates and censorial political regimes. And, of course, God. Who else is beyond criticism? Volumes weigh the shelves in the world's libraries that impugn and defame beliefs that were formerly beyond questioning. In "free societies," anyone who wants may write, and publish, works that attack Christianity; assail the "historical revisionism" of Afro-centrism; deconstruct the myths of Hinduism; defame the Pope; disdain Republican, Democratic, communist, or any other ideology; emblazon the whole of Islam as a hotbed for irrational mania and terrorism; write entire volumes about the alleged worldwide Japanese economic "conspiracy"; and vilify the entirety of the nebulous entity known as the "white establishment" and anyone dictated by skin color to be within it. But, curiously, in the vast expanse of deconstructive engines of all and everything, one cannot criticize the sacrosanct domain of Jewish history, politics, and identity, unless the critic is willing to be systematically marginalized in all walks of life, prepared to be tarnished and branded as a contemptible hate-filled "anti-Semite," risk losing her or her job, and be categorically lumped into mainstream society's moral and intellectual garbage dump reserved for the likes of the Nazis and Ku Klux Klan.
"True opinion," wrote prominent Jewish American journalist Walter Lippman (1889-1974), "can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known; if they are not known, false ideas are just effective as true ones, if not a little more effective." [LIPPMAN, W., LIBERTY AND THE NEWS, 1920] Enforced ignorance of the full Jewish story, mass censorship, and fear of reprisals for its telling, are among the reasons why no substantial scholarly volume critical of Jewry of this sort has ever been published in America. Never could it be published by an American mainstream publisher. Among many other things, this volume illustrates why. (Professors Albert Lindemann of the University of California and Kevin MacDonald of California State University, both publicly charged by Jewish reviewers as anti-Semites for recent scholarly volumes about Jewish history, have begun, however cautiously, in roundabout ways, to knock on the Iron Door).
We live in a land where to state in summary overview, in public forum, the perameters of America's "Jewish issue," is to invite categorical dismissal as a prejudiced bigot. Without evidence and information, few have entre into the reasoned discussion that should be happening about this in a truly "free" society. Hence, anyone open to exploring the issue of Jewish-Zionist pre-eminence, even domination, in popular culture, must be prepared to expend enormous effort in examining the huge dimensions of the issue, breaking past knee-jerk platitudes. The acquistion of knowledge is no easy task. Nor is the search for truth. This giant book was created for free-thinkers who are so inclined, to honestly examine the facts of Jewish history, identity, and socio-political control. To understand, too, the continuous turmoil in modern Israel, one must start here, with the BIG picture.
It is also the conviction of this author that there is a very small number of individuals in the Jewish community who, critical of their own community, recognize clearly the dimensions of the issues herein. These people are heroes in this story -- the ones who know that, sooner or later, the injustices perpetrated in the collective name of the Jewish community must be frankly addressed. And changed. These injustices, in the long term, are good for no one. The author of this work argues that the issues in this work are better raised here, in an academic context, towards public discussion and debate, than any other. The increased Balkanization of American society, certainly the divisions in Israel, and the world at-large, are a danger to everybody. And Jewish ethnocentrism -- coupled with an unusual transnational power to assert it -- has few parallels.The author of this work is against stereotypes, prejudices, irrational biases, discrimination, racism, and all the other buzzwords that signify ignorance, intolerance, injustice and evil in our day. Yet when such buzzwords are used so loosely as political ramrods and shields to ward off legitimate criticism everywhere in the power struggles of "cultural pluralism," they lose their moral and intellectual moorings. Such systematic screening from criticism grossly rewards -- and institutionalizes -- pure propaganda. The world's Jews do not talk and act with one head. There are many expressions of international Jewry. Yet such diversity does not mean that their self-defining commonalities that impact non-Jewish others are beyond reproach, immune from critical commentary. Of course not all Blacks are stereotypically "the same," but they are different, as a group -- in character, history, and collective world view -- from Hispanics. Of course not all Americans are equal, but they are certainly different as a people (in all their diversity) than, say, Indonesians. Likewise, there are many kinds of Muslims, but they definitely have more in common with each other than they do with Methodists. Not all Germans were Nazis, but few question the enforcement of a collective German responsibility for their Aryan fascist movement. (If more Germans had stood up and taken active stands against those that claimed to speak for them, history would have been different).
As Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has observed about "political correctness" in the "Jewish joke" context:
"People who oppose telling ethnic jokes would have us believe that
the whole genre is nonsense, that alcoholics, neurotics, oversensitive
people and shady characters are evenly distributed among all groups.
However, tolerant as it sounds, this assumption makes no sense, for
it implies that history and culture have no impact on human beings.
But of course, they do. What makes Jews Jewish is a specific religious
culture and historical experience that have shaped their values and
strongly influenced how they view the world." [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 10]
Amitai Etzioni, a Jewish scholar and an escapee from Nazi Germany, in discussing the German peoples' collective responsibility for Hitler's fascism, has thoughts that also have important relevance here. In the following quote he is talking about Germans, but his argument can just as well be applied to Jews (or any other people):
"Communal responsibility is based on the fact that each of us is born into a community and shares its history, memories, identities, achievements, and failures. We are not simply human beings who can retreat behind a Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance,' secure in our universal rights and historical innocence. We are also members of specific families and communities ... We are all coresponsible for that which our community has perpetrated or condoned, for both sins of commission and omission." [ETZIONI, p. 13-14]
Fair enough. In this respect, the subject of this volume is not Germans, but Jews. They will be held here, of course, accountable to the same "communal responsibility" as any other people. This simple premise, however, (daring to hold Jews responsible for their collective actions and inactions now and across history) is, of course, in today's world, an extremely radical -- and even dangerous -- position. Why this is so, and how it came to be that simply to ask questions (and even to state unpleasant facts) about the Jewish community -- a special interest group in America of unparalleled power and influence -- is considered a virtual crime today, is part of the forthcoming story.
Let us proceed then.