Via Jack Shafer’s Twitter feed, this AP story on Fidel Castro’s decision to fill three of the eight scant pages in the party-controlled newspaper Granma with nonsense from 9/11 Truther and Bilderberg conspiracy theorist Daniel Estulin. AP writer Will Weissert does a nice job detailing how Estulin’s work actually draws on the thinking (rather, “thinking”) of the extremist right.
I’m glad to see that the Obama administration is moving to ease travel restrictions to Cuba. And yet I’m still amazed that there are those on the left who continue to admire Castro, this pitiful crackpot, who has long outlawed the very existence of a journalistic culture on the island, preferring to force-feed the Cuban people his own ravings, along with the ravings of fellow loons.
I know, journalism in the U.S. is anything but perfect, but the quick dissemination of news and debate fostered by the Net — and the enormous flux in media and information cultures detailed in this very interesting pair of pieces in Wired (hat tip John Murph) — couldn’t stand in starker contrast to the utterly shriveled, hideous excuse for a media outlet that is Granma. And every other official organ like it elsewhere on the planet.
Read Chris Anderson’s thoughts on iPads and RSS feeds and Pandora and the like. And then recall that the Cuban government took the enormous step of legalizing cell phones in 2008. We thought it was right-wing anticommunists, per William F. Buckley, who “stood astride history, yelling ‘Stop!’” Turns out it’s actually the communists. (Of course, America’s Castro apologists benefit from cutting-edge online communication to get their organizing done.)
By the way, Castro’s not the only one spouting laughable conspiracist rot. Hugo Chávez, we learn in this valuable piece by Christopher Hitchens, believes the moon landing may not have actually happened. But the most amusing part of Hitchens’s account is how deeply, how desperately, Sean Penn wants to believe in Chávez’s political sanity, all evidence to the contrary.
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.
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.
Oliver Stone has made a documentary called “South of the Border,” about the new left-wing populist wave in South America, and in particular about Hugo Chávez, a man Stone much admires.
On “Real Time with Bill Maher” the other week, Stone praised Sean Penn’s earlier appearance on the same program. Penn, Stone said, had done “a great job” defending Hugo Chávez on HBO. Interestingly, what Stone is referring to is the discussion in which Penn declared that American journalists should be jailed for reporting inaccurately on the Chávez regime. What this shows is that Penn is not deluded about the autocratic nature of Chávez’s reign (or Castro’s for that matter). It turns out he in fact supports its autocratic nature. I’m someone who believes firmly in straight talk, and this, finally, was Penn talking straight, laying bare his anti-democratic convictions. Good for him, I suppose.
In case you haven’t been paying attention:
Chávez recently announced, ”The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done.” (If an American politician said this, needless to say, there’d be endless howls of protest and mockery from the left, and rightly so.) In 2008, Chávez ejected two leading Human Rights Watch officials from Venezuela. He recently voiced qualified admiration for Idi Amin. He congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for stealing the 2009 Iranian election. He has proclaimed solidarity with torturer and kleptocrat Robert Mugabe and called Belarus under dictator Alexander Lukashenko “a model social state.”
This is not subtle, and it’s not up for argument — it’s all a matter of record, and it establishes Chávez as a deeply reactionary figure, a figure beloved not by the democratic left (in any country), but by the reactionary left. There is, and has always been, a difference. Yes, Chávez was democratically elected, as Stone and Penn tell us over and again. But being democratically elected is not the same as governing democratically. Ask the people of Gaza.
What do Stone’s film, and Penn’s advocacy, and the mewlings of other pro-Chávez celebrities really represent? They represent the growing success of the reactionary left in drowning out the discourse of the democratic left, a phenomenon that is aided by the silence of people like Rachel Maddow, who sat and listened to Oliver Stone on Bill Maher’s panel and uttered not a word back. I love Maddow, I watch her, I’m thrilled that she’s on the air, precisely because she’s a person of democratic convictions. But those convictions failed her here. And I’m a hundred percent certain she knows better.
Google Stone’s film and the only strong critiques you’ll find are on right-wing sites. This is not because only a rightist would attack a great guy like Chávez. It’s because left political culture in the U.S. is badly distorted and in need of an overhaul.
The right is blasting Obama’s Oval Office speech for pushing too hard on costly clean energy initiatives. Wait a minute, the left is blasting Obama’s speech for not pushing nearly hard enough on clean energy initiatives.
What is going on here? To me it looks like a de facto left-right alliance to tear down this president halfway into his term.
The right’s pro-oil agenda is clear enough. As for the left, I’m beginning to think there are those who just love to proclaim their disappointment — the more extravagant and apocalyptic, the better.
“Where is the President Obama whom we believed in? Where did he go?” wrote one friend on Facebook. “I do not understand why he did not announce the commandeering of oil tankers,” wrote Yobie Benjamin, knowing full well that there was no way Obama was going to do any such thing. But this is the routine: Hold Obama to expectations yanked from unreality, then announce your shock that he failed to meet them. “Mr. President, you failed your first Oval Office speech,” Benjamin continues. “I am only one supporter, a decline-to-state, one blogger and though I lean progressive and will continue to do so, I hope someone runs in a primary against you. I’d love to look at progressive options.”
Good luck with that. How wearying, this sort of petulance.
Look, I’m not saying it was a great speech. But some of the reactions on the left seem to issue from an alternate universe. The president did not lay out a vision for a clean energy future? Didn’t he say this?
For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked — not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.
The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. [...] We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own destiny.
And today we read that the president got the $20 billion escrow account from BP, an amount that is uncapped and will probably grow.
I understand some of the criticisms — it’s taking too long, he’s not channeling the public’s anger, etc. But many on the left are at a point where they just will not give Obama any credit, for anything. And when 2012 rolls around, by failing to rise to this president’s defense in the face of what is sure to be the ugliest right-wing assault yet, they might just help Sarah Palin take over Washington.
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.
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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.”
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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.
In response to this disastrous incident at sea involving the Israeli military and the Free Gaza Movement, Roger Ebert, the movie critic and prolific liberal tweeter, wrote this morning: “Why isn’t Israel firing on a humanitarian aid ship worse than North Korea firing on a warship?”
This was quickly retweeted by Jeremy Scahill, who appended the word “Exactly.” Scahill, to remind you, is an apologist for Somali pirates, or “pirates” as he refers to them. In other words, Scahill in some instances has no problem with heavily armed people waging violence against civilian ships. Just saying. It seems clear that Israel handled this recklessly and its conduct should be investigated. Let me also state that Israel has pursued an immoral and counterproductive policy in Gaza for some time, and should rethink its blockade (which, to be clear, was instituted in response to Hamas aggression).
However, from video evidence here and here, it also seems clear that some of the Free Gaza Movement activists on that ship attempted to engage Israeli soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. At this stage it is rash to describe this as a simple matter of Israel wantonly killing civilians. But of course that’s what many people want to believe.
This post by Glenn Greenwald makes no mention of the Free Gaza Movement, which is something close to journalistic malpractice. More than the humanitarian aid business, the Free Gaza Movement is in the propaganda business. It is an outlet of the extreme anti-Zionist left, essentially a Hamas support group. It has engaged in this same cat-and-mouse game with the Israeli navy for a long time. The people on that ship knew full well they would be intercepted. That was the whole point. These are theatrical stunts intended to provoke the Israelis.
Why is this incident unlike the Korean one? Because the Free Gaza ship was warned repeatedly to desist and change course, and then it was boarded — not fired upon, not sank. The North Korean regime sank a sitting-duck South Korean warship with premeditation and without a word of warning, apparently in order bolster the prestige and power of Kim Jong Il in a succession struggle. North Korea is a totalitarian state; Israel is a (deeply flawed) democracy.
What Ebert’s formulation says, sotto voce, is that the actions of totalitarian states shouldn’t bother us that much.
You have written approvingly (here and here) of John Mearsheimer’s recent speech in which he divided American Jews into three camps: “New Afrikaners,” or right-wing supporters of Israel; “righteous Jews,” i.e., critics of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians; and the “great ambivalent middle.” I’d like to focus on something that you glossed over entirely in your remarks: Mearsheimer’s inclusion of Noam Chomsky among the “righteous Jews.”
Clearly you are determined to wade into the muck that is the debate over Israel/Palestine, and on one level, more power to you — arguing for an end to Israel’s destructive and immoral settlements policy is much needed. No one can plausibly claim that you’re an antisemite for doing so. And yet I believe your antisemitism detector is in need of repair, and that you could be doing more to fight it. Let me explain.
You are of course familiar with Noam Chomsky’s profile as an arch critic of American foreign policy, for you have linked in the past to Oliver Kamm’s voluminous work showing Chomsky to be an unscrupulous demagogue. Incidentally, Chomsky is of Jewish descent but has never made a point of publicly identifying as a Jew, which makes Mearsheimer’s mention of him all the more suspect. But that is for another post.
What you need to know is that Chomsky is listed here as an honorary member of something called the BRussells Tribunal [sic]. (Hat tip Adam Holland.) His name appears alongside seven other prominent figures and fellow honorary members, including Cindy Sheehan and the late Harold Pinter. At the top of this list is Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, the former prime minister of Malaysia, whose record of virulent antisemitism is well known. In a speech delivered in January of this year, Mahathir said this:
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.
Now, while it would not be fair to ascribe these views to Chomsky himself, Chomsky has opted to lend his imprimatur to an organization associated with Mahathir — indeed, even to allow his name to be displayed right alongside Mahathir’s. I’m sure you will agree that this weakens the case for Chomsky as a “righteous Jew,” but I would argue that it also reveals, at best, a fundamental ignorance and lack of judgment on the part of John Mearsheimer. (It is equally disgraceful that Mearsheimer listed as a “righteous Jew” Norman Finkelstein, a declared supporter of Hezbollah.)
To conclude: The charge of antisemitism is not simply a ruse, a means of silencing critics of Israel. Mahathir Mohamed is not a “critic of Israel”; he is a Jew hater. Noam Chomsky and Cindy Sheehan, among many others on the anti-Zionist left, are enabling his hatred and giving it a veneer of legitimacy. For many of us in the “great ambivalent middle,” to attack the Chomskyite left, or to fail to condemn Israel with sufficient ardor, is to risk being labeled a “New Afrikaner” by the likes of John Mearsheimer. This is the silencing phenomenon that few commentators seem willing to address. I wish you would do so.
Via Jack Shafer’s Twitter feed, this AP story on Fidel Castro’s decision to fill three of the eight scant pages in the party-controlled newspaper Granma with nonsense from 9/11 Truther and Bilderberg conspiracy theorist Daniel Estulin. AP writer Will Weissert does a nice job detailing how Estulin’s work actually draws on the thinking (rather, “thinking”) of the extremist right.
