Kahanists Embrace Trump — But Are Divided on ‘Alt-Right’

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Luke Ford

The Forward:

A Twitter user known as AltRabbi wrote online, “Closest thing jews have had to alt right was kahane.”

AltRabbi is known online as a religious Jew who is sympathetic to the “alt-right.”

“Secular Jews in US are so severly [sic] SJW that they are lost,” he wrote, using an acronym for “social justice warrior,” a pejorative term for activists.

Hundreds of people watch Torah classes organized by Baron, who admires the ways the “alt-right” has harnessed the internet.

“There are some lessons to learn from them in the way they reach out,” he said.

A recent flare-up in Whitefish, Montana, brought the generational divisions of the movement into sharp relief.

Neo-Nazis pledged to carry out an armed march against local Jews in Whitefish, where Spencer lives part time. Spencer did not endorse the march, and quietly distanced himself from the anti-Semitic campaign, but the clear ideological links between the “alt-right” and Nazism were laid bare.

This caused members of the older JDL generation to take a stand.

Meir Weinstein, national director of Canada’s JDL, told the Forward he was more than willing to confront Spencer and neo-Nazis in person.

“That guy’s going to get his head kicked in. He’s a Nazi, this guy’s a Nazi,” Weinstein said of Spencer in a phone interview.

But others, like Stern, are taking a more tempered approach: “We’re not going to work with Nazis — God forbid — but there are factions within the ‘alt-right’ where there is a commonality.”

Stern hopes that Spencer might “denounce all forms of Nazism.” Spencer has complicated views on Jews and Israel and does not call himself a Nazi — preferring instead white “identitarian.” Still, it is unlikely that he will “disavow” any of his neo-Nazi supporters.

In an email to the Forward, Stern asked: “Why shouldn’t we associate ourselves with a charismatic and extremely popular rising figure within the MAGA movement who agrees with us on most issues, but has some problematic followers?”

In Stern’s eyes, “white nationalism is not akin to Nazism,” and white nationalists “do not necessarily hate Jews or non-whites.” Sterns message went on: “They simply want the best for their race. And Jews are white too btw, so why should we object to that?”

“We are looking to make an alliance with people on the right, but that doesn’t include people who you would call Nazis,” Baron said, trying to clarify the Kahanist camp’s position. “We do connect to people who have an American nationalist viewpoint.”

While it is unlikely that Spencer will develop a formal alliance with Kahanist elements, both they and the more established JDL movement are part of a swell of nationalist groups angling for revivals, according to researchers who monitor radical groups.

“This time seems to be ripe for extremist movements of all types,” said Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see this Kahanist ideology grow online.”

Faybyshenko has high hopes for his re-energized movement.

“It’s something being reborn,” he said. “Especially after the election results, we now see that people are waking up.”

Posted in Alt Right, R. Meir Kahane | Comments Off on Kahanists Embrace Trump — But Are Divided on ‘Alt-Right’

White Supremacist Cheers Trump’s ‘De-Judification’ of Holocaust

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Luke Ford

The Forward writes:

Richard Spencer, the leading ideologue of the “alt-right,” Donald Trump’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that failed to mention Jews or anti-Semitism was an important, perhaps revolutionary, step.

Spencer dubbed it the “de-Judification” of the Holocaust.

Jewish activists, Spencer wrote in a short post for his new website Altright.com, have long insisted on making the Holocaust “all about their meta-narrative of suffering” and a way to “undergird their peculiar position in American society.”

The Holocaust, in Spencer’s eyes, has become a sort of moral bludgeon — used against white nationalists like himself.

“We can’t limit immigration, because Hitler. We can’t can’t be proud of ourselves as a Europeans, because Holocaust. White people can be Christian, but not too Christian, because Auschwitz,” he wrote.

Spencer went on: “Effectively, any policy, idea, or belief that is markedly right-wing and traditional — that evokes identity, power, hierarchy, and dominance — must be regulated by the possibility that it could potentially lead back to the German Führer.”

Spencer, a onetime Duke University PhD student, popularized the term “alt-right,” a broad label that defines a new generation of white nationalists.

While other influential members of the movement, like Andrew Anglin, clearly identify with Nazis (Anglin’s Daily Stormer website is named after the Nazi propaganda sheet Der Stürmer), Spencer says he is not a Nazi and denies the label that is often attributed to him, preferring the term “identitarian,” a reference to a far right political movement that has roots in France.

Spencer dismissed Jewish responses to Trump’s statement as “kvetching,” using a Yiddish term for complaining.

In speaking about Hitler and the Holocaust, Spencer has also elided Jewish suffering, telling the Daily Caller that “terrible things were done to many different people during that terrible war.”

He also does not outright condemn Hitler, calling him a “historical figure.” “He’s done things that I think are despicable,” Spencer told the Daily Caller, but did not go into details. “I’m not going to play this game.”

In Spencer’s eyes, the “de-Judefication” of the Holocaust is a quintessentially “Trumpian” statement. Spencer championed Trump through the presidential campaign — and though he has been critical of the president at times, seems to have come around to Trump.

“Trump is a white nationalist, so to speak, he is alt-right whether he likes it or not,” Spencer in a recent interview on “The David Pakman Show.”

I agree with this Richard Spencer essay:

This week, the activist Jewish community in the United States forcefully reminded the world that, no matter how much we might moralize the Holocaust, no matter how much we might glean from it lessons about man’s fallen state or dehumanization in the modern world, the Holocaust is all about the Jews. It is all about their meta-narrative of suffering, and it shall undergird their peculiar position in American society, and theirs alone.

In 2005, the UN deemed January 27 to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the occasion has annually elicited soulful statements by sitting presidents. President Trump’s press release was as seemingly banal as any other:

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.

“Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.

“In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.”

But the kvetching came quickly. . .

Hitler and the Holocaust are the negative moral center of the liberal universe.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky famously put forth the maxim that “Without God, all is permitted.” That is, without a singular moral authority, life descends into hedonistic violence, nihilism, chaos, and degeneracy.

Dostoyevski didn’t quite foresee that the post-God 21st century—the American Age and “End of History”—would arrive at its own hyper-morality, this time as a negation: “Because Hitler, everything is forbidden.”[1]

We can’t limit immigration, because Hitler. We can’t can’t be proud of ourselves as a Europeans, because Holocaust. White people can be Christian, but not too Christian, because Auschwitz. Und so weiter . . . Effectively, any policy, idea, or belief that is markedly right-wing and traditional—that evokes identity, power, hierarchy, and dominance—must be regulated by the possibility that it could potentially lead back to the German Führer.

This trend leaves activist Jews in a difficult position. Hitler and the Holocaust define postmodern global morality, and yet both have peculiar resonances for Jews, in particular, for their senses of identity and “apartness” from European society. Thus, there has always been an uncertainty and worry over the spread and predominance of “Because Hitler. . . morality.” In academia, the rise of “genocide studies” (I was actually a Teaching Assistant for such a course in grad school) has, on the one hand, cemented the Holocaust as the moral paradigm . . . and simultaneously threatened its uniqueness, threatened to make the Holocaust “just another genocide,” which is unimaginable for Jewish activists.

Trump’s statement on Holocaust Memorial Day is, on the surface, utterly defensible within the current moral paradigm: Hitler is depicted as quintessential evil, with modern society revolving around this dark center. But when viewed from the perspective of Jewish activists, Trump’s statement becomes outrageous, as it dethrones Jews from a special position in the universe.

It is especially Trumpian of Trump to bring this contradiction to the fore.

Note

  1. The Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek reached a similar conclusion:Without God, all is forbidden. “Everything is permitted to today’s hedonistic Last Man—you can enjoy everything, BUT deprived of its substance which makes it dangerous.” ↩︎

Update

The Trump administration has doubled-down on its “de-Judification” of the Holocaust.

CNN:

The White House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day didn’t mention Jews or anti-Semitism because “despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered,” administration spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN on Saturday.

Hicks provided a link to a Huffington Post UK story noting that while 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, 5 million others were also slaughtered during Adolf Hitler’s genocide, including “priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical disabilities, communists, trade unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, anarchists, Poles and other Slavic peoples, and resistance fighters.”

Asked if the White House was suggesting President Donald Trump didn’t mention Jews as victims of the Holocaust because he didn’t want to offend the other people the Nazis targeted and killed, Hicks replied, “it was our honor to issue a statement in remembrance of this important day.”

Posted in Alt Right, Holocaust | Comments Off on White Supremacist Cheers Trump’s ‘De-Judification’ of Holocaust

In Rare Unity, Orthodox and Liberal Denominations Are Critical of Trump Refugee Ban

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Luke Ford

JTA:

Two large groups representing Orthodox Jews responded to President Donald Trump’s executive order barring migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries and refugees from around the world by warning against policies that would place any limits on immigration based on religion.

With the combined statement by the Orthodox Union and Rabbinical Council of America, all four major American Jewish denominations have criticized the executive order in some form. The Reconstructionist movement condemned the statement ahead of its signing Friday, while the Reform and Conservative movements condemned it on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

The Orthodox statement came Sunday night. It was first issued in December 2015 after Trump called for banning the entry of Muslims into the United States.

It is extremely rare for all four movements, which have split on everything from LGBT rights to Israel policy, to unite in opposing a presidential action.

While the Orthodox organizations said they recognize the need for protections against terrorists, they urged the administration to protect religious freedom.

“We call on all Americans to reaffirm that discrimination against any group based solely upon religion is wrong and anathema to the great traditions of religious and personal freedoms upon which this country was founded,” the statement says, and calls on “the United States government to recognize the threats posed by radical Islamists, while preserving and protecting the rights of all people who seek peace, no matter how they worship God.”

Trump has denied that Friday’s executive order is a ban on Muslims, although the statements by the Reform and Conservative movements both assert that the policy is tantamount to a religious test for refugees, travelers and migrants. The executive order prohibits for 120 days all refugees from entering the country, with an indefinite ban on those from Syria. Citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, are barred from entry for 90 days.

A range of Jewish groups have opposed the order, and Jews joined protesters at airports across the country on Saturday to protest the ban.

The Zionist Organization of America appears to be the only major Jewish group to unreservedly support the executive order.

Posted in Jews, Orthodox Union | Comments Off on In Rare Unity, Orthodox and Liberal Denominations Are Critical of Trump Refugee Ban

How Do You Make Sense Of Trump’s First Days In Power?

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Luke Ford

If you go by what the TV networks and major newspapers say, Trump is blowing it. And yet when I weed out the propaganda and just concentrate on his actions, I am ecstatic.

So while I read the LA Times, NY Times, and Washington Post every day, my main ways of understanding this new world come through the following sources:

* Drudge Report
* Steve Sailer (and his commenters)
* Twitter

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I remember the “Freedom for Soviet Jews” banners outside of every synagogue way back when. Of course, every liberal will say there’s a philosophical difference between a preference and a ban, but is there, really? Those who areprefered take the place in line of those who aren’t. And I don’t think the Constitution recognizes the difference between a preference and a ban. Regardless, the Constitution doesn’t apply to those who don’t live here. The “We the people,” phrase is a lie by omission. The more complete phrase reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union….”

* “Save Soviet Jews” was a big enough phenomenon to become a meme,which was hard to do back in the late 70′s. But one would find it jokingly scribbled on men’s room walls everywhere in the form of a coupon promotion: “Save Soviet Jews – win valuable prizes!”

* Hold on now! You’re telling me that Julia Yoffe and Eugene Volokh were not expelled from their native villages and forced to live in the steppes? They weren’t gang-raped by Cossacks? They didn’t see their families tortured in front of them?

Are you telling me they were actually well-connected cosmopolitans with very good college educations and great prospects in Russia who abandoned their homeland because moving West (and NOT to Israel) was good for their careers?

And here I thought they were really suffering.

* Well, I suppose that if being asked to reimburse the state which provided them with a world-class tertiary level education the cost of said education prior to emigrating was persecution, they were persecuted, the poor souls.

* Is it just me, or has Ann Coulter become the primary conduit through which iStevean ideas reach our political discourse?

* I knew many Soviet Jews back in the ’70′s, the vast majority of them were not religious, nor, IIRC, were they particularly “Jewish” in the sense that many had non-Jewish spouses. Basically they came here because the career opportunities in Russia sucked, and this was a way out for them. But then the career opportunities sucked for a lot of people in Russia.

One can try to say that the definition was not “religious” but rather “ethnic” yet that doesn’t really change the equation; one could just as easily conflate “Muslim” and “Arab” in the present instance, in many cases it makes no difference (not for all, e.g., Iran, Sudan). The fact is, there was preferential open door policies for Jews for decades, and since Jews are both an ethnicity and a religious group, the same concept applies.

Furthermore, one could argue that Jews are an ethnicity only in terms of their religion, because it is the religion that encouraged endogamy; remove the religio-cultural taboo, and Jews marry out at the same very high rate as, say, Germans and Irish in America. Moreover, the idea of Soviet Jews getting out was so they would migrate to Israel, where “ethnicity” or “race” is defined and decided by religious authorities, which reinforces the link.

* I’d say Julia Ioffe is fairly good looking but that tweet she sent out alleging — even as a joke — incest in the Trump family was completely perverse. That would give me second thoughts about her even if I was in the market for a date.

* Dude, I use to work as a background investigator carrying fed creds. A statement like she made should immediately signal she’s got major emotional and psychological issues if not a full subscription and for you to stay the fuck away. A person like this would be capable of destroying your life pretty quickly and not give it a second thought. I’ve seen it over, and over, and over again. If you see just one tiny puff of smoke you can be sure there’s a raging inferno. As they say, reputation is based more on what’s hidden than on what’s done. Some people are good at hiding things, but it’s not possible in marriage unless one spouse chooses to ignore the obvious (vincible ignorance).

Forget eHarmony and the idea of compatibility. That’s bullshit. There’s only one criterion: marry someone with a good disposition and a rock solid moral character. Which assumes a clean record and a functional and normal family upbringing (mother and father still married and more siblings the better).

* The unifying theme of the “black bloc” types last night at Berkeley was cowardice.

Cowardly mob with sticks beating a single unarmed man.

Cowardly clocking a man from behind with a bike lock as he calmly looks the other way.

Pepper spraying the woman as she speaks to the reporter.

Breaking windows of the student union, and attempting to throw a flare through the hole from a distance, rather than having the gonads to run up and push it through.

All with masks on.

These people fear cops, even nice Berkeley cops with lots of video being recorded, even in Alameda county with its lax prosecution of crime.

Posted in America | Comments Off on How Do You Make Sense Of Trump’s First Days In Power?

Conservative, bisexual, and latino: Professor forced to quit hellish teaching experience

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Luke Ford

From Red Alert: Even when conservative professors earn tenure, the academic experience can get unbearable.

Professor Robert Lopez of California State University-Northridge was happy to receive his tenure in May 2013. The achievement is particularly difficult for conservative professors. Three years later, however, Lopez was ready to leave, writing about the “salvation” he’s found and how he’s “quitting because I found the will to live.”

Lopez, who is bisexual and Latino, has written about problems he faced on campus months after obtaining tenure for expressing his conservative views. In October 2013, “The Devil Comes Home to Cal State Northridge” was published for American Thinker. “I confessed that I admired Palin to a colleague, and he immediately compared me to Hitler,” Lopez wrote.

The reactions against Lopez didn’t stop with the Hitler comparison. People were rude and denounced him. His applications for benefits were rejected, as were department newsletter submissions. He couldn’t get on committees, and faculty members whom he called “the Marxist Brothers” held closed-door meetings about him.

Lopez “had people carve threatening lines over the Army stickers on my door, tear my American flag, and throw flyers at me.”

He was not allowed to use university resources for anything political, but his colleagues were held to different standards.

“Anything I did, on the job or off, that alluded remotely to my not being a leftist counted as political and was therefore grounds for complaint and possible sanction,” he wrote.

As Lopez chronicles his worsening experiences, a common theme is “the constant stream of ‘it has come to my attention’ messages.”

Last month, American Thinker published “The True Story of a Conservative Refugee.” Lopez describes how he became convinced that someone had been going through his personal items, which he had suspected for years. He described more of the complaints against him, including one which led to a tribunal:

The epic Title IX tribunal over my conference at the Reagan Presidential Library is still now, to this day, open and undecided after 600 days. The case was based on a gay student claiming he had a nervous breakdown because of anti-gay “targeting” at the Reagan Library and a woman who claimed I did not nominate her for an award because she alleged that the five female speakers at the Reagan Library were “anti-female.”

The investigation of Lopez, and the risk of suspension, highlights the hypocrisy of campus culture. At other universities, professors who made anti-Republican comments received pay raises, a stark contrast to Lopez being forced out.

Lopez felt forced to teach a certain way because he couldn’t trust his students and “was teaching like a robot.” He also suspected that his colleagues were “planting students in my class to annoy me.” Lopez went through lengths of only accepting digital papers, of no longer providing comments on papers, and of letting students write about whatever they wanted.

Lopez told The College Fix that he stood up for “racial and ethnic diversity in literature and staffing.” With calls for diversity from students, particularly when it comes to assigned literature, there could have been common ground for Lopez and his detractors.

It wasn’t enough for those out to get him.

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