Stone has issued an apology. Translation: he’s sorry for revealing to an interviewer that he’s essentially a far rightist, an apologist for dictators, a man without a shred of moral comprehension, an ignoramus who would presume to lecture us all.
It would be interesting to get the reaction of Tariq Ali, one of Stone’s screenwriters and a supposed man of the left.
As much as I applaud the NAACP for calling out rampant racism within the Tea Party movement, the problem is this. The NAACP’s rhetorical strategy is a delicate one; they don’t want to alienate masses of blue-collar whites who might be drawn to the Tea Party’s brand of (I would argue phony) libertarianism. So the NAACP instead insists that the Tea Party must make clear there is “no place for racists” in its movement. But the fact is there is a place for racists in the movement. And there’s no delicate way to say that.
The problem is similar when it comes to antisemitism, the fringe left and the Palestine solidarity movement. Consider, for instance, the attempt of Socialist Worker to slink away from its association with Nazi sympathizer Gilad Atzmon. To his credit, Paul Heideman of Newark wrote in to denounce Atzmon and say that antisemitism “has absolutely no place in our movements.” But yes it does. Antisemitism does have a place in far-left movements at present, and that is because the far left has created a rhetorical culture attractive to antisemites. Just as the Tea Party has created a rhetorical culture attractive to white racists.
Yes, it is. So it’s good to see the fringe lefties at Socialist Worker retract and apologize for publishing an interview with a Nazi sympathizer. The fact that they felt no need to vet Gilad Atzmon beforehand speaks volumes, however. “Critics of Israel,” no matter how virulent, have come to be given the benefit of the doubt on the radical left.
If Socialist Worker is “the best publication on the U.S. left,” as Safia Albaiti of Boston declares, then this is a sad commentary on the U.S. left. But I already knew that. Still I’m grateful to Albaiti for speaking up and making short work of the lie — perpetuated by NJ-based jazz musician Rich Siegel and others — that Atzmon has been taken “out of context.” Here is Atzmon:
In the light of Israeli brutality, the conviction of gross swindler Madoff and the latest images of Rabbis being taken away by FBI agents, it is about time we stop discussing the rise of anti-Semitism and start to elaborate on the rise of Jewish Crime.
And here is Atzmon:
Jewish texts tend to glaze over the fact that Hitler’s March 28 1933, ordering [sic] a boycott against Jewish stores and goods, was an escalation in direct response to the declaration of war on Germany by the worldwide Jewish leadership.
Atzmon has not disavowed these remarks, nor has he explained the “context” that supposedly requires us to read these words for anything other than what they are.
Just in case you thought the term “kike” went out of use in the ’50s: here is Ben C. Slocum, who signs off here from South Orange, New Jersey, and who wrote the following in my comments field:
“Why all this hysteria over something as negligible as anti-Semitism. Jews are the richest and most privileged people in the world. Israel has over 200 nukes and has the 4th deadliest military in the world. Sn [sic] what’s this nonsense about anti-Semitism? Do the common folk have to bend down and lick the crack in a Jew’s ass so as not to be called an ‘anti-Semite’ today? Are they that neurotic and insecure? They own the world – isn’t that enough for these kikey little farts?”
Rich Siegel, who is partnering with Gilad Atzmon as described in my previous post, has written me a terse reply. He says that the Atzmon quotes I cite “do not constitute racism or holocaust revisionism. I suggest you read them again.”
Michael Ezra, in the Z Word comments space, has also referred me to this piece of writing, in which Rich Siegel writes sympathetically of Holocaust revisionism: “It seems to me that if holocaust revisionists are wrong, then open dissemination of their views encourages those with opposing views to prove them wrong. And if they are right, all the more reason we should hear about it.” Note that this goes well beyond an argument for free speech. For Siegel, it is an open question whether David Irving and other like-minded hucksters are right or wrong. (Hint: It’s not an open question, and Irving’s Jew-hatred and pro-Nazism are copiously documented.)
Alas, it is not the case, as I’d hoped, that Siegel is deceived about Gilad Atzmon. He is in fact a fellow traveler through and through.
But because Siegel’s denials strike me as part of a larger political strategy to define antisemitism out of existence, allow me, as Siegel has suggested, to read Atzmon’s comments again. I do so at the risk of insulting the intelligence of my readers. But it seems that some in liberal and progressive circles have lost the ability to detect antisemitism even when it’s staring them dead in the face.
First Atzmon quote:
Carpet bombing and total erasure of populated areas that is so trendy amongst Israeli military and politicians (as well as Anglo-Americans) has never been a Nazi tactic or strategy.
Siegel sees no revisionism in this statement. To him, the notion that the Nazis never engaged in carpet bombing or, in a word, genocide, falls within the bounds of legitimate historical comment.
Second Atzmon quote:
One of the things that happened to us was that stupidly we interpreted the Nazi defeat as a vindication of the Jewish ideology and the Jewish people.
Siegel sees no racism in the notion that there’s such a thing as “the Jewish ideology,” or in the idea that a persecuted minority group requires “vindication” — as if the Jews, in the lead-up to the Holocaust, were collectively guilty of something.
But if you share Atzmon’s worldview, then yes, you do believe these things, as a third quote from Atzmon makes clear. I didn’t cite this in yesterday’s post, and I didn’t send it to Siegel for comment, because I’ve only just learned of it. But it puts Atzmon’s overt Hitler apologetics in plain view as perhaps never before:
Jewish texts tend to glaze over the fact that Hitler’s March 28 1933, ordering [sic] a boycott against Jewish stores and goods, was an escalation in direct response to the declaration of war on Germany by the worldwide Jewish leadership.
There it is: The Jews made Hitler do it. I can think of few political sentiments more chilling and, I would hope, more foreign to the spirit of jazz.
The bloggers of Mondoweiss have worked very hard to convince the public that antisemitism does not exist among the Palestine solidarity movement — indeed, that all such charges of antisemitism are mere subterfuge concocted by “Zionists” to tar critics of Israel, who are by definition pure of heart.
So it’s important to note that Mondoweiss is now voicing support for the Israeli-born, UK-based jazz musician and virulent antisemite Gilad Atzmon.
Atzmon, who has declared, “One of the things that happened to us was that stupidly we interpreted the Nazi defeat as a vindication of the Jewish ideology and the Jewish people,” is scheduled to play two concerts in upstate New York with Rich Siegel, a pianist, vocalist and bandleader from New Jersey. Siegel is author of the Mondoweiss posts, here and here, alleging that the Rochester concert was nearly canceled thanks to what he calls “Zio-pressure.”
The Mondoweiss posts paint Atzmon in benign colors as an “anti-Zionist.” They cite Atzmon’s defense that he is “often quoted with ‘cherry-picked’ quotes taken out of context,” which is amusing, since the entire context of Atzmon’s political writing is coterminous with Israel and the Jews — and in any case, I’m not sure what “context” would render the above-mentioned verbatim quote morally acceptable. Or for that matter, this quote:
American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ [sic] are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy.
A nearly identical argument about the Protocols appears in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Carpet bombing and total erasure of populated areas that is so trendy amongst Israeli military and politicians (as well as Anglo-Americans) has never been a Nazi tactic or strategy.
It’s ironic that Rich Siegel, speaking about the Rochester venue’s decision to ignore complaints from a local rabbi, writes: “It seems that they came to a realization … that the rabbi was part of an agenda that they don’t want to support.” But apparently Siegel is comfortable supporting Atzmon’s agenda.
I am not familiar with Siegel’s work, but his website lists appearances with highly respected and important jazz musicians such as Art Baron, Cameron Brown, Eliot Zigmund and Bob Kindred. I’d like to believe that Siegel’s been taken in by Atzmon’s self-whitewash on the matter of antisemitism. Or it could be that Siegel has read Atzmon’s racist, lunatic writings and is in full agreement with them. I’ve emailed Siegel to get some clarity on that question. Meanwhile, we cannot sit by and allow Atzmon to hoodwink others in the American jazz community.
I tweeted on this the other day but let me recap here: This NYT piece reported that the ships in the Free Gaza Movement flotilla were funded by something called the Perdana Global Peace Organization. Greta Berlin, a founder of the Free Gaza Movement, herself acknowledged this link to Perdana. Look around Perdana’s website and you’ll find the organization is chaired by Mahathir Mohamed, former prime minister of Malaysia and one of the world’s most notoriously outspoken antisemites — a man who said this at a January conference:
The Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole Governments to ransom. Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world. The Holocaust failed as a final solution.
And people accuse Jews of fabricating the issue of antisemitism as a smokescreen.
There’s been very little reporting on Mahathir’s ties to the Free Gaza Movement as far as I’ve seen. Lots and lots of discussion about “what Israel has become” and such. Very little discussion of what the Palestine solidarity movement has become.
As for IHH, the Turkish organization involved in the melee on the flotilla’s biggest ship, my friend Yigal Schleifer, in his must-read posts on the Turkey-Israel diplomatic crisis, describes IHH as an organization of the Islamist far right. Yigal’s coverage is some of the fairest, most non-ideological and rigorous you’ll come across anywhere.
~
In last week’s New Yorker, Pankaj Mishra reviewed Paul Berman’s new book The Flight of the Intellectuals, about the widespread liberal-left acceptance of Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, and what this phenomenon says about intellectual culture in our time. Mishra, in short, offers a fine example of what Berman was trying to diagnose. He subjects Berman to a relentless drubbing over his liberal-hawk support of the Iraq war, thus shooting the messenger, while giving Ramadan a pass on his uncritical support of the extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
First of all, Qaradawi doesn’t simply justify suicide attacks against Israel, as Mishra notes, although this would be bad enough. Qaradawi says things like this:
Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place.
Mishra further tries to undermine Berman’s case:
[Berman] says that Ramadan not just “admires” but “worships” Qaradawi, although the citations of Ramadan that he produces to illustrate this claim reveal nothing more fervent than the standard lexicon of scholarly attribution: “Yusuf al-Qaradawi aptly notes that…”; “For details, see Yusuf al-Qaradawi….”
I very much doubt that Mishra would agree it’s benign for Ramadan to cite, whether calmly or fervently, the work of a man who believes Hitler put the Jews in their place.
And yet wait. Here is Paul Berman himself, responding to another negative review, in which he notes that
…Ramadan, who has contributed prefaces to two of Sheikh Qaradawi’s collections of fatwas[my emphasis - DA], has revered and applauded Qaradawi in every one of his major books, beginning with the book about [Hassan] al-Banna. Anyone who takes the trouble to read through Ramadan’s work will discover that Qaradawi has been the most important of his mentors—a distinguished and learned sheikh with his own history of ties to the Ramadan family, by the way (which I mention … because Ramadan himself, in his book on al-Banna, chooses to boast of it).
Mishra, it seems, is misrepresenting facts in order to burnish his conclusion: that Ramadan “may not be ideal, but the impulse to engage with him seems to exemplify the best kind of liberalism….”
By all means, engage Ramadan, but do it in the way that George Packer did in this exchange, in which he pressed Ramadan repeatedly on the issue of antisemitism. “[H]e couldn’t give me a direct answer,” writes Packer. “He hedged, he spoke about context, he suggested that the quotes were mistranslated, that they didn’t actually exist. But he refused to acknowledge that his grandfather and the Muslim Brotherhood in its origins were characterized by anti-Semitic or totalitarian views. It seemed clear that there was a limit to what he would allow himself to say or think, and that I had found it.”
~
Last but not least, the fact that racists such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are blasting veteran White House reporter turned pundit Helen Thomas does not mean that Thomas’s remarks were anything less than disgusting. And racist.
Having begun to read David Aaronovitch’s engaging Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, I am prompted once again to mention the UK-based saxophonist and political agitator Gilad Atzmon. To be clear, Atzmon does not appear in Aaronovitch’s first chapter, about TheProtocols of the Elders of Zion. However, Aaronovitch does reveal something that underlines the toxicity of Atzmon’s rantings against the Jews — oh, excuse me, his pro-Palestinian advocacy and “constant debate with different Jewish lobbies.”
As Oliver Kamm recently reminded us, Atzmon wrote the following on his website in 2005:
American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ [sic] are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy. [...]
Now, compare that sentiment to the following, quoted by Aaronovitch in Voodoo Histories:
The Frankfurter Zeitung is forever moaning to the people that [the Protocols] are supposed to be a forgery; which is the surest proof that they are genuine. What many Jews do perhaps unconsciously is here consciously exposed. But that is not what matters… What matters is that they uncover, with really horrifying reliability, the nature and activity of the Jewish people, and expose them in their inner logic and their final aims. But reality provides the best commentary. [...]
This passage is from Mein Kampf, by one Adolf Hitler.
Let’s be clear on this. In stating that the Protocols‘ inauthenticity does not matter, that Jewish behavior tells all, Atzmon is cribbing arguments from Adolf Hitler.
Kamm goes on to cite a more recent piece by Atzmon, in which he writes:
It took me years to grasp that my great-grandmother wasn’t made into a ‘soap’ or a ‘lampshade’*. She probably perished out of exhaustion, typhus or maybe even by mass shooting. [...] The fate of my great-grandmother was not any different from hundreds of thousands of German civilians who died in an orchestrated indiscriminate bombing, because they were Germans. Similarly, people in Hiroshima died just because they were Japanese. 1 million Vietnamese died just because they were Vietnamese and 1.3 million Iraqis died because they were Iraqis. In short the tragic circumstances of my great grandmother wasn’t that special after all.
Apart from the pseudo-leftist flourishes, this also happens to be Mel Gibson’s view of the Holocaust. Here is what Gibson, or “sugar tits,” said to Peggy Noonan in 2004:
Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.
In other words, “wasn’t that special after all.” The subtext is clear, and Atzmon could have uttered it. But given that Atzmon is on record parroting the views of Hitler himself, his brand of Holocaust minimization is especially ghoulish.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that no leftist of any stripe would want to be caught dead praising Hitler. Or Mel Gibson for that matter. But Atzmon? That’s different.
Anil Prasad has an interview up with drummer Asaf Sirkis, whose recent recordings The Song Within and The Monk I can vouch for as unique and well worth hearing. Sirkis also happens to be a musical associate of Gilad Atzmon, a saxophonist and political blowhard with a straightforwardly antisemitic paper trail that has come up frequently on this blog. In defense of his colleague, Sirkis offers:
… [I]n Israeli/Jewish culture, you can be a lefty, right wing, orthodox, or whatever you like, but there are a few things that you’re not supposed to question, so to speak, and that could make things difficult for people like Gilad Atzmon with whom I worked. Gilad, who is very outspoken about his pro-Palestinian views, had to deal with situations when at his gigs members of the audience—mostly Jewish/Israeli, of course—left the hall because of something he said. As far as I know he is in constant debate with different Jewish lobbies.
Let’s be clear about Atzmon’s political record, for he is not merely outspoken about his pro-Palestinian views. He is equally outspoken about his anti-Jewish views, which are in many respects indistinguishable from the views of the racist far right. “One of the things that happened to us was that stupidly we interpreted the Nazi defeat as a vindication of the Jewish ideology and the Jewish people,” Atzmon wrote recently, leaving one to wonder about the meaning of “us” and “we” in the sentence. The notion that only “Jewish/Israeli” audience members would find such a statement disgusting is almost as offensive as the statement itself.
Also consider Atzmon’s record of Holocaust denial and apologetics for the Third Reich. It’s not for nothing that Atzmon’s work is greeted warmly on David Duke’s website, Stormfront chat boards and other white supremacist outlets.
Asaf Sirkis might have noted that even many of the UK’s most outspoken anti-Zionist activists will have nothing to do with Atzmon. One can be sure there are Palestinians who feel the same way and have no use for Atzmon’s “pro-Palestinian” advocacy. But all one has to do these days is invoke the dreaded “Jewish lobbies” and the discussion is over. After all, anyone “in constant debate with different Jewish lobbies” must be a pretty good guy.
I’ve just delved into Michael Bérubé’s book The Left At War, and it’s reminding me how deeply influenced I am by the late Ellen Willis, in particular her 2003 essay “Is There Still a Jewish Question? Why I’m an Anti-Anti Zionist.” I should have linked to it much sooner.
Let me be clearer about why I raise the issue of antisemitism on the left as frequently as I do. It’s not because I think people need to feel our Jewish pain and be sensitive. It’s because, as Willis states, “Anti-Semitism remains the wild card of world politics and the lightning rod of political crisis, however constantly it is downplayed or denied.” Therefore, the left’s failure to deal with the issue — or worse, actually to aid and abet the phenomenon itself — is not just any failure. It has happened before in history and it is happening again.
Louis Farrakhan is not of the left, of course, but people on the left — most notably Jeremiah Wright in the recent past — have mistaken his championing of the black struggle for progressivism. And yet Farrakhan continues to say things like this, just yesterday:
“[You] can’t even engage in constructive argument over the veracity of the figures of the Holocaust. We know something happened, sure, but you can’t talk about [it]. In certain cities in Europe they arrest you and put you in prison for denying such.”
I think we can conclude that Farrakhan is less interested in “constructive argument” than in “denying such.”
Citing Cynthia McKinney as a victim of the all-powerful Zionist lobby, Farrkhan also said: “You can’t criticize, you can’t say nothing because if you do, you’re branded as an anti-Semite.”
Actually, this is what antisemites say to draw attention away from the fact that they’re promoting antisemitism. And it’s an attempt to stifle those who would oppose them.
