For the first time since the end of World War II, classic anti-Semitic tropes – “the Jews” control the world and are to blame for everything that goes wrong, including the financial crisis; “The Jews killed Christian children in order to use the blood to bake matza; the Holocaust never happened – are becoming acceptable and legitimate subjects for academic and political discussion.
To understand why these absurd and reprehensible views, once reserved for the racist fringes of academia and politics, are moving closer to the mainstream, consider the attitudes of two men, one an academic, the other a politician, toward those who express or endorse such bigotry. The academic is Prof. Brian Leiter. The politician is Ron Paul.
You’ve probably never heard of Leiter. He’s a relatively obscure professor of jurisprudence, who is trying to elevate his profile by publishing a gossipy blog about law school professors. He is a colleague of John Mearsheimer, a prominent and world famous professor at the University of Chicago.
Several months ago Mearsheimer enthusiastically endorsed a book, really a pamphlet, that included all the classic anti-Semitic tropes.
It was titled The Wandering Who and written by Gilad Atzmon, a British version of Louisiana’s David Duke, who plays the saxophone and has no academic connections. Atzmon writes that we must take “very seriously” the claim that “the Jewish people are trying to control the world.”
He calls the recent credit crunch “the Zio punch.” He says “the Holocaust narrative” doesn’t make “historical sense” and expresses doubt that Auschwitz was a death camp. He invites students to accept the “accusations of Jews making matza out of young goyim’s blood.”
Books and pamphlets of this sort are written every day by obscure anti-Semites and published by disreputable presses that specialize in this kind of garbage.
No one ever takes notice, except for neo-Nazis around the world who welcome any additions to the literature of hate. What is remarkable about the publication of this hateful piece of anti-Semitic trash, is that it was enthusiastically endorsed by two prominent American professors, John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk, who urged readers, including students, to read, “reflect upon” and “discuss widely” the themes of Atzmon’s book.
Obama first took office with very high hopes for healing the Muslim/America divide.
He was using Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, Marc Lynch, Chas Freeman and a few others to help him form his policy.
Their approach to the Middle East was grounded in two dogmas of anti-Israel foreign policy sophistication: (a) linkage, according to which Middle East pathologies are a result of the unresolved Arab/Israeli conflict rather than the Arab/Israeli conflict being the result of those ME pathologies, and (b) “if only Israel would…XXX,” the Arab/Israel conflict could be resolved were Israel to offer more concessions.
Walt, Mearsheimer and all had promised that their approach to the Middle East that “put daylight” between the US and Israel would lead to Israeli gestures/concessions, at which point Arab regimes would reciprocate.
But even after bowing to the Saudi King, Obama’s ”policy” led that King to become enraged.
King Abdullah browbeat Obama and Obama ended up dropping his policy makers in favor of Dennis Ross.
See 9 paragraphs into this story.
IF you check MEMRITV on a regular basis, you’ll see that Holocaust denial is daily fare.
So is using forgeries like the Protocols of the elders of Zion on the air as sources.
The refrain that Jews need human blood to make Matzos goes over the air often.
There was even an Iranian TV series, Zahra’s Blue Eyes, 1st broadcast in 2004 and later dubbed for a wider Arabic audience that’s story line was how Jews used sick children brought in from the Arab world to harvest body parts out of.
Some of America’s finest universities and colleges have turned to oil money for their continued operation.
There are strings attached to each petro dollar.
Prof. Brian Leiter and John Mearsheimer and many others teaching our children are the price we pay.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00E16F935550C708DDDAB0994DD404482
“Harvard University announced yesterday that it had received a $20 million donation from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, a Saudi businessman and member of the Saudi royal family, to to finance Islamic studies.
….
Harvard said it would create a universitywide program on Islamic studies, recruit new faculty members in the field, provide more support for graduate students….”
Cute. Line up one guy who is a dyed-in-the-wool antisemite, publisher of anti-Jewish pamphlets, and apparently holocaust revisionist. And another whose ‘antisemitism’ consists of refusing to return a campaign contribution from a white separatist. And then we’ll write as if these two things are of similar import.
I also take issue with part of their history… they write ‘When Nazi anti-Semitism began to achieve mainstream legitimacy in Germany and Austria in the 1930s, it was not because Hitler, Goebbels and Goering were espousing it.’, etc.
This is an attempt to make an analogy with the world of the present, but it’s bogus, because anti-semitism was *already* mainstream in Germany and Austria (and to a lesser extent France, America and the UK) in the early part of the twentieth century. The situation is much improved today, so to pretend that dangerous levels of antisemitism are somehow in the offing if people don’t act is ridiculous and alarmist.
CURT
HI, yes the GERMANS who carry the shame of what their ancestors did to the JEWS,
and the best way for those like SMEIRSHAMER AND THE OTHER WITH A FUNNY FORHEIGN NAME,
GILAD ATZMON
are proud to indulge with OBAMA’S REQUEST to help on the smear,
what a group.
no matter how much they try to teach the young, the lie that it never happened, they wont succeed, because their shame will live through time forever in history, someone will know
and will tell the truth
Barack Obama’s Economic Team (Nope….don’t see any j*** here …Nosiree)
Federal Reserve System
Chairman, Benjamin Bernanke
Vice Chairman, Donald Kohn
National Economic Council
Chairman, Lawrence Summers
Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Chairman, Paul Volcker
Chief Economist and Economic Adviser
Vice President, Jared Bernstein
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
Chairman, Gary Gensler
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Chairman, Mary Schapiro
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Chairman, Sheila Bair
Small Business Administration (SBA)
Administrator, Karen Mills
Other Executive Positions include:
IRS Commissioner
Douglas Shulman
Federal Communications Commission
Chairman, Julius Genachowski
Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
Chairman, Eric Lander
TARP Executive Compensation
Special Master Ken Feinberg
Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Richard Holbrooke
President’s Automotive Task Force
Senior Advisor, Ron Bloom
Dept. of Homeland Security
Special Representative for Border Affairs, Alan Bersin
Special Envoy for Climate Change
Todd Stern
Advisor to the President and the Vice President on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Issues
Lynn Rosenthal
US Department of State
Special Envoy Guantanamo, Daniel Fried
Special Advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (which includes Iran)
Dennis Ross
Office of Management and Budget
United States Chief Performance Officer and Deputy Director for Management, Jeffrey D. Zients
Office of Management and Budget
Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein
Office of Science and Technology Policy
Director, John P. Holdren
White House Medical Czar
Ezekiel Emanuel
Ambassador-at-large
Richard Haass
Chief of Staff to Vice President Biden
Ron Klain
Deputy Secretaries of State
Jacob Lew
James Steinberg
Deputy White House Chief of Staff
Mona Sutphen
Federal Trade Commission
Chairman, Jon Leibowitz
Food and Drug Administration
Commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg
Dave Brickner
hi,
not good enough fire them all,
see the ceiling come down