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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Rowan Berkeley
Published Letters: 176
It works like this : first of all, provocateur #1 posts a remark that actually does tar all Israelis, or even all Jews, with the same brush, as warmongers, then provocateur #2 cites provocateur #1 - not just here, but elsewhere - as proof that "Glenn Greenwald's columns give aid and comfort to anti Semites." It is coordinated smearing, and you won't beat it by trying to deflect it every time it happens. I fear that you have to pay someone to censor the comments threads, if you really want to defeat this tactic.
As to Glenn's original and slightly unhappy phrasing - "It isn't just the American neocons, but also the Israelis, who are escalating the "Attack Iran" campaign. The Jerusalem Post yesterday "reported" that ..." - I think that he would have been wiser to put "It isn't just the American neocons, but also the Israeli neocons, who are escalating ..." since that is what he actually meant, and it is accurate to describe the JPost as an outlet for "the Israeli neocons."
About the question of whether "the neocons" are "fascists," or "trotskyites," or both, I would just point out that Ledeen himself has never been either a fascist or a trotskyite, but he has written on fascism, and it is true that Jabotinsky, the founder of revisionist zionism, accepted the support of Mussolini in training his cadres for a period. Given the conditions of the time, this is not as bizarre as it may seem in retrospect, but it does make for some great quotes, like this, from Lenni Brenner:
The March 1936 issue of L'Idea Sionistica, the magazine of the Revisionists' Italian branch, described the ceremonies attendant to the inauguration of the Betar squad's new headquarters: "The order 'Attention! A triple chant ordered by the squad's commanding officer ''Viva L'Italia! Viva Il Re! Viva Il Duce! resounded, followed by the benediction which rabbi Aldo Lattes invoked in Italian and in Hebrew for God, for the king and for Il Duce ... Giovinezza [the Fascist Party's anthem] was sung with much enthusiasm by the Betarim."
I try to avoid citing my own blog, but in this case the only way to show you how deceptive Bob Baer actually is, is to do so, because it is only there that this marvellous example is carefully isolated by me, from the end of a very, very long essay elsewhere:
http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/a-little-something-for-fans-of-bob-baer/
Thanks, that looks quite good. I am not too keen on Chip Berlet, or Martin Lee's "the Beast Reawakens," because you will find a cumulative blurring of fascism, nazism, anti-semitism, and anti-zionism in them, which seems to be coordinated with the ADL.
Now, the ADL under Abe Foxman has actually engaged in totalitarian thought control campaigns of its own, which go far beyond any legitimate program to prevent a rise of anti-Semitism, and indeed stand anti-fascist values on their head, such as when they coordinated with the South African secret police to bribe a San Francisco cop to steal police files on anti-zionist activists, for which they eventually admitted culpability and settled out of court on condition of non publicity. the go-to guy for this is Jeff Blankfort, who has archived a lot of it at
http://www.adlwatch.org/
I have spent quite a few months telling people that at least some of the rocket and mortar fire that comes out of Gaza is being done by Fatah squads, trying to provoke Israel into counterstrikes against their "arch-foe," Hamas. While there have been recorded cases of this, I have just managed to work my way round the rather badly organised web pages that Hamas and the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades put up, and I have finally been forced to accept that Hamas are genuinely proud of their rocket and mortar campaign, and have no desire to evade responsibility for it, whoever may have fired any particular one. This is especially important because of the timing, which is often clearly intended as a dismissive retort to any peace moves : today, for example, a mortar shell killed a Jewish Israeli. Finally facing up to this has put a different complexion on the issues regarding Gaza, at least for me. It has no direct bearing on any other battle-front, it just wakes me up a bit.
Chris Sinnard (a few pages back in this thread) attacks all the guest speakers that "FFF" has somehow attracted for its conference, but the ones he lists are either not libertarians or Misesians at all (e.g. Cockburn), or, if they are (e.g. Kwiatkowski), have something else to offer, like trail-blazing insights into the military industrial hijack by warmongering corporatists.
This is the list of guest speakers that Chris Sinnard complains about : "Alexander Cockburn, James Bovard, Karen Kwiatkowski, Glenn Greenwald".
He then says about them, "what a bunch of America-Haters and Racists! I'd like to try and go, I'm hoping I can get my white hood and robe back from the dry cleaner in time." I think that either Mr Sinnard's mind simply wasn't on what he was writing, or he was deliberately muddying the waters by mis-matching his examples to his argument.
I mean, if he had said "Jacob Hornberger is an ideological hack fronting a corporatist rat trap disguised as a libertarian think tank," I would have been delighted, and he would have achieved at least some of what I suppose is his purpose, namely, saying that "FFF" per se is rubbish.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
