The problem with what Carl writes is that, and I understand why, believe me I
do, he's mixing apples and oranges. First of all, there's a thread of
anti-semitism that is part of American culture. I think of it as getting mixed
up with Christianity, but that may or may not be true. Anti-semitism involves
those stereotypes that he mentioned and it also means that most likely, very
wealthy Christian folks like the Koch Brothers or that guy on Long Island who
funded trump, (of course I can't think of his name, him and his daughter), but
those people don't socialize with Jews in their private clubs. However, Jewish
Americans, by and large, have been assimilated into the US and they have lots
and lots of power, both political and economic. What it's important to keep
separate is people's feelings about Israel and their feelings about Jews. There
are a lot of anti-semitic people who support Israel, but that doesn't mean that
they support Jews. They support Israel because of its usefulness to American
empire, and they support it because of what it means symbolically to
Evangelical Christians. There's been recent research that shows that along with
charities and Israel, the Jewish Federation has been financially supporting
right wing anti-semitic groups because these groups are supporting Israel.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2018 6:31 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Synagogue Shooting and the Return of
Mainstream Anti-Semitism
When I was a very young boy, during the Second World War, I believed that when
we won the war people would never again discriminate against Jews. By the
time I was 9 and 10, and the war was finally coming to an end, and our troops
were discovering the horrors of the Death Chambers, my school chums were
dancing and singing on the play field at John Hay Grade School on Queen Anne
Hill in Seattle, Washington State, United States of America, "If I knew you
were coming I'd have baked a Kike." And a very common place phrase among the
older boys was, "He Jewed me.", when complaining about being cheated.
Even as we were being sold the idea that the Jews should have their Holy Land
returned to them, we were portraying Jews as tight fisted pawn shop owners,
jewelers and small minded merchants. While we sort of left them alone during
our Red Baiting days, Jews never became as accepted as other Europeans. While
a very few did rise to wealth and power, most of the public's view of Jews was
as entertainers.
Although some took "American" names, like Jack Benny, many kept their family
names and became much loved by the nation. And so there came to be the
appearance of assimilation, when it was only a surface veneer.
Today we continue to deceive our people with this notion that we are defending
the misplaced Jews in their quest to simply return to their Promised Land. But
the cold corporate hearts of American and European businessmen could care less
about the Jews. Israel is nothing more than an American Empire outpost.
Currently, the Israelis do not want to believe this. But when the American
Empire no longer needs Israel, they will learn, too late of course, the awful
truth.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/28/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Synagogue Shooting and the Return of Mainstream Anti-Semitism By
Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker
28 October 18
The violence that took place this Shabbat morning at the Tree of Life
congregation in Pittsburgh is the fear of every synagogue, Hillel, day
school, and Jewish community center in this country. It is the ancient
Jewish expectation of persecution-when, where, has it not been with
us?-married to American reality: a country saturated with guns and
habituated to quotidian massacre, plagued by age-old racism and
bigotry, which have lately been expertly inflamed by the holder of the
highest office in the land.
For the past few years, American Jews have glanced warily at Western
Europe, where anti-Semitism, never dormant, is once again on the rise.
The British Labour Party has been riven by accusations of
anti-Semitism among its leadership. French Jews have emigrated to
Israel in unprecedented numbers.
In Sweden, synagogues and Jewish centers have been firebombed. After
9/11, American synagogues and community centers became barricaded
spaces, outfitted with concrete sidewalk barriers and metal detectors,
so that going to services felt like going to the airport. The concern
then was an external threat.
There has long been a casual assumption that homegrown anti-Semitism
could not happen here, that "The Plot Against America" would remain
the fantastical counter-factual that Philip Roth intended it to be.
And yet, the warning signs have become increasingly clear. Since the
2016 Presidential campaign, anti-Semitic vitriol has exploded on the Internet.
Neo-Nazis tweet swastikas and Hitler-era propaganda of leering,
hook-nosed rabbis. Holocaust deniers discuss "The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion" in plain view. Jewish journalists and other public
figures have had their profile pictures Photoshopped onto images of
lampshades and bars of soap.
The name "George Soros" is no longer invoked as a dog whistle, but as
an ambulance siren. "The Jewish question" is debated on alt-right
blogs and news sites. In the run-up to the election, anti-Semites
began to put Jewish names in sets of triple parentheses-a yellow star
for the digital age, by which to un-assimilate the assimilated. Jews
rushed to claim and defang the symbol, turning it into a voluntary
declaration of pride, but the scar of its origins remains. For a time
after Donald Trump's election, I collected screenshots of racist and
anti-Semitic hate speech I came across. Then I stopped. The proof was
everywhere, plain as day.
It seems clear that anti-Semitism has burrowed into the American
mainstream in a way not seen since the late nineteen-thirties and
early nineteen-forties, when it also fused easily with conservative
isolationist fervor and racism. In "These Truths," her masterful new
history of this country, my colleague Jill Lepore writes about the
anti-Semites of that period, who saw "mass democracy and mass culture
as harbingers of the decline of Western civilization." In 1939, the
German-American Bund held a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden,
attended by twenty thousand people; you can watch footage of it here,
and, as vile as it is, I suggest that you do. Amid the sieg-heils, you
will see Fritz Kuhn, the Bund's leader, railing against the
"Jewish-controlled press" as he lays out his vision for a "socially
just, white, Gentile-ruled United States." "We, with our American
ideals, demand that the American government shall be returned to the
American people who founded it," he says, to cheers.
Not long ago, I came across a description-published in the March,
1939, bulletin of the men's club at New York's Ansche Chesed
synagogue-of a counter-rally held a couple of weeks later, at Carnegie
Hall. "Stressing that racial intolerance was un-American, speaker
after speaker denounced the activities of the German-American Bund,"
the bulletin reports. "The need for protecting our democratic
processes was on the lips of everyone and strong sentiment of
solidarity to protect democracy and racial and religious freedom that
goes with it was prevalent throughout." That sense of solidarity,
which, for me, as for many, is at the moral center of the
American-Jewish experience, was explicitly attacked in Pittsburgh on
Saturday. It has been reported that, a few weeks ago, the alleged
gunman furiously railed on social media against HIAS, the Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society, which was founded, at the turn of the last
century, to help the waves of Jewish immigrants who left imperial
Russia for America. The organization later worked to resettle Jews
fleeing Nazi Germany, and currently serves immigrants and refugees of
all backgrounds. It is a bitter irony that that sense of common cause
has now been further strengthened, as the Tree of Life joins Mother
Emanuel A.M.E. Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, Dar Al-Farooq
Islamic Center, in Bloomington, Minnesota, and so many other houses of
worship as points on a dark map of ongoing American tragedy.
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