I was impressed with Max Blumenthal’s 2009 video, “Feeling the hate in Jerusalem”, because it captured the honest thoughts of many Jews towards Obama, views that rarely see the light of day in the MSM.
In the MSM, Jews are usually portrayed as powerless victims who are incapable of racism. This is often nonsense and I dig the realism in Blumenthal’s video. Jews are as prone to negative feelings about out-groups as any other strongly identifying in-group.
All peoples have a victimology, all victimologies have a nationalism, and all nationalisms contain the capacity for genocide when needed.
The other day, a friend sent me a link to this James Kirchick article. I find Kirchick’s essays so heavy on slurs and so light on clarity that I have to be in a particularly perverse frame of mind to bother with them, the same way you might find an obnoxious, paranoid and emotional friend interesting on rare occasions when you have a particularly bent but you would not want to run into him regularly nor trust anything he says.
So this morning I decided to read the link my friend sent and trudged through Kirchick’s manure slinging:
In the course of a short career, the younger Blumenthal gradually exiled himself from respectable journalistic outlets, and so several years ago decided to reinvent himself as Israel’s most outspoken and extreme Jewish antagonist, at one point writing for a Beirut-based newspaper aligned with the Assad regime in Syria, before deciding that the blood-drenched regime in Damascus was no longer to his liking. His 2013 book Goliath is so venomous in its denunciations of Israel, and so strident in its defense of terrorism against it, that Eric Alterman, himself a harsh critic of Israel and a columnist for the far-left Nation magazine, concluded that it “could have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club (if it existed) without a single word change once it’s translated into Arabic.”
The book is replete with comparisons of Israeli Jews to Nazis, and calls for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East…
Not that everyone hated Goliath. Frazier Glenn Cross, the 73-year-old white supremacist who murdered three people at Kansas Jewish Community Center and retirement home last year, was one of Blumenthal’s biggest devotees. “Jew journalist Max Blumenthal exposes and explains this attempt by a foreign government Israel, to buy the presidential election for the neo-con, war-mongering republican establishment,” Cross wrote on a Ron Paul fan site in 2012, referencing an interview Blumenthal gave on the Russian government-funded RT network. A survey of a white supremacist web forum run by Cross found over 300 references to Blumenthal and his work, with posters lauding his exposes of nefarious Jewish influence.
Last year, Max earned himself the distinction of being barred from the German Bundestag after he chased the leader of the country’s Left Party into a toilet, demanding to know why the parliamentarian had put the kibosh on a talk Blumenthal was scheduled to give at the invitation of two Left Party members. Scheduled to speak on the day after the anniversary of Kristallnacht, outraged party members initiated a petition criticizing their colleagues’ hosting Blumenthal, which they said amounted to “stoking obsessive hate and demonization of Israel with an anti-Semitic argument pattern and trivialization of the Holocaust.”
…Or the one who promotes his son’s work portraying Israel as a uniformly ghastly, racist country and American Jews as its disloyal double agents?
OK, James, I get the message that Max is a very bad man.
Unless I know better, I assume that someone who’s been exiled from respectable journalistic outlets for non-criminal reasons has likely breached decorum by revealing uncomfortable truths.
When I read denunciations of “extremism,” I know I’m dealing with a shallow thinker. “Extremism” is usually just a slur hurled at someone pursuing a group interest you don’t like. Muslim terrorists, for example, aren’t extremists in my view, but they are people who love their group as much I love my group and they are pursuing goals that clash with my goals.
Kirchick’s article was so hyperbolic that I decided to Google “Max Blumenthal” and one of the first Google results sent me to an article on Tablet Mag by academic cliche David Mikics:
WILD THING: MAX BLUMENTHAL’S CREEPY ANTI-ZIONIST ODYSSEY
What should anti-Zionists do about the bullying hater in their midst?
The over-the-top hatred intrigues me. How much unhinged lunacy could this English professor cram into his piece? Has it ever occurred to him that different groups have different interests and that what is creepy to him is the height of honor to another? Has he ever paused to consider that there is nothing bigoted or racist or hateful in opposing any group, be it Jewish or Muslim or black, rather, such opposition is usually a healthy and rational reaction to people doing things against your own group’s interests. An Arab and a Muslim, for instance, who does not have some negative feelings about Jews is a wacko because the existence of a prosperous Jewish state in the middle of the backward Arab-Islamic world is an obvious affront to Arab/Muslim pride.
I am no expert in Max Blumenthal, but it seems like he’s a quintessential man of the left, and socialists by definition are opposed to dividing people by race and religion. Hence, it makes sense for socialists to be opposed to ethno-states such as Israel. I see nothing wild, creepy, bizarre, bullying or hateful in this any more than theists being opposed to atheism and Dallas Cowboys fans being opposed to Philadelphia Eagles victories are bizarre. Only one team will win the NFC East this year. I hope my Cowboys win it. I see their principle opposition as the Eagles, and hence I cheer whenever anything bad happens to Philadelphia.
The KKK and Jews have different interests. If the KKK dominated America today as much as Jews do, it would be uncomfortable for Jews. As Jews have great influence in America, they make things uncomfortable for their opponents such as the KKK. When Anglos dominated America, it made Jews uncomfortable. When Jews supplanted Anglos, it made Anglos uncomfortable.
Only one group will rule the land now called Israel. As I am Jewish, I want my group to rule. If I were Arab or Muslim, I would want Arab and Muslim rule over the land now called Israel. I am a white American and I want whites to rule America, just as if I were black, I would want blacks to dominate America and to get as much as they could (resources and power). Just as I want Jews to have their own state and freedom and room to develop their own civilization free from the interference of outsiders, I want whites to have their own states and their own freedom to develop their own destinies free from interference by non-whites. If I were Mexican-America, however, I would be thrilled at the prospect of a Mexican takeover of America. If I were a Muslim, I would want the whole world to embrace Islam. If I were Christian, I would want the whole world to embrace Christianity. As an Orthodox Jew, I want the whole world to acknowledge the God of Israel as the one true God and the Torah as His instruction book to humanity.
Back to Max Blumenthal. Notice that two articles linked above are less about criticizing him as they are about destroying him. This is a common Ashkenazi discussion style where you don’t let yourself get sidetracked by the merits of an argument, rather you try to annihilate your opponent. Jews are rarely criminally violent, but they are often verbally violent, hitting below the belt in ways that fair-play Anglos, who tend to form groups based on morality and ideology rather than kinship, find abhorrent and often flee. In my life, I notice that Jews typically win their arguments with non-Jews because the Jews are more intense, more intelligent, more verbally gifted, more verbally violent, and less constrained by any ethic beyond what’s good for their group. Anglos, by contrast, tend to courtesy and universal morality.
The Anglo-Puritan ethic dominated America until the 1950s when Jews became the country’s elite and decided the rules of public discussion (one rule is you can’t discuss Jewish influence and the Jewish role in determining the rules of public discussion).
Nothing can tarnish a German politician like charges of anti-Semitism.
Why? Why should Jews be any more sacred a group than any other? You could argue that Jews are sacred because approximately six million died of them in the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis. Well, Ukrainians are not regarded as a sacred group beyond criticism because approximately six million of them were starved to death under Soviet communism (with some assistance from communist Jews who acted as Stalin’s willing executioners). Russians aren’t regarded as sacred because about 20 million of them were killed by Stalin (with some assistance from communist Jews who acted as Stalin’s willing executioners). About 80 million Chinese died from Mao’s genocides but nobody regards the Chinese as a sacred group beyond criticism.
I don’t welcome those who try to make Jews a sacred group because it inevitably invokes an extreme backlash, and meanwhile as we wait for the next genocide, it is bad for Jews to be exempt from public criticism in that all peoples benefit from accurate criticism.
Blumenthal and Sheen were supposed to appear at Berlin’s Volksbühne to discuss Israel’s “war crimes” in Gaza.
I don’t have any opinion on Israel’s wars with Gaza, but I find it absurd to automatically assume that Israel is the one country that could never commit a “war crime.” I think Israel and its wars are as worthy a topic for discussion, coverage and criticism as any other country at war.
That event also got canceled: Nov. 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, is a day of solemn commemoration in Germany, not a time for attacks on Israel.
So you are not allowed to say anything negative in public about Jews on days that are sacred to Jews? I don’t welcome this kind of Jewish over-reach because it invites a backlash, and meanwhile as we count down to the next genocide of Jews, it invites bad behavior on the part of those who think of themselves as above criticism.
I want all groups to be held accountable 24/7, 365 days a year. I welcome accurate criticism of any group on day of the year. I think this free speech is more important than hurt feelings.
Characteristically, Blumenthal cast Israel as a planner of mass murder and on a day consecrated to the memory of the Shoah.
Because we have no examples in history of suffering groups doing anything bad to outsiders on days that are sacred to the in-group?
Blumenthal’s version of what happened in Berlin is conspiratorial
Because we know there are no conspiracies. What are you? Some kind of losers? Only losers don’t accept the conventional narrative shaped by those who know best, such as James Kirchick and David Mikics.
Blumenthal loves ethnonational clichés
Ethnonational cliches are bad because all right-thinking people know that there are no patterns beyond the ones sanctioned by the powers that be.
Strangely, he added that “pro-Israel organizations on American college campuses are functioning as White Students Unions that are pandered to instead of properly stigmatized.” (Are African American or Ethiopian Jews “white” if they hang out at Hillel?)
Don’t engage with Max Blumenthal, just attack. As we all know, Jews and other victim groups are never pandered to in America. As we all know, Jews don’t look remotely white. As we all know, Jews don’t form ethnic groups to further their interests.
Come on, man! Logic demands acknowledgment that if Israel is the Jewish state, then all Jews become targets of those who have clashing interests with Israel.
Max Blumenthal’s stock in trade is anti-Zionist polemic dripping with cartoon-like, racially weighted depictions of Israeli Jews. What distinguishes him from many other anti-Zionist writers is not his political views, but the obsessive nature of his work, which seems animated not by moral passion or analysis but by hate. It’s no surprise that there are at least 300 citations of Blumenthal on the message board popular with anti-Semites, VNN Forum. Blumenthal is also a go-to source about Jewish evildoers and evildoing for the neo-Nazi Stormfront site, and David Duke has endorsed his work. One of Blumenthal’s chapter titles in Goliath has been especially popular with the white supremacist sites that gleefully embrace his work: “How To Kill Goyim and Influence People.”
And it’s not just anti-Semitic crackpots who flock to him anymore. Mainstream journalists like James Fallows and Andrew Sullivan have also praised Blumenthal’s work. Astonishingly, Blumenthal has promoted Goliath at the New America Foundation, a centrist Democratic Party think-tank, and was recently given a platform by the New York Times.
But the truth is that Blumenthal is a pisher di tutti pishers and the mainstreaming of him has no political importance, since none of his political views are original to him. As a reporter, the best one can say about him is that he doesn’t speak Hebrew or Arabic, and he doesn’t have any sources—so it’s hard to fault him for getting things wrong. Rather, his specialty is the age-old marketing of Israel as a unique repository of the world’s evils and therefore a deserving target of unrestrained invective. The question then, is really for anti-Zionists who believe their cause to be motivated by justice and human rights: What to do about the hater in their midst?
For his sins of criticizing the group that must not be criticized, Max Blumental must be destroyed.
