February 13, 2018 Chain Of Command Luke Ford No sacred cows.

Chain Of Command

Posted on February 13, 2018 by Luke Ford

I’ve watched the first five episodes of this National Geographic documentary series and it is amazing that the United States is so heavily invested in fighting something as subjective and amorphous as “violent extremism.”

This is an arbitrary moral category. To the extent that “violent extremism” represents something real, it is no more of a threat to America’s interests than non-violent decadence such as feminism.

Many of the regimes that America supports such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt could rightly be called “violent extremism.”

Fighting “violent exremism” is not Jewish. In the Torah, God drowns the whole world in the Flood. Later, God commands Israel to commit genocide against the Canaanites. Jewish prayers command Jews on a daily basis to remember their commitment to exterminate Amalek. The texts of the Jewish tradition are specific when they name Israel’s enemies, and they focus on fighting particular peoples and practices, and not on amorphous things like “violent extremism.”

I know ISIS does bad things, but at least they don’t celebrate same sex marriage, and they don’t allow trannies to use bathrooms not in accord with their DNA.

When America had a real enemy, it didn’t call him “violent extremism.” Instead, it called him England, Mexico, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union and Al Qaeda.

Fighting “violent extremism” is what you do when you have no threats to your own sovereignty and no threats to your regional hegemony and you think you have no rivals to your world power.

The United States does have a rival to its world power, China, and the Chinese are not wasting their resources and lives fighting “violent extremism.”

So why is the United States fighting violent extremism? Because it’s exciting. It feels great. It provides work and the opportunity for false heroism to people who would be much better off getting a real life. Do you think anyone joins our foreign policy establishment to not intervene in other countries? That’s boring.

On the show, you see a husband and wife, Marines, leave their kids behind in America to go fight in Afghanistan. That’s insane. Afghanistan has no strategic interest to us. The country could go to hell and we would not be affected.

Women do not belong in the armed forces (except in secretarial and nursing roles) and they certainly do not belong in the Marines. What kind of country sends young mother Marines to fight in Helmand Province, Afghanistan? A country that has lost its mind.

From BroadwayWorld:

With incredible access inside the walls of the Pentagon and to the front lines of the U.S. military’s mission to fight violent extremism around the world, National Geographic’s new eight-part documentary series CHAIN OF COMMAND offers a new perspective on what has been dubbed “the war of this generation.” Filmed over 18 months and narrated by Chris Evans (“Captain America,” “The Avengers”), the global event series paints an intimate portrait of how men and women in the U.S. military handle authority and responsibility, as well as the sacrifices they make in their personal lives.
Chain of Command delivers extraordinary insight into a line of authority and responsibility as never seen before, including a rare on-camera sit-down with Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From the halls of power at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., to the front lines in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Niger and South America, and to the surprising ISIS recruiting ground of Trinidad and Tobago – only 1,600 miles from the coast of Florida – viewers will see firsthand how decisions made at the Pentagon have a direct impact on our service members on the ground, fighting to protect Americans and our allies from radicalized extremists.
“What’s really important is that we have clear communications. And that clear communication runs from the president and the secretary of defense, who make decisions, all the way down to the Marine lance corporal or the Army specialist out there executing the mission,” says Chairman Dunford in the series, adding, “The No. 1 priority for us is to protect the homeland and the American people from an attack and also to protect our allies from an attack against violent extremists. This is a global challenge; we call it a trans-regional challenge, but it literally is in every corner of the globe.”
In a command post sheltered inside a school in Mosul, Iraq, Capt. Quincy Bahler of the 101st Airborne Division works hand in hand with Iraqi Security Forces on a range of issues. Together, they monitor live camera feeds from U.S. combat aerial drones, deciding when to drop missiles on ISIS fighters while also figuring out ways to stop ISIS-flown camera drones from dropping bombs on U.S. and coalition forces. Meanwhile, on the streets in Mosul, Iraqi forces undertake a civilian rescue, getting families out of the combat zone on foot and under enemy sniper fire. In a quieter moment, at the end of his nine-month deployment, Capt. Bahler savors the simple pleasure of a well-brewed espresso as he prepares to hand over the reins to Capt. Mark Zwirgzdas of the 82nd Airborne Division and return to his wife and civilian life.

Everyone on this series tells us the same story — that they’re blowing up “violent extremism” in countries that have no strategic interest to America and this will make us safer. Then they bring women into the Pentagon to lecture on human rights.

Everybody becomes violently extremely when their interests are extremely threatened. “Violent extremism” is simply a severe reaction to a severe conflict of interest. “Violent extremism” is not an enemy, it’s a visceral reaction. This series shows America at war with a basic and necessary human emotion.

Every form of life has a strong visceral reaction to that which “f***s with my s***.” We all know when when our lives are threatened and we all react extremely to extreme threats.

It’s pointless for America to try to prop up the ruling powers in Afghanistan and Iraq. ISIS and Al Qaeda are, in all likelihood, far more authentic to who these people are. Counter-insurgency never works, as the Netflix movie War Machine showed, because people don’t side with their invaders.

The only person in Barack Obama’s foreign policy team in his first term who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Barack Obama. He couldn’t find anyone else because all of our foreign policy elites love intervening overseas and there’s no meaningful difference between liberal internationalists (Democrats) and conservative internationalists (Republicans). People join the foreign service to intervene, not to leave well enough alone.

Many people in the Alt Right will say this is the Jews’ fault. I grant that organized Jewry has long favored an internationalist American foreign policy to protect Jewish interests, just as the East India Trading Company needed the British Navy bomb the hell out of people who got in the way of their flourishing heroin trade to the Far East (run by the Sassoon family, yes the biggest drug kingpins in history were Orthodox Jews, and the biggest legal drug racketeers in history have been the Sackler family who gave us the opioid epidemic). But American Jews were substantially less supportive of the 2003 invasion of Iraq than American gentiles (by about ten points in polls). I don’t primarily blame the Jews for America’s unnecessarily interventionist foreign policy. I blame the goys (though I don’t think it would have happened without AIPAC lining up behind the war, I remember even this left-wing Modern Orthodox rabbi in LA supporting the war publicly because he thought it would be good for Israel).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn comments on my Youtube video:

Oh c’mon!!!!!!!!!!
Why do you think Saddam went down? Mubarek? Kaddafi? Why do you think the entire ME has been WRECKED? Do you think that white people wrote “Clean Break.”
Did white people run PNAC?
Do you think that white people want Assad out?
Do you think that white people want war with Iran?
C’mon.

It wasn’t Jews who had the power to decide whether or not to invade Iraq in 2003. The most important people making that decision were gentiles (George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, etc). It was Hillary Clinton who was the prime mover behind America’s intervention to get rid of Khaddafy. And she’s not Jewish.

Alexander comments:

No Luke, it isn’t absurd to say the system is run by Jews.
A simple analysis of political donations proves that Andrew is right.
In fact, this is the ONLY way to understand ANYTHING that is happening……the only way to understand open borders in every white nation……the only way to understand wars in the middle east.
C’mon, some people have studied this issue.
The white shabbos goy are frontmen like Paul Ryan, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, etc.
Does Congress give Netanyahu 40 standing ovations because he’s such a great guy?
No.
They do it because of the (((donors)))

Jews make up 1.7% of America’s population. They don’t have the numbers to run the country against the will of gentiles.

Dennis Prager offers this impressive analogy that just as your neighborhood needs a policeman, the world needs a policeman, and that role has fallen to America.

My response is that no country, including America, can effectively act as the world’s policeman, and to the extent it tries, it will end up doing at least as much harm as good for the world and will inevitably sap its own strength. It was in America’s interest to intervene late in both world wars to ensure an outcome that suited our interests. I am not for withdrawing from the world. I just see this Chain of Command documentary series and I have no faith that the lives and treasure we are expending in fighting “violent extremism” is doing us and the world any good. Did our intervention in Vietnam make America safer? The world safer? All the major realists opposed the intervention in Vietnam and the 2003 invasion of Iraq and they have been proven right.

Is the Middle East better off because of American intervention? I can’t see any evidence for that.

I am not arguing that Jews are 100% innocent in America’s foreign policy blunders. No group is 100% innocent. Due to their energy, high IQs, and focus, Jews have played a disproportionate role in America’s successes and failures, at home and abroad.

I think it is a massive mistake for America to subsidize Israel (there never would have been a 9/11 attack on the USA without it). I think both countries would be better off going their separate ways. They would both have more room to operate in their own interests.

The foreign policy realists I admire include John J. Mearsheimer, Steve Sailer, Carl von Clausewitz, George Kennan, Brent Scowcroft, Hans Morgenthau, Martin van Creveld, Michael Scheur, and Carl Schmitt.

Posted in Afghanistan, Alt Right, America, Iraq, Jews | Comments Off

Josh Alan Friedman Interview

Posted on February 11, 2018 by Luke Ford

Starts here.

I’ve known Josh for about 17 years. His website.

From the Observer last January:

Josh Alan Friedman: The White Guitarist Who’s ‘Blacker Than You’
Josh Alan Friedman is the most multi-talented musician you’ve probably never heard of. Why? He sings the blues, that’s why.
Honing his talent for storytelling as a journalist, Friedman made his name writing non-fiction books, a novel, and even a musical that never made it to stage. Covering the Times Square beat for a decade gave him a unique perspective on New York City, and growing up as a white kid in at New York’s last segregated public school gave him a unique perspective on basically everything else, as evidenced by the diverse influences on his new album, Sixty Goddammit.
Boasting a rippin’ cover of the theme from Blaxploitation classic Shaft as well as provocative original blues numbers (“I’m Blacker Than You,” for one), Friedman never shies away from pushing buttons, which should make his February 3 appearance at The Cutting Room one of the week’s most interesting concerts.
More than happy to talk about his new record when we spoke over the phone recently, Friedman revealed his thoughts on the state of the music industry in 2017, why the blues are at an all-time low, and why much of music today has become worthless.

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Post Game: The Andrew Anglin vs. Sargon of Akkad Debate

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Luke Ford

Listen and listen and listen.

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Where Does Judaism Differ From Christianity?

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes:

Ethical monotheism means two things:
1. There is one God from whom emanates one morality for all humanity.
2. God’s primary demand of people is that they act decently toward one another.
If all people subscribed to this simple belief – which does not entail leaving or joining any specific religion, or giving up any national identity – the world would experience far less evil. Let me explain the components of ethical monotheism…
Christians and Ethical Monotheism
While the challenge to making ethics primary in Judaism is largely one of Jews rather than of Judaism, the challenge to Christianity is more rooted in the religion itself. Within Christianity, the doctrine developed that correct faith, not correct works, is God’s primary concern.
Paul articulated this view in the New Testament: If good deeds could lead to salvation, he reasoned, “Christ would have died in vain” (Galatians 2:21). For that reason, he continued, “We conclude that a man is put right with God only through faith, and not by doing what the law commands” (Romans 3:28).
True, Catholicism holds that faith alone is not sufficient, that some works, too, are necessary for salvation. But between faith in Christ and goodness in behavior, the Church has, until recently, nearly always taught that faith is more important. Thus the Church held for nearly two millennia that even the kindest non Christians were all doomed: “Outside of the Church there is no salvation.” In a major move toward ethical monotheism, the twentieth century Catholic Church has reinterpreted this statement, and now teaches that while salvation will come through Jesus, it is not necessary for an individual to assert belief in Jesus by name in order to be saved; only God judges who is saved, and Catholics cannot declare who they are.
Historically, the thrust of Church teachings has not been that cruelty or unethical behavior is the greatest sin. As historian Norman Cohn wrote:
The sins to which the Devil of Christian tradition has tempted human beings are varied indeed: apostasy, idolatry, heresy, fornication, gluttony, vanity, using cosmetics, dressing luxuriously, going to the theater, gambling, avarice, quarreling, spiritual sloth have all, at times, figured in the list…. I have looked in vain for a single instance . . . of the Devil tempting a human being to cruelty.1
Some statements attributed to Jesus can lead a Christian to abandon the fight against evil: “Resist not evil” is the prime example. Others include: “Pray for those who persecute you,” “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), and Jesus’ prayer on the cross beseeching God to forgive his murderers. Christians can interpret each of these verses in a way that does not detract from a Christian’s duty to fight evil. For example, the verses can be explained as applying only to an individual—i.e., the ideal individual Christian will not resist evil done to him, will love those who hurt her, etc., but this shouldn’t be taken to mean that believers won’t resist evil done to others. Such interpretations are certainly welcome. But it is difficult to imagine that the ideal Christian will lead a life of nonresistance to evil directed to self, and then strongly resist evil when it is done to others.
These verses of Jesus may explain why as prominent and personally fine a Christian as the Reverend Billy Graham, the most widely listened to Protestant in the world, failed to call evil by its name when he visited the Soviet Union in 1982. Indeed, true to Martin Luther’s teachings, Graham called on Soviet Christians to obey the Soviet authorities, and did not publicly side with perse cuted Christians. Rather than refer to the Soviet Union as an enemy of Christianity, the Reverend Graham only referred to “the common enemy” of nuclear war. At the time of the visit, George Will wrote:
Graham’s delicacy [about the Soviet Union] is less interesting than his “common enemy” formulation…. His language suggests a moral symmetry between his country and the soviet Union.
The Washington Post reports that when Graham spoke in two churches, both “were heavily guarded, with police sealing off all roads leading to them. Hundreds of KGB security agents . . . were in the congregation.” Graham told one congregation that God “gives you the power to be a better worker, a more loyal citizen because in Romans 13 we are told to obey the authorities.” How is that for a message from America;
Graham is America’s most famous Christian. Solzhenitsyn is Russia’s The contrast is instructive.2
Another area of Christian theology that undermines ethical monotheism is the belief that God saves human beings irrespective of how they act toward one another, just as long as they have the right faith. Millions of Protestants hold that believers in Jesus, no matter how many cruel acts they may perform, attain salvation, while nonbelievers in Jesus, no matter how much good they do and how much they may love God, are doomed to eternal damnation.
In spite of these teachings, two points need to be emphasized.
First, it is Christianity, more than any other religion, including Judaism, that has carried the message of the Jewish prophets, the clearest voices of ethical monotheism, to the world.
Second, Christianity, though not theologically pure in its ethical monotheism, can and does lead millions of people to more ethical lives. People do not live by theology alone. Theological teachings aside, the kindness and selflessness often associated with religious Christians and with charitable Christian institutions are rarely paralleled anywhere in the secular world—and infrequently in the religious world, either.
I yearn for the day when Christians will emphasize ethical monotheism as the most important part of their commitment to Christianity. I know from years of work and friendship with Christians of all persuasions that ethical monotheism is a value that many of them can easily and passionately affirm.
Muslims and Ethical Monotheism
During some of the Western world’s darkest periods, Islam was a religious light in the monotheistic world. The seeds of ethical monotheism are deeply rooted in Islam. For whatever reason, however, the soil for their nourishment has, over the last several hundred years, been depleted of necessary nutrients. Islam could be a world force for ethical monotheism, but in its present state, the outlook is problematic.
The Quran has numerous verses that emphasize belief in the one universal God who judges people according to their behavior. Like all religions, however, Islam contains xenophobic elements and doctrines that are incompatible with ethical monotheism. Unlike some other religions today, however, within Islam, xenophobia and hostility to ethical monotheism too often seem to prevail. For example, though the Quran states explicitly that in matters of faith there shall be no coercion, almost everywhere Islam dominates there is considerable religious coercion, whether by the state or by the community.
An example of such state sponsored coercion is Saudi Arabia, where religious police monitor what Muslims drink and reduce women to childlike status by forbidding them, for example, to drive cars. Saudi Arabia also severely restricts the religious freedom of other faiths.
The Sudan, too, is ruled by devout Muslims, and it is one of the most cruel states in the world, especially to its large black non Muslim minority.
Muslims need what most Christians and Jews have experienced – separation of church and state; interaction with other faiths and with modernity; and reform. Islam needs to compete with secularism, not outlaw it, and to allow competing ideologies within Islam. In religion, as in politics, when there is no competition, there is corruption and intolerance.
There are some Muslim voices crying for reform and for ethical monotheism, such as that of Dr. Fathi Osman, the former Princeton historian of Islam and editor of Arabia. When their influence increases, Islam will be a world force for ethical monotheism.

Posted in Christianity, Judaism | Comments Off

Tabletmag: ‘Eagles Fans, the NFL’s Most Notorious, Have an Important Spiritual Lesson to Teach Us – We need a little rowdy tribalism’

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Luke Ford

I think this is the first time I’ve liked anything Liel Liebovitz had to say.

He writes:

Why would anyone put up with this behavior, let alone revel in it? Why tolerate such boorishness, inflected as it is with violence and disdainful of all that is kind and beautiful in the world? There’s a good reason, I think, and it has more to do with theology than it does with athletics.
Aptly enough, I first stumbled upon this bit of religious insight in Jerusalem. I’m a fan of the city’s local soccer team, Beitar, and I was attending a game one day when the God of Vengeance soured on his hometown boys. Beitar lost, and the fans set out on a nearby mall, seeking revenge. Happening on a McDonald’s, they attempted arson, pouring their wrath on the Chicken McNuggets before the law swooped in and had the hooligans arrested.
Observing these men, my fellow fans, I felt a strange sort of pride that troubled me. Even though I could never partake in their shenanigans, and would, under any other circumstances, denounce them as vile little vandals, I was gratified to see them senselessly express their disappointment by behaving like a gaggle of Visigoths with clubs in their hands and pillage on their minds. In their own idiotic way, I understood, they were pledging their allegiance to their tribe. It didn’t matter much that their tribe revolved around something as trivial as soccer, or that their way of expressing themselves involved light eruptions of asocial behavior. What mattered is that these men wanted to belong.
And wanting to belong, these days, is a problem.
These days, you’re likely to be told that the only collective you can join without care or concern is the biggest one possible, that of the human race. Globalists are welcome, praised for their humanity, celebrated for their universal worldview that insists that all peoples and places and cultures are, at heart, the same. But say that you have an affinity for your nation, say, or for the particulars of your religion, and suspicions arise: Are you some sort of separatist? And isn’t your preference really a way to mask feelings of supremacy? Because isn’t belonging really about choosing, and choosing really about hierarchy, and hierarchy really about discrimination?

If Jews can teach the world that tribalism and nationalism are often good, they will be a light unto the nations.

Dennis Dale blogs:

Wanting to belong is only truly a problem for white Westerners. The author of this piece Liel Liebowitz has not only an exception from the compulsion to self-atomize, but the responsibility to resist it, as a Jew. Even the most secular Jew living outside of Israel can take his ethnic identity–a genetic and cultural lineage going back thousands of years–as such a normative given he doesn’t even see it. White Americans used to have this. The critique of “white privilege” is just the pathologizing of the normative values any nation is necessarily based on.
The tribalism of soccer hooligans and American normals is meaningless, except as another degenerate wasteful release of energy. From the elites’ perspective, having nationalist tendencies subsumed in sportsball enthusiasm, whether by design or happy accident, is a Good Thing.
Recently someone tweeted a photo of an impressive parade of German men turned out to support their soccer team, while their women are raped and seduced at home by men with a deeper sort of tribalism.
Nonetheless, Liebowitz is on to something, and perhaps even comfortable secular Jews are starting to worry about the post-national wonderland that awaits.

Posted in Jews, Nationalism | Comments Off

Jewish Success In South Africa

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes:

De Beers was long controlled by the Oppenheimer family, which got into a public feud with the Guptas a year ago.
In general, it’s not a good idea to get on the wrong side of somebody named Oppenheimer. As Hindus, the Guptas should have been familiar with the most famous thing anybody named Oppenheimer ever said: Quoting Vishnu, atomic-bomb creator J. Robert Oppenheimer (probably not a close relation to the South African Oppenheimers, but still…) proclaimed, “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”
The Jewish role in South Africa’s “white monopoly capital” is not insignificant (nor likely irrelevant to Mr. Segal’s point of view). Paul Johnson wrote in A History of the Jews:
But Jews had always been involved in precious stones (especially diamonds) and bullion, and they played a notable part both in the South African deep-level mines and in the financial system which raised the capital to sink them. Such men as Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato, Louis Cohen, Lionel Phillips, Julius Wehrner, Solly Joel, Adolf Goertz, George Albu and Abe Bailey turned South Africa into the world’s largest and richest mining economy.
The South African Jewish Report estimated in 2016 that Jews still make up 26 percent of the 250 richest people in South Africa, despite constituting only 0.14 percent of the population.

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TabletMag: HOW JEWS SHOULD DEAL WITH GENTILES – According to this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study, as little as possible

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Luke Ford

Adam Kirsch writes:

The nominal subject of Tractate Avoda Zara is idol worship, one of the worst sins in Judaism. But as Daf Yomi readers complete our third week of studying this tractate, it is becoming clear that the real concerns of the rabbis are much broader than idolatry. In effect, they are aiming to regulate all of Jews’ relationships with non-Jews. Nowhere, perhaps, is the gulf between the Talmudic worldview and the experience of modern American Jews more evident than here. American Jews live in a world that, while certainly not free of anti-Semitism, is marked by a historically unprecedented openness and trust between Jews and non-Jews. After all, this is a country where President Barack Obama, a Christian, hosted an annual Passover Seder in the White House…
Such stories tend to suggest that the safest course for Jews was to avoid gentiles altogether, and Tractate Avoda Zara clearly uses idol worship as an excuse to separate the Jews from the pagan world that surrounded them. It is not just heresy the rabbis want to stamp out—indeed, actual idol worship seems to be the least of their worries—but excessive intimacy of any kind. We saw earlier that Jews could not do business with gentiles near their festival days, nor sell them items that might be used in pagan rituals. The mishna in Avoda Zara 14b goes further: a Jew should not sell gentiles large livestock because they will be used to violate the Shabbat prohibition on labor.
More troublingly, Jews should not leave small animals alone with gentiles, or entrust their sheep to gentile shepherds, because they are likely to use them to commit bestiality—a law that speaks volumes about the rabbis’ estimation of pagan morals. In addition, a Jew should not entrust his child to a gentile teacher “to teach him to read books or to teach him a craft.” It is not entirely clear whether this prohibition, too, stems from sexual fears, or whether it has more to do with the chance that the teacher will lead the child into apostasy. Broadly speaking, “one may not seclude oneself with gentiles,” since the assumption is that they will try to do a Jew harm.
Other prohibitions are meant to discourage social intercourse with gentiles. Jews may not go to places of amusement, such as circuses, theaters, and stadiums, for two reasons: not only are pagan sacrifices performed there, but they are what the Bible calls “the seat of the scornful,” homes of levity and frivolity. Any time spent there is time lost to Torah study. Moreover, Jews should not praise gentiles, especially women; according to Rav, “it is prohibited for a person to say: How beautiful is this gentile woman!”

Posted in Jews, Talmud | Comments Off

The JQ in the GOP

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Luke Ford

David Cole is not able to point out where Paul Nehlen is wrong so he just calls him “obsessed”.

Whenever I encounter that word flung as an accusation, I suspect the accuser has no factual or logical basis to attack someone, so they go for a cheap psychological put down.

People have called me obsessed for decades. I think I’m diligent about topics that interest me. Who’s to decide between obsession and diligence?

I’ve been following Nehlen with interests the past few weeks. I don’t see any anti-Jewish animus from him. I simply see a guy who notices patterns and calls a spade a spade. He hasn’t done anything to reduce my admiration and my friends on the Jewish Alt Right feel similarly.

David Cole writes: “Nehlen is obsessed with Jews. Everyone who criticizes him gets attacked for being a Jew or a lackey of Jews. Just a few days ago, Nehlen tweeted out an “enemies list” to prove that “the Jews” are out to get him (he included the email addresses and, in some cases, phone numbers of the people on the list). He’s also tweeted photos of Jews with the Star of David stamped above their foreheads.”

I didn’t find any useful insights in this Cole column. YMMV.

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NYT: What Trump’s Speech Says About His Mental Fitness

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Luke Ford

John McWhorter writes:

However, the distinction between public and private speech is key here, so I am unconvinced that his current speech patterns can be analyzed as evidence of dementia. Instead, they’re characteristics of casual speech as it has always existed.
It is easy to forget how much casual speech in general differs from writing. We tend to imagine our speech is tidier than it often is. The complete sentences and logical throughlines of writing are a stylization of speech, rather than a mirror image…
The younger Mr. Trump, albeit as self-obsessed as now, was not yet a rock star, and he had a businessman’s normal inclination to present himself in as polished a manner as possible in public settings. Especially as someone who grew up in the 1950s, when old-school standards of oratory were still part of the warp and woof of American linguistic culture, Mr. Trump instinctually talked “up” when the cameras were rolling. To him, cloaking his speech in its Sunday best would have been part of, as it were, being a gentleman.
However, for him this would always have been more stunt than essence. Since he is someone who neither reads nor reflects, his linguistic comfort zone has always been the unadorned.
At a certain point, Mr. Trump became the man who felt – and was comfortable saying publicly – that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and retain his supporters’ allegiance. Someone with that mind-set, especially a sybaritic person unaccustomed to sustained effort, has no impetus to speak in a way unnatural to him in public.

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White Nationalism Is Spreading In The Orthodox Community

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Luke Ford

Listen.

Anti-Trump activist Elad Nahori writes for the Forward:

Something disturbing has been happening in the Orthodox world. White Nationalist language is infiltrating our public spaces. It’s happening in our shuls, in our communities, in our schools, and of course, online. And those of us who see it are looking on in increasing horror.
There was always some racism in our communities, of course; we’d begun to address it around the time Barack Obama was elected president, when calling black people “shvartze” — a derogatory term for a black person in Yiddish — finally started to become taboo.
But what we’re seeing now is new. It’s different. It’s not just plain racism, or hatred and judgment of a group of people because of their skin pigment. Rather, what I and others have been noticing in our communities is the emergence of a philosophy, one that the Trump era is increasingly bringing into stark relief.
It’s the philosophy of white nationalism that justifies racism, and it’s spreading like a virus among many Orthodox Jews.
Fifteen years ago, you might hear the word “schvartze” in shul. But you wouldn’t hear justifications for deporting black people to Africa. Today, you probably won’t hear a racial slur, at least, not without some sheepishness. But you will hear talking points that you could find on David Duke’s Twitter feed.
In other words, a significant group of Jews have moved from casual racism to an embrace of all-but-the-anti-Semitic aspects of modern white nationalist philosophy, with many of the assumptions and talking points that go with it.
A few weeks ago, President Donald Trump reportedly called Haiti and other countries in Africa “shithole” countries. The white nationalists crowed. “I must come to the defense of #Haiti!” tweeted Richard Spencer, a leader of the nativist “alt-right.” “It’s a potentially beautiful and productive country. The problem is that it’s filled with shithole people. If the French dominated, they could make it great again.” David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan was also thrilled. “Trump spoke Blunt, hard truth that makes PERFECT TRUTH!” he tweeted.
But they were far from alone. When I posted my dismay about Trump’s “shithole” comment on my Facebook page, I was amazed at how similar many of the pro-Trump Orthodox Jews I knew sounded compared to Spencer, Duke, and Trump himself.
As one argued, “Option A: El Salvador isn’t a ‘shithole,’ so they don’t need 17 years of Temporary Protected Status, and migrants from there should be sent home immediately. Option B: El Salvador is, in fact, a ‘shithole.’”
Another Orthodox friend, who had left South Africa for Israel, remarked, “I’m so glad I emigrated from a shithole.”
And another frum Jew wrote, “So, how many snowflakes would like to move to Haiti?”
When I facetiously wondered if that commenter also believed in “white genocide” (a term popular in the white nationalist community), the person responded: “I have no idea what you are talking about. I don’t know any white supremacists, so I don’t know what they ‘sound like’. By “genocide” do you mean blacks murdering white farmers in South Africa?”
And it wasn’t just in my own orbit, either. Soon I heard from friends, liberal Orthodox Jews like me, who listened in horror as online comments were repeated in synagogue on Shabbat.
And it always boiled down to the same rationalizations, those used by Spencer and Duke: Haiti and Africa are indeed shitholes, and Trump was right not to want people from those countries.
What I learned from Trump’s “shithole” comment was that the President’s dog whistles aren’t only being heard by the “alt-right” anymore. That countries dominated by blacks are shitholes was the broad consensus, it seemed to me that weekend. Despite the concerns about Trump’s “crass” wording, far too many Orthodox Jews agreed with the content.
Was it the majority of the Orthodox world? Doubtful. But was it a portion large enough to be concerned about? Absolutely.
And those who didn’t openly agree with the racist rhetoric remained silent, choosing to celebrate the naming of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, or the release of Sholom Rubashkin, rather than call out the racism in their midst.
Similarly, our leaders maintained a stiff silence. While the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Reform movement spoke out stridently and bravely against Trump’s words, there has not been one word from the Orthodox Union or any Orthodox groups. They are no doubt afraid of the backlash of these extremists, as when Alex Rapoport’s Masbia, a soup kitchen run by an anti-Trump Hasidic Jew, lost donors when he protested the Muslim ban.
And this isn’t the first time. Since a majority of Orthodox Jews voted for Trump, they are the only group in the U.S. reporting growing approval ratings of Trump — up to 71%, according to the AJC. So approving are they that immediately following the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia and Trump’s subsequent defense of white supremacists with the claim that some neo-Nazis are “fine people”, there was the same deafening silence from Orthodox leadership, at least at first, the same defenses, and the same parroting of white nationalist talking points.
Remember the article entitled “I’m an Orthodox Jew in Israel but liberals have become so deranged with hypocrisy, I’m actually standing with the KKK on Charlottesville”?
While an outlier in its framing, this author put into words what many in his community were feeling: Ultimately, even the KKK may not be as bad as the liberal world.

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