According to interviews with Fox News women, Ailes would often begin by offering to mentor a young employee. He then asked a series of personal questions to expose potential vulnerabilities. “He asked, ‘Am I in a relationship? What are my familial ties?’ It was all to see how stable or unstable I was,” said a former employee. Megyn Kelly told lawyers at Paul, Weiss that Ailes made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 2006 when she was going through a divorce. A lawyer for former anchor Laurie Dhue told me that Ailes harassed her around 2006; at the time, she was struggling with alcoholism.
Ailes’s longtime executive assistant Judy Laterza — who became one of his top lieutenants, earning more than $2 million a year, according to a Fox executive — seemed to function as a recruiter of sorts. According to Carlson’s attorney, in 2002, Laterza remarked to a college intern she saw on the elevator about how pretty she was and invited her to meet Ailes. After that meeting, Ailes arranged for the young woman to transfer to his staff. Her first assignment was to go down to the newsstand and fetch him the latest issue of Maxim. When she returned with the magazine, Ailes asked her to stay with him in his office. He flipped through the pages. The woman told the Washington Post that Ailes said, “You look like the women in here. You have great legs. If you sleep with me, you could be a model or a newscaster.” She cut short her internship. (Laterza did not respond to a request for comment.)
I spoke with another Fox News administrative assistant who said Laterza invited her to meet Ailes in 2004. The woman, then 25, told Ailes that her ambition was to do commercials. Ailes offered to pay for voice lessons (she declined) and helped her land an agent at William Morris. A few months later, Ailes summoned her to his office for an update. She told him how excited she was about the opportunities, and Ailes invited her for a drink. She suggested happy hour, but he demurred. “For a man in my position, it would have to be alone at a hotel,” she recalls him saying. “Do you know how to play the game?” She tried to get out of the situation as tactfully as possible. “I don’t feel comfortable doing this,” she said. “I respect your family; what about your son?” She remembers Ailes’s reply: “I’m a multifaceted man. That’s one side of me.” As she left the office, she says, Ailes tried to kiss her. “I was holding a binder full of voice-over auditions that I put between us. I was terrified.” She says she never heard from the William Morris agent again.
The fact that these incidents of harassment were so common may have contributed to why no one at Fox came forward or filed a lawsuit until now. Ailes’s attitudes about women permeated the very air of the network, from the exclusive hiring of attractive women to the strictly enforced skirts-and-heels dress code to the “leg cam” that lingers on female panelists’ crossed legs on air. It was hard to complain about something that was so normalized. Other senior executives harassed women, too. “Anyone who claimed there was a hostile work environment was seen as a complainer,” says a former Fox employee who says Ailes harassed her. “Or that they can’t take a joke.”
… Karem Alsina, a former Fox makeup artist, told me she grew suspicious when Fox anchors came to see her before private meetings with Ailes to have their makeup done. “They would say, ‘I’m going to see Roger, gotta look beautiful!’ ” she recalled. “One of them came back down after a meeting, and the makeup on her nose and chin was gone.”
Posted inFox|Comments Off on The Women Who Recruited For Roger Ailes
Then came Donald Trump. Kelly’s feud with the GOP nominee was one of the dominant story lines of the presidential election; it also exploded the fragile balance of relationships at the top of Fox News.
According to Fox sources, Murdoch blamed Ailes for laying the groundwork for Trump’s candidacy. Ailes had given Trump, his longtime friend, a weekly call-in segment on Fox & Friends to sound off on political issues. (Trump used Fox News to mainstream the birther conspiracy theory.) Ailes also had lunch with Trump days before he launched his presidential campaign and continued to feed him political advice throughout the primaries, according to sources close to Trump and Ailes. (And in the days after Carlson filed her lawsuit, Trump advised Ailes on navigating the crisis, even recommending a lawyer.)
Murdoch was not a fan of Trump’s and especially did not like his stance on immigration. (The antipathy was mutual: “Murdoch’s been very bad to me,” Trump told me in March.) A few days before the first GOP debate on Fox in August 2015, Murdoch called Ailes at home. “This has gone on long enough,” Murdoch said, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox’s debate moderators — Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace — to hammer Trump on a variety of issues. Ailes, understanding the GOP electorate better than most at that point, likely thought it was a bad idea. “Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee,” Ailes told a colleague around this time. But he didn’t fight Murdoch on the debate directive.
On the night of August 6, in front of 24 million people, the Fox moderators peppered Trump with harder-hitting questions. But it was Kelly’s question regarding Trump’s history of crude comments about women that created a media sensation. He seemed personally wounded by her suggestion that this spoke to a temperament that might not be suited for the presidency. “I’ve been very nice to you, though I could probably maybe not be based on the way you have treated me,” he said pointedly.
After the debate, Trump called Ailes and screamed about Kelly. “How could you do this?” he said, according to a person briefed on the call. Ailes was caught between his friend Trump, his boss Murdoch, and his star Kelly. “Roger lost control of Megyn and Trump,” a Fox anchor said.
The parties only became more entrenched when Trump launched a series of attacks against Kelly, including suggesting that her menstrual cycle had influenced her debate question. Problematically for Ailes, Fox’s audience took Trump’s side in the fight; Kelly received death threats from viewers, according to a person close to her. Kelly had even begun to speculate, according to one Fox source, that Trump might have been responsible for her getting violently ill before the debate last summer. Could he have paid someone to slip something into her coffee that morning in Cleveland? she wondered to colleagues.
While Ailes released a statement defending Kelly, he privately blamed her for creating the crisis. “It was an unfair question,” he told a Fox anchor. Kelly felt betrayed, both by Ailes and by colleagues like O’Reilly and Baier when they didn’t defend her, sources who spoke with her said. “She felt she put herself out there,” a colleague said.
Frustrated at Fox, Kelly hired a powerhouse agent at CAA and began auditioning in earnest, and in public, for a job at another network. In interviews, she said her ambition was to become the next Barbara Walters and to host prime-time specials. She wanted to prove to the industry she could land a “big get” — and the biggest get of all was Trump. So Kelly went to Trump Tower to lobby the candidate for an interview. It worked — even Trump couldn’t resist the spectacle of a rematch — but in the end the show failed: The ratings were terrible and reviewers panned her generally sycophantic questions. Worse for Kelly, it eroded her burgeoning status as a tough journalist who stood up to Trump. Afterward, her relationship with Ailes further deteriorated. According to Fox sources, they barely spoke in recent months.
Posted inDonald Trump, Fox|Comments Off on How Rupert Murdoch Tried To End The Trump Candidacy
Linda Stasi writes: Laurie Luhn, the latest woman to accuse ex-Fox boss/perennial pervert Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, is now saying she only became the disgusting old pervert’s “whore” because she thought it would advance her career.
And it did. She went from his cash whore to his on-the-books madam. And now she’s so upset — after 20 years and a $3 million settlement — that she had to tell all: to New York magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman.
Meantime, during those 20 years Luhn accepted more no-show jobs than Dean Skelos’ son. In fact, at one point she was making $250,000 a year as a Fox events planner without events. Well, that’s not quite true, since she actually planned some events. Like? Like trysts with Ailes and then, after he got tired of her, trysts for Ailes.
She indicates it started out innocently enough with her simply wanting a job in media.
Seriously? If a disgusting creep dangles a job, and then asks you to show up at a hotel in a garter belt, chances are good he’ll be dangling more than just a job.
In this case, she says he dangled what one of his victims described as his “raw hamburger meat.” OK, that’s enough to wreck the sex lives of every adult in America right there.
Did she think part of the job description as media adviser was exotic dancer? Who wouldn’t confuse the two?
When the dancing was done, “Ailes told her to get down on her knees in front of him,” she said, and put his hands on her temples … ‘Tell me you will do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. … Do you understand? You will follow orders.’”
Did she run out screaming into the night into the nearest precinct to report him? No, instead she continued in an arrangement that paid her well.
Ailes told her she was his whore. And she was. After he got her to involve other women in S&M sex, he’d leave a grand on the dresser.
When he put her on the Fox News payroll, he allowed her to hire staff — good-looking only.
Posted inSex|Comments Off on Laurie Luhn, alleged ‘whore’ for Fox pervert Roger Ailes, doesn’t seem so innocent in this scheme
Dennis Prager writes: Many progressive Jews are shocked that Black Lives Matter (BLM), a movement they support, has turned out to be virulently anti-Israel — to the extent that in its new platform, it charges Israel with “genocide” against Palestinians. Their response calls to mind an event of nearly 50 years ago.
In 1970, the most famous American classical musician of the 20th century — Leonard Bernstein, the conductor of the New York Philharmonic and a major composer (“West Side Story,” operas, etc.) — along with other men of the left, both black and Jewish, threw what probably became the most notorious private fundraiser in American history at his Manhattan penthouse.
The honored guests were the Black Panthers, an America-hating, police-hating radical Black group, a sort-of predecessor to BLM. In the words of liberal writer Adam Gopnik in the latest issue of The New Yorker, the Panthers were “mindlessly cruel, misogynistic gangsters, capable of acts of torture and murder … ”
Here is how Panther leader “Field Marshall” Don Cox began the evening:
“We call [the police] pigs. … We recognize that this country is the most oppressive country in the world, maybe in the history of the world. The pigs have the weapons and they are ready to use them on the people. … They are ready to commit genocide against those who stand up against them.”
Bernstein did not express a word of protest, let alone end the fundraiser, after hearing police labeled “pigs” and America labeled “the most oppressive country in the world.” In fact, Bernstein (who, to make the parallels even sharper, was very pro-Israel) pledged his entire fee for conducting the opera “Cavalleria Rusticana” to the Panthers. Four other prominent Jews — film director Otto Preminger, lyricist Sheldon Harnick (“Fiddler on the Roof”), lyricist and composer Burton Lane (“Finian’s Rainbow”) and renowned art dealer Richard Feigen — then made their pledges.
Prior to the Bernstein event, another Jew in the arts, film director and producer Sidney Lumet, also threw a party for the Black Panthers at his home.
As New York Magazine reported:
“Ray ‘Masai’ Hewitt, the Panthers’ Minister of Education and member of the Central Committee … laid it on the line. … If buildings were burned and other violence ensued, that was only part of the struggle that the power structure had forced the oppressed minorities into.”
No country in history has treated its Jewish citizens as well as the United States has, yet left-wing Jews have supported almost every left-wing group that depicts America as an oppressor (and as war-mongering, imperialist, systemically racist, etc.).
But this love for the left has never been reciprocated. The left (not traditional liberals, it must be noted) has been Jew-hating (and later, Israel-hating) throughout its history.
Jews adored Karl Marx for well over a century, but that grandson of two Orthodox rabbis wrote one of the most influential anti-Semitic books of the 19th century (“On the Jewish Question”).
Shortly before he died last year, Robert Wistrich, the head of Hebrew University’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, wrote a devastating book on left-wing anti-Semitism (“From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel”).
And one of America’s most prominent liberals, professor Alan Dershowitz, has just written an article titled “Are Jews Who Refuse to Renounce Israel Being Excluded From ‘Progressive’ Groups?”
Professor Dershowitz’s answer is, of course, yes. The “progressive groups” cited in the Dershowitz article have contempt for America — and America-hatred and Israel-hatred always go together.
“Last year,” Dershowitz wrote, “Rabbi Susan Talve, a longtime activist on race issues in the St. Louis area, was told that her advocacy for Israel was incompatible with the objectives of Black Lives Matter: ‘Solidarity from Ferguson to Palestine has become a central tenet of the movement’ she was informed, because ‘Israeli and U.S. state oppression are deeply interconnected.’
“Similarly,” Dershowitz noted, “a student who attended a Black Lives Matter rally at Northwestern University last year was told, ‘you support Israel, so you cannot also support us.’ ”
Dershowitz then lists other major left-wing groups that are anti-Israel:
“MoveOn, CodePink, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter [have] become openly opposed to the nation state of the Jewish people.”
And all these groups are supported by left-wing Jews.
Posted inBlacks, BLM|Comments Off on Black Lives Matter Turns Against Israel
The pair of Jewish losers at the heart of the new arms-smuggling serio-comedy ‘War Dogs’ remind us that losers who dream big may be losers, but at least they dream big”
As we’ll learn, Efraim is a shadow of a human being, without the ability to connect to others through friendship, love, or family. Yet he’s also charismatic because he is someone who loves how he spends his time. We’re supposed to identify with David, an attractive nebbish in a pink polo shirt carting a massage table around, but we’re mesmerized by Efraim, loud, crude and one-dimensional though he is.
Efraim and David spend almost all their waking hours in an office that’s basically a desk and a Scarface poster, staring at a U.S. government defense-procurement website and trying to figure out a way for their tiny firm, AEY Inc., to fulfill the contracts too small for established businesses to want to bid on. The movie makes it look like enormous fun. Because their business day begins again at midnight Miami time, morning in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the boundaries of work and play are diffuse. Because of this, and because these guys are in their 20s, there’s a lot of weed smoked and, eventually, coke snorted. It’s not so different from The Social Network, except that Mark Zuckerberg was creating something, and Efraim is just a middleman between arms buyers and sellers.
But the biggest difference between these guys and Silicon Valley is in style. The dudes are Jewish, just like Zuckerberg, but they’re from an insular, probably lower-middle-class Jewish background, while Zuckerberg went to Exeter and spent a couple of years at Harvard. (It seems Diveroli and Packouz are Sephardic.) They could just as well be Italian- or Irish-Americans—anyone who grew up in a tight-knit ethnic enclave, who got seed capital from a guy with a chain of dry cleaners (in real life, apparently, the financier was a Mormon in Utah) not a venture capitalist. Efraim has more in common with Melanie Griffith’s working-class striver from 1988’s Working Girl than with the privileged wonks of The Social Network; he was kicked out of high school after ninth grade and was just 18 when he started AEY. (The movie has them the same age, early 20, but David is really four years older.)
Of course, Efraim isn’t meant to be a role model. He’s open about his use of prostitutes; in fact, he’s unable to imagine any other kind of relationship with a woman. When he sees a girl he likes in a nightclub, he offers her $1,000 to blow him in his car, saying, “Why don’t we pretend we’ve had the three dates.” (Her boyfriend saunters by and decks him.) There are signs early on that Efraim’s also unable to be the “best friend” to David that he claims.
The two men get a huge, historic ammunition contract—but they make a sloppy mistake, and their comeuppance is only a matter of time. And as the business expands, Efraim spends more time doing cocaine and becomes suspicious and mean. We sense his unraveling in a scene of a trainee orientation. At the end of his spiel, Efraim asks if the trainees have any questions. “What does AEY stand for?” one guy asks. Efraim says, “It doesn’t stand for anything. Like IBM. Does IBM stand for anything?” The trainee says, “Well, actually it does. It stands for International Business Machines.” And Efraim shouts at him, “Get the fuck out of my office!” Then, “Anyone else have a question?” Silence. That bullying moment is, in fact, pure Trump. And you know then that Efraim is killing his newborn company…
War Dogs doesn’t offer any easy answers; the potential happy ending for David comes with moral ambiguity. Everything costs something. But the movie forces us to ask: Why not try for the big time, whatever that means to you?
I would have thought the message was don’t cheat people because people remember when they’ve been ripped off. And if they’ve been ripped off by Jews, they may well hold their resentment against all Jews.
* 1. Forward prefers an ad hominem against someone supporting an anti-Clinton allegation to investigating the tweet for its content and the content Kelly’s interview with Wohl.
2. It’s twitter, most people there retweet others without doing a full background check and cavity search that Mr. Feldman engaged in.
3. If Forward’s standard for disqualifying someone from presidency is their child’s retweet of someone even the child is likely not to know everything perfectly, why doesn’t Forward do the same to Hillary Clinton? Surely, her association with the Blumenthals is much more intimate than Trump’s son’s retweet.
(BTW, I do not know for whom I will vote if for either of the candidates at all. I am not sold on Trump, so that path of responses to me is pointless.)
Posted inAnti-Semitism|Comments Off on Donald Trump Jr. Retweets the ‘Neo-Nazi Movement’s Favorite Academic’ Kevin MacDonald
I loved the speech. It was the first Trump speech that both the fire and spontaneity of the stadium stump speeches and the focus and brilliance of the policy speeches. This was one for the ages. Taken together with the triumphant diplomatic trip to Mexico, this is the most astounding political coup I can remember. The lead up with the “to be determined” waffling was brilliant as well. The idiot press took the bait hook line and sinker, and now are stuck with having given huge exposure to this particular speech. I’m really looking forwards to watching them squirm. Ending it with the families of the victims was absolutely the right move.
Immigration policy is about the fundamental question of politics: Whose side are you on?
Trump Goes to Mexico was brilliant because it made clear that he was totally cool with the President of Mexico putting Mexico First. After all, that’s the President of Mexico’s job. People are better off when political leaders look out for the voters who put them into office.
Hillary says Trump wants to reduce immigration because he’s Ravaged by Hate, while (like Jeb) She Loves Mexicans. But Trump replies that he wants to reduce immigration because as President of the United States, putting America First would be his job.
COMMENTS:
* I was told that actually appealing to the citizens of a country was filthy POPULISM which leads to all kinds of horrors … like Big Business having to pay decent wages.
* It’s well established in the ‘sphere that Jeb’s Mex-loving is a result of being the dorky black sheep of his family. He got an Inca because he lacked the ability to get a White girl. HC loves Mexico because she’s a typical hysterical menstrual hag who hates Straight White Men but loves her Wall Street (((in-laws))) cash.
* I’m watching the opening of “CBS This Morning”, 7 am EDT. The lead story is that Trump’s visit to Mexico was a “Fail” and his speech was a contradictory mess that nobody (outside of the cheering knuckle-draggers) saw any merit in. Nimble, clever Hillary can’t help but gloat, at least a bit.
My Nice Liberal Lady wife pursed her lips and shook her head. So would you, if you thought you were watching the news.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on Trump vs. Hillary on Immigration
* Sub-heading: “Security officials openly admit that unarmed civilians trying to enter India illegally are being killed.”
It blows my mind that people are outraged at the most mild immigration limits of US, Australia, Canada, and every last nation of Europe, but completely indifferent to the most extreme immigration limits of the rest of the world.
Japan openly asserts it’s right to remain a homogeneous single ethnicity nation state. The Arab gulf states do the same. And of course Israel. To be fair, expectations on mostly white secular/Christian Russia are low as well.
Do good fences make good neighbours? Not along the India-Bangladesh border. Here, India has almost finished building a 2,000km fence. Where once people on both sides were part of a greater Bengal, now India has put up a “keep out” sign to stop illegal immigration, smuggling and infiltration by anti-government militants.
This might seem unexceptional in a world increasingly hostile to migration. But to police the border, India’s Border Security Force (BSF), has carried out a shoot-to-kill policy – even on unarmed local villagers. The toll has been huge. Over the past 10 years Indian security forces have killed almost 1,000 people, mostly Bangladeshis, turning the border area into a south Asian killing fields. No one has been prosecuted for any of these killings, in spite of evidence in many cases that makes it clear the killings were in cold blood against unarmed and defenceless local residents.
Shockingly, some Indian officials endorse shooting people who attempt to cross the border illegally, even if they are unarmed. Almost as shocking is the lack of interest in these killings by foreign governments who claim to be concerned with human rights. A single killing by US law enforcement along the Mexican border makes headlines. The killing of large numbers of villagers by Indian forces has been almost entirely ignored.
The violence is routine and arbitrary. Alauddin Biswas described to Human Rights Watch the killing of his 24-year-old nephew, who was suspected of cattle rustling, by Indian border guards in March 2010. “The BSF had shot him while he was lying on his back. They shot him in the forehead. If he was running away, he would have been shot in the back. They just killed him.” The BSF claimed self-defence, but no weapons were recovered.
Nazrul Islam, a Bangladeshi, was luckier. “At around 3am we decided to cross the Indian border,” he said. He was headed to India to smuggle cows back to Bangladesh. “As soon as the BSF saw us, they started firing without warning.” Islam was shot in his arm, but survived.
Some of the victims have been children. One father recounted how his sons were beaten by BSF officers. “The BSF personnel surrounded the boys and without giving any reason started beating them with rifle butts, kicking and slapping them. There were nine soldiers, and they beat my sons mercilessly. Even as the boys fell down, the BSF men continued to kick them ruthlessly on their chest and other sensitive organs.”
The border has long been crossed routinely by local people for trade and commerce. It is also crossed by relatives and friends separated by a line arbitrarily drawn by the British during partition in 1947. As with the Mexican border in the United States, the border has become an emotive issue in Indian politics, as millions of Bangladeshis now live in India illegally. Many are exploited as cheap labour.
* If it is anything like Brexit it will be hilarious. The media will predict total immediate disaster, in the hope of making it happen. Then they will talk of impeachment. After no disaster happens and the deportations proceed smoothly they will occasionally lash out, plot in the shadows before, and I do not know yet, slowly vanishing?
* For a guy of 100% pure Nordic stock; a blond blue-eyed six-footer of Lutheran German and Scots Presbyterian background, Trump must have the greatest chutzpah of all time. The brazen culturally semito-levantine New York style, synthesized with an urgent will to preserve hearth and home for the people, is possibly unique?
I’m fascinated that by the current year, it takes a billionaire playboy bullsh*ter actually to save America and her posterity.
* Another one of my predictions: just like Presidente Nieto has a hunch who is gonna win so he needs to study the chessboard, Kapaernick is inadvertently giving Trump the winning touchdown!
This total narcissist is showing the American people that they are all complicit in “institutional racism” and that they are not worthy of his respect. I predict this is such a yuge mistake since football is the one religion in this country that everyone can get behind. His disrespect for his team, police, armed forces, and American people will further broadcast to the American electorate that Trump is correct in that everyone who is an American citizen has a duty to respect our country. Otherwise, just leave; you don’t deserve to live here.
That a million-dollar player (who’s not that good anymore, btw) of a ball game, has the audacity to think his ramblings about race will resonate with fans (and the millions watching tonight’s game), is delusional and just, well, dumb.
If he is auditioning for a job with ESPN, he’s too much of a liability. The network can not take a risk that their audience is forced to ever listen to this disrespectful loser ever again. You have to have charisma and be likable on camera – and, this guy just doesn’t have any of that…the American football audience don’t like to be told they are racists…and espn needs to quit playing politics, shut their traps on the election, and just talk about the games this season. Enough. I just can’t stand this player; he’s just a jerk in a football jersey he doesn’t deserve to wear anymore.
Well, I say carry-on and diss the people in the stadiums this season, it will turn millions of people to vote for Trump. People are tired of race grandstanding. Football is not the time and place for this. I also predict ESPN will lose more subscriptions…and they can’t afford that anymore. Espn has laid-off about 800 people the last 4 years.
Posted inIndia|Comments Off on India’s shoot-to-kill policy on the Bangladesh border
They risk becoming the Jewish version of the ‘Alt-Right,’ a community that champions its own ethnic interests even when the result is outright bigotry.
Peter Beinart Aug 31, 2016 6:32 PM
Obviously, Jews, being naive newcomers to organizing politically, must be taking lessons from those ancient masters of the game, the ‘Alt-Right.’
Haaretz 2012:
“If Israel does not survive as a Jewish democratic state, I want to be able to tell my children that I did what little I’m capable of. I’m a writer, so what I can do is to try to sound an alarm. I just want to be able to say that to them.”
The man speaking is Peter Beinart, the journalist, essayist and author who became American Jewry’s most prominent prophet of doom following the publication of his 2010 article, “The Failure of the Jewish Establishment.” It is a role that will now be cemented in stone with the publication of his new book “The Crisis of Zionism,” in which he calls on American Jews “to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.”
…there’s a part of me, as a Jew, who, when I look at the AIPAC conference, says: ‘Wow, we’re good. Who else could do this?’ I feel the same way when I see the list of Nobel Prize winners.
…“I think one question that American Jews who are on the left have to face is how much they care about this compared to everything else. People say, ‘Yes, and what about global warming?’ That’s part of the reason I don’t come at this from a purely universalistic perspective. You say to people: You have to be involved in this struggle because it’s the struggle of your people, it’s your honor.”
COMMENTS:
* “You have to be involved in this struggle because it’s the struggle of your people, it’s your honor.”
This is what Peter Beinart believes: He and his co-ethnics get to have an “our people”. We don’t.
* #ALTJEW we are here we are not going away. any jew who supports islamic immigration is signing their own death warrent. nothing bigoted about wanting to be safe. nothing bigoted about wanting your neigborhoods free of 3rd world backward cultures. remember who were the first to do whiteflight in NYC & the n east? the jews. now many live in suburban gated areas, their memories have come up short.
* I actually have a lot of WN friends these days. If they accept me, I accept them is how I look at it. And I understand their critique of disproportionate Jewish power and influence.
* They’re either not really your friends, or not really WN as the term is usually understood. It’s possible you hung out with a bunch of Breitbart-level American nationalists who are willing to accept minorities who play by the rules, but read the Daily Stormer or TheRightStuff’s response to Joshua Seidel. They don’t want any Jews, period (and are quite forceful about it).
I suspect the background is the neocon takeover–they’re afraid if they let any in their movement will eventually be run by Jews. I think the Buckley purge had more to do with WFB wanting to look respectable to the general public (WW2 was still fresh in everyone’s mind and he probably could see which way the civil rights movement was going)…but I can see where these guys are coming from.
* Check out Jewamongyou, Lion of the Blogosphere, and Pragmatically Distributed.
* Really, the best definition of “alt-right” is “whites who are as racially conscious as non-whites and Jews”. Alt-right journalists could cut and paste pieces straight from Beinart, such as that last sentence: “You have to be involved in this struggle because it’s the struggle of your people, it’s your honor.”
* To champion tribal or ethnic heritage is to prefer one’s own kind (family, relations, extended family as contained in religious, language and cultural bonds) over those that are not your kind. Be it gracious or insidious, it’s a preference. Call it intolerance if you must. But my preference for my brother or my mother, rather than a stranger, is a feature, not a bug, of life existence.
But Beinart thinks this shameful? That sound you’re hearing? Exploding heads…
* Unfortunately, I think Trump will lose. But if he wins, things will get C*R*A*Z*Y real fast. Soros-driven civil disobedience, assasination attempts, impeachment hearings, and I wouldn’t even completely exclude a coup followed by a crackdown.
In general, the amount of craziness in the air seems to be increasing. If future scientists identify some environmental cause of global mental instability and plot its variations through time, this would be one of the peak periods, together with the late 1960s and early 1990s.
* I see that Mr. Beinart’s opinion is heavy in moral argument. Is moral argument like alcohol in that genetic lines develop resistance after long exposure? If so, how do the world’s people line up in tolerance to moral argument?
* Alan Dershowitz, David Brooks, Abe Foxman, Jennifer Rubin, and John Podhoretz have no tribal identity. It’s just a coincidence that they want different immigration policies for Israel and the United States. I usually to cut Beinart some slack (since he admitted that he was wrong about the Iraq War, and understands that Jewish liberals who support the Israeli right are hypocrites) but this piece deserves ridicule.
* I took a walk through Boro Park today. The vast majority of the Yiddish signs I saw were pro Trump.
* Nobody tell Haaretz about us alt-right sympathetic Jews (and no, we’re not self-hating, and yes, we’ve read KMac, and yes, we understand that WN is important in the alt-right and no, we’re not in favor of our own expulsion or extermination). Their heads might explode.
If as the comment above says Jews favor Clinton over Trump 2:1 that’s a lot better than I thought, given the relentless parade of anti-Trump pearl-clutching articles in Tablet, Forward, Haaretz, etc.
* Remember, Bill Clinton’s presidency sparked the rise of the “militia movement”, which was obviously overhyped by liberals, but there was the development of that whole subculture, which overlaps with the anti-New World Order, conspiracy theory subculture and the white nationalist subcultures. These subcultures were overhyped by liberals, but there was genuine related craziness during the Clinton administration, like the Oklahoma City bombing. These subcultures have only grown and become more popular with the rise of the internet and the Obama administration. Things have gone more liberal, and Hillary would be even more liberal than her husband’s administration, so there might be some craziness if Hillary wins as well.
The amount of craziness in the air is due to the rise of the internet and the fragmentation of people into different online subcultures and communities. People are increasingly inhabiting different mental worlds.
* Don’t count Hillary out!
When Bill pardoned those welfare/school scamming rabbis and machers from Rockland County, the word went out from the bull rabbis and Hillary got 1214 (of 1215!) votes in one of the ultra-Orthodox ‘villes.
She knows how to buy the black hat vote.
* I just read an article about a radio interview on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and Jonah Goldberg.
The bottom line of what Goldberg had to say was that the alt-right was like an onion with layers. In the center was the core alt-righters who are racists, nuts etc. Then there are some outer layers of somewhat saner, nicer people that had been led astray.
But after Donald Trump is humiliatingly defeated, these saner alt-righters can be herded like good little sheep back to the true conservative fold, and all will be well, and they will follow orders (I guess from Goldberg et al) as they should.
* I listen to HH, and heard the interview, and this is about right. Hugh’s been doing quite a bit of Righteous Republican hygiene-maintenance in the past couple of days, bringing on guests (e.g. Rich Lowry yesterday) who denounce the alt-right racists and explain how they’re not quite the same as the ‘nationalists’ and ‘populists’ who support Trump, but who can indeed still be reclaimed as good Republicans.
HH is good on many issues, but he’s a typical baby boomer who’s terrified of being called racist, and he’s got potential career advancement in TV at stake, so he’s trying to support Trump’s candidacy while simultaneously washing his hands of him; it’s not always so pretty to listen to . . . .
* I am sure it must help that Trump’s grandchildren are being raised Orthodox. The Orthodox are not too keen on gay marriage or electing women into positions of leadership. At least Hillary dresses modestly.
Since the Orthodox have to walk to synagogue on the Sabbath, they tend to live in urban neighborhoods and not partake in White flight which means that they are often surrounded by Black or Latino neighborhoods, often with less than ideal inter-community relations. I have been suprised at how Anti-Semitic some Blacks are in in New York City. Unlike native Black Americans, the heavily Caribbean immigrant population in Brooklyn does not associate Jews with the civil rights movement (not that Hasids were ever marching from Selma to Montgomery). For various reasons, the Orthodox tend to be somewhat immune to the standard media Narrative.
By the way, it looks like New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind will not be invited to Corey Booker’s Purim party next year.
* What you are all missing is that whilst it seems obvious to you that liberal Jews are really pursuing their own ethnic interests by promoting liberalism, to Peter Beinhart it seems obvious that by promoting liberalism they are going against their own ethnic interests. The truth is somewhat in the middle: most Jews support liberalism, the dominant ethical ideal of our time, making larger or smaller exceptions when it contradicts their own interests LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. I remember when I was at university and the last all-male choirs were being “desegregated”; many people were upset, but they all had good explanations for why there should be an exception to liberalism in this case, because music is important to them and thus matters unlike things that are important to other people, which don’t.
Posted inJews, Nationalism|Comments Off on Jews Accused of Tribalism
Haaretz: Once again Knesset members are trying to promote a bill that would allow Israelis to vote in elections here even when they are overseas. On its face, especially in an era in which technology enables one “to be” in two places at the same time, there is no reason why a citizen who is abroad cannot fulfill his or her democratic right. So why must this law be opposed?
Because in view of the demographic threat – the concern about losing the Jewish majority in this country – the millions of Jews living in the Diaspora, comprising half of the world’s Jews, are an untapped statistical asset that must appeal to doomsayers. Such a law could become a future opening for vote thieves or a magic formula for vote contractors. The unflagging enthusiasm for this law, as shown by its ardent supporters Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, is unsettling.
Coalition parties are obliged to give this bill their automatic support, but opposition Knesset members are also expected to support it, and some of them are even signatories on the bill (Zionist Union’s Itzik Shmuli, Eitan Cabel and Stav Shaffir). The bill’s explanatory notes state that this law exists in most democracies. This is true. However, the uniqueness of the Jewish nationality, with the denial of an Israeli nationality and the clear preference given to Jews by way of the Law of Return, invalidates the comparison of Israel to other countries. Not only is Israel holding 3 million people in the West Bank by force, without citizenship, it also has in its arsenal 7 million potential Jewish citizens as a doomsday electoral weapon.
The Law of Return grants instant citizenship to Jews. Granting voting rights from abroad will encourage Jews to acquire citizenship just for the purpose of voting. This can be done behind the democratic scenes or, in the spirit of these times, through remote granting of citizenship, making do with de jure “return” instead of an actual one.
This will grant much weight, even more than is the case today, to Jews living anywhere, even if they never lived here and have no intention of doing so (except in the event of “another Holocaust”), at the expense of non-Jewish citizens of Israel, in all things relating to the character and future of this country. Sheldon Adelson-style.
The more Israel stresses its affinity to Jews around the world above its commitment to its own citizens, the more it erodes its democratic basis. In doing so it harms not only its non-Jewish citizens but also its Jewish citizens, whose interests do not overlap with those of Jews who don’t live in Israel. Jews around the world will also be affected, with renewed – and this time perhaps justified – accusations of dual loyalty.
The idea of Israel as a shelter for the Jewish people is taking material shape under the leadership of Netanyahu, King of the Jews: Diaspora Jews will decide Israeli elections without having to live here. Meanwhile, in the Jewish condominium, the state of Israel is becoming dirty, dark and neglected, like a typical air-raid shelter in any random apartment building.
Posted inIsrael|Comments Off on Absentee Voting Would Grant the World’s Jews Priority Over Israel’s non-Jewish Citizens
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
