Talking with Jews (or not)
By Dr. Kevin MacDonald
A topic that is not discussed enough is the screaming, in-your-face, hostile aggression that people must withstand when they dare to trample on Jewish sensibilities. I am not talking about the sophisticated rationalization one sees in the op-ed pages of the mainstream media, or even the smear techniques of organizations like the ADL or the SPLC. We are talking about interpersonal aggression. There is something absolutely primal about it.
Now comes a refreshingly frank blog post by Karin Friedemann, an ethnically Jewish anti-Zionist. She notes the “violent intolerance” that defenders of Israel show towards people with different opinions:
American Jews are actually being trained since childhood to interact with non-Jews in a deceitful and arrogant manner, in coordination with each other, to emotionally destroy Gentiles and Israel critics in addition to wrecking their careers and interfering with their social relationships. This is actually deliberate, wicked, planned behavior motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury….
The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering so when a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against his own inner self in a huge battle against his “inner Jew” making him feel inadequate and intimidated. But the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what’s good for the Jews. …
I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it’s truly scary. …
If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state they become very angry and start using bullying tactics, unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or try and destroy your career or social status through character assassination. …
Zionists all believe in the myth of “1000 years of Jewish suffering” and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors’ “unique” suffering. It’s a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the contradictions between their belief that they are the good guys and what Jews are actually doing to their neighbors, both in the Middle East and in the US, by developing mental health issues. Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.
My take:
— These tactics are not restricted to critics of Zionism. As one who has experienced a barrage of hostile email from my faculty colleagues, I can certainly attest to this. A correspondent sent me the following recently:
I have encountered many liberal, politically correct Jews who react vociferously (almost violently) to the most innocuous comments about any topic related to Israel or Jews. One Jew upon my mentioning that my wife and I had been to Russia spent several minutes virtually frothing at the mouth about Russians. Another upon hearing me say I was sympathetic to the problems of the Palestinians demanded to know who I was and how dare I say such a thing. Often zero tolerance for any difference in opinion.
— The media constantly present images of Jewish suffering-most recently the endless glut of Holocaust movies. But the media ignore instances, such as the early decades of the USSR and now in Greater Israel, where Jews have inflicted horrible suffering. Right now I am reading E. Michael Jones’ The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History. It is striking to read his account of Jewish violence against non-Jews in the ancient world, particularly the persecution of Christians whenever Jews had the power to do so. Long before Christians had any influence on Roman policy, Christians’ complaints about Jews were not stereotypes based on historical memory but resulted from direct experience with Jews: “Origen understood that Jewish calumny helped to cause Christian persecution, and that Jewish hatred was a fact of life for the Christians, continuing unabated after the repeated defeats of Messianic politics” (i.e., the defeats of Jewish rebels at the hands of the Romans in 70 and 135 ad) (p. 69). This is the basis of my concern on what will happen to whites when Jews become part of a hostile elite in white-minority America.
— Non-Jews absorb these media images and as a result feel inadequate, emotionally intimidated. Eventually they identify with the aggressor, much like a browbeaten hostage or, as Friedemann suggests, an abused spouse. Or they maintain their friendships but studiously avoid talking about anything related to Israel. Non-Jews do the bidding of their “inner Jew” because they have internalized images of Jewish suffering. They therefore aid and abet Jewish brutality and aggression.
— Non-Jews who persist in criticizing the organized Jewish community are threatened with loss of livelihood and social ostracism. As I noted in a previous article the organized Jewish community does not believe in free speech. It is important to keep in mind that when Jews were dominant in the first decades of the Soviet Union, the government controlled the media, anti-Semitism was outlawed, and there was mass murder of Christians and the destruction of Christian churches and religious institutions.
As Friedemann notes, the situation is nothing less than a sign of serious mental health issues for the mainstream Jewish community: “Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.”
I think this is what happens when people who deal with Jewish issues finally realize that there is no hope for dialogue and begin to think of what to do next. Honest people finally realize that when it comes to critical issues like Israel and multicultural America, the divisions among Jews are an illusion. (Friedemann herself has renounced her Jewish identity.) As Friedemann’s husband, Joachim Martillo, notes, “Jews, who want to be decent human beings, have no choice but to renounce being Jewish and serve the anti-Zionist struggle (right now).”
Exhibit A for this right now is the murderous Israeli invasion of Gaza. We know (see, for example, John Mearsheimer’s article in The American Conservative) that this invasion occurred after a prolonged period when Israel restricted supplies into Gaza and then attacked tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. We know that the invasion was designed to “to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future.”
The tone of Mearsheimer’s article suggests a dramatic shift in attitude where the usual inhibitions on public discourse are finally beginning to fall, even for a respected academic:
There is … little chance that people around the world who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will soon forget the appalling punishment that Israel is meting out in Gaza. … [D]iscourse about this longstanding conflict has undergone a sea change in the West in recent years, and many of us who were once wholly sympathetic to Israel now see that the Israelis are the victimizers and the Palestinians are the victims.
The gloves are coming off. This is what happens when smart and honest people who work hard to get the scholarship right are nevertheless smeared as anti-Semites guilty of the vilest misdeeds. Not surprisingly, Abe Foxman – a premier defender of the racial Zionist status quo in Israel – devoted an entire book to smearing Mearsheimer and Walt. Quite simply, there is no point to talking to such people or taking seriously what they say about us.
We know that the government of Israel is firmly in the hands of the racial Zionists – followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky and his view of the racial distinctiveness and superiority of the Jewish people. Indeed, the only question in the Israeli election is which brand of racial Zionism will form the next government. One knows that racial Zionism has completely won the day in Israel when Kadima – the party of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and the Gaza invasion – is now described by Benjamin Netanyahu as the party of the left. (The LA Times dutifully calls it “centrist” but, as Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery writes, Livni “cries to high heaven against any dialogue with Hamas. She objects to a mutually agreed cease-fire. She tries to compete with Netanyahu and [Avignor] Liberman with unbridled nationalist messages.”) Indeed, Netanyahu’s only worry is that the openly racist Liberman – a disciple of the notorious Meir Kehane – will take away too many votes from Likud.
The situation is analogous to a US election where Pat Buchanan is the candidate of the far left. (I can dream.)
Avnery analogizes the election to a joke where a sergeant tells his men: “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you are going to change your dirty socks. The bad news is that you are going to exchange them among yourselves.”
Once again we see at work the general principle that within the Jewish community, the most extreme elements carry the day and pull the rest of the Jewish community with them. As I noted in “Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism,” “over time, the more militant, expansionist Zionists (the Jabotinskyists, the Likud Party, fundamentalists, and West Bank settlers) have won the day and have continued to push for territorial expansion within Israel. This has led to conflicts with Palestinians and a widespread belief among Jews that Israel itself is threatened. The result has been a heightened group consciousness among Jews and ultimately support for Zionist extremism among the entire organized American Jewish community.”
The fanatics keep pushing the envelop, forcing other Jews to either go along with their agenda or cease being part of the Jewish community. Ominously, if elected, Netanyahu promises that a top priority will be “harnessing the U.S. administration to stop the threat” of Iran’s nuclear program.
Incidentally, E. Michael Jones (The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Effect on History, p. 42ff) has expanded this argument to the ancient world. He shows how the Jewish community was pulled in the direction of fanaticism by the Zealots who expelled the followers of Jesus from the synagogue and adopted a disastrous path of revolution against Rome, leading ultimately to the defeats of 70 and 135 a.d.
A good example of the schizophrenia described by Friedemann comes from the fact that around 80% of American Jews voted for Obama but around the same percentage blames Hamas for the escalation of violence and believes that the Israeli response was “appropriate.” These results of the poll on the Gaza invasion were proudly announced by Abraham Foxman of the ADL, an organization that is one of the principal forces in promoting a post-European America. The Jewish left is a pillar of multi-cultural America but strongly supports racial Zionism in Israel.
This same schizophrenia was on display at a recent presentation at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles by Chris Hedges and Mark Potok – he of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The program dealt with the usual bogey-men of the organized Jewish community: Christian fundamentalists, skinheads, David Duke, and (I am gratified to report) The Occidental Quarterly. In a comment on the alliance between Christian conservatives and Zionists, an audience member mentioned (to stifled applause) that “There are Jewish fascists.” But the moderator, Ian Masters, saved the day when he stated that “the vast majority of American Jews are secular and liberal” – a comment that brought much applause, presumably because it reassured the many Jews in the audience that they weren’t like THOSE Jews. For his part, Potok, that stalwart warrior against white America, expressed his support for what he sees as a beleaguered Israel on the verge of apocalypse at the hands of the Arabs. Schizophrenia indeed.
The politicians who are running Israel are, if anything, more racialist and nationalist than anything even remotely on the horizon in American or European politics. As Avnery notes:
In every other country, Liberman’s program would be called fascist, without quotation marks. Nowhere in the Western world is there a large party that would dare to advance such a demand [to annul the citizenship of Arabs]. The neo-fascists in Switzerland and Holland want to expel foreigners, not to annul the citizenship of the native-born. …
When Joerg Haider was taken into the Austrian cabinet, Israel recalled its ambassador from Vienna in protest. But compared to Liberman, Haider was a raving liberal, and so is Jean-Marie le Pen. Now Netanyahu has announced that Liberman will be “an important minister” in his government, Livni has hinted that he will be in her government, too, and Barak has not excluded that possibility.
The optimistic version says that Liberman will prove to be a passing curiosity. … There is also a pessimistic version: Fascism has become a serious player in the Israeli public domain. The three main parties have now legitimized it. This phenomenon must be stopped before it is too late.
So I have a suggestion for the Foxmans, the Potoks, the neoconservatives, and the secular Jewish liberals of the world: If you want to fight racism and ethnic nationalism, start in your own backyard. And my suggestion for the rest of us is to get rid of what Friedemann calls the “inner Jew.” I know it’s hard to do. But once you tune out the screaming hostility (and assuming you don’t fear losing your job), it’s easy. Just don’t expect a pleasant or rational conversation.
Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University-Long Beach.
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