My Kafka kick began a few weeks back, when an anti-Zionist friend sent me an email containing a story by Kafka. Here's the whole story, which his friend Max Brod, going through his papers after his death, titled "A Little Fable":
“You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.
I asked my anti-Zionist friend why he was sending it to me and he said it was just one of those days, and the story was "shattering." The next weekend I was at my parents' house and saw Kafka's letters to his mistress in an upstairs room and fell into that. The very first letter, reintroducing himself strangely to Felice Bauer a couple of weeks after their meeting in person, begins with Palestine. This has led to my appreciating a central truth of Kafka's life: he was, as Hannah Arendt says, a Zionist. Maybe just a cultural Zionist, certainly an imperfect Zionist, certainly an areligious disliker of creeds more drawn to Dostoyevsky's (Christian) religiosity than to what he called the "hot Jews" of eastern Europe. Feeling like a wooden coatrack pushed around the room when he attended Zionist meetings… Still he was a Zionist for a simple reason: he understood the Jewish condition of Europe. It was his condition and it is reflected in the fable. As it is in so much of his work. In his diaries and letters, Kafka worried over assimilation, Jewishness, emancipation, and Zionism constantly. He died even as he and his last mistress were thinking of moving to Palestine.
The other night a friend said that one problem he has in pro-Palestinian situations is that there is not an understanding of "the Jewish experience," which he learned about from his grandfather. I don't reflect that experience enough on this site. P.S. Kafka's sister died in the Holocaust. P.P.S. If you think I am changing my views on Israel, you have another think coming.
Who knows exactly what your views are on Israel?
One-state, two-state, support for Jewish legal claims in West Bank for ethnically cleansed population?, 67 boundaries – negotiated boundaries, unlimited right of return to Palestine – to Israel, repeal of 1950's laws prohibiting Palestinians' day in court, Israel has a right to defend against Hamas and other factions shelling of civilians, to what extent?
Do you advocate for the ethnic cleansing of current Jewish residents of the West Bank (even those willing to live as Palestinian citizens)?
The opposition to settlement expansion and excessive force is obvious to anyone.
Its also obvious who you are irritated by. By what are you committed to? What are you willing to suspend your irritation for, to enact what you are committed to?
(A hint, historically Finkelstein hasn't been willing to suspend his irritation for an hour.)
Hard to know what you actually think and are willing to work for.
Easy to know what you criticize and suspect.
Is that where it ends?
Also, the last century was the last century to most American Jews. Most of us NEVER experienced the traumas that European and Arabian Jews did.
To European and Israeli Jews, the news is of the current century, not of the last.
Its easy to dismiss, if one only extrapolates from their own experience.
Even recognizing those historical and recent traumas, its still possible to advocate for a humane Israel.
But, not recognizing those historical and recent traumas, then one's pressure includes an element of harrassment, even if one describes it to oneself and cadre as dissent.
Ethnic cleansing?
You would label the transfer (which is what it really is) of Israeli Jewish COLONISTS in the West Bank (who are paid to settle on Palestinian land) back to ISRAEL where they CAME FROM and whom they are STILL GOVERNED BY and who would be RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CARRYING OUT OF THE TRANSFER as an 'ethnic cleansing'?
Do you have no shame Witty?
Weren't you bashing people who labeled the Gaza massacre as a GENOCIDE?
Yet you continue to characterize the rocket fire on S'Derot as 'shelling'. Those shitty Qassams that have killed 20 people in eight years.
And now you call the removal of settlers an 'ethnic cleansing'?
Un-fucking-believable.
How fortunate kafka was, never to see the shithole israel has become and how they have disgraced the memory of Kafka and every other Jew of character.
'The other night a friend said that one problem he has in pro-Palestinian situations is that there is not an understanding of "the Jewish experience," '
–
Millions of Christians were targeted for their religion by the State and murdered in the Soviet Union well prior to the Holocaust. What percentage Christians is even aware of this, let along fixate upon it and have incorporated it into their religion vs. the number of Jews who fixate upon the Holocaust and have incorporated it into their religion and their very essence as perhaps THE central event in "the Jewish experience."?
A huge component of "the Jewish experience" seems to be obsessive fixation on historical wrongs (with the view that Jews have been historically wronged to a degree far and above all others) and a sharpening of knives with an eye on the future. This is a recipe for group psychopathy. And the keepers of the religion know this, and encourage it.
That's not proper tutelage, or religious and spiritual guidance. That's sadism.
"The other night a friend said that one problem he has in pro-Palestinian situations is that there is not an understanding of "the Jewish experience," which he learned about from his grandfather. I don't reflect that experience enough on this site. P.S. Kafka's sister died in the Holocaust."
do jews understand, give a damn about the experiences and suffering of others? this holocaust, is it ww2? many had family members killed in that holocaust and in the one labeled ww1.
if one goes to palestine and lives as a palestinian probably that person would be accepted. go to palestine or any place and be thug expect to be treated as an undesireable.
We are sad to report that Philip Weiss died this afternoon of an exploding head. The head explosion is being blamed on his aytempt to reconcile genocidal Jew hatred with respect for the Jewish experience.
well, look, I do understand it, Phil: it's like the Coil song, "the universe is a haunted house."
Ed said:
"This [an 'obsessive fixation on historical wrongs'] is a recipe for group psychopathy. And the keepers of the religion know this, and encourage it. That's not proper tutelage, or religious and spiritual guidance. That's sadism."
I don't know that things are that far along, but I will say that as a diagnosis of the dynamics of what can happen with such fixations, and a characterization of what they can result in, I think it's really just a brilliant statement.
I'm not saying that all Rabbinical Jews and communal leaders, and extended communal opinion shapers like Neocons and Neolibs (let alone all Jews), are psychopaths and sadists. But I do believe there are enough of them out there both in the West and in Israel who are, and who actually believe that the most effective way to "save" Judaism is to cultivate more like themselves, that it is becoming a real problem both for Judaism itself and for keeping the Western peace and preventing a Middle East conflagration.
This [an 'obsessive fixation on historical wrongs'] is a recipe for group psychopathy. And the keepers of the religion know this, and encourage it. That's not proper tutelage, or religious and spiritual guidance.
I don't think it qualifies as sadism either, but I definitely agree with Ed on this one. Good call, Ed. It doesn't have to be this way, but it is. Why is that?
@ Colin,
I don’t know why it had to be like this. The only thing that I can think of was that Communism theoretically didn’t have to be murderous either. But actually it did, because it was so hateful, and economically unviable, that it came down to kill or be killed. Zionism may be in a similar position.
The increasingly bankrupt Plutocratic-Capitalist/Big Government Socialist amalgamation America has become may be in a similar position as well. We’re now in a situation where the dollar is being propped up at US gun point.
These morally and economically corrupt systems are starting to come unhinged, and consequently their behavior is getting increasingly desperate.
Kafka was a Czech Jew, and under prevailing German influence too. There's three onion peels right there. He was also influenced by Darwin. His most famous character, the bug, was sort of a reverse version
of (only) populist Darwin (lineal progression). The most undying motif he had was inability to communicate. Is that where we are on this blog?
Here's a bit of Kafka put in context of his place and time:
http://www.upenn.edu/nso/prp/met/breckman_lecture.html
I love the little fable. And I love mice, from the moment I saw my first tiny and field mouse caught in what felt like a huge trap in the first winter I remember as a child. My brother agreed. We promised ourselves the next time we would try and save her.
Millions of Christians were targeted for their religion by the State and murdered in the Soviet Union well prior to the Holocaust… Posted by: Ed | March 24, 2009 at 11:50 AM
oh, yeah? you got any evidence for that, Ed? Don't tell me 'Solzhenitsyn', unless you can find me a translation of his "Two Hundred Years Together" and show me the quote. Hints; (1) There isn't a translation, and (2) It doesn't say that, anyway.
rykart,
false flag or not, go away. you add nothing.
kafka
Phil-
In his diaries and letters, Kafka worried over assimilation, Jewishness, emancipation, and Zionism constantly. He died even as he and his last mistress were thinking of moving to Palestine.
From this I understand that you identify Zionism as Herzl's plan to establish a polity in Israel, in order to escape anti-semitism and create a society centered on Jewish culture?
Which is analogous to the settlement of the N.A. Colonies by those who wished to escape religious persecution and control their own society.
Unfortunately, both groups immigrated to land already inhabited. Since we live in an age when advanced technology has increased the speed and ease of both communication and transportation, the consequences of conflict between those already resident and those emigrating are a global issue rather than a local one.
In addition, previous experience, including the holocaust, has led to international agreement that land cannot lawfully taken by conquest. Yet war is still considered a lawful activity and often labeled just.
Well in fact Rowan not just "millions" of Christians were targeted for their religion by the Bolshevik state but they *all* were. And of the *tens* of millions murdered by that state the vast majority *were* Christians. So what do you insist upon if you refuse to connect those dots, a mea culpa from the likes of Lenin and Stalin?
Rowan is a holocaust denier, only his brand of holocaust denial is politically correct, according to the tenets of left-liberalism/Neoliberalism, which is the political ideology that today predominates in the West, and has for many decades.
The Black Book of Communism
link to en.wikipedia.org
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@ Rowan
"oh, yeah? you got any evidence for that, Ed? Don't tell me 'Solzhenitsyn', unless you can find me a translation of his "Two Hundred Years Together" and show me the quote. Hints; (1) There isn't a translation, and (2) It doesn't say that, anyway."
Considering Solzhenitsyn's credentials, don't you wonder why there is no English translation? BTW,
it does say that in the book that contains some of his 200 Yrs Together.
We’ve all been well-trained to fixate upon the Nazi Holocaust, which “took place right in the heart of Western civilization!” no less, while flushing the numerically larger, Big Brother/Jewish-perpetrated Holocaust of Christians which preceded to the East, and was the context of the Nazi Holocaust, down the memory hole.
And today, some liberals for the life of them can’t figure out how Westerners can avert their eyes with feigned ignorance as another Big Brother/Jewish collaboration prepares to perpetrate yet another holocaust, this one against Muslims.
It was successfully "pulled off" in the Soviet Union without a big stink made about it (although the ultimate price paid by Jews and everyone else in Europe was heavy); I suppose it can be done again, but probably with similar repercussions for all involved.
Every time somebody talks about the German Nazis who indeed committed crimes and murder, not only against their own people and others, including non-Nazi Germans, we must also talk about the tens of thousands of Bolshevic Jews in Soviet Russia who in cooperation with their non-Jewish Bolshevic brothers in arms killed hundreds of thousands of non-Bolshevic Jews, including orthodox Jews like yourself in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe and up to SIXTY MILLION GENTILES.
Although, despite his credentials, no English word press allows us to read Alexander Solshenitzin’s book on the relationship between Jews and Russians in Soviet Russia (not available in English but is available in Russian, German and French), we English speech people know enough that the English title of his book would be Them and Us.
Out of eleven GuLag death camps in Soviet Russia, ten were designed, built by slave labour and run by Bolshevic Jews. Read Stalin against the Jews by Arkady Vaksberg, who clarifies that the Soviet GuLag death camps came long before the concentration camps in Germany. According to reliable historians and confirmed by ex-Polish president Lech Walensa. He said: Bolshevism at least killed 200 million innocent men, women and children world-wide. Most were Christian, and this was intentional.
The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005, which was edited by Edward E. Ericson Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney, with the active cooperation of Solzhenitsyn and his family is all English readers can get at the moment due to Jewish censorship in every way possible.
It’s a greatest hits collection, but the big news is that over a quarter of its 635 pages is never-before-translated writings, most notably the 20-page excerpt from Two Hundred Years Together, 1795-1995, Solzhenitsyn’s two-volume history of the world-changing interactions of Russians and Jews. The first volume, released in Russia in 2001, was published in a French translation in France in February 2002, and the second volume a year later. Yet these two books by the world’s most famous living author just can’t seem to get published in an English translation here in the land of the free and the home of the brave…
You can download a portion of the book in English for a fee here:
There are many people who write history. There are very few who make history through their writings. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died this week at the age of 89, was one of them. In many ways, Solzhenitsyn laid the intellectual foundations for the fall of Soviet communism. That is well known. But Solzhenitsyn also laid the intellectual foundation for the Russia that is now emerging. That is less well known, and in some ways more important.
Solzhenitsyn's role in the Soviet Union was simple. His writings, and in particular his book "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," laid bare the nature of the Soviet regime. The book described a day in the life of a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp, where the guilty and innocent alike were sent to have their lives squeezed out of them in endless and hopeless labor. It was a topic Solzhenitsyn knew well, having been a prisoner in such a camp following service in World War II.
The book was published in the Soviet Union during the reign of Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev had turned on his patron, Joseph Stalin, after taking control of the Communist Party apparatus following Stalin's death. In a famous secret speech delivered to the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev denounced Stalin for his murderous ways. Allowing Solzhenitsyn's book to be published suited Khrushchev. Khrushchev wanted to detail Stalin's crimes graphically, and Solzhenitsyn's portrayal of life in a labor camp served his purposes.
It also served a dramatic purpose in the West when it was translated and distributed there. Ever since its founding, the Soviet Union had been mythologized. This was particularly true among Western intellectuals, who had been taken by not only the romance of socialism, but also by the image of intellectuals staging a revolution. Vladimir Lenin, after all, had been the author of works such as "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism." The vision of intellectuals as revolutionaries gripped many European and American intellectuals.
These intellectuals had missed not only that the Soviet Union was a social catastrophe, but that, far from being ruled by intellectuals, it was being ruled by thugs. For an extraordinarily long time, in spite of ample testimony by emigres from the Soviet regime, Western intellectuals simply denied this reality. When Western intellectuals wrote that they had "seen the future and it worked," they were writing at a time when the Soviet terror was already well under way. They simply couldn't see it.
One of the most important things about "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was not only that it was so powerful, but that it had been released under the aegis of the Soviet state, meaning it could not simply be ignored. Solzhenitsyn was critical in breaking the intellectual and moral logjam among intellectuals in the West. You had to be extraordinarily dense or dishonest to continue denying the obvious, which was that the state that Lenin and Stalin had created was a moral monstrosity.
The freedom of the West, according to Solzhenitsyn, produced a horrifying culture of intellectual self-indulgence, licentiousness and spiritual poverty. In a contemporary context, the hedge fund coupled with The Daily Show constituted the bankruptcy of the West.
Solzhenitsyn had no real home in the United States, and with the fall of the Soviets, he return to Russia, where he witnessed what was undoubtedly the ultimate nightmare for him: mostly jewish thugs not only running the country, but running it as if they were Americans. Now, Russians were pursuing wealth as an end in itself and pleasure as a natural right. He was not happy.
Some quotes from Solzhenitsyn's book have appeared which seem to be consistent in this regard with Yuri Slezkine's "The Jewish Century."
I read Two Hundred Years Together in Russian when it came out. I just want to add that it's hard to give the flavor of the book by giving some selective quotes. There aren't any particularly striking incriminating quotes, as far as I remember, that you can cite in isolation. It's more about the way the argument develops and the inevitable implications of what has been said. One thing he does, I remember, is deny the fact that Jews could not own land (and this is why they were forced to occupy the hated service, trade, and banking niche). He claims that on one or several occasions the Tsarist government offered the Jews some land, but they didn't condescend to take it. There is a passage there that made me really uneasy about Jewesses that were too lazy and spoiled and thought themselves "too fine" to work the land.
The point of the Jews being responsible for the Russian Revolution was made by him already in The Red Wheel, if I'm not mistaken. It was then repeated in Two Hundred Years Together. His point or unavoidable conclusion (I don't remember whether it was stated explicitly, but the implication was inescapable for anyone who doesn't have a problem with reading comprehension) was that Jews bear moral responsibility for the Revolution and owe Russians an apology. I have a big problem with this argument: it insidiously suggests that Jews constitute some kind of a political entity that can act in an organized way and can therefore be assigned collective responsibility. It is basically a version of the Jewish conspiracy argument. Solzhenitsyn's overarching purpose with this book seemed to be to explain and/or justify Russian anti-Semitism by Jewish behavior. He gave many examples of Russian anti-Semitism both on the grass root and government level (and this is why his apologists vehemently deny that this book is anti-Semitic and claim that it is fair-minded and objective research of Russian-Jewish relations), but he always managed to twist his historical narrative in such a way as to show that Jews somehow provoked these violent excesses. And this is why the book left a bad taste in my mouth.
Nonetheless, this does not cross out great admiration I feel for his political courage and creative achievement. I am in sympathy more or less with his traditional views (minus the anti-Semitism). He was a big hero for my parents in the 1970s. (I also heard, strangely, that his wife is Jewish).
Here's the core of your criticism of Solzhenitsyn:
I have a big problem with this argument: it insidiously suggests that Jews constitute some kind of a political entity that can act in an organized way and can therefore be assigned collective responsibility.
But is it not the case that the Jews are an entity? Do not the Jews regard themselves as an entity, a people, a religion, of which they are very proud? Yes, I understand Paul Johnson's argument that the Jewish Communists had nothing to do with the Jewish religion and denied their own Jewish ethnicity. But at the same time, they came out of the Jewish people and shared the understandable obsession of many 19th century European Jews with solving the Jewish problem, which the Jewish Communists (or, as Johnson calls them, the non-Jewish Jewish Communists) thought they could do by creating, via Communism, a Single Mankind in which all nations and ethnicities, including the Jewish ethnicity, would disappear, and Jews would no longer be seen as different, and the persecution of them would cease.
So my point is, is it completely off-base to attribute the Russian Revolution, in some degree, to the Jews?
One could ask–would the Russian Revolution have occurred without the Jews? Would banking have originated without the Jews? My answer is yes and yes. These events were too big and historically warranted to ascribe them solely to the Jews. But Jews were prominent in the Russian Revolution, yes. Just as they were/are prominent in many other areas of human endeavor, both for good and for bad. For whatever reason, they are an active group of people and are often highly visible when something new takes place. But just as there were many Jews who participated in the Revolution, there were a lot more Jews who were completely apolitical of against it. There were no Rabbis, no Jewish community leaders holding forth on the necessity of the Communist overthrow. There is nothing about it in the Jewish Bible. There was no social pressure to join the Revolution. Those who did it, did so as individuals. Jews, as an oppressed minority, stood to gain from the Revolution. But so did other minorities. And they too joined the Revolution in great numbers. To lay the blame for the Revolution on the Jews as a group does not make sense.
It makes more sense, for example, to blame Jews for Zionism (not that I personally would do that, being pro-Zionist myself). Zionist eschatology is very prominent in the Bible and central to the Jewish faith, culture, and oral history. Rabbis in synagogues do read passages about the restoration of Israel. Some actively called for it and call today for the restoration of the Temple. Israel was created by Jews as Jews and specifically as a land for Jews. Jewish political leaders put pressure and made demands on other countries as Jews and in the name of all Jews. So it could be argued that an individual Jew may bear some responsibility for the creation of Israel simply by virtue of self-identifying as a Jew.
The fear and loathing of Soviet Big Brother/Jewish Communism is the context of what gave rise to Nazism. The Christian West was right to strangle Nazism when it became homicidal, and it was right to strangle homicidal Communism as well.
But the West made a huge mistake when it didn’t properly educate its people about the murderous nature and character of Communism and its carriers, and it made a huge mistake when it allowed leftists and left-liberals to pooh-pooh the epic crimes committed by the Communists, and it made a huge mistake when it allowed those same left-liberals and Communist carriers to erode and destroy the West’s Christian character, and it made a huge mistake when it sat on its hands even after it became apparent that Jewish ideologues and their partners were taking over control of the American government in order to resurrect the murderous Leviathan beast and use it to kill a whole new set of “enemies.”
Should the West have perpetually fixated in the crimes of Soviet Big Brother and those behind them as the Nazis did? No. But should Soviet Big Brother's crimes and those behind them have remained in the Western canon as a morality tale and a warning about Big Government, anti-Christian and pseudo-Christian wolves in sheep's clothing? Absolutely.
Felicie C. might reply:
This is how I see it. Yes, Jews are an entity, of sorts. They are a religious and cultural entity. They are an entity in terms of self-identity, which also includes common history and, for some, a destiny. But they are not a political entity. Nor are they a social or economic entity–a class, a guild, an organization. They do not have a special political or social status or position that enables them to effect change in a directed and organized way. They do not belong to one synagogue or one centralized Jewish community that tells them what to do or has the power of censuring them. In fact, a lot of Jews are not religious and do not participate in any kind of Jewish life. So when they act, they act not as a group but as a disparate collection of individuals, each pursuing his own agenda and guided by his own set of reasons. If overall patterns emerge, they are statistical, created largely by common historical conditions. The problem is this not true in the current USA. As Phil has often pointed out, the Jews are a major component of the Elite power group in the USA. We are not in Russia circa early 20th Century, we are in USA, circa 2009.
One could ask–would the Russian Revolution have occurred without the Jews? Would banking have originated without the Jews? My answer is yes and yes. These events were too big and historically warranted to ascribe them solely to the Jews. But Jews were prominent in the Russian Revolution, yes. Just as they were/are prominent in many other areas of human endeavor, both for good and for bad. For whatever reason, they are an active group of people and are often highly visible when something new takes place. But just as there were many Jews who participated in the Revolution, there were a lot more Jews who were completely apolitical of against it. There were no Rabbis, no Jewish community leaders holding forth on the necessity of the Communist overthrow. There is nothing about it in the Jewish Bible. There was no social pressure to join the Revolution. Those who did it, did so as individuals. Jews, as an oppressed minority, stood to gain from the Revolution. But so did other minorities. And they too joined the Revolution in great numbers. To lay the blame for the Revolution on the Jews as a group makes partial sense, given the proportion of Jews involved as compared to the proportion of goys involved.
It makes even more sense, for example, to blame Jews for Zionism. Zionist eschatology is very prominent in the Bible and central to the Jewish faith, culture, and oral history. Rabbis in synagogues do read passages about the restoration of Israel. Some actively called for it and call today for the restoration of the Temple. Israel was created by Jews as Jews and specifically as a land for Jews. Jewish political leaders put pressure and made demands on other countries as Jews and in the name of all Jews. So it could be argued that an individual Jew may bear some responsibility for the creation of Israel simply by virtue of self-identifying as a Jew. Americans do have a case against Zionists–why should American spend their children's lives and their treasure for this Zionist cause?
Let me ask you this. What about when Jews say, "As Jews, we believe in a generous immigration policy," or, "As Jews, we believe in open borders," or, "My mother came here as an immigrant, therefore we must have open borders" (columnist Paul Greenberg essentially said that during the debate on the 2007 Comprehensive Immigration Bill, see this), or, "Why shouldn't Somalis, Africans, Hmong, Mexicans, and Muslims be able to assimilate into America, since my grandparents did?"
Given that Jewish writers and Jewish organizations constantly speak in this way, can we fairly criticize Jews, as Jews, as passionate supporters of open immigration? Can we fairly criticize Jews, as Jews, as people who want to transform America and all historically white countries into nonwhite countries? And can we fairly say to the Jews, as Jews, that they should stop doing this objectionable thing?
This is going a bit further off-topic but this may be the Paul Greenberg article I was thinking of. He says he supports the Comprehensive Immigration Bill, though he detests it, and the reason he detests it is that it's not open enough and, under its rules, his mother might not have been allowed to immigrate. And what does he believe in?
Far from allowing too much immigration, this bill wouldn't allow enough. Around the world, the most determined, ambitious, hard-working and congenitally hopeful people in the world are dying to get into this country, sometimes literally. We are turning our backs on the most valuable form of wealth ever offered a nation: human capital.
Nor did this bill sufficiently emphasize education for immigrants – education in English, in civics, and generally in what we were once allowed to call Americanism. I'm all for the wonderful mosaic of cultures in this country – social, religious, linguistic, culinary and every other kind in this country of countries. Each contributes something to the way we all see things, think about things. We learn from each other. But here there is room for only one, indivisible, unhyphenated civic culture. A civic and civil culture that gives us a common tongue to argue in, and common ground to stand on. E pluribus unum, it used to be said: From out of many, one. Not from one, many.
So what Greenberg wants is literally open borders for everyone in the world who wants to come her, plus civic education for the immigrants to make sure they assimilate.
LA wrote:
"So my point is, is it completely off-base to attribute the Russian Revolution, in some degree, to the Jews?"
Well it depends on what you mean by that. I know that this can sound Clintonian but I don't think it is. The crucial distinction it seems to me—to the degree it's accurate, which is another matter—is embodied in your acceptance that the jewish communists were in essence trying to create that "Single Mankind in which all nations and ethnicities, including the jewish ethnicity, would disappear."
In other words while they *were* jews, they weren't doing what they were *for* jews specifically. And as to that "degree of accuracy," I know that it has been somewhat disputed—and indeed one of the first things the Bolsheviks did when they took power was pass a law outlawing anti-semitism—but it seems to me that in the overwhelming main that the truth is they were *not* doing what they were doing out of a specific concern for jews. Even though Lenin, for example, did not see himself as jewish (though it seems he had at least one grandparent who was, and a clearly self-identified one at that), he was so domineering and so brutal and … well … "true to his Bolshevik ideals" that there's simply no way that any of the jews around him could have gotten into their positions without being true believers in those Bolshevik ideals. And I don't know of even one who was *ever* linked in their earlier years to any kind of fanatical pro-jewish identity; most if not all in fact, like Trotsky, seem to have rejected judaism as much as possible quite early in their years in favor of the incredible lure of secular revolutionism that existed at the time.
So I guess you could say that "in some degree" (which actually is a very surprisingly large degree) yes one can validly "attribute the Russian Revolution … to the jews." On the other hand I don't think you can attribute their contribution to that to any particular intention on their part to specifically aid the jews or that they were doing it "for the jews."
It can be interesting, and none of the above gets into whether or how the jewish bolsheviks might still have been *influenced* by their jewish roots to become what they were, but in the end whether right or wrong my eyes always start to glaze over a bit due to the idea that "what the f— does it matter to their victims"? They were sociopaths or evil incarnate, take your pick. Same as Hitler who, if he didn't act *out* of Christianity he and his henchmen were probably all "Christian" of a sort. But, again, what difference did that make to their victims?
The lesson to me is any peoples are susceptible to doing anything. Nobody has a monopoly on morality or virtue, and no-one has a monopoly on suffering.
Those of us who do not read Russian cannot of course form any opinion of our own about Solzhenitsyn's book. However, I highly recommend Slezkine's "The Jewish Century." Slezkine himself is of Russian Jewish background and is now a professor of history at UC Berkeley. Among the striking revelations in his largely ignored book is the fact that Lenin himself had Jewish background–a Jewish grandfather who lived in Palestine.
According to Slezkine, Jews never formed a majority of Bolsheviks as a whole, but proportionately yes AD they were dominant in certain key areas, for example, among those who oversaw the gulag and the secret police. So too, there never was a majority of Jews supporting the Revolution, though proportionately Jews were involved and as honchos. Also, many of the leftist Jews were those who were fleeing their religious identity.
My opinion is that Jewish Bolsheviks were about as dedicated to Communist ideals as Jewish Zionists are to the American ideal, which is to say: only to the extent that it is good for the Jews. When they go their separate way, the Zionists will turn upon America viciously, as Jewish ideologues turned upon the Soviet Union.
That will likely be an epochal, Reformation like fracture within Judaism.
Ed wrote:
"My opinion is that Jewish Bolsheviks were about as dedicated to Communist ideals as Jewish Zionists are to the American ideal, which is to say: only to the extent that it is good for the Jews."
Well I think the scholarship just overwhelmingly points in the exact opposite direction, Ed, and that the jewish Bolsheviks were just political as opposed to ethnic or religious fanatics.
There is still the question of why the Russian and Eastern jewish communities so strongly did support the Bolsheviks, and provided so many of the men and women who staffed so many of their ranks. But again you have an uphill climb saying that those communities did so with a specific eye towards helping their jewish selves only because of the universalist program of the Bolsheviks and their hostility to all religious or ethnic divisions and indeed to any divisions whatsoever other than the economic.
And again what does it matter really? To me it can smack a bit of the same kind of vindictive, polemical endeavor you see with, say, that Harvard guy a few years ago who wrote "Hitler's Willing Executioners", or what can seem the campaign to indict the Pope back then for alleged anti-semitism. E.g., just endless campaign after campaign to pound nails in the heads of … the German people, or Protestants, or Roman Catholics, or the Polish people, or the Russian peasants or whomever … as if they form some uniquely evil body of humanity.
And meanwhile the lesson of history in general and the last century in particular seems to me to just scream that there is no such unique sort; damn near every race, creed, color, ethnic, economic class, culture or etc. imaginable has at one time or another acted like mad butchers. And who they fell upon seems largely a matter of happenstance.
By circumstance—happenstance—Hitler and the people who supported him fell on the jews. But any claim of the jews to some unique lack of evil potential or unique status as victims is refuted by noting that by happenstance the jewish Bolsheviks fell on the slavic Christians mostly, whose victims outnumbered Hitler's even.
Therefore every group of people at all times, it seems to me, ought to be watched for butcher-like tendencies, and none—including the Israelis or the jews—are entitled to any assumption of immunity from same. And for those who perceive history as just an abstract putty of some kind that's easy to twist into self-serving lessons, that T-shirt showing a bulls-eye on the belly of a pregnant Palestinian woman ought to be sufficient to bring the abstraction level down.
I'd just like to point out that the Black Book of Communism attributes 20 million victims to Soviet communism. If one is picky, it's not clear that Stalin was worse then Hitler in terms of numbers killed, not that it makes much difference morally speaking. The Black Book attributes close to 100 million to communism altogether, but the majority in China. One can actually compile an equally huge death toll for capitalism and I've seen the Islamophobes attribute hundreds of millions to Islam (which I suspect is an exaggeration and to the extent that it is large, much of it is probably from the Mongol conquests–Timur was Muslim, I think.)
I've also seen tens or hundreds of millions of deaths attributed to western colonialism, the Western slave trade, the tobacco industry, etc… It's gruesome, but not that hard to rack up these immensely large death tolls when talking about some ideology that affected the lives of large numbers of people for a long period of time. And probably all these claims are in the right ballpark (making allowances for the natural human tendency to pick the largest number and then inflate it some more).
My point–communism was awful, but possibly no more awful in terms of death toll than some other ideologies, not that this excuses it. It's a 20th century myth that megadeaths were an invention of the 20th century totalitarian ideologies like communism and Nazism–China had a massive civil war in the 19th century which killed tens of millions (you could, if you wanted, chalk that up to a perverse form of Christianity). On a per capita basis, 19th century China might have been a more murderous and miserable place to live than China under Mao.
My other point–Sin Nombre is basically right. Every group of people and every ideology ought to be watched. It wouldn't surprise me if liberal human rights ideology someday leads to megadeaths–arguably this might have happened to some degree in Iraq. And of course in Vietnam we were supposedly slaughtering people for the sake of democracy.
Thank you for your response, Felicia – I haven't finished reading, but am happy to hear other statements about what is meant by the words people use in our discussions.
Felicia C
Zionist eschatology is very prominent in the Bible and central to the Jewish faith, culture and oral history. Rabbis in synagogues do read passages about teh restoration of Israel. Some actively called for it and call today for the restoration of the Temple. Israel was created by Jews as Jews and specifically as a land for Jews. Jewish political leaders put pressure and made demands on other countries as Jews and in the name of all Jews. So it could be argued that an individual Jew may bear some resonsibility for the creation of ISrael simply by virture of self-identifying as a Jew.
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In hearing you are pro-zionist, I understand you to mean that what you say above is an expression of your beliefs.
What are the implications of these beliefs in terms of sharing the land with others who are not Jewish? What rights do you accord to others? What rights are withheld from those who are not "Jews"?
I do not consider the so-called "Black Book of Communism" to be an objective study at all, since it was written and edited line-by-line to CIA requirements.
If you want to examine the policies of the USSR in relation to either Jews or Christians, you will have to distinguish between the periods before and after the expulsion of Trotsky, because after it, Stalin ended the Yevsktsia's selective defense of Jewish Communist cadres, and also revived the Orthodox church.
I think my understanding of Jewish culture (small town California) was first shaped by stories about unions, and then, when I discovered how many of the stories were about people who were communists, about communisim, and then about the holocaust, which was a progression that left me with the understanding that Jewish people in the unions were brave (people in the union were brave); that many were communist but that their bravery was not diminished by their communism, which even might be considered to be a result of the Holocaust. As this was just after the McCarthy era, I was at first scandalized and frightened to hear they were communists. Those are childhood memories; they came one from the other in a way that might be imagination, but felt real – I seemed to remember looking over my shoulder on reading that Rosa Luxemborg was a communist.
My mother supported unionization, came from a union family; both my parents worked for the government and were dedicated Democrats.
Rowan,
I have read that Stalin soured on Jews as Zionism became a more powerful political force, and he began to doubt their loyalty. They also outlasted their usefulness.
It seems to be difficult to get people excited about committing mass murder on their own people, and I suspect that the long-standing grudges that the Stalinist Jews had against Eastern Europeans peasants made them useful in carrying out the mass murders and Ukrainian mass-starvation of the prewar period.
Not surprisingly, the Eastern Europeans in areas occupied by the Nazis were very eager to take a leading role in the Holocaust. Ukrainians, in particular, were overrepresented as guards at concentration and death camps.
Yes, Jewish Communists in the USSR persecuted Christians and Slavic nationalists very harshly, leading to the death of tens of millions of innocents Soviet citizens over the decades.
A most telling fact is what the Soviet Communists (remember, a large number of them Jewish) did to Christian churches after they came to power…they often turned many of them in to theaters, cinemas, workshops, and in some cases even barns for LIVESTOCK. Other churches were razed, dynamited, or otherwise destroyed; for instance, the famous Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in central Moscow (which was/is the central church of Eastern Orthodox Christianity) was blown up in 1931 on orders from the (in)famous Soviet Jew Lazar Kaganovich. They planned to put the 'Palace of Soviets' in its place but that never materialized because of WWII, so instead they made the former site of that cathedral, which was/is so central to Russian Christianity, in to the world's largest swimming pool.
what does "persecuted … leading to" mean, when it's at home?
I think that what a lot of this boils down to is that priests, rabbis, and mullahs object to having children from the families of what they regard as "their flocks" being taught by state schools that their various scriptures are of human rather than divine authorship. Well, the things are of human authorship. Their inspiration may be divine or angelic, but their authorship is human. However, to take the example of what are nowadays called "ultra-Orthodox" rabbis, you can find books in which they accuse secular educationalists of seeking to commit "soul murder" on their supposed "flocks" by doing this. And, in fact, these "ultra-Orthodox" rabbis have until today been "anti-zionist" largely because "zionist" state schools did teach this. But maybe this will now change, and a more uncompromising form of 'religious zionism' – 'hardal' rather than 'mafdal', in the jargon – will rule the roost.
@ David F: "It seems to be difficult to get people excited about committing mass murder on their own people, and I suspect that the long-standing grudges that the Stalinist Jews had against Eastern Europeans peasants made them useful in carrying out the mass murders and Ukrainian mass-starvation of the prewar period."
And that's why Big Brother in America employs and enables American Jewish ideologues to agitate for US foreign wars. Because many of them have no affection for the American masses, they will happily do and say whatever it takes to whip them into a war frenzy, knowing its not their blood on the line. And in the Middle East, their blood on the line is Israel, which gives them all the more incentive to, for example, lie the country into the Iraq war.
Cheney and Rumsfeld staffed the Office of Special Plans with Zionist Jews Wolfowitz and Feith (who both had been investigated for operative work on behalf of Israel) for a reason. And that’s where much of the false Iraq war intelligence originated. Cheney and Rumsfeld didn’t care, because they don’t have souls, and Wolfowitz and Feith didn’t care, because the believed the goy cattle they were lying into war didn’t have souls, either.
When soulless gentiles come together with Jewish supremacists (Soviet Union, Neoconned/Neolibbed America), the results are murderous.
Yep. It's not for nothing that the jews copied the Hitler Jugend uniforms and agenda institutions. This was all noted back in the late 1940's, but to no good avail.