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Chicago’s mayor goes Pro-Hamas: ‘Ceasefire now’

The Times of Israel (TOI), Blogs

By Dr. Clemens Heni

On January 31, 2024, a symbolic resolution for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was adopted by the Chicago City Parliament in the US with the decisive vote of the mayor. The vote itself had been 23 to 23, meaning that half of the elected representatives had rejected the antisemitic resolution, which had been promoted for weeks, while the other half had approved it.

Many dozens of antisemitic Palestinians and their friends had previously shouted around in parliament and were then banned from the chamber by their buddy, the mayor of Chicago, after some time. But dozens were allowed to continue shouting their antisemitic hate speech loudly behind glass windows in a kind of VIP lounge and display their antisemitic clothing such as the PLO scarf or keffiya.

Earlier, before being ejected from the meeting hall, Chicago’s only Jewish congresswoman Debra Silverstein had been antisemiticaly insulted and a typical antisemitic conspiracy myth intoned that she would use her “Zionist money” to “wipe crime off her desk”.

The modern form of Holocaust denial also comes to the fore here, the unspeakable crimes of Hamas are negated or celebrated and Israel is accused, just as the antisemitic government from South Africa is doing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The perpetrator-victim reversal is a very typical pattern of antisemitism, as research has shown in recent decades.

In her speech, Silverstein emphasized that it was intolerable to call for a ceasefire and not the complete destruction of Hamas.

The Palestinian organization had massacred over 1200 Jews in southern Israel in a genocidal frenzy on October 7, 2023 and kidnapped over 240, of which about 130 remain held hostage to this day.

Chicago Congressman Byron Sigcho-Lopez had brought fliers and in his speech accused the New York Times of documenting without evidence the genocidal pogroms of Hamas, including the unspeakable rapes of Jewish women by Muslim and Palestinian butchers. Sigcho-Lopez then celebrated the victory against Israel with antisemitic buddies, even if it was only symbolic – Chicago, however, is the third largest city in the USA after New York City and Los Angeles.

Public school students were given extra time off to participate in demonstrations in support of a permanent ceasefire and thus in support of the genocidal, Islamist-terrorist organization Hamas, according to the Wall Street Journal:

In the Windy City, the resolution was helped along by the Chicago Public Schools system, which offered students grace time to join Tuesday walk-outs supporting the ceasefire. Mr. Johnson said he was ‘incredibly proud’ of students for ‘exercising their constitutional rights’ and ‘speak(ing) up for righteousness.’

At these hate demonstrations against Israel on Tuesday, January 30, 2024, hundreds of students from high schools and other schools demonstrated for the antisemitic terror gang Hamas, for Palestine and against Israel.

The mayor was mighty proud of the young people who are standing up for Hamas and a permanent ceasefire, i.e. for the preservation of Hamas and against the complete disarmament of these Nazi-like monsters.

Here you can see the antisemites cheering after the decisive vote for a permanent ceasefire and thus for Hamas by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Chicago has the largest Palestinian community in the US. The 82-year-old “civil rights activist” Jesse Jackson received enthusiastic applause for his mere presence and support of the anti-Israel resolution.

At least two antisemites carried a Palestinian flag with a picture of the Hamas spokesman in Chicago yesterday, according to the Times of Israel (TOI).

So they are fans of the Muslim-Nazis of Hamas and are obviously allowed to walk around freely in the US and spread antisemitic propaganda. People with flags like the one in Chicago should be charged with supporting terrorism and genocide, just like neo-Nazis who deny or celebrate the Holocaust.

Members of the “democratic socialists” in Chicago campaigned for and supported Johnson in 2023, as Politico magazine reports. Reactionary, antisemitic, but in the woke language of the mainstream called “progressives”, anti-Zionist employees of the City of Chicago have been agitating for a permanent ceasefire since the fall of 2023, analogous to employees in the White House of Joe Biden, who is a Zionist and close friend of the only Jewish state.

After the worst mass murder of Jews since the Shoah on 7 October 2023, the antisemitic organization “Democratic Socialists of America” is engaging in a typical perpetrator-victim reversal and is calling for no military aid for Israel from the USA and an end to the “massacres”, by which it means Israel’s self-defense.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has documented and criticized several examples of antisemitism by the “Democratic Socialists of America”. In Salt Lake City, for example, the group incites against the “settler-colonialist apartheid” of Israel, in San Francisco it talks about the “decolonization of Palestine” and calls for further mass murder of Jews with the slogan “from the river to the sea”, i.e. the destruction of the Jewish and democratic state of Israel. Only a few days after October 7, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in Denver, Colorado, calls for the complete destruction of Israel – “from the river to the sea“, as the ADL notes. For antisemites like these anti-democratic “socialists” and “democrats”, Israel is the perpetrator and not the victim of genocidal Muslim and Palestinian violence.

At any rate, this is also the milieu that supported the mayor of Chicago in the election campaign. It is therefore his “thanks” to these antisemitic agitators of all genders that he has now intolerably given his decisive vote to the anti-Israel resolution.

The New Yorker and Jacobin magazines, and of course the Young Democratic Socialists of America, were all excited in 2023 about ‘their’ new Mayor Johnson in Chicago, who could be a role model for major cities and other communities across America. What will they say now that their hero has helped an antisemitic resolution to pass with his vote?

America, and therefore the West, is teetering on the brink. In view of Brandon Johnson’s sensational election victory as mayor of Chicago in the spring of 2023, the US Democratic Party has decided to hold the party convention for the 2024 presidential election in Chicago of all places. This will be the most difficult battle for the pro-Israeli Joe Biden, because the extreme opposition to his pro-Israel policy comes from within his own party.

America, and therefore the West, is teetering on the brink. In view of Brandon Johnson’s sensational election victory as mayor of Chicago in the spring of 2023, the US Democratic Party has decided to hold the party convention for the 2024 presidential election in Chicago of all places. This will be the most difficult battle for the pro-Israeli Joe Biden, because the extreme opposition to his pro-Israel policy comes from within his own party. Added to this is the new right-wing agitator and populist Donald Trump, who has still not conceded his 2020 election defeat. Trump’s isolationism and complete arbitrariness could have dramatic consequences for Israel. Trump’s antisemitic and conspiracy-mythic voter base complements the antisemitic and conspiracy-mythic voter base of parts of the Democrats, i.e. the part that is aggressively pro-Palestine.

Immediately after the genocidal massacre by Hamas, Johnson failed politically. A few days after October 7, 2023, he remained equidistant. However, his parliamentary group leader in the Chicago parliament, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, re-tweeted a tweet by the notorious Ilhan Omar, Democrat member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota, in which the antisemitic classic of Jews and Israel as “child murderers” in Gaza and Palestine is rehashed. Ramirez-Rosa himself supports the antisemitic BDS movement, which is why he was dropped as a candidate for the position of lieutenant governor by Daniel Biss in September 2017. However, this did not hinder the career of Ramirez-Rosa, who openly appears as a Palestine supporter on his X profile.

He only had to resign from his position as leader of the Democrats in the Chicago City Council in November 2023 because he apparently has a violence problem – he had put his body in the way of a female colleague and prevented her from entering the meeting room.

The misery doesn’t just consist of people like this “Carlos”. The misery lies in the fact that everywhere, from Berlin to Chicago, San Francisco, Paris or London, those who supposedly stand up for diversity, tolerance and diversity are the exact same people who abandon or hate Jews and Israel and aggressively fight against them.

They are the very people who quite rightly oppose Trump or the AfD and recognize and criticize conspiracy myths, but as soon as a conspiracy myth or an antisemitic lie and perpetrator-victim reversal such as the fantasized “genocide” in Gaza come into play, the “do-gooders” remain silent. This currently affects millions of people in Germany who have taken to the streets and are against right-wing extremism in recent days and weeks – but these people remain silent about hatred of Jews because it comes from Muslims, Palestinians, left-wingers or oh so “progressive” people.

Those who see climate change as a huge threat are often those who see no problem in antisemitism and are antisemitic themselves, see Greta Thunberg. Conservatives, on the other hand, who deny man-made climate change, are sometimes more open to criticism of antisemitism, although this is often accompanied by the note that it is simply against left-wingers or migrants. But leftists and migrants, on the other hand, feel completely immune to criticism, as they are by definition immune to criticism. But today’s antisemitism of the 21st century comes primarily from Muslims and Islam, keyword Iran. Even otherwise secular leftists have been joining the chorus of anti-Zionists and Islamists for decades.

That was the biggest shock for Jews in Germany, the USA and worldwide, that they were left completely alone after the most terrible massacre, which definitely had a genocidal character, on October 7, 2023, and experienced antisemitic demonstrations, rallies and actions of varying intensity in the USA, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, England and everywhere else.

It was quite typical that the newly elected president of Harvard University had to resign after her refusal to categorize the call for genocide against Jews – “Palestine from the river to the sea” is a genocidal battle cry – as worth fighting and intolerable (which was also because she did unscientific and plagiaristic work). But it was a symbol worldwide of the so-called woke milieu, where it is always about diversity, equality and inclusion, that diversity, equality and inclusion does not mean Jews. Women’s groups refuse to call the documented rapes of Jewish women by Muslim men intolerable and repugnant, just as any rape is intolerable and repugnant. Even genocide researchers are stunned by the unbelievable brutality and sadism of Muslim men and Palestinians. Black Lives matter – but what about when it comes to Jewish lives? Black people in particular are at the forefront of defaming Israel, celebrating Hamas and wishing death on Jews. This was demonstrated when BLM Chicago posted a paraglider with a Palestinian flag. 90,000 people viewed it on X, which did not immediately delete this form of antisemitism and celebration of a genocidal massacre and blocked the account.

The core of the antisemitism problem in Chicago, however, is Brandon Johnson. From cooperating with a BDS supporter, to taking an equidistant stance after the largest massacre of Jews since the Shoah, to openly supporting Hamas with yesterday’s decision for a full ceasefire without fully disarming the Muslim-Nazis, Johnson shows which side he is on. He has given the antisemites in Chicago a field day with his vote, leaving behind a deeply divided city parliament and a massively shaken Democratic Party.

The Jewish Union Foundation and the Anti-Defamation League Midwest criticize the anti-Israel resolution of the city of Chicago and emphasize that in recent weeks Jewish life there is no longer safe. Jews are being insulted, stores are being graffitied and pro-Palestinian propaganda is being spread. The perpetrators – Muslims and Palestinians – are being victimized. The old antisemitic game of perpetrator-victim reversal – only it hasn’t happened on this scale since the Holocaust and all Israelis and Zionist Jews also thought that after Auschwitz and Babi Yar there could never be anything like it again. But Israel, for many reasons that are still being worked through, completely failed to protect its own people on October 7, 2023.

The US Democratic Party, however, will be pro-Israeli or it will not be. The election for American president in 2024 will be dramatic in every respect. The antisemite and sexist Trump must not win. But Joe Biden, who is also completely unqualified for the presidency because of his age, will face a massive antisemitic campaign from his own people.

Chicago is a beacon, contrary to any beacon of hope. The city is an antisemitic beacon. Democrats and the left must finally stand up against all forms of antisemitism, mainstream as well as right-wing, anti-Zionist and Holocaust trivializing antisemitism, but also and especially, because it is much more widespread, the anti-Jewish genocide celebrating, Hamas protecting, Muslim, Palestinian and left-wing antisemitism.

Am Israel Chai!

About the Author
Dr Clemens Heni is director of The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

Were Germans innocent civilians during WWII?

Clemens Heni, Ph.D., The Times of Israel (Blogs), 12. November 2023

Screenshot, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/were-germans-innocent-civilians-during-wwii/

On October 7, 2023, an unprecedented massacre against Jews occurred, not seen since the Shoah and Babi Yar.

1200 Jews and Israelis were butchered in a way no one could ever imagine after the Holocaust. Hamas and the Palestinians had the intention to shock Israel, as we now know from findings of the IDF in Gaza. It was the intention to kill the entire Jewish People, just like the Germans intended to kill all Jews during the Holocaust and World War II.

Today, though, Israel exists. Oct. 7 was not the beginning of a new Holocaust. But it feels like one, because the intention of Muslims and the Hamas was exactly the same like the German intention 85 years ago.

Shockingly, the Jewish state failed to protect its citizens and this will be dealt with after the War, because there are people responsible for that failure. We always thought Israel is the one and only place where Jews can live freely and secure, despite Intifadas and rocket alerts for decades – but a massacre on Israeli land was not thinkable.

But the main problem is Islamic antisemitism and its billions of fans worldwide. Academia is a main field of antisemitism, it has been a main playground for all kind of antisemitic resentment in recent decades. Those German and Western academics who promoted the antisemitic BDS movement, including those who fight the German Parliament’s resolution against BDS, were enabler of Hamas and the events of Oct. 7.

Most German and Western NGOs, activists or media always made a distinction between the military wing of Hamas and the political party of Hamas, as if antisemitic words do not kill. Hamas has always been an antisemitic terror organization and was never interested in building a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. Most Arabs were never interested in the two state solution since they rejected the UN Resolution 181 in November 1947 and started war against the Jewish state in the making.

Of course, Israel made political mistakes in recent decades as well, and religious extremists also live in the Westbank among settlers. But that is not the topic right now. The right-wing extremist government under Bibi is always not the topic right now.

In this short comment, I just want to focus on those who cry foul when Jews and the IDF defend Israel, like the hundreds of thousands of people today in London. Every single participant supports the slaughter of Jews by his or her participation. But they are not alone, French President Macron, who suggested Israel that he is on the Jewish side – as a President of France, what a joke!! -, now shows his real (French) face and calls for a ceasefire.

Would he have called to the Americans and British to have a ceasefire like in May 1944, weeks before D-Day? Would he called the poor German ‘civilians’ victims of allied bombings? Would he?

The Nazi Party and the German population wanted to kill all European Jews. There were no innocent civilians, as the community of the people (“Volksgemeinschaft” in German) was entirely antisemitic.

Recently, at a rally in southern Germany to remember the nights of pogroms on November 9, 1938, a speaker made clear how German ideology works these days. He is against Hamas and to some extent he sees the need of the IDF to fight this war. But more importantly he stressed the fact that at the end of the day, his hometown (Heilbronn, north of Stuttgart) was destroyed by allied bombers during the Second World War. As if that was not the consequence of Nazi Germany’s Holocaust and the Second World War, he rather portrayed his poor countrymen and -women as victims. He knows that all of them had no problem with the burning of the local synagogue, but he is unable to realize that the bombing – like the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Frankfurt etc. – was important for ending the War. The allies, including British bombers, had most often military targets, but civilian casualties were unavoidable, because these military targets were part of the towns they attacked. And of course, the allies wanted to fight the German public as well, as they knew very well that antisemitism and anti-Western ideology was widespread among the entire population.

Hamas wants to kill all Israeli Jews and Jews worldwide. They do not have the means to do so, but they have Iran and with a nuclear arsenal that antisemitic dream could become reality, even if hundreds of millions of Iranians and Arabs would be killed in retaliation by Israel and the US. As they love death and embrace to become martyrs, such a scenario is not shocking for the Iranian regime (for the Iranian street it is!) nor for the Arab street (for the Arab regimes it might be, though).

Those women and men who did nothing to end the rule of Hamas since 2007, are not civilians. Children are civilians, but their parents are not and their cynical behavior to remain in areas under attack shows their complete lack of empathy. If they do not care if they are killed, they show their Islamist ideology. But children are victims of these parents.

The IDF does everything to prevent civilian victims – which is incredible difficult in Gaza in particular, but in Muslim jihadist areas in general.

Even those academics, politicians and activists who did not embrace the slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023, but now call for ceasefire should ask themselves: would they have urged the allies in May 1944 or any other time, to stop bombing Germany, in order to give Germans the possibility to hide even more weapons or industrial infrastructure etc.?

There is outrage about unavoidable ‘civilian’ casualties in Gaza in London, Berlin, Paris, New York City, but no outrage at all about the kidnapping of over 240 Jews in to Gaza by people who butchered other family members of friends of those kidnapped in a way, no animal would ever treat anyone.

What we are seeing in London today or in New York, Berlin, Paris and all other places on earth in recent days and weeks is the celebration of a Holocaust like mass murder on Oct. 7.

Did we ever had Holocaust supporting rallies in Germany? With tens of thousands of people? Did London ever witness Pro-Holocaust rallies with hundreds of thousands of people, celebrating the Nazis and the Shoah?

Never.

But today’s Nazis, Palestinian Muslim antisemites, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the like, are celebrated and supported on streets in Western countries and around the world. Iran publicly celebrates the massacre and is then invited today to Saudi-Barbaria to a summit of Arab and Muslim countries. The Mullah regime in Teheran is both denying the Holocaust and celebrating the Nazi like massacre of Oct. 7, 2023.

Academically spoken, that is a combination of secondary antisemitism and rejection of Holocaust memory and of the memory of Oct. 7, 2023 on the one hand, and Islamist and anti-Zionist antisemitism on the other. We see the flexibility of the “longest hatred” (Robert S. Wistrich (1945-2015)).

Some cry “Palestine, from the river to the sea” (although that antisemitic slogan might become illegal in Germany), others call for a ceasefire. Tens of thousands of killed people in any kind of war in Africa or currently in Ukraine do not translate in calls for a ceasefire. On the contrary, Western countries, the US and the EU support the war in Ukraine with billions and billions of Dollars and Euros, no calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine anywhere.

Russia supports the jihadist regime in Teheran and in Gaza, Turkey now calls into question the entire existence of Israel, which is no wonder taken the disgusting personality and ideology of Erdogan. His followers mainly in Germany and Europe celebrate him and the massacre of Oct. 7.

Germany does neither stop its diplomatic relations with Iran, nor with Turkey or Saudi-Arabia. As if their diplomatic relations with these barbarian countries did change anything in the last 40+ years.

As we all knew and predicted, the window of opportunity for the IDF is closing.

The world likes the killing of Jews and protects the killers. Antisemitism is on an all-time high since 1945. And that was exactly what Hamas wanted with the unprecedented massacre of babies, children, women and men. They anticipated that the pro-BDS world would be grateful for that day and post-colonial academics and activists now book paragliding events for their allies, friends and family.

Holocaust denial and neo-Nazis are outdated. Today, celebrating the Holocaust like massacre of Oct. 7, 2023 is “in”. And all those supposedly left-wing campuses around the US, and Europe are not left-wing, they are right-wing extremists and ordinary antisemites like neo-Nazis are.

 

About the Author
Dr Clemens Heni is director of The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

BHL’s silence on Holocaust perpetrators in Ukraine

BHL’s silence on Holocaust perpetrators in Ukraine

In a recent article in Tablet Magazine by French author Bernard-Henri Lévy the complete victory of Ukraine in the ongoing Russian War in Ukraine is proclaimed. Lévy, known for his obsessive hatred of Russia, Communism and a fact based analysis of the conflict, urges the WEST to not stop fighting this War – until Russia has lost.

Lévy, who is Jewish, has obviously no problem at all with pro-Holocaust Memorials dedicated to Holocaust perpetrators in Ukraine. He has no problems with Hundreds of streets named after people who wanted to eradicate the Jewish people from Ukraine during the Shoah, including Stepan Bandera, Yuri Polyanskiy, Dmytro Paliiv, Petro Gudzovatiy, Dmytro Gakh, Stepan Burdyn, Terentiy Pihotskiy, Vasyl Sydor, Omelyan Polovyi, Oleksa Babiy (who played a role in the worst massacre of the Shoah in Baby Yar near Kiew) and many others.

Lev Golinkin gives you a clear picture in the Jewish Forward of all these antisemites and Holocaust perpetrators – every single one of them has a street, memorial, football stadium or plaque named after them. All this happened in the last 30 years and it happens today and tomorrow, including streets named after Neo-Nazis.

Let me be clear:

Russia’s war is a criminal war of aggression that violates international law and must end immediately. But more weapons for Ukraine will prolong this war and cause many more deaths in Ukraine. And the US and Germany want more people to die and the war to continue, otherwise they would not continue to supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition. What about complicity in the war through NATO’s decades of aggression? This includes NATO’s eastward expansion, although US Secretary of State James Baker promised Gorbachev (!) and the Soviets in February 1990 that NATO would itself in the event of a possible reunification of Germany not expand “one inch eastward”.

Without this promise by the US, Baker, and West-Germany’s Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the USSR would never ever had given their support for a re-unification of  the two Germany’s. NATO expansion ever since was an act of imperialism and is one key factor why Russia fights this war. This is a scholarly explanation, not a support for Putin, to be clear. But I am disgusted by the anti-Russian hatred of Tablet Magazine and most mainstream journals and politicians in the US or Germany.

This war has a history. For sure, it did not start February 24, 2022. Worse, Ukrainian President Zelenskyi argued in an antisemitic manner and trivialized the Holocaust during a speech he gave via video to the Knesset by comparing the date of the start of the war with the founding of the German NAZI Party (NSDAP) in 1920 and even portrayed Ukraine as friends of Jews at the time !! In Israel, there was outrage about that kind of antisemitism and Holocaust distortion. What about Tablet Magazine and Lévy?

Russia will not lose this war – otherwise we might be facing the end of the world: an atomic war, first fought by the United States of America in August 1945 against Japan.

Ever since, our lives face a deadline every single day, because ever since August 6, 1945 and Hiroshima, the entire destrucion of all lives on earth is an option. ‘Thanks’ to the US Army, by the way.

In December 2021, the Russian Federation sent Ukraine, the US and NATO a peace plan for Ukraine. No response from the White House. Biden wanted the War and he got the War.

Then, in March 2022, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett did broker a near to be reached ceasefire – but Boris Johnson, the UK and the US, also France and Germany prohibited that ceasefire, because it included a statement that Ukraine would never ever become member of NATO. Russia, though, would have withdrawn all forces – all forces – to the lines prior to February 24, 2022. Ukraine was even interested in that deal, according to Bennett! But the UK, the US and the West rejected peace!!

Bernard-Henri Lévy, whom I defended against antisemitic resentment in my recent book (dealing with forms of antisemitism in the late 1970s), is an agitator and warmonger. He loves war and he hates peace and Russia. He has no problem with pro-Holocaust Memorials in Ukraine, otherwise he could not have written in Tablet Magazine:

On the other (Ukraine) is a citizens army defending not just their country but also a certain idea of civilization and of Europe: So, as a consequence, they understand why they fight.

That is an obscure fantasy of a French writer with no real knowledge of the history of NATO since 1990 and no real knowledge of streets and memorials named after Holocaust perpetrators in Ukraine.

Contrary to Lévy, I am against this war. This war, like all others like in Yemen or Ethiopia, has to stop immediately. Stop sending weapons to Ukraine now! Support both Russian and Ukrainian men and women, who flee the warzone and reject military service. Support these men and women!!

Support diplomatic efforts to solve this conflict. Reject NATO’s and Putin’s imperialism likewise – and fight for peace in Europe.

And stop Lévy and Tablet Magazine and their one-sided, irrational and obsessive hatred of Russia and their denial of pro-Holocaust political culture in Ukraine, which you can witness in almost every single city or village in Western Ukraine.

Fight Holocaust distortion and pro-Holocaust Memorials named after people like Jaroslav Stetsko who wrote on July 9, 1941:

I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the like.

Later, in 1983, he made shake hands with then US Vice President George H.W. Bush:

 

Antisemites such as Jaroslav Stetsko are honored in today’s Ukraine, as Lev Golinkin has shown in his groundbreaking study for the Jewish Forward on January 27, 2021.

It is this silence of BHL (Bernard-Henri Lévy) that is a typical sign of a decline in historical knowledge, historical accuracy and morality.

The current war started at the latest in 2014 at the MAIDAN in Kiew. It will end asap, but never ever will it end with an Ukrainian victory. Both sides will fail and compromise will be the result.

If Ukraine wins that would also be a victory for those millions of Ukrainians who celebrate their streets and monuments named after pro-Nazi antisemites like Jaroslav Stetsko. Is this what Bernard-Henri Lévy and Tablet Magazine, NATO and German warmongers truly want, deep in their hearts?

About the Author
Dr Clemens Heni is director of The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

Ukraine, Holocaust trivialization, transphobia and tolerating the “American Nazi Party” in the pro-Israel scene?

Originally published here on August 19, 2022

 

The Berlin International Center for the
Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

BICSA Working Paper Series, No. 5, August 2022

 

Ukraine, Holocaust trivialization, transphobia and tolerating the “American Nazi Party” in the pro-Israel scene?

 

A new research center on contemporary antisemitism in London, Fathom Magazine, Kathleen Hayes and the anti-intellectual “Intellectual Dark Web” …

 

By Clemens Heni, Ph.D.

 

Published in August 2022

Series Editor: Dr. Clemens Heni, Director, The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

www.bicsa.org

c/o Edition Critic

Sophie-Charlotten-Str. 9-10

14059 Berlin

Germany

Mail: bicsa[at]bicsa.org

Read the PDF version of this working paper.

 

Table of Contents

 

Ukraine. 3

The London Conference on Antisemitism in September 2022. 10

The British Magazine Fathom.. 14

Quillette, the „Intellectual Dark Web“, the New Right and the American Nazi Party. 17

The case of Kathleen Hayes. 20

Hope: Gad Granach’s Zionism.. 24

Endnotes. 28

Ukraine

The new “London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism” led by the sociologist David Hirsh has announced a conference on antisemitism for September 2022. It is important and very timely to engage critically with the various facets of antisemitism in the 21st century.

It is important to commemorate 9/11, which is part of the conference. In 2011, I published a big study about 9/11, Islamism and antisemitism, I know about the relevance to deal with jihad, Islam, Islamism, anti-Americanism and 9/11.[1] Professor Robert S. Wistrich invited me to speak at Hebrew University on December 18, 2002, about contemporary German anti-Zionism after 9/11.[2]

My talk included remarks about Holocaust distortion and the accusation by the West, that Serbia was organizing a “new Auschwitz” against Kosovo. That was a lie, of course, a grotesque Holocaust distortion. It was common, though, in Germany in 1999 in order to affirm the NATO War against former Yugoslavia. This kind of Holocaust distortion is now in full swing when it comes to Ukraine in 2022.

Therefore, it is striking that at the event in London in September 2022 the talk is almost exclusively about anti-Zionist antisemitism in many different forms – postcolonial, Islamist/Muslim, left, right, etc. Topics such as rejection of Holocaust memory in Ukraine by naming streets, squares or football stadiums after antisemites and Nazi collaborators – you won’t find at that London event.

One of the most blatant forms of antisemitism in the 21st century is naming squares and streets after the perpetrators of the Holocaust. One could also extend this to the downplaying of the Holocaust via the red-equals-brown ideology in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary or Western countries, such as to the supporters of the Prague Declaration of 2008 – like the last President of Czechoslovakia from 1989–1992 Vaclav Havel or former German President Joachim Gauck.[3]

When five Eastern European states recently called on the European Union to preserve “historical memory” and wrote that the aim should be to promote the “European platform for memory and conscience” based on the 2008 “Prague Declaration”, then the Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff from Israel could only laugh bitterly. He writes in the Times of Israel, which praises his blog as particularly worth reading:

Several days ago, I was shocked to learn that five heads of state from Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Poland, all post-Communist Eastern European countries, had recently beseeched the leaders of the European Union to step up efforts to “preserve historical memory.” It was addressed to the European Council president, European Commission president, and the Czech prime minister, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

For the past three decades since their transition to democracy, these countries have excelled in grossly distorting their own respective histories of the Holocaust. Yet the quintet of leaders now maintains that the Kremlin “is seeking to rewrite history and use it to justify its aggression against sovereign states.” Thus, they urge the bodies of the EU to take a leadership role in “preserving historical memory and preventing the Russian regime from manipulating historical facts.” They contend that this concern “is particularly relevant in light of Russia’s intensive use of history for propaganda purposes in the context of the war in Ukraine.”

These heads of state know how to deal with this problem of rewriting history.[4]

The governments of these countries know how to rewrite history – Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia. For years they have been playing down the Holocaust by whitewashing or even celebrating their own antisemitism and by glorifying their own Nazi perpetrators and, in a second step, by equating the unprecedented crimes of the Shoah with the crimes of Stalinism, referred to here as “crimes of communism” and would continue to this day. It is no less antisemitic when Ukrainian President Zelenskyi compares the start of the current war in Ukraine to the day the NSDAP was founded in 1920 and babbles about a “final solution” in Ukraine. This antisemitism didn’t go down well in Israel in the Knesset, where he delivered via internet one of his foul propaganda speeches.[5]

In 2010, I wrote about the “Memorial to the Victims of Communism” in Washington, D.C. Their new homepage and opening is now linked from this site Zuroff criticizes in his Times of Israel piece, which purports to keep European memory and conscience alive.[6] On March 15, 2010, I spoke at an international conference in Riga, Latvia, on Eastern European and Western antisemitism and the rewriting of history:

Look at www.victimsofcommunism.org memorial site in the US: they are saying that Communism was the “deadliest ideology in human history”: this is an antisemitic obfuscation of the Shoah![7]

The site “victimsofcommunism” honestly pushed its ideology at the time, writing on its site that „In October 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution gave birth to the deadliest ideology in human history – Communism.“ This is blatantly an antisemitic denial of what truly was the deadliest ideology in human history: Nazi eliminationist antisemitism. The homepage no longer has this antisemitic sentence on its page, but the intention of the creators is the same as before.[8]

Zuroff stresses that countries that are themselves rewriting history in antisemitic ways should be the last to accuse Russia of antisemitism. Of course, Russia is also lying when it talks about a “genocide” in the Donbass, when there is no genocide in the Donbass. And there is also not at all a Russian “war of annihilation” in Ukraine. In particular, in Germany, the country of the perpetrators of the Shoah, the Second World war and the “War of Annihilation” (“Unternehmen Barbarossa”, “Vernichtungskrieg”) against the Soviet Union from June 22, 1941 until 1944, one has to be reluctant to use the phrase “War of Annihilation”. Why then did the somewhat left leaning political scientist Lars Rensmann, who is now teaching at the University of Passau in Bavaria and who is associated with Hirsh’s new institute in London, invite his colleague Herfried Münkler of all people to an event on the war in Ukraine in mid-July (the event was then cancelled, but there will probably be an “alternative date” as the University of Passau happily announces on its homepage)?[9]

After all, Münkler is notorious for applying the term “war of annihilation” to the Russian war in Ukraine, thus playing down the Holocaust.[10] There is no “war of annihilation” in Ukraine, anyone who claims otherwise is simply lying or wants to clear the Germans of their guilt, because of course it is very convenient for the Germans to accuse one of the victims of World War II, Russians and Soviets, of crimes of the same magnitude as those committed by the fathers and grandfathers of the Münklers of this world.[11]

This is what research calls “secondary antisemitism”, a term Rensmann is familiar with, as he dealt a lot with that post-Auschwitz ideology in Germany.[12] Why then did he invite Münkler, who is invoking that kind of secondary antisemitism when applying the term “War of Annihilation” to the very typical war Russia is waging in Ukraine? Compare the Russian war in Ukraine to the Iraq War 2003, to the US led War in Afghanistan, the Vietnam War or the ongoing and compared to the War in Ukraine much more murderous War in Yemen by Saudi-Arabia and other Islamist warmongers and you find that the Russian War in Ukraine is a typical war. A typical war is horrible enough. But the war in Ukraine is not at all comparable to the unprecedented War of Annihilation by the German Nazi Army Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union and the Jews.

Is it possible that Münkler and Rensmann, who has a Ukrainian flag with the slogan #StandwithUkraine as a header on his Facebook account, have much in common when dealing with the current war and situation in Ukraine?[13]

This speaks for little political science differentiation. Is he also behind the streets in Ukraine that have been named after Holocaust perpetrators and antisemites in recent years? A left anti-militarist position would never post #StandwithUkraine or #StandwithRussia, but would oppose arms deliveries to both sides, it would decode NATO’s clear complicity in Putin’s process of fanaticism – keywords #notoneinch, Putin’s idea many years ago that Russia should be admitted to NATO which was greeted with laughter and most recently the peace plan of Putin and the Russian Federation of December 17, 2021, which was ignored by the US.

On the other hand, the US Congress was already planning war on Russia by Ukraine on January 3, 2022 and passed a billion-dollar program for military and other support a few weeks later in February, even before Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24.[14] BEFORE the war began, the US was already financing Ukraine and sending support and weapons.

On the other hand, it is typical of the time and scene for the conference in London in September 2022 that several lectures on

Soviet anti-Zionism and antisemitism are announced there,

but not one lecture on today’s antisemitism in Ukraine, which is evident there through honors, monuments, stamps, football stadiums, streets, avenues, etc., which were named after Nazi collaborators, antisemitic agitators or murderers of Jews such as Roman Shukhevych, Yaroslav Stetsko or Stepan Bandera in recent years. Or take the antisemitism of the neo-Nazi Azov Brigades, which were part of the Ukrainian army before they were militarily defeated in Mariupol – no lecture on that either.

A campaign is currently underway against David Hirsh at the University of London, where he teaches sociology at Goldsmiths College. He had criticized post-colonial and apparently pro-BDS tweets and actions by students and activists and was then aggressively defamed as a “white supremacist”.[15]

Hirsh deserves support in his fight against this kind of antisemitism in the UK.

But sometimes Hirsh also writes some very strange things about antisemitism. A quick look at David Hirsh’s Twitter account shows how unscientific and vulgar behavior is sometimes being used there, which seems to be typical of this anti-social medium and not a personal quirk of Hirsh’s. As a personal description, Hirsh writes about himself (as of August 07, 2022):

Russian warship go fuck yourself

Founder LCSCA @centre_as

Arsenal, women and men.

ADHD http://EngageOnline.org.uk http://gold.ac.uk/sociology/staf

In other words, in vulgar terms, he opposes the Russian war against Ukraine. In a tweet dated August 7, 2022 at 6:28 p.m., he then writes the following:[16]

Listen carefully to what antisemites say. They’re not telling you about Jews, but they’re telling you about themselves. They’re telling you what, in their imagination, evil and cunning people would do in a particular situation: their own fantasies, their own intentions.

Who does David Hirsh mean by “antisemites”? He means the Russian mission in Geneva, from which he posts a message under his tweet that that embassy-like mission had posted on Twitter. What is this Russian tweet about? The Russian tweet refers to mainstream media, which could not help but state that Ukraine often hides and positions weapons and artillery in schools or hospitals and Russian attacks would then appear as attacks on civilian targets. Then, the world attacks Russia for “war crimes”. Attacking civilians in such a way would indeed be a war crime. But what if Ukraine intentionally uses civilian infrastructure for their own soldiers and weapons to provoke Russia to attack theses civilian facilities?

Firstly, what could be antisemitic about the statement by the war party Russia? Why does David Hirsh, the sociologist and antisemitism expert from England, write that you should listen carefully to what the antisemites are saying and underneath is this tweet that reflects the current Russian line? What’s antisemitic about that?

Because that is exactly what is happening, as a report by Amnesty International, quoted by the Austrian daily Der Standard on August 5, 2022, shows:[17]

Amnesty International accuses Ukraine for breach of international law.

According to this, the Ukrainians are cynically and inhumanely positioning weapons and artillery in residential areas, and when the Russian side bombs them, it looks like a targeted attack on civilians, a war crime. The Ukrainians deliberately put their own population in this danger. Incidentally, a tactic that the pro-Israel scene or David Hirsh should know, as it has been used by the Islamist Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others in the Gaza Strip for years to discredit Israel.[18]

At the beginning of July 2022, the German Second TV Channel ZDF also quoted a UN report that Ukraine was deliberately using civilian locations such as a nursing home to station soldiers there. Survivors of a Russian attack spoke of the Ukrainian soldiers in the nursing home.[19]

According to Hirsh’s logic, the United Nations and the Second German Television (ZDF) also argue antisemitic. Is he serious?

However, there is current antisemitism in Russia. For example, when the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov recently perfidiously accused Hitler of “Jewish blood”, for which Putin unofficially apologized to Bennett in Israel, as the BBC reported from England.[20]

The UN report on civilians as human shields, though, emphasizes that both sides, the Ukrainians and the Russians, use this perfidious tactic of civilian shields and the instrumentalization of civilians.[21]

The reports from Amnesty International and international media coincide with the UN report and the tweet from the Russian mission in Geneva. But what David Hirsh fantasizes here as antisemitism, using the example of an empirically verified tweet from the Russian mission in Geneva, is not antisemitism.

When he builds his new institute – with dozens of experts on the Advisory Board, as you can see on the homepage – for the analysis and criticism of current antisemitism in the 21st century on such Twitter delusions – and there is a lot to be said for it, because he also for his new center has set up a Twitter account[22] –, then he can immediately stop the undertaking. Because this tweet from the Russian Mission in Geneva is not antisemitic and has nothing remotely to do with Jews or antisemitism. It is perfidious that, according to the UN, both sides are using this inhuman tactic, Russians and Ukrainians alike. Of course, the Russian mission in Geneva makes no mention of its own similar tactics. But that’s not antisemitic, and Hirsh doesn’t seem at all aware of the facts that Ukraine is using these cynical military tactics.

Russia’s war is a criminal war of aggression that violates international law and must end immediately. But more weapons for Ukraine will prolong this war and cause many more deaths in Ukraine. And the US and Germany want more people to die and the war to continue, otherwise they would not continue to supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition. What about complicity in the war through NATO’s decades of aggression? This includes NATO’s eastward expansion, although US Secretary of State James Baker promised Gorbachev and the Soviets in February 1990 that NATO would itself in the event of a possible reunification Germany not expand “one inch eastward”.[23]

NATO maneuvers in Ukraine in recent years have been an intolerable provocation, as every reasonably trained political scientist and conflict researcher (m(ale)/f(emale)/d(iverse)) will confirm. But how does David Hirsh come to the conclusion that the obviously factual position of the Russian mission in Geneva that Ukraine is using civilian shields is antisemitic? This is an inflationary use of the accusation of antisemitism where it is not recognizable at all.

Are these good prerequisites for a new center for antisemitism research when the founding director David Hirsh introduces himself so vulgarly in the anti-social Twitter world and then posts tweets that have nothing to do with reality? What does he mean by antisemitism when the Russians only repeat what the daily Standard in Austria or Amnesty International, the UN and the German Second TV Channel (ZDF) also report? Are they all antisemites when they show empirically that Ukraine sometimes deliberately accommodates its own army, soldiers, weapons, ammunition and artillery in residential areas, schools, old people’s homes or hospitals?

In addition, are there good prerequisites for a new center for antisemitism research if Hirsh and his team right from the start equate the eliminatory antisemitism of National Socialism with Stalinist antisemitism, which was in no way with comparable German antisemitism?

It is not accidental that antisemitism was associated with both National Socialist and Stalinist totalitarianisms.[24]

Why is he not mentioning that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz? Soviet antisemitism was bad enough, but not at all comparable to the Shoah and German or Nazi antisemitism. To equate Nazi and Soviet antisemitism rather sounds a lot like the 1997 French “Black Book of Communism,” and historian Jeffrey Herf is also a supporter of this Holocaust-belittling black book,[25] and he will be part of the September 2022 conference in London as well as a Board Member of Hirsh’s new center.[26]

Maybe the above quoted phrase from Hirsh’s new center is just an unfortunate formulation that insinuates an analogy, but the obsessive Russian hatred that Hirsh shows on Twitter could point to deeper ideologemes. In addition, as quoted, he seems to ignore the categorial difference between Auschwitz and Stalinist antisemitism. This fear is there.

The London Conference on Antisemitism in September 2022

In addition to the usual speakers and very important and current topics such as anti-Zionism, 9/11, hostility to Israel, e.g. among leftists in Norway, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Muslim antisemitism, there are also obscure but very trendy topics such as Holocaust trivialization by critics of the medically irrational mask mandates. The mask mandates are probably not seen as medically irrational and democratically disastrous. This is not negating the disgusting Holocaust comparisons; some critics of the mask mandate might occasionally use them – even if I am not yet aware of such a comparison of masks and the Holocaust. There are indeed too many other antisemitic tropes in the scene critical of Corona politics, about which I reported in detail in a working paper of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) in January 2021.[27]

Be that as it may, the announcement of Czech researcher Zbyněk Tarant’s presentation about “Holocaust Appropriation in Anti-Mask Protests – A New Challenge to IHRA Definition?” at the London conference in September 2022 reads as follows:

To our misfortune, antisemitism develops more quickly than our legal and scholarly definitions of it. Its fluidity was again aptly demonstrated during the anti-mask and anti-vaccination protests across Europe. Along with the antisemitic conspiracy myths, such as ‘plandemic’, or the belief that vaccines are meant to sterilize the world population, there were cases of abuse of Holocaust-related symbolism and iconography by the protesters, such as wearing yellow Stars of David, comparing epidemiological measures to Nuremberg laws and comparing vaccine mandate to the Nazi genocidal program. My presentation will explore the ideological and quasi-religious background of these myths, many of which have roots in the scene of Western Esotericism. As my presentation will argue, these incidents stretch our current definitions of antisemitism and some are not even covered by them. For example, the IHRA definition has no provision that would recognize such cases of Holocaust Appropriation in anti-vaxxer discourse as antisemitic, despite their harmful impact on Jewish life and tendency to banalize the horrors of the Shoah. Is it time to update the IHRA definition?[28]

It is significant that problematic tendencies in the anti-vaccination scene are discussed and probably presented far beyond their relevance, but the author does not say a word about the anti-democratic character of the entire vaccination discourse. He does not mention in his announcement the international Corona regime and the totalitarian arrogance of countries like Australia, New Zealand or the US to this day not allowing people to enter the country if they are not vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 or have undergone gene therapy. Gene therapy? Yes, since it is well known that a representative of the pharmaceutical industry from BAYER said at the Global Health Summit in October 2021 in Berlin, beaming with joy and perfidiously, with a mischievous laugh, that the “vaccination” was a “gene therapy” and that Corona was a huge stroke of luck for the pharmaceutical industry and the acceptance of genetic engineering, since by the end of 2019 some 95 percent of the population, at least in Germany, had been clearly opposed to genetic engineering. That’s exactly what Stefan Oelrich from BAYER said, you can watch the video of the Berlin event.[29]

THIS is the scandal of our time, Holocaust comparisons by marginal, extremist, esoteric and other groups critical of the Corona regime are bad and antisemitic, but just: marginal compared to the totalitarian vaccination policy of many (leading) countries in the world and the WHO.

There are enough examples of esoteric clumsy nonsense, comparisons of the Corona pandemic that play down the Holocaust and other problematic ideologemes, such as the case with the lawyer Füllmich, about whom and his Corona investigation committee and other problematic protagonists of the anti-Corona policy scene in the international context I have reported.[30] But addressing masks and antisemitism and thus covering the whole topic of Corona seems intentionally obscure and it is not to be expected that a differentiated criticism of the catastrophic and totalitarian Corona policy in the Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, US, UK etc. will occur at this talk.

Furthermore, I fear that many important features of the Corona regime are negated at all like mask mandates, lockdowns, vaccination apartheid,[31] social isolation and economic catastrophes around the world because of a completely irrational and intentional anti-democratic panic policy. I also fear that there will be no mention of the intentional use of panic by politicians around the world – see for example the so-called “panic paper” by Horst Seehofer, then German minister of the Interior, by then chancellor Merkel, vice-chancellor and today chancellor Olaf Scholz and the German government from March 2020.[32]

Criticism of the mask fetish should be a central topic today – and not a core topic for an antisemitism conference. That seems grotesque and may at best serve to defame any criticism of the mask mania. This is intended to present individual obscure mask mandate critics, presumably as an example for the whole ‘scene’ of critics of the epidemiologically, medically and democratically highly questionable Corona policies.

But what will the conference say about the many Jewish and Israeli medical professionals who have vehemently opposed Western and Israeli anti-democratic Corona policies, like Dr. Tomer Cooks of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics at the University of Ben-Gurion School of Medicine in the Negev? Like the professors Udi Qimron, Ariel Munitz, and Motti Gerlic and almost 150 other doctors and researchers in Israel, as early as December 2020 he was a signatory to a “Common Sense Model” that campaigned against lockdowns and for a rational Corona policy.[33]

In October 2020, a number of Jewish and Israeli epidemiologists and medical professionals were the first to sign the legendary Great Barrington Declaration, which is committed to protecting vulnerable groups. That Declaration wanted to prevent the millions of dead people in the countries of the Global South who have been subject to the lockdown policy since March 2020 and to this day caused. Or at least from October 2020, when the declaration was written and published, they wanted to minimize this “collateral damage” of the Corona policy of Merkel, Boris Johnson, Trump, Biden & Co. in the future. Among the signatories were the following people, most of whom signed both the Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020 and the specifically Israeli Common Sense Model of December 2020:

Dr. Ariel Munitz, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel, Dr. Eitan Friedman, professor of medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel, Dr. Motti Gerlic, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel, Dr. Uri Gavish, biomedical consultant, Israel, Dr. Udi Qimron, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel.[34]

How antisemitic and anti-Israel will a Corona policy-critical scene staffed by leading Israeli researchers in the field of medicine be? It is therefore to be feared that the criticism of the Corona policy at this conference in London will only appear as part of today’s antisemitism, which would be a deliberate distortion of the facts if that were to happen.

In any case, what stands out extremely strangely at the announcement of the September 2022 London conference on contemporary antisemitism is the following lecture by an author who has hardly appeared in the public eye:

Kathleen Hayes “Punch a TERF’ and ‘Smash the Zionists’: Misogyny and Antisemitism“.

The author thus suggests that transphobic radical feminists are victims like Zionists. As an enlightened critical antisemitism, right-wing extremism and democracy researcher, one becomes skeptical. TERFs are known to be “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists”. Now you have to know that in 2021 more trans people were murdered worldwide than ever before since these acts of violence have been registered.

In 2021, 375 transsexuals were murdered worldwide, 70 percent of them in South America, 30 percent in Brazil alone. When I see Syrian or Iraqi refugees in Germany, for example, downtown, who stare at and threaten transsexuals, then I know how close these migrants and the New Right are, but also some traditional left and liberal feminists on issues of religion, family and gender.

In many countries there is increasingly anti-gender legislation and rhetoric, as in Poland, Hungary or even in the oh-so-western, enlightened Brexit Great Britain, as Forbes Magazine reports:

Meanwhile, a global recession in trans rights continues, with countries from Hungary, Poland and even the U.K. seeing rising transphobia, anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric.

Vice Magazines writes:

In the U.K., transphobic hate crime reports have quadrupled over the last six years.

This is the backdrop against which Hayes will speak in London in September 2022.

The British Magazine Fathom

In July 2022, Kathleen Hayes published an article in the British journal Fathom. Fathom is edited by Alan Johnson.[35] Her piece is called:

Fathoming the Intellectual Revolution of our Time (1) | ‘Punch a Terf’ and ‘Smash the Zionists’: Misogyny and Antisemitism in the Contemporary Western Left.[36]

That sounds very grand. So the “intellectual revolution of our time” should be “explored”: “Let’s box a TERF and hit the Zionists: misogyny and antisemitism in the present left in the West”. For Fathom’s editor Alan Johnson, the article is part of an “intellectual revolution of our time”. Hayes presents poststructuralism in an extremely abbreviated manner and without any deeper knowledge:

A few decades back, without a vote being taken, a handful of intellectuals decided to roll back the Enlightenment. Holding hands and chanting ‘Down with grand narratives,’ they dismissed as hubris the paradigmatic Western belief that it was possible to know anything approximating truth. Equating the Enlightenment with slavery, colonialism and women’s subjugation, they declared positivism the greatest sin and announced they were post everything.

All of the groundbreaking critique of prison rule, of surveillance, of the prison-style clinic by thinkers like Michel Foucault—who was also pro-Israel—is swept away with the silly stroke of a pen by a no-name author. In the following, Hayes does not discuss that positivism is in fact a dangerous ideology of domination, even today. The mere description and rubrication is a core element not only of capitalism and patriarchy, but also of Corona politics, for example. A dialectic view, Marxist, Adornite, even critical-theoretical and post-structuralist, would proceed differently.

It would analyze the connections between the capitalist world market, the breaking away of supply chains and the jobs of hundreds of millions of day laborers especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the irrational panic of a virus that can primarily attack very old and sick people.[37] Based on data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK, Dr. John Campbell has shown that only 12 per cent of the official Covid deaths in the UK died only from Covid-19.[38]

To attack Foucault, as Hayes does here without naming him, as a typical postmodernist (she does not mention that he was a gay man) who would have pitted the particular against the universal, is remarkably reductionist and shows surprisingly little knowledge of the history of post-structuralism or postmodernism. But to Hayes’ credit, she was active in an antisemitic cult from 1987 to 2016 and didn’t read much.

Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari and whatever their names are, post-structuralism as a whole was against the enlightenment and that’s how Judith Butler came to her pro-Hamas position, Hayes insinuates. One can criticize a lot and substantively in post-structuralist ideology, but Hayes wants to exorcise spirits here, since she herself exorcised the antisemitic spirit in herself in 2016 or thinks she has exorcised it. This has nothing to do with a serious scientific analysis of post-structuralism, despite all the Heideggerian and highly problematic tendencies in post-structuralism. Michel Foucault’s criticism of power – especially of the police, prisons, surveillance, punishment, clinic and medicine – is outstanding and of the greatest importance for our time.

Much like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Republicans), Hayes opposes gender education in children:

In the US, for instance, many bills aim to prevent ‘transwomen’ from participating in women’s sport (while allowing them in other categories); some seek to end the teaching of gender woo to young children in public schools. These are legitimate goals although the devil, as always, is in the details.

So that’s not in a brochure by the right-wing extremist Germany party in the Bundestag, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), no. This is a quote from Hayes article in Fathom Magazine. Certainly there are antisemitic tendencies in the areas of feminism, intersectionality, multiculturalism and anti-racism.

But as Hayes argues here, the starting point of Judith Butler’s gender studies today is the problem, i.e. the emphasis on social gender – and not just her anti-Zionist drive which became public since the early 2000s. That the post-Auschwitz Marxist tradition did not engage with left-wing antisemitism, as Hayes claims,[39] is utterly grotesque when one looks at the scholarly literature of the last few decades.

The work “Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky” by Robert S. Wistrich from 1976 alone is an example. Ever since[40] and even before that there is a wide range of research on the Left and Jews as well as on left antisemitism and also from the Left, i.e. not only from anti-communists who only want to see their own prejudices confirmed. Immediately after the Six-Day War in June 1967, for example, in the leading intellectual weekly Die Zeit, the left-wing writer Wolfgang Hildesheimer wrote about the new left-wing anti-Zionist antisemitism and criticized his colleague Peter Weiss.[41]

In 1976, Jean Améry published an influential article criticizing left-wing and “respectable” antisemitism.[42] In 1980, the journalist Henry M. Broder published a reckoning with the left-wing antisemitism of his former friends and comrades. In 1986 he wrote a bestseller – “The Eternal Antisemite” – which dealt with all possible green and left-wing facets of antisemitism.[43] As is well known, Broder later became a conservative publicist with the “axis of the good” (an online Homepage called “Achgut”), which is open to the far right and gives the AfD a boost, for which he also spoke in the Bundestag.

In January 2001, i.e. before 9/11 and before the beginning of what we have been calling a remarkable, audible and activist pro-Israel scene since 2002 not only in Germany but internationally, as part of a radical left-wing autonomous group I myself wrote a brochure criticizing the left-wing anti-Zionism published by the Revolutionary Cells.[44] In 2010, the British jurist, lawyer and literary scholar Anthony Julius published a standard work on the history of antisemitism in England, which also deals with left-wing antisemitism today.[45] Of course, Kathleen Hayes missed all of that, since she was antisemitic herself until 2016.

Finally, Hayes also opens up a relationship between critical theory and postmodernism such as transsexualism, which would no longer know any truth; in a completely abstruse way, she constructs a mini-small group of transsexuals to be the actual gatekeepers and rulers of discourse. For them there is a direct relationship between antisemitism and transsexualism, neither is committed to the truth:

And yes, I’m aware the Frankfurt School played its own role, however ambivalently, in indicting the Enlightenment itself as leading inexorably to Auschwitz: a deeply pessimistic conclusion that paved the way for postmodernism, with its extreme scepticism towards material reality and truth. In a sense, reality and truth are ‘all’ that’s at issue here: the ability to recognise—and the right to say—that two plus two make four; the Earth is not flat; and a man is not a woman, no matter how artful his eyeliner.

In the last paragraph of her Fathom pamphlet, Kathleen Hayes then opens up a monstrous analogy that downplays the Holocaust and writes:

Once truth is up for grabs, all truths are up for grabs. A mind persuaded to reject the reality of biological sex is one unlikely to recognise basic facts about the Holocaust, or about living Jews.

So anyone who rejects their biological gender and does not see themselves as male or female tends to be a Holocaust denier. And with this essentialist doctrinal talk, Kathleen Hayes also feels like a trendsetter, being published both in the ‘liberal’ Fathom Magazine and elsewhere, as we shall see, all in 2022, when Fathom is starting its two-year “Intellectual Revolution,” as Alan Johnson, a dude of David Hirsh, writes.

Kathleen Hayes was an antisemitic activist in a Trotskyist party from 1987 to 2016, which she reports on in another 2021 Fathom article. She was a left-wing fanatic and has been a renegade for a few years, that is, an anti-left activist.

Quillette, the „Intellectual Dark Web“, the New Right and the American Nazi Party

Claire Lehmann, on the other hand, was never a leftist. She is an assimilated, middle-class woman from Australia, whose first text as an author in 2013 praised the marriage and dull childbearing penned by the then pregnant women. Like family ideologists from the AfD or other right-wing extremists, she lamented that criticism of the petty-bourgeois family idyll would cause serious damage to society. In 2015 she founded the new-right or far-right platform Quillette, which is considered a central medium of the “Intellectual Dark Web”. The inventor of the term “Intellectual Dark Web”, the equivalent of the “Dark Web”, which oscillates between gun sales, prostitution, terrorism and violence, is Eric Weinstein, who is a central figure in Quillette.

Of course, this is a purely linguistic misunderstanding, because right-wingers, conservatives, anti-feminists, patriots and nationalists, anti-gender ideologues and anti-political correctness rabble-rousers are anything but intellectual. We should remember what makes an intellectual. I wrote about this in 2006 in my dissertation on the critique of the welcoming into the salon of the New Right at the University of Innsbruck:[46]

Since the 1970s, German conservatives and nationalists have increasingly tried to rehabilitate German history and in no way assumed a pre-modern epoch, but did not deny the Nazi past, but rather looked for and found connection points. The social philosopher Hauke ​​Brunkhorst commented on this in a 1987 study.[47]

‘Mandarins, a term commonly used in Europe for the high Chinese officials of the Imperial Era, defined the German scientific scene from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century with a deeply anti-intellectual resentment. However: ‘The classic role of philosophers, priests and prophets, mandarins and shamans is over.’ ‘[48]

Then: ‘The Mandarin stands above the parties: ‘If we do not succeed in putting the cause of the nation back above the cause of the party, then we are lost.’ [Eduard Spranger, C. H.]’.[49]

A German Mandarin does not have anything that characterizes an intellectual:

‘Intellectuals should not allow themselves to be seduced into compromises with supposedly deep-seated metaphysical needs. ‘Without a model’ (Adorno), without higher legitimation, they should insist on the ‘unrestricted use of their intellect’, and that means nothing other than the power of the negative and the right to negative, destructive criticism. This claim, which ‘is against innate and’, as Kracauer expressly emphasizes, ‘acquired nature’, cannot be given to intellectuals: ‘to at least tentatively override nature as far as possible. The intellect is nothing other than the instrument for the destruction of all mythical stocks in and around us.’ [50]

In this respect, of course, there are family ideologues, anti-gender agitators, nationalists and new right-wing protagonists who see white supremacy as endangered. They indulge in racism or promote antisemitic conspiracy ideologues like Alex Jones and the whole Trump environment, Trumpism. These people like the authors at Quillette are not intellectuals. Their intention is not, as Kracauer defined the very term intellectual, “the destruction of all mythical stocks in and around us”. On the contrary, they embrace myths, like patriotism, nationalism, or traditional family values and a binary world, based on men and women, black and white, good and evil. They are counter-intellectuals or anti-intellectuals like Claire Lehmann, the Dark Intellectual Web and Quillette.

They are all defenders of bourgeois rule, who do not shy away from classifying neo-Nazis as mere “conservatives” such as those of the American Nazi Party and thus making them socially acceptable, as we will see shortly.

In May 2019, the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) published a hymn of praise for the anti-intellectual “Intellectual Dark Web” by right-wing publicist Milosz Matuschek.[51] He could have known what was circulating on the “Intellectual Dark Web”: Because in February 2019, the post-doc at Columbia University Richard Hanania wrote a very typical text for these counter-intellectuals of the “Intellectual Dark Web” on Quillette:

It Isn’t Your Imagination: Twitter Treats Conservatives More Harshly Than Liberals.

This is the usual whining from the Far Right that the mainstream would dismiss them. However, this text shows much more, namely the abysses of the talk of “free speech”. The Quillette article is about Twitter users who have been blocked due to hate speech or other reasons, i.e. whose Twitter accounts have been permanently or temporarily blocked.[52] The thesis is that Twitter reacts much less harshly to leftists compared to “conservatives”.

In the article, Quillette author Hanania linked an Excel spreadsheet that he worked on with a team. In doing so, they listed prominent cases of “conservatives” that mainstream media have reported being blocked by Twitter. There are 43 people or organizations. What Quillette now understands by “conservatives” knocks the bottom out of every barrel.

The 43 people and groups include British far-right, convicted thug Tommy Robinson, Gavin McInnes, founder of the neo-Nazi terrorist group Proud Boys, who were also banned from Twitter, and who later played a leading role in the attempted Capitol coup in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 and are notorious for beating up Antifas and other leftists. There are also the conspiracy mythologist Alex Jones and his site Infowars, the neo-Nazi and founder of the term “Alt Right” Richard Spencer, the racist and Holocaust denier David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Finally, and most shockingly, Quillette also lists the “American Nazi Party” as part of those “conservatives” whose Twitter account was suspended.

Also in May 2019, the extreme right-wing publicist and at times a lecturer at the University of Augsburg as well as a speaker at an event of the German conservative Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, Eoin Lenihan, published an anti-Antifa article. In it, he described “networks” of journalists on Twitter working on Antifa and right-wing extremism, and their alleged or actual relationship with Antifa activists examined in a study. Some of these journalists were named and defamed. He announced his “study” on May 15, 2019 on Twitter, on May 29 it was published on Quillette.[53]

One of the journalists who was attacked later reported how a few weeks later neo-Nazis, such as those from “Stormfront”, uploaded videos to YouTube with images of mass shootings, where the faces of journalists repeatedly appear in the middle, including pictures of herself, all people which Lenihan had denounced in his anti-Antifa article on Quillette.[54]

In July 2019, Quillette published another article opposing the blocking of antisemites, neo-Nazis, New Rightists, misogynists, transphobes, sexists, etc. pp. The author takes the antisemitic conspiracy mythologist Alex Jones as an example, who was included in the list of “conservatives” who were blocked by Twitter in February 2019. His ban on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify and other a-social media would only have increased his popularity. What these bourgeois anti-bourgeois “Free Speech” protagonists ignore and thereby affirm is the violence emanating from guys like Alex Jones.

Until recently, he denied the Connecticut shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. He fantasized like a madman that the parents of the children killed were actors. The parents of one of the murdered children have now won a lawsuit against Jones in Austin, Texas. The court sees it as proven that Jones’ conspiracy myths generate a huge fortune – up to 300 million US dollars a year. The parents suffer from particularly severe post-traumatic stress disorders, similar to those of war victims or soldiers. The Austin court fined Alex Jones $49.3 million to pay these parents. There will also be further trials in Texas and Connecticut. The lawyers had previously called for a particularly high penalty to be imposed so that it would have a deterrent effect.

One of the new-right agitators of the anti-intellectual Dark Web is Dave Rubin. He, the “comedian,” neuroscientist Sam Harris, and mathematician Eric Weinstein, met with anti-left, pro-New Right activist at The New York Times, Bari Weiss, who wrote about it in May 2018 in the New York Times. Weiss is no longer with the New York Times, but her agitation for more traditional values ​​and more conservatism went viral. She found it somehow super exciting that Rubin also invited the antisemite and conspiracy mythologist Alex Jones to his show. Jones runs the “Infowars” site and has already spoken to Trump there. Weiss can write any number of books against antisemitism and is a super-star in the pro-Israel camp, but with texts like those in the NYTimes she has massively encouraged hatred of Jews and support for the New Right, since irrationalism and delusions of conspiracies are essential ingredients for antisemitism. Dave Rubin, like Weiss, is Jewish, so that doesn’t mean anything – irrationalism and obsessive hatred of leftists has nothing to do with it. Criticism of sexism and conventional family models, and specifically criticism of natalism, are concepts of the enemy of the New Right. Quillette is the flagship of the anti-intellectual “Intellectual Dark Web”. Bari Weiss opened them up to the mainstream via the New York Times.

Why am I going into such detail about Quillette, about those super exciting, oh so cosmopolitan New Right people and the “intellectual dark web”, i.e. a playground for authors who follow the thugs of the Proud Boys and provide intellectual legitimacy?

The case of Kathleen Hayes

Well, on Quillette, a page, it cannot be stressed enough, where the American Nazi Party is portrayed as poor “conservatives” who have been banned from Twitter, on May 19, 2022, the same Fathom author Kathleen Hayes writes an anti-gender piece. The same Hayes who will now appear in London in mid-September 2022 at the new antisemitism research think tank around the “leftist” David Hirsh and who was published in July 2022 by the liberal, left-wing or left-liberal magazine Fathom with the same anti-gender tropes.

In May 2022, Hayes publishes her article “Gender Ideology’s True Believers. I spent 25 years in a cultish political sect. Trans activists are giving me déjà vu” with the new-right magazine Quillette.

Only after that, in July 2022, will her similar, longer article appear on Fathom, so Fathom knew that she wrote for the far-right journal Quillette just a few months prior. In her May 2022 Quillette text, she links to another text of hers in the July 2021 Fathom Journal, where she reckoned with her left-wing antisemitic Trotskyist past, which lasted from 1987 to 2016.

In her autobiographical text in Fathom 2021, Hayes emphasizes that two groups were particularly hated in her Trotskyist splinter party: feminists and Zionists. She has easily carried her hatred of gender theories into the present day. The problem that Kathleen Hayes – like many right-wing extremists, new rightists and family ideologists worldwide – has with Judith Butler is not primarily her anti-Zionism, but rather her gender theories. That there is indeed a biological gender and a social gender, as Butler analyzed in her seminal 1990 book “Gender Trouble”, is denied or ridiculed here. Accordingly, we are not born as girls or boys, but are made into such primarily through socialization, without necessarily denying our biological gender. With this, Butler leaned on Simone de Beauvoir, as German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk recalled:

The American philosopher Judith Butler has prominently demonstrated that this supposedly natural order is neither as natural nor as orderly as claimed: her book Gender Trouble has become a classic in gender research. Exactly 30 years ago it was published in the US, just a year later in German under the title ‘The Unease of the Sexes’.

In it, Butler deals with Simone de Beauvoir’s work ‘The Second Sex’, above all with a famous thesis: ‘One is not born a woman, one becomes one.’

The fact that since then, especially after the second Intifada since autumn 2000, after September 11, 2001 and the founding of the anti-Israeli boycott movement BDS in 2005, Judith Butler has taken a terrible Jewish anti-Zionist position based on Hannah Arendt is another matter.[55]

Butler’s criticism of sexist attributions and patriarchal patterns was and is groundbreaking. Not so for Kathleen Hayes, who, in addition to a few greasy lip-services that trans people are somehow also human beings, describes the trans movement primarily as a “cult”. This reminds her of her own authoritarian cult past as an antisemitic and anti-feminist Trotskyist. Hayes does not mention what kind of anti-gender ideology she herself is invoking at Quillette and beyond. She mentions billionaire Harry Potter novelist J.K. Rowling, who has also come out as TERF and is part of the UK’s Gender Critical Feminists.[56] She has received death threats for her anti-trans positions. Such threats and acts of violence are terrible.

But what Hayes doesn’t say is who very often actually gets murdered because of their gender. In addition to women who are murdered by their husbands or lovers, transsexuals were murdered more often in 2021 than ever before since this has been recorded statistically. But Hayes writes just like the AfD in Germany or the New Right in the UK, the US or Australia when she formulates in Quillette:

Gender ideology is drilled into children from a young age at school; media, charities, and public institutions echo the line; critics are hounded and dismissed.

If that’s the ideology of David Hirsh and his super awesome new London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, since Kathleen Hayes, who published this new-right rubbish, is supposed to speak at his inaugural conference in mid-September 2022, then there isn’t one difference to organized right-wing extremism and the New Right.

Hayes is no longer concerned with specific problems that men who define themselves as transsexuals and women can very well emanate from using women’s toilets to agitation in anti-social networks or on the street may well be fueled by pro and anti-trans people. No, Hayes is concerned here with “gender ideology” as such.

Her language is from the New Right. She fantasizes that children are indoctrinated with “gender ideology” from a young age. This is Far Right ideology, in the US it is intoned by Trumpism and in England by the corresponding anti-left and anti-gender circles, which apparently also includes the pro-Israel magazine Fathom.

Current academic texts criticizing the New Right and its relationship to capitalism and neoliberalism deal with the ideology of the “Intellectual Dark Web” and its wide circles of YouTubers with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers and New Right networks of all kinds. The British Political scientist Alan Finlayson criticizes the New Right, the Intellectual Dark Web and analyses:

A range of ideological currents – conservatism, nationalism, ethnonationalism, libertarianism – share a critique of the liberal state which gives to it a cultural and intellectual rather than economic class character. That critique emphasises the linguistic and discursive power of ‘new class’ intellectuals, exercised through institutions of culture, communication and legal regulation, oppressing or victimising those with contrary cultural, political and ethical orientations.

Today this analysis is the basis of a broad-based systematic challenge to the technocratic politics of third-way neoliberalism and globalisation. The new class is the common enemy, under a variety of names: ‘the establishment’, ‘the swamp’, ‘the blob’, ‘the cathedral’.

Because followers can characterise members of these groups variously as bureaucrats, intellectuals, civil servants, climate scientists, gender theorists, feminists, public sector workers, journalists, screenwriters, specific ethnic groups and so on, this antagonism sustains an otherwise unlikely alliance of Trump supporters, online ‘Men Going Their Own Way’, Christian Identity militias, radical libertarians, ethno-nationalists, anti-feminists, American paleoconservatives, ‘race realists’, anti-Muslims, anti-communists.[57]

Accordingly, the New Right agitates against a “new class” that is dominated by the “cultural Marxists”. This is reminiscent of the propaganda from the Springer group in Germany and their daily Die Welt and its agitator Don Alphonso.[58] Finlayson writes:

That class is figured as the ‘Cultural Marxist’. This label for a range of perspectives in social and political theory predates the internet. Its origins lie in paleo-conservative writing from where it has developed into a conspiracy theory, holding that acolytes of the Frankfurt School are enacting a plan to undermine America by promoting feminism and anti-racism (Jamin, 2014). Online the idea has taken on new life (Richardson, 2015; Manavis, 2019), becoming shorthand for the argument that claims to racial or gender equality are a spurious invention of those with a sinister hidden ‘agenda’ (Peterson, 2017; Murray, 2019).

The Cultural Marxist is a jargonising guru mesmerising impressionable students, exploiting them financially while covertly and calculatedly destroying Western culture by encouraging immigration. The idea has been taken up by Members of Parliament and circulated in magazines such as The Spectator (Walker, 2019). (…) [T]he figure is central to a political rhetoric which has emerged from the fusion of offline and online reactionary spaces, the inhabitants of which see themselves as involved in a war for hearts and minds, teaching others to see the invisible left-hand behind events, and to learn how to protect themselves by becoming part of the cultural, intellectual and moral resistance.

Jordan Peterson, for instance, advises school students to leave their classes if teachers begin discussing diversity, inclusivity or equity, to video it and post it to YouTube (Peterson, 2018). Such awareness and resistance are most powerfully conveyed through the rhetoric of ‘the red pill’.[59]

Finlayson aptly addresses Foucault’s critique of the “entrepreneurial subject,” which fits squarely with the rule of neoliberalism and the New Right. I would add, against more typical Guardian writers like Finlayson, that the Corona pandemic showed how the atomized people were being made into their ostensible saviors: panic-induced self-masking, isolating, and “segregating” (“Absonderung”, a Nazi word, executive directives read exactly as they did in 1933 or 1938).

The state is no longer responsible for a functioning health system, which has been systematically underfinanced for decades due to capitalism, the greed for profit of politicians, health insurance companies and hospital companies, but the individual is responsible for not getting sick! In an infectious disease where no human – no human! – can know where to get infected and how.

So either everyone is locked up (2020) or the vaccination apartheid is executed (2021/22) and since April 2020 all people have been forced to mask themselves – in public local and long-distance transport in Europe this regulation has only applied in Germany since spring 2022. The disastrous effects of the medically irrational masking in hospitals and retirement homes cannot be estimated – tens of thousands of inmates or patients will have died earlier or died at all, because as a human being you cannot live without empathy, i.e. without seeing other people and to feel. But these collateral deaths were readily produced by politicians, the media and society.

In any case, the bottom line is that in 2020 and 2021, without any lockdown and without any mask mandates, Sweden had less than half as much excess mortality than Germany, according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO).[60] Another text criticizing the New Right deals exclusively with the Intellectual Dark Web flagship Quillette:

In its political and socioeconomic dimensions, Quillette might therefore be said to further destabilize contemporary and long-held dichotomies between liberal democracy and far-right politics, variously engaging both with tenets of liberalism and exhibiting far-right and neo-fascist elements.

Some Quillette writers’ various embrace of neoliberalism, along with their excuse or promotion of racism, radical traditionalism, and affirmation of pseudo-scientific hierarchies, demonstrate Landa’s observation that, far from representing liberalism’s primary antagonist, fascism can variously serve to reinforce the supremacist, elitist, and exclusivist premises of the (neo)liberal order. Liberal democracies, as demonstrated so dramatically in the 2020 US presidential election, can also provide for the emergence of far-right violence.[61]

Hope: Gad Granach’s Zionism

The pro-Israel scene, on the other hand, has been dominated for many years by conservatives and the New Right. One example is the neoconservative English bestselling author and anti-immigration activist Douglas Murray, whose books, such as one on “The Strange Death of Europe. Immigration, Identity and Islam” was liked to be read by far-right Hungarian President Victor Orbán, who posted a picture of himself while reading the Hungarian edition of Murray’s book on Facebook.[62]

On her new Twitter account, on July 20, 2022, Kathleen Hayes promotes and is very enthusiastic about Douglas Murray. On July 28, 2022, she is touting the London Conference on Antisemitism in September 2022, where, as shown, she is not only a participant, but will be a speaker, as she euphorically emphasizes.[63]

Using the example of Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, pro-Israel activist and former Donald Trump administration official and representative of the US pro-Israel camp, Kenneth S. Marcus, and publicist Henryk M. Broder, I have criticized these new-right tendencies in the pro-Israel scene in recent years.[64] I also experienced this myself when, because of my left-wing criticism of Trump’s right-wing extremism and sexism, the board of directors of the (NGO) Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which I had co-founded in 2007 in Berlin, unanimously dismissed me in 2017, which is an honor. I don’t want anything to do with people like that anymore.

Israel deserves better than support from the New Right and from people who until a few years ago were antisemitic themselves for decades – like Kathleen Hayes – and today agitate against gender theories and publish on sites like Quillette that considers the American Nazi Party as  “Conservatives” who were blocked by Twitter. Resocialization matters, also for former “cult” followers such as Hayes – but as hateful as Kathleen Hayes agitates against the “gender ideology”, she should perhaps think about it for a few years before posing as a pro-Israel activist and author, who primarily harbors resentment against transsexuals. On the other hand, she is of course right, she finds similar agitators ideologically friendly to the New Right or the transphobic Left and feminist circles in the self-proclaimed pro-Israel scene.

Of course, the conference by Hirsh and his allies will have a few lectures about the danger deriving from the Right like in the US. But as along as someone like Kathleen Hayes, who writes for the New Right journal Quillette, appears at the conference, this is nothing but a farce.

What kind of world is this? What kind of pro-Israel scene is meeting in London in September 2022? Doesn’t it fit today’s Israel, where a right-wing extremist, religious fanatic and anti-Palestinian agitator like Itamar Ben Gvir might get up to 13 seats, which would mean the third-largest faction in the next Knesset elections with the party “Religious Zionism” at the beginning of November? A Ben Gvir who, as a 19-year-old, agitated against Prime Minister Rabin in 1995, damaged his state car and warned that Rabin would soon be attacked personally – and a few weeks later Rabin was murdered? The Times of Israel reports on this in a long critical feature on Ben Gvir. Ben Gvir was also one of the organizers of anti-LGBTQ rallies:

Additionally, the far-right Religious Zionism party, which now controls six seats in the Knesset, has three members openly hostile to LGBT rights: Avi Maoz, leader of the Noam faction, and Itamar Ben Gvir and leader MK Bezalel Smotrich, organizers of the 2006 “beast march” in Jerusalem, in which religious opponents of the Pride March walked with donkeys.

There is more anti-gender and transphobic activism in Israel, analyzed by the site Pinknews from the UK and illustrated with an LGBTQ-flag, including a star of David, used by Zionist protesters in Israel:

Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party and self-described “proud homophobe”, helped to organise the 2006 anti-LGBT+ “beast parade” when World Pride came to Jerusalem.

The “beast parade” saw right-wing activists trace the Pride parade route with donkeys and goats, claiming the animals were above LGBT+ people because they hadn’t “sinned”. Other Knesset members under the Religious Zionism alliance umbrella include Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads the Otzma Yehudit party, and Avi Maoz, founder of the anti-LGBT+ party Noam.  Ben-Gvir has celebrated the killing of Palestinians, has previously been convicted of inciting violence and supporting a terror group, and believes the “Arab enemy” must be “expelled” from Israel. Maoz’s Noam party has compared those who fight for LGBT+ rights to Nazis and suicide bombers, and was founded solely to oppose LGBT+ rights.

Unfortunately, Quillette’s, Fathom’s and Kathleen Hayes anti-gender rabble-rousing fits with such agitators as Ben Gvir.

What wonderful times those were when Zionists like Gad Granach (1915–2011) wrote about their life in Israel:

In any case, I am of the opinion that these so-called ‘settlers’ should be left to dry out, simply ignored, neither supported nor protected. (…)

That would be a short process if the ‘settlers’ on the West Bank were simply left to their own devices (…). Incidentally, what does ‘settlers’ even mean? Have they ever done anything for the land they ‘settle’ on?

They haven’t planted a single bush yet. The day before yesterday they were still in Brooklyn, today they want to explain to me what Zionism is. In 1936 I settled on Arab soil that we bought from the Arabs, but we worked it and we actually built. Avodah Yehudi, Jewish work, was very important at the time, and rightly so. No Arab built our houses, as is customary today. There’s the story of the Israeli who strolls through the streets of Shabbes with his son. He says: ‘You see, that house over there, I built that. And here’s the road, I built that too when I was young. And I laid the water pipes over there’. Then the little son says to his father in astonishment. ‘When you were young, were you an Arab?‘[65]

The new London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism around David Hirsh certainly has the very important intention of fighting today’s anti-Zionist antisemitism. But with his inflationary talk of antisemitism regarding Russian tweets, which only reflect – based on mainstream media reports – how inhumane Ukraine is also using civilians as protective shields in this war, Hirsh completely discredits himself as an antisemitism researcher.

Notably by inviting Kathleen Hayes to speak at this conference, who publishes with the “Intellectual Dark Web” magazine Quillette, which presents the American Nazi Party as “conservatives” blocked by evil Twitter, Hirsh loses credibility as a critical researcher.

Finally, Hayes’ announced talk, based on her two articles on Quillette and Fathom, reflects an increasingly transphobic climate in the UK. Her perfidious statement that people who would not take biological sex for granted would also be open to denying the truth about the Holocaust is egregious and transphobic. This is also an inflationary use of the accusation of antisemitism. Such individuals are invited by the London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, but not a word is heard about the very real Ukrainian antisemitism and street naming after perpetrators of the Holocaust and antisemitic ideologues, who paved the way of the Shoah in Ukraine. And that speaks volumes.

Criticism of antisemitism in London will be left-wing and anti-fascist, or it will not be.[66]

 

Endnotes

 

[1] In the following endnotes original German quotes (like from newspapers or other sources) are translated by the author. Titles of articles and books are quoted in the original with a translation following in brackets. Clemens Heni (2011): Schadenfreude. Islamforschung und Antisemitismus in Deutschland nach 9/11 [Schadenfreude. Islamic Studies and Antisemitism in Germany after 9/11], Berlin: Edition Critic.

[2] Clemens Heni (2002): German Political Culture: The Relationship to Anti-Zionism and Jihad before and after 11 September 2001, published online with the page hagalil on December 17, 2003, https://www.clemensheni.net/german-political-culture-the-relationship-to-anti-zionism-and-jihad-before-and-after-11-september-2001/. I also criticized Heidegger and Foucault in my talk, by the way. The German Embassy, a co-sponsor of the event, run riot after my talk. The audience and the host, Wistrich’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), though, were very supportive. As a doctoral candidate, I became a Felix Posen Fellow at SICSA in 2003 and 2004.

[3] Clemens Heni/Thomas Weidauer (Ed.) (2012): Ein Super-GAUck. Politische Kultur im neuen Deutschland [A Super-GAUck. Political Culture in the new Germany], Berlin: Edition Critic, darin Clemens Heni (2012a): Die Abwehr der Erinnerung an den Holocaust und die komparatistische Obsession [Rejecting Holocaust Memory and the Comparative Obsession], ibid., pp. 7–42. One of the contributors to this anthology is the Holocaust historian, publicist and professor of Yiddish Dovid Katz from Vilnius in Lithuania. He has been a critic of Putin and Putinism for many years. In March 2022 he wrote, among other things, about the war in Ukraine:

„What is the upshot? That just as elsewhere in pro-Western Eastern Europe, a small but disproportionately powerful coterie of far-right pseudo-patriotic history rewriters, among them highly educated and sophisticated historians, politicians and state apparatchiks, all Holocaust revisionists in their passion to have as national heroes Hitler collaborators, have done so much harm to their own countries. It’s enough to peruse Defending History’s sections on Croatia, EstoniaHungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and more (see Countries). Incidentally, the motivation of these small, overly influential elites is (mis)guided by two forms of racism: inability to concede their nations’ leaders acted wrongfully during the Holocaust (what country’s history has no dark spots?), and the demented desire for a (supposedly) ethnically pure country (in other words, quiet satisfaction with the results of accomplished ethnic purification).

Each time a ‘Bandera Street’ is inaugurated in Ukraine, glorifying the World War II fascist, whose hordes murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles of all ages and both genders on an ethnic basis (i.e. genocide), Ukraine and its prestige are dealt an unfair and undeserved blow”, Dovid Katz (2022): Ottawa Citizen & N.Y. Times Break Media Silence on Self-Damage of Eastern NATO/EU Democracies by Public-Space Adoration of Holocaust Collaborators, March 20, 2022, https://defendinghistory.com/ottawa-citizen-n-y-times-break-media-silence-on-self-damage-of-eastern-nato-eu-democracies-by-public-space-adoration-of-holocaust-collaboratorsce-on-self-damage-of-eastern-nato-eu-democracies-by-pu/109618.

[4] Efraim Zuroff (2022): 5 EU countries that shouldn’t be throwing stones. Accusing Russia of rewriting the Holocaust for its current propaganda is fair – but not when you’ve always whitewashed the Holocaust for your own purposes, 27. Juli 2022, The Times of Israel (Blogs), https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/5-eu-countries-that-shouldnt-be-throwing-stones/.

[5] „Israeli lawmakers outraged after Zelensky compares Ukraine war to Holocaust“, 20. März 2022, https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjn3nxbf5; „Zelensky compares Kremlin’s actions to Nazi ‘final solution’ in Knesset speech“, 21. März 2022, https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/zelensky-compares-kremlins-actions-to-nazi-final-solution-in-knesset-speech/: „Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been criticised by some Israeli politicians after delivering a speech to the Knesset in which he compared the actions of the Kremlin with the Nazi ‘final solution’. In a 12 minute-long speech, in which he referenced the ‘people of Israel’ several times, Zelensky also drew flack after saying: ‘Ukrainians made their choice 80 years ago, we saved Jews, and there are among us righteous gentiles.’ After Sunday’s speech – the latest in a series of pleas made by Zelensky to politicians across the globe including the UK’s parliament – one Likud MK Yuval Steinitz said the president’s message ‘borders on Holocaust denial.’”

[6] https://www.memoryandconscience.eu/; https://www.memoryandconscience.eu/2022/06/11/opening-of-the-new-museum-of-the-victims-of-communism-in-washington-dc/.

[7] Clemens Heni (2010): Against the equation of National Socialism and Communism – Fight the Prague Declaration, conference presentation on March 15, 2010, article online March 21, 2010, https://www.clemensheni.net/against-the-equation-of-national-socialism-and-communism-fight-the-prague-declaration/. The original post read: „In October 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution gave birth to the deadliest ideology in human history – Communism.“ That is Holocaust denial, anti-Communist style. On Dec. 8, 2009, this was on their site, as the wayback machine documents, https://web.archive.org/web/20091208161141/http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/history_communism.php.

[8] https://victimsofcommunism.org/.

[9] https://www.uni-passau.de/internationales/ukrainehilfe/vortragsreihe/.

[10] “Judith Heitkamp: A definition of the term war of annihilation says that in such a war ‘all physical and psychological limitations are lifted‘. If one follows the news about the Russian warfare, does one have to speak of a war of annihilation by Russia against Ukraine?

Herfried Münkler: I do believe that it can be done. In any case, it is not recognizable that the usual restrictions and limitations of international warfare law, which were developed in the late 19th and over the course of the 20th century, have a relevant position in this war. In principle, it is a question of independent military action in which assumed military requirements dominate and the restrictions of wartime law take a back seat,” „Herfried Münkler über Kriegsführung in der Ukraine. Warum Russland einen Vernichtungskrieg führt“, 14.04.2022, https://www.br.de/kultur/gesellschaft/interview-herfried-muenkler-ukraine-russland-vernichtungskrieg-mariupol-kriegsverbrechen-100.html.

Well: In the Second World War from September 1, 1939 and in the German and Wehrmacht war of annihilation from 1941 to 1944, six million Jews and 27 million Soviets were murdered, thousands of villages were completely wiped out and Jews and Soviet commissars were deliberately murdered, Hannes Heer/Klaus Naumann (1995): Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. Nothing even remotely comparable has happened in Ukraine since February 24, 2022. Even the neo-Nazis of the Azov Brigades, who had holed up in a steelworks in Mariupol for weeks, were not murdered with carpet bombing, but ultimately surrendered to the Russian army and the pro-Russian units on the ground. No war of annihilation anywhere. War is terrible enough! The word “war of annihilation” has an exclusively propaganda and NS-trivializing function.

The historian Hubert Brieden said about Münkler in a program for Radio Flora from Hanover: “Münkler, mass media and politicians claim that Russia’s war against Ukraine is a war of annihilation. The leader of the Greens, Ricarda Lang, justified the German arms deliveries to the Ukrainian government a few days after the start of the Russian attack on Ukraine with a “war of annihilation” allegedly planned by the Russian government. At that time, the Ukrainian government reported 352 civilians killed.

In Germany’s war of annihilation, at least 27,000,000 people died in the Soviet Union, 14,000,000 of them civilians. An integral part of this war of annihilation was the systematic murder of the Jewish population. In the further course of Russia’s war against Ukraine, there were no indications that Russia wanted to systematically exterminate the Ukrainian population or parts of it for racist reasons. It is a war with bombing and rocket attacks, street and house fighting and consequent destruction and deaths – that’s bad enough – a war like in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria etc. but it is not a war of annihilation. The association with the Nazi genocide program serves to justify supplying arms to a war zone and an armament program unprecedented since 1945.

This type of war propaganda works on the same pattern as Josef Fischer’s Auschwitz lie in the war against Yugoslavia. Andriy Melnyk, the Ukrainian ambassador who has since been recalled, never tired of talking about Russia’s war of annihilation. At the same time, he downplayed the involvement of Ukrainian nationalists led by Stepan Bandera in the Holocaust. About 1.6 million Jews were murdered by the Germans and their local allies in what is now Ukraine. Shortly after taking office, Melnyk, who has been Ukrainian ambassador to Germany since January 2015, laid flowers at the grave of one of the main people responsible for the mass murder of Jews and Poles in Ukraine.

His belittling of Bandera led to protests by the Israeli and Polish embassies in 2022 and ultimately to his dismissal,” Hubert Brieden (2022): ” … wow, wir stehen nicht nur auf den Schultern von Joschka Fischer, sondern auch auf denen unserer Großväter.” Deutsche Kriegspropaganda: Verharmlosung des NS-Vernichtungskrieges und des Holocaust, Radio Flora, 18.07.2022, https://radioflora.de/wow-wir-stehen-nicht-nur-auf-den-schultern-von-joschka-fischer-sondern-auch-auf-denen-unserer-grossvaeter-deutsche-kriegspropaganda-verharmlosung-des-ns-vernichtungskrieges-und-des-holo/.

[11] The network “Remembrance + Future in Hanover e.V.” shows the inflationary talk of “genocide” in a very exemplary way when it wrote in a newsletter at the end of March 2022:

„Here with us, many are disturbed and stunned by the fact that the Russian ruler has now followed up the numerous announcements and actions of recent years that he wants to restore the former Russian-Soviet great power with further aggressive military actions. Stunned that a mafia-like, power-obsessed nomenklatura led by a Chekist who rules with murder, manslaughter and genocide is destroying years of self-suggestion.” Putin is an autocratic, anti-liberal and brutal ruler, but he has not committed genocide. What are these networkers in Hanover talking about? Which genocide?

[12] Lars Rensmann (2004): Demokratie und Judenbild [Democracy and the perception of Jews in Germany], Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

[13] https://de-de.facebook.com/lars.rensmann (as of August 8, 2022). Some ex-authors of the only left popular monthly magazine in this country – Konkret – are particularly insidious – such as Lars Quadfasel, Tom Uhlig, Alex Feuerherdt, Ramona Ambs, Elke Wittich, Olaf Kistenmacher, Marit Hofmann, Leo Fischer, Jan Süselbeck, Elke Wittich, Lothar Galow-Bergemann and others –

https://kontrast-mittel.org/2022/06/30/warum-wir-nicht-mehr-fur-konkret-schreiben/ –, who now no longer want to write for Konkret because Konkret does not want to become a member of NATO and the ‘Western community of values’ – the pseudo-left agitators* put right-wing extremist journals like Compact with Konkret on the same level in relation to the Russian Ukraine war:

“For us, the authors of Konkret, a red line has been crossed with the editorial course on the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. We don’t want to and can’t continue to publish in a magazine that is close to the AfD, the volkish wing of the Party of the Left or with Jürgen Elsässer’s [right-wing extremist] Compact Magazine, Henry Kissinger, Klaus von Dohnanyi or the lobby groups of German industry on this issue.”

German industry, by the way, rejoices at the 100 billion that Scholz & Co. want to spend on the Bundeswehr in view of the historical possibility of finally being able to kill Russians again, albeit indirectly via Ukrainian soldiers, but with German tanks, howitzers and other things should use murderous tools instead of politics employing diplomacy and skill.

Just as perfidious is an online Journal called “Kritiknetz” by the former lecturer at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences Heinz Gess, who also puts Compact Magazine and Konkret Magazine in the same line; Heinz Gess (2022): Stinkender Misthaufen? Zur Querfront in Putins Krieg [Stinking dung heap? To the transverse front (Querfront) in Putin’s war], in: Kritiknetz – Zeitschrift für Kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft, https://www.kritiknetz.de/images/stories/texte/Gess_Misthaufen.pdf. The editorial staff of Konkret had already taken a clear stance against Putin and the war on February 24, the day Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine began

“We do have no concrete understanding of Moscow’s power-political ambitions and the Russian push to smash the ‘Vladimir-Iljitsch-Lenin-Ukraine’ (Vladimir Putin), nor is a commitment to the free-democratic world order of the West to be expected from this magazine, a Western world which always discovered his great love for peace when the West itself had not just started a war of aggression.” A “long version” of a statement (which came as a short version in issue 8/22) on the Konkret homepage also says:

“The discussion will be continued in the next issue – including an article on the development of Russian foreign policy over the past 20 years and on the question of how and when Vladimir Putin, who was trying to get closer to the West, became a chauvinist warlord. (…) 3. But why did the authors of the call for a boycott, although they were invited, not take part (anymore) in the discussion? They give two answers to this question – one untrue and one childish. The untrue:

‘In his (Lars Quadfasels) view, there has been less and less room for controversy and exchange lately. For the March issue, Quadfasel wrote a critical article on the subject. After that it shouldn’t have been possible anymore’, he said on the Twitter page of the NDR media magazine ‘Zapp’ in the context of an interview that ‘Zapp’ had conducted there with Quadfasel. Konkret has obtained a cease-and-desist declaration against the NDR because of this obvious untruth (up to and including the May issue, Quadfasel published articles on the Ukraine war in Konkret); the broadcaster has removed the passage from the network. (…) Finally, one more thing: The Konkret boycotters have put the motto on the homepage on which they published their ‘declaration’ (contrast-medium.org): ‘Contrast medication are medicines that are not intended to cure or alleviate serve illnesses, but help to identify them.’ The metaphorical use of the term ‘illness’ to label unpopular (political) opinions, and thus the pathologization of the political opponent, is fascist idiom“, Editorial Heft 8/22, Langfassung, https://www.konkret-magazin.de/727-editorial-heft-8-22-langfassung.

[14] For all these topics see the book by Gerald Grüneklee/Clemens Heni/Peter Nowak (2022): Nie wieder Krieg ohne uns… Deutschland und die Ukraine, Berlin: Edition Critic [Never again War without us… Germany and Ukraine], which was published in late July 2022.

[15] „Goldsmiths asks student union to begin antisemitism probe over Jewish lecturer slurs“, 19. Mai 2022, https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/university-opens-anitisemitism-probe-as-jewish-academic-called-far-right-supremacist/.

[16] https://mobile.twitter.com/DavidHirsh.

[17] „Amnesty International wirft Ukraine Völkerrechtsbruch vor. Die Unterbringung von Truppen in Wohngebieten habe die Zivilbevölkerung gefährdet, heißt es. Russische Medien instrumentalisieren den Bericht ihrerseits“ [“Amnesty International accuses Ukraine of violating international law. The accommodation of troops in residential areas has endangered the civilian population, it is said. Russian media exploit the report for their part”], August 5, 2022, https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000138043310/amnesty-international-wirft-ukraine-voelkerrechtsbruch-vor.

[18] „Hamas’ use of human shields is a war crime“, May 13, 2021, https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/teich-hamas-use-of-human-shields-is-a-war-crime.

[19] „Bericht zu Pflegeheim-Angriff : Tote Zivilisten: UN machen Ukraine Vorwürfe“ [Nursing home attack report: Dead civilians: UN blames Ukraine], July 9, 2022, https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/kriegsverbrechen-zivilisten-un-bericht-ukraine-krieg-russland-100.html.

[20] „Putin sorry for Lavrov’s claim Hitler was part Jewish – Israel PM“, May 5, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61339749.

[21] „OHCHR is concerned that in the course of hostilities, both Russian armed forces and affiliated armed groups as well as Ukrainian armed forces took up positions either in residential areas or near civilian objects, from where they launched military operations without taking measures for the protection of civilians present, as required under IHL.16 OHCHR is further concerned by reports of the use of human shields, which involves seeking to use the presence or movement of the civilian population or individual civilians to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. The use of human shields is specifically prohibited by article 28 of Geneva Convention IV and article 51(7) of additional protocol I”, June 29, 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/ua/2022-06-29/2022-06-UkraineArmedAttack-EN.pdf.

[22] https://mobile.twitter.com/centre_as.

[23] I dealt with documents about the “not one inch” offer by James Baker, the Americans and Germany, Clemens Heni (2022): “Not one Inch”, Ukraine und NATO-Osterweiterung im Kontext oder: Amerika plante 1959 91 Atombomben auf Ost-Berlin zu werfen” … und die UdSSR wurde im Februar 1990 von Baker, Bush sen. und Kohl “ausgetrickst” [“Not one inch”, Ukraine and NATO eastward expansion in context or: America planned to drop 91 atomic bombs on East Berlin in 1959 … and in February 1990 the USSR was tricked out by Baker, Bush sen. and German chancellor Kohl], February 13, 2022, https://www.clemensheni.net/not-one-inch-ukraine-und-nato/; Jonathan Guyer (2022): “How America’s NATO expansion obsession plays into the Ukraine crisis. The post-Cold War debates shaping the current standoff with Russia“, January 27, 2022, https://www.vox.com/22900113/nato-ukraine-russia-crisis-clinton-expansion; Svetlana Savranskaya/Tom Blanton (2017): Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner. Slavic Studies Panel Addresses “Who Promised What to Whom on NATO Expansion?”, December 12, 2017, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early; Mary Elise Sarotte (2010): Not One Inch Eastward? Bush, Baker, Kohl, Genscher, Gorbachev, and the Origin of Russian Resentment toward NATO Enlargement in February 1990. Diplomatic History, 34(1), pp. 119–140, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24916036; Mary Elise Sarotte (2021): Not One Inch. America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

[24] https://londonantisemitism.com/about/.

[25] „‘The authors of The Black Book of Communism are part of a welcome change in the moral-philosophical landscape in Paris, and one hopes elsewhere, as a result of which liberal and left-of-center intellectuals, scholars and politicians judge the crimes of communist regimes with the same severity they’ve applied to those of Nazism and fascism.’—Jeffrey Herf, The Washington Post Book World”, reads the blurb by Herf for the book on the homepage of the publisher, Harvard University Press, https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?content=reviews&isbn=9780674076082. For criticism of the Holocaust distorting Black Book of Communism see Jens Mecklenburg/Wolfgang Wippermann (Hg.) (1998): Roter Holocaust? Kritik des Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus [Red Holocaust? Criticism of the Black book of Communism], Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag.

[26] It is very common to ignore Holocaust distortion via the Red equals Brown ideology, I dealt with it in the first issue of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism: Clemens Heni (2017): Antisemitism in the Twenty-First Century, Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1–9, here p. 3. DOI: 10.26613/jca/1.1.1, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.26613/jca/1.1.1/html?lang=en.

[27] Clemens Heni (2021): Antisemitismus im Zeitalter von Corona (BICSA Working Paper, Januar 2021 – Jubiläum, 10 Jahre BICSA) [Antisemitism in the Age of Corona], January 31, 2021, http://www.bicsa.org/allgemein/antisemitismus-im-zeitalter-von-corona-bicsa-working-paper-januar-2021-jubilaeum-10-jahre-bicsa/.

[28] https://londonantisemitism.com/conference-21st-century-antisemitism/.

[29] „KEY 01 – Opening Ceremony – World Health Summit 2021“, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJFKBritLlc. See the discussion about that video and Corona gene therapy in Clemens Heni (2021a): Corona-Panikorchester in großen Nöten: ARD-Faktenfinder – “Gentherapie” – Ivermectin – Spotify – Onchozerkose [Corona panic orchestra in great need: ARD fact finder – “gene therapy” – Ivermectin – Spotify – onchocerciasis], 02. Februar 2022, https://www.clemensheni.net/corona-panikorchester-in-grossen-noeten-ard-faktenfinder-gentherapie-ivermectin-spotify-onchozerkose/.

[30] Clemens Heni (2021b): Jenseits der Agitation im Tagesspiegel: Antisemitismus als einigendes Band? #allesdichtmachen, die CDU (Maaßen) und die “Schwarmintelligenz” der BASIS [Beyond the agitation in the daily Der Tagesspiegel: Is antisemitism common ground for critics of  Corona policies, like #allesdichtmachen, including remarks about Far Right politician Maaßen and the new party Die BASIS], 12. Mai 2021, https://www.clemensheni.net/jenseits-der-agitation-im-tagesspiegel-antisemitismus-als-einigendes-band-die-cdu-maassen/.

[31] Since 2021 we know that vaccinated people against SARS-CoV-2 are exactly as long and as intense contagious as not vaccinated people, as a major study of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US and the US Ministry of Justice have shown: “Transmission potential of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in a federal prison, July—August 2021“, November 19, 2021, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.12.21265796v1.full-text. Every single differentiation between vaccinated and not vaccinated people is an Apartheid rule and has to end immediately. Since 2021 most people who died with or from Covid-19 were vaccinated.

[32] „Schwerer Vorwurf an Horst Seehofer (CSU): Politische Vereinnahmung von Forscher:innen in Geheimdokument?“[“Serious accusation against Horst Seehofer (CSU): Political appropriation of researchers in a secret document?”], 09. Februar 2021, https://www.fr.de/wissen/schwerer-vorwurf-an-horst-seehofer-csu-politische-vereinnahmung-von-forscherinnen-in-geheimdokument-90197291.html; „Wie bekommen wir Corona in den Griff?“ Internes Papier aus Innenministerium empfahl, den Deutschen Corona-Angst zu machen“ [“How do we get Corona under control?” Internal paper from the Ministry of the Interior recommended making Germans afraid of Corona”], 11. April 2020, https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/aus-dem-innenministerium-wie-sag-ichs-den-leuten-internes-papier-empfiehlt-den-deutschen-angst-zu-machen_id_11851227.html.

[33] „Lockdown policy ‘madness:’ Israeli scientist tells i24NEWS“, 31. Dezember 2020, https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/coronavirus/1609424065-lockdown-policy-madness-israeli-scientist-tells-i24news; Clemens Heni (2021c): Hope is in the air: the Israeli ‘Common Sense Model’ for Corona in context, 02. Januar 2021, The Times of Israel (Blogs), https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hope-is-in-the-air-the-israeli-common-sense-model-for-corona-in-context/.

[34] Clemens Heni (2020): Yes, we can: Celebrate the End of Trump, November 8, 2020, The Times of Israel (Blogs), https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/yes-we-can-celebrate-the-end-of-trump/.

[35] https://fathomjournal.org/about-us/.

[36] https://fathomjournal.org/fathoming-the-intellectual-revolution-of-our-time-1-punch-a-terf-and-smash-the-zionists-misogyny-and-antisemitism-in-the-contemporary-western-left/.

[37] As early as May 2020, world leading epidemiologist Professor John P.A. Ioannidis from Stanford University in California, estimated the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of Covid-19 at 0.23 per cent. His study was submitted on May 13, 2000, a revised version resubmitted on September 13, 2000 and the paper was then accepted on September 15, 2020. The study was published as a WHO Bulletin on October 14, 2020, John P.A. Ioannidis (2020): Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/340124/PMC7947934.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Compare this to the IFR of the Influenza epidemic in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1969/70, which was at 0.29 per cent, see a study by co-workers at the now infamous Robert Koch-Institute (RKI) in Berlin, Udo Buchholz et al. (2016): Todesfälle durch Influenzapandemien in Deutschland 1918 bis 2009 [Deaths by Influenza pandemics in Germany 1918 through 2009]. Bundesgesundheitsblatt 59, pp. 523–536 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00103-016-2324-9. Not one of the useless and antidemocratic measures such as lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccination apartheid, isolation, quarantine, stop of international supply chains etc. were used and enforced in 1969/70. In August 2022, in Germany the Case Fatality Rate is 0.13 per cent, which is two to ten times higher than the epidemiologically important Infection Fatality Rate, as most people do not realize that they have Covid-19, do not see a doctor and have not really a serious problem with their cough, sniff or sore throat. The average age of death from (or with) Covid-19 from the beginning was 80+ years, it was even 82,5 years in 2021 in the UK, which is above life expectancy. A huge amount of official Covid deaths did not die because of the virus, but only with a positive test, while there were other reasons for the death, comorbidities for example.

[38] John Campbell (2022): Freedom of information discussion, January 20, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UHvwWWcjYw; ONS Report (2022): COVID-19 deaths and autopsies Feb 2020 to Dec 2021, January 17, 2022, https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/covid19deathsandautopsiesfeb2020todec2021.  

[39] In Fathom she writes: „The admonition for Jews to reject Zionism, remain in Europe and fight for socialist revolution ended in horrific ‘special Jewish sorrows’. That the Marxist movement’s dogmatic universalism left a terrible legacy has never been acknowledged by subsequent generations of leftists—and has left a deep reservoir of unexamined guilt“ (emphasis by the author).

[40] In addition to articles and book chapters, historian Robert S. Wistrich (1945–2015) published the following books on the topic of the Left and antisemitism, including the relationship of universalism and particularism: Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky (1976); Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary (1979); Socialism and the Jews: The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (1982, on Marx and antisemitism ibid., pp. 25–26); From Ambivalence to Betrayal. The Left, the Jews and Israel (2012). See also Julius Carlebach (1978): Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism, London, Henley and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Edmund Silberner (1949): “Was Marx an Anti-Semite?,” Historica Judaica, 11 (April 1949); Robert Misrahi (1972): Marx et la question juive, Paris: Gallimard; for a discussion of Marx, antisemitism and the Left see in addition Clemens Heni (2013): Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism, Berlin: Edition Critic, pp. 89–92, including a take on Marx and Bruno Bauer.

[41] Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1967): Denken auf eigene Gefahr. Ein Offener Brief an Peter Weiss über den Nahost-Konflikt [Think at your own risk. An open letter to Peter Weiss about the Middle East conflict], Die Zeit, July 28, 1967, http://www.zeit.de/1967/30/denken-auf-eigene-gefahr; Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1999): Briefe [Letters]. Herausgegeben von Silvia Hildesheimer und Dietmar Pleyer, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. On Hildesheimer’s criticism of Peter Weiss‘ Anti-Zionism see Clemens Heni (2018): Der Komplex Antisemitismus. Dumpf und gebildet, christlich, muslimisch, lechts, rinks, postkolonial, romantisch, patriotisch: deutsch [Complex antisemitism: dumb and educated, Christian, Muslim, left, right, post-colonial, romantic, patriotic: German], Berlin: Edition Critic, pp. 649–658. There I also quoted postcards that Adorno and Hildesheimer wrote to each other in August 1967, the first came from Adorno, where the critical theorist warmly thanked Hildesheimer for his criticism of Peter Weiss’s anti-Zionism in Die ZEIT, ibid., p. 654.

[42] Jean Améry (1976): Der neue Antisemitismus [The new antisemitism], Tribüne. Zeitschrift zum Verständnis des Judentums, Vol. 15., No. 59, pp. 7010–7014.

[43] Henryk M. Broder (1980): Danke schön. Bis hierher und nicht weiter [Thank you very much. Up to here and no further]. Mit Beiträgen von Detlef Hartmann, Ulrich Klug, Uwe Maeffert, Ulrich Vultejus, Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag; Henryk M. Broder [1980]/(1982): Zur Demokratie angetreten – ein Volk macht Dienst nach Vorschrift [Stand still for democracy. A people embraces it’s call of duty], in: Lea Fleischmann (1982), Dies ist nicht mein Land. Eine Jüdin verläßt die Bundesrepublik. Mit einem Nachwort von Henryk M. Broder [This is not my country. A Jew leaves the Federal Republic. With an afterword by Henryk M. Broder] , 4. edition, Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, pp. 251–272; Henryk M. Broder (1986): Der Ewige Antisemit. Über Sinn und Funktion eines beständigen Gefühls [The eternal antisemite. On the meaning and function of a constant feeling], Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.

[44] „We don’t like your love-song. Kritik des Antizionismus der Revolutionären Zellen – und anderer Linker heute“, January 2001, a scan of the brochure can be found here: https://clemensheni.net/wp-content/uploads/We-don-t-like-your-love-song-linker-Antisemitismus.pdf.

[45] Anthony Julius (2010): Trials of the Diaspora. A History of Antisemitism in England, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

[46] Clemens Heni (2007): Salonfähigkeit der Neuen Rechten. ‚Nationale Identität‘, Antisemitismus und Antiamerikanismus in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1970–2005: Henning Eichberg als Exempel [Welcoming the New Right into the Salon. ‚National Identity‘, antisemitism and anti-Americanism in the political culture of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1970–2005: Henning Eichberg as an example], Marburg: Tectum, pp. 87–88. [doctoral dissertation, University of Innsbruck, Austria, July 2006].

[47] Hauke Brunkhorst (1987): Der Intellektuelle im Land der Mandarine, Frankfurt a. M. (Suhrkamp; edition suhrkamp)[Intellectuals in the Land of the Mandarin]. Meanwhile, Brunkhorst has mutated into an irrational ZeroCovid-Professor, he supports the fanatic ZeroCovid movement: Clemens Heni (2021d): Das Untier wird politisch – “zwei Epidemien”: “Corona und Coronarr”. Ulrich Horstmann attackiert den Coronawahnsinn [The beast becomes political – “two epidemics”: “Corona and Corona maniac”. Ulrich Horstmann attacks the Corona madness], 23. Juli 2021, https://www.clemensheni.net/das-untier-wird-politisch-zwei-epidemien-corona-und-coronarr-ulrich-horstmann-attackiert-den-coronawahnsinn/.

[48] Brunkhorst 1987, p. 2.

[49] Ibid., p. 77.

[50] Ibid., p. 10.

[51] Milosz Matuschek (2019): Voltaires Erben 2.0 oder Warum das Intellectual Dark Web so sehr fasziniert. Intellektuelle Nonkonformisten um Dave Rubin und Joe Rogan haben eine alte Tugend neu entdeckt: Endlosgespräche mit furchtlosen Zeitgenossen über kontroverse Themen, Thesen und Trends zu führen. Live und ungeschnitten, also unverfälscht. Das neue Format kommt an [Voltaire’s Legacy 2.0 or why the Intellectual Dark Web is so fascinating. Intellectual non-conformists around Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan have rediscovered an old virtue: having endless conversations with fearless contemporaries about controversial topics, theses and trends. Live and uncut, so unadulterated. The new format is cool], NZZ, 16.52019, https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/intellectual-dark-web-wieso-voltaires-erben-faszinieren-ld.1481641. The openness towards the New Right or left-wing conspiracy myths is typical of an appeal by Matuschek and his colleague, the YouTuber (WHAT a word and what a business model) Gunnar Kaiser, “Appeal for free debate spaces”, to which dozens of people then signed, which often appear in the mainstream media, on television or radio and at events, among the first signatories are also conspiracy ideologues on 9/11 such as Mathias Bröckers, https://idw-europe.org/; https://idw-europe.org/liste-der-unterzeichner/. For criticism of Bröckers see Ivo Bozic (2011): Mossad, wer sonst? Verschwörungstheorien zu den Anschlägen finden immer größeren Zulauf. Je absurder, desto beliebter [Mossad, who else? Conspiracy theories about the attacks are becoming increasingly popular. The more absurd, the more popular], 05. September 2011, Jüdische Allgemeine, https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/politik/der-mossad-wer-sonst/:

“The conspiracy theorists are not only dependent on obscure esoteric publishers, such as Kopp-Verlag, which is particularly ambitious on the subject of September 11th, they also publish their books in well-known houses such as Piper, Westend and Knaur. And they always make it onto the bestseller lists, also because the book by Mathias Bröckers is hyped up in the German arts pages and by television magazines such as ‘Titel, Thesen, Temperamente’ (ARD). Conspiracy theories about 9/11 are not only a phenomenon of left and right enemies of America and antisemites, but have firmly established themselves in the middle of society. They are all the more dangerous.”

[52] See also interesting information about Quillette here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quillette. The German Mainstream online cultural magazine „Perlentaucher“ (Pearl diver) obviously finds the New Right style agitation of Quillette rather thrilling, and the magazine reported several times enthusiastically about Quillette and quoted the New Right platform, https://www.perlentaucher.de/9punkt/2018-11-13.html?highlight=Quillette#a69378, like on November 13, 2018: „Ideas. Amelia Lester tells politico.com what the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ (IDW) is all about, a loose association of intellectuals and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who oppose left-wing identity politics and claim values to advocate for enlightenment. Her favorite magazine is Quillette (from which The Pearl Diver has quoted several times), run by editor Claire Lehmann: This magazine ‘has at times received a massive repercussion on social media. Its authors have been thrown at everything from ‘clown’ to ‘crypto-fascist’. But fans of the site include pop psychologist Jordan Peterson, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, Harvard psychology professors Steven Pinker and New York University’s Jonathan Haidt, and columnists such as David Brooks, Meghan Daum and Andrew Sullivan.“

[53] Eoin Lenihan (2019): It’s Not Your Imagination: The Journalists Writing About Antifa Are Often Their Cheerleaders, May 29, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190529172934/https://quillette.com/2019/05/29/its-not-your-imagination-the-journalists-writing-about-antifa-are-often-their-cheerleaders/. Lenihan posted a video about an anti-Corona policy rally in the city of Ulm in the south-west of Germany in February 2022 on YouTube – „Spaziergang/Demonstration Ulm”, Germany – 25.2.22“, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZopHQQXuKqs; as long as this scene does not distance itself from right-wing extremists or the New Right of any kind, something like this happens again and again, although of course people can always be present at a public demonstration or rally who, if they are not exactly as well-known as Jürgen Elsässer from the right-wing extremist Compact Magazine or convicted Holocaust denier Horst Mahler etc., run along unnoticed and then take over the action for themselves.

[54] „The day after it was published, the article made its way to notorious white supremacist forum Stormfront, and I soon found out what was meant by ‘further study.’ A few weeks after Lenihan had his big day out at Quillette, I got a message from a friend warning me about a weird video that had just popped up on YouTube. As the Columbia Journalism Review describes, the video showed ‘imagery of mass shooters intercut with images of the reporters mentioned by Lenihan under the heading ‘Sunset the Media.’ ’ My face was there, next to those of a dozen other writers, activists, and friends”, Kim Kelly (2019): Quillette’s “Antifa Journalists” List Could’ve Gotten Me Killed. What a harassment campaign reveals about a darling journal of the intellectual dark web, June 14, 2019, https://newrepublic.com/article/154205/quillettes-antifa-journalists-list-couldve-gotten-killed; Jared Holt (2019: Right-wing publications launder an anti-journalist smear campaign, June 12, 2019, https://www.cjr.org/analysis/quillette-antifa-journalist-smear-campaign.php. A supposedly equidistantly but de facto supportive article by Cathy Young about the New Right, Quillette and Lenihan’s baiting, Cathy Young (2019): Antifa, Quillette, and Media Bias. Who got smeared?, July 3, 2019, https://medium.com/arc-digital/antifa-quillette-and-media-bias-a6fa7652d38a shows the embarrassing journalism of our time. A week later Young had to admit that she had played down the right-wing role of Lenihan, but her focus was on the „extremism of Antifa“.

[55] I wrote a book about the pro-Israel stance of the original Marxist Critical Theory, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal, and the anti-Zionist Erich Fromm, including chapters on Judith Butler’s anti-Zionism, Clemens Heni (2014): Kritische Theorie und Israel. Max Horkheimer und Judith Butler im Kontext von Judentum, Binationalismus und Zionismus [Critical Theory and Israel. Max Horkheimer, Judith Butler, Jewry, Bi-Nationalism and Zionism], Berlin: Edition Critic.

[56] For a scientific analysis and criticism of Rowling and the current transphobic discourse among left and liberal feminists, see a master’s thesis at the FU Berlin in sociology from December 2021: Braedyn Ezra Simon (2021): IT ISN’T HATE TO SPEAK THE TRUTH”: ANTI-TRANS (GENDER) POLITICS IN THE UK AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENDER CRITICAL FEMINIST MOVEMENT. A critical look into the colonial remnants of gender discourse, December 2, 2021, https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/32780.

[57] Alan Finlayson (2021): Neoliberalism, the Alt-Right and the Intellectual Dark Web, Theory Culture Society, Special Issue „Post-Neoliberalism?“, pp. 1–24, here p. 11.

[58] Clemens Heni (2020a): Die geistigen Brüder des Neonazis in Hanau: AfD, Merkelhasser, Don Alphonsos Agitation gegen „Kulturmarxismus“ [The spiritual brothers of neo-Nazis in Hanau: AfD, Merkel haters, Don Alphonso’s agitation against “cultural Marxism”], 20. Februar 2020, https://www.clemensheni.net/die-geistigen-brueder-des-neonazis-in-hanau-afd-merkelhasser-don-alphonsos-agitation-gegen-kulturmarxismus/.

[59] Finlayson 2021, p. 12.

[60] WHO (2022): „Global excess deaths associated with COVID-19 (modelled estimates)“, May 5, 2022 (Update), https://www.who.int/data/sets/global-excess-deaths-associated-with-covid-19-modelled-estimates.

[61] Imogen Richards/Callum Jones (2022): Quillette, Classical Liberalism, and the International New Right, in: A. James McAdams/Alejandro Castrillon (Hg.), Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy, London/New York: Routledge, pp. 121–148, here p. 145. In the text, the two authors characterize Nietzsche in a typically vulgar Marxist tradition and contrary to empiricism as anti-enlightenment and right-wing. In fact, Nietzsche was an anti-German and friend of the Jews. Imogen Richards has also written a scientifically questionable text on neoliberalism and the Corona pandemic that is just as little empirical as his false characterization of Nietzsche, where he factually misrepresents Sweden and speaks badly about the rational response in that Scandinavian country, Imogen Richards (2022a): Neoliberalism, COVID-19 and conspiracy: pandemic management strategies and the far-right social turn, Justice, Power and Resistance • vol 5 • no 1-2 • pp. 109–126, here p. 114. The fact that Sweden has less than half as much excess mortality as Germany, a heartland of the ZeroCovid madness, precisely because of its more liberal, epidemiologically more sensible policy, is of course not mentioned in this text.

[62] Murtaza Hussain (2018): The Far Right Is Obsessed with a Book About Muslims Destroying Europe. Here’s What It Gets Wrong. Rather than declaring the continent “dead,” it might be worth considering that every generation faces unique challenges, 25. Dezember 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/12/25/strange-death-of-europe-douglas-murray-review/.

[63] https://mobile.twitter.com/renegade_kathy.

[64] Clemens Heni (2017): Jews should stop supporting the Alt-Right and the enemies of the Jewish people, The Times of Israel (Blogs), November 18, 2017, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jews-should-stop-supporting-the-alt-right-and-the-enemies-of-the-jewish-people/; Clemens Heni (2018): Kenneth L. Marcus’ Oxymoron: Trump and Civil Rights, March 12, 2018, The Times of Israel (Blogs), https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/kenneth-l-marcus-oxymoron-trump-and-civil-rights/; Clemens Heni (2019): Why is Germany’s Best Known Jewish Journalist Giving Speeches to Its Holocaust-Downplaying, Far-Right Party? February 4, 2019, Tablet Magazine, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/jewish-journalist-defending-german-far-right. Clemens Heni (2019a): “Please give me some latkes before you kill me”: Jews and neo-Nazis in Germany, February 11, 2019, https://www.clemensheni.net/please-give-me-some-latkes-before-you-kill-me-jews-and-neo-nazis-in-germany/: “Our climate is in trouble. Both the climate and climate change as well as the political climate, the political cultures of our societies. My piece about journalist Henryk M. Broder on Tablet Magazine on Monday, February 4, has created some noise among the Far Right. That is no surprise and indicates the importance of the article.“

[65] Gad Granach (1997)/19985: Heimat los ! Aus dem Leben eines jüdischen Emigranten. [Without homeland. The life of a Jewish emigrant], recorded by Hilde Recher, Augsburg: Ölbaum Verlag, pp. 147–149.

[66] In times of the Corona pandemic and the pandemic turn, the Antifa movement in Germany has proven to be particularly aggressive, irrational and totalitarian – slogans like “we vaccinate you all” testify to their willingness to use violence. Whether the Antifa movement acted similarly irrationally internationally, in Australia, the US, UK, France etc. would be worth a closer examination; Clemens Heni (2021e): “Wir impfen euch alle!” – Berliner Antifa zeigt ihr wahres Gesicht – ECHTE Antifas sind entsetzt [“We vaccinate you all!” – Berlin Antifa shows their true colors – real Antifa people are appalled], March 14, 2021, https://www.clemensheni.net/wir-impfen-euch-alle-berliner-antifa-zeigt-ihr-wahres-gesicht-echte-antifas-sind-entsetzt/.

 

Gen Z and the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

The Times of Israel (Blogs), May 18, 2022

 

The fight against antisemitism is of increasing importance for the young Generation Z. At least for some Gen Z Jewish teenagers.

Generation Z includes young people born between 1995 and 2015. Zachary W. Singerman is a student at the Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland, about 14 miles southeast of Germantown and just a few miles north of Washington, DC. As a ninth grader in January 2020, Singerman called for his generation to take action against antisemitism and published an Op-Ed article in Washington Jewish Week. He reports from his bar mitzvah in April 2018 how much he learned and had a party with a DJ. But just six months later, a neo-Nazi murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The perpetrator had been strongly agitated by the extremely aggressive, racist, antisemitic and conspiracy myth climate created by Donald Trump. Zack Singerman’s grandmother, who fled or immigrated from Europe, goes to the Tree of Life Synagogue. His grandmother was not at the synagogue that day, but friends of hers are among the dead. It was a coincidence that she was not also murdered in what was the worst antisemitic massacre in US history. That was the wake-up call for Zachary Singerman that as a teenager, just 14 years old, he had to become politically active. He organized the Jewish DC Regional Teen Summit on antisemitism.

For March 2020, he announced Bari Weiss as a speaker for his Gen Z group against antisemitism. Bari Weiss is a well-known anti-left former New York Times columnist who now also writes for the German conservative Springer daily Die WELT, and apart from her conservative ideology and her pro-Selenskyi War agitation, she is by time an eloquent critic of contemporary antisemitism.

I say this as a longstanding critic of anti-liberal, authoritarian, nationalist and even anti-USSR and pro-Zsarist Putin, but I am also not a friend of longstanding antidemocratic and pro-Nazi tendencies in Ukraine, including the now destroyed Asow bataillon, but also hundreds of streets, places or stadiums named after Ukrainian Holocaust perpetrators, but in a recent article by Weiss’ she shows not really any interest in ending the war in Ukraine, rather the support for as many weaponry for Ukraine as possible, which will for sure result in even more people killed on both sides. Her piece in German “What is worth fighting for”, Die Welt, March 22, 2022, is a pompous and belligerent, anti-diplomatic article, blaming Russia alone and not asking any questions about anti-Russian racism in the Ukraine at least since 2014, or about the insidious aggression of NATO since 1990, when US Secretary of State James Baker and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised Soviet Union’s Michael Gorbatchov that NATO will “Not move one inch eastwards” after a possible reunification of the two Germanys, and in particular taken into account the NATO maneuvers which have taken place in Ukraine in recent years – why? To threaten Russia?, and of course without facing the horrible war before the war, the war against the Donbass in Eastern Ukraine with more than 14,000 people killed.

The two senators Jacky Rosen and James Lankford, who founded a Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, were also invited by Zack Singerman for March 2020.

Then, on May 12, 2022, Singerman published a blog in the Times of Israel, where he again advocated active engagement of his Gen Z against antisemitism.

Singerman reports: According to the FBI, more than 55 percent of all religious hate crimes in the United States in 2020 were directed against Jews – and only 2 percent of the US population are Jews.

On May 16, 2022, Zack Singerman posted a Zoom talk with two other students and a student from the US and Canada on the fight against antisemitism and Jewish life in North America today.

These are all kids between the ages of 17 and 19. It is remarkable how intensively they deal with Judaism and with antisemitism – yes, horribly, they have to deal with antisemitism on a daily basis. It’s a question of whether or not Zack wears his “massive kippa” on public transport. He started wearing his kippa in public. It’s still easy for him during the day, he goes to a Jewish school, while the other two students, Arielle Edberg and Carrie Tananbaum, don’t. Arielle wears her Star of David necklace and Carrie has many Jewish friends at her high school. Nati Pressmann, on the other hand, the only one who is already at the university, knows about the problems of identifying as a Jew. She emphatically emphasizes that it is not a Jewish student’s fault if he or she does not dare to show their Jewish necklace in a certain environment and prefers to hide it under a T-shirt or sweater.

These are times with BDS agitators on campus, but also with right-wing extremists who smear swastikas on schools or university buildings, as the four report. What is interesting now is how naturally they quote the IHRA definition of antisemitism without uttering the acronym – International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Right at the beginning of the Zoom conference, Zack plays a video of Representative (D) Ted Deutch, who is thrilled that Jewish teenagers are so actively involved in the fight against antisemitism.

Deutch will not run again in the midterm elections in the USA in the fall, since he will then become chief (CEO) of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and succeed David Harris, who has held this job since 1990.

Teenage Zack Singerman could hardly have found a much higher profile supporter for his Gen Z Jews: Fighting Antisemitism. Nati Pressmann emphasizes how violent it is at her university or her college, where recently 69 percent of the faculty – i.e. the employees – spoke out against the IHRA antisemitism definition. The IHRA definition of antisemitism, adopted on May 26, 2016 in the Romanian capital Bucharest after many years of discussion, is currently supported by 35 states. It is less the definition than such a point of contention:

Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews that can be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Antisemitism is directed, in word or deed, against Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, as well as against Jewish community institutions or religious bodies.

, rather than the following detailed explanation from the point of view of enemies of Israel, what is to be understood by today’s antisemitism:

Denying the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

35 countries have signed this legally non-binding definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many European countries, a definition that is of great importance for political culture and discourse. Canada has also signed the definition, but Nati Pressmann is shocked by the rejection of this fight against antisemitism at a normal Canadian university. This comes at a time when Harvard’s elite university newspaper, Crimson, aggressively and offensively endorsed the antisemitic BDS movement on April 29, 2022.

The commitment of Zack Singerman and his three colleagues is reminiscent of the youthful struggles against Jew hatred, which the later star hairdresser and philanthropist (including the legendary Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1982 ff.) Vidal Sassoon (1928-2012) led. As is well known, he was a member of Group 43 in London, which was founded in 1946 and opposed the Mosley fascists in street fights. On May 12, 2012, Sassoon died. In 1948 he fought in the Palmach for the independence of the Jewish state of Israel.

A neo-Nazi antisemitic 18-year-old conspiracy ideologist massacred 10 people on Saturday, May 14, 2022 in Buffalo, New York, all victims were black. He shot them with an assault rifle that he had bought legally. He had specifically chosen a district with the largest black population, which he managed to do with a postcode search (ZIP code). He wanted to specifically murder blacks for racist reasons. His motivation was racist and antisemitic: the “Great Replacement” theory, which is strongly based on the French far-right publicist Renaud Camus, who wrote a book in 2011 entitled “Le Grand Remplacement”. This thesis does not always need an antisemitic plot, since it is clear to the recipient that there are evil forces behind the migration. This is the dog whistle, so to speak, that antisemites hear when talking about the “great exchange”.

Mainstream American journalists like FoxNews have been preaching this kind of antisemitic conspiracy and racist climate intensification for years, like Tucker Carlson:

I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” a visibly outraged Carlson began.

For the 18-year-old neo-Nazi from America, the string pullers and those responsible for this “repopulation” in neo-Nazi slang are now the Jews. He has published a 180-page manifesto which states, among other things:

It is antisemitism that is behind the “great exchange” conspiracy ideology. Jewish billionaires and activists are behind NGOs smuggling migrants or Muslims into Europe or North America, that is at the heart of this far-right conspiracy narrative. The Pittsburgh murderers in the synagogue or that neo-Nazi in New Zealand also believe in this antisemitic conspiracy ideology with racist consequences. Then there is the threat of BDS and those certainly super smart researchers like the one at the university in Canada where Nati Pressmann is studying, who reject the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism by a large majority.

In contrast to older bullies like the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who at the time became a columnist for the New York Times together with Bari Weiss and who expressed his doubts about man-made climate change right from the start, the young Generation Z like Zack Singerman also has an understanding of it Climate catastrophe, as he writes as a tenth grader in 2021:

It seems even more urgent now. I am tired of waiting for adults to take a stronger stand. Just like climate change and stopping school shootings, Gen Z needs to get involved in the fight against white supremacy and antisemitism. It’s not just that it’s urgent. It’s that it already feels two months — or two years — too late.

In this text, Singerman addresses the Donald Trump-fueled storm of nationalists and right-wing extremists on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as he grew up a 30-minute walk away and his mother works there.

So we see how relevant the IHRA definition of antisemitism is today. Much remains to be done for societies in North America or Europe, as well as for Generation Z, in the fight against anti-Semitism. Young Jewish schoolchildren and students should not be left alone.

 

About the Author
Dr Clemens Heni is director of The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

Yes, we can: Celebrate the End of Trump

Finally, twitter poisoned hatred, racism, sexism, isolationism, turbo-capitalist agitation, anti-Obamacare ideology, hatred of the Antifa and antisemitic conspiracy-myths have to leave the White House – However: Will reason come back or irrational Coronamaniac among Democrats prevail?

The Times of Israel (Blogs) | Nov. 8, 2020 | Clemens Heni

That is truly good news: Donald Trump is history. Finally, after more than four years, including his run for Presidency in 2016! His violent, sexist agenda (“grab her by the pussy”), his antisemitic anti-Soros, anti-“Globalist”-ideology, his pro-climate change maniac, his fracking-is-cool, super-turbo-capitalist, anti-ecologist activism, his embracement of the neo-Nazi like “Proud Boys” live on TV during the first Presidential Debate with Joe Biden, his even funny “Voting for Biden is Socialism” fantasy – since when is the contradictio in adjecto of a “Democratic Party Socialism” (read: capitalism with a smile on its face) translating into Socialism? –, his post-truth Qanon-like extremist agenda, his lies and conspiracy myths will no longer harm the United States of America and the entire world.

As early as September 2016, I wrote about the Far Right and Trump:

It is well-known neo-Nazi tactics these days to make an outrageous statement, and then to step back a little bit. Blinking with the eyes to their followers is part of the game. Look at Trump and you know what I mean … The core message of the racist movement in Germany these days goes like this: The AfD wants to ‘get rid of Merkel’. That was the slogan of their big rally in the heart of Berlin, Nov. 7, 2015, with neo-Nazis joining them, including agitators against America who say that ‘Germany is run by NSA’ and the US, as right-wing extremist and antisemitic agitator Jürgen Elsässer’s Compact Magazine did on that day. Elsässer is also known for public speeches like at Potsdamer Place in the middle of Berlin, like in April 2014, where he agitated against ‘Rockefeller, Rothschild, Soros’, Jews and money.

The Pro-Israel camp in Germany and in vast parts of the US aligned with Trump. That shameful development, associated with the support of the German right-wing extremism of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) led me to break with my American donors and most parts of the German pro-Israel camp. Bibi did the same mistake as right-wing American Trumpists, and collaborated with the nastiest and most disgusting of all American Presidents in history, while sidelining the Democrats.

For Zionism, both Bibi and Trump are devastating, regardless of the great achievements of Netanyahu when it comes to the Arab world and the diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and probably vast parts of the Arab world – that is historic and tremendously important.

At least, Trump will be history by January 2021. Trumpism, though, will be an essential part of America and the Western world today, and that is and remains a shame, thanks to folks like Hannity from Fox News or in Germany sites such as Achgut.com, Axis of the Good, and uncounted others, including rural weaponry maniacs in the US or pro-Tump, pro-Putin German “Corona-sceptics” and followers of the old “German Reich”.

But now we are in 2020 and in the times of the pandemic turn. What is the pandemic turn? The pandemic turns means that the state can stop the entire society of living as a society, regardless of the rational or irrational predictions of a pandemic or epidemic.

When I saw the No. 3 of the Democratic Party Jim Clyborn, one of their two House of Majority Whips, speaking after Biden’s victory, something struck me. It was not only his age (born 1940), making him just another too old for politics person like Trump, Pelosi or Biden, it was something different. It was his remarks on Fox News, that he knows about the “Spanish Flu from 1918” and that Trump failed to deal with Corona. That is irrational, to say the least.

The Spanish Flu killed some 50 million people, out of 1,8 billion people on earth at the time. These were 2,7 percent of the world population. Corona just killed 0,015 percent of today’s world population (1,2 million people out of 7,8 billion). But even more striking was the average age of death of the Spanish Flu: 28 years! Most old people over 70 were even spared, they might have had immunity from another serious flu epidemic, the Russian Flu of 1889/90.

Clyborn seems to be completely out of touch with reality, when it comes to Corona. He might have ignored most of the research done in that field ever since march 2020, when American star epidemiologist John P.A. Ioannidis warned about a fiasco in the making. Most recently, the WHO published the latest study by Ioannidis, counting like an official WHO working paper. In it, Ioannidis shows that the infection fatality rate of Corona worldwide is at maximum 0.23 percent. Most studies he dealt with, are from Corona hotspots or countries hard struck by the virus like the US or Brazil.

If we take all countries on earth into account, that number will even be lower. Most countries have not many Corona deaths (like in Africa or Asia), they might have had some infections, but taken the fact that way over 80 percent of people infected by Corona have no to mild symptoms, you understand that Corona is much more specific than the flu. People under 70 are not at all in danger from Corona. And young people should stay away from older people or visit them in accordance with the needs of old people like in nursing homes or residential areas – to isolate the old and elderly was a huge crime and killed thousand of people with dementia in Wales and England in spring 2020 alone.

Israel has a huge debate about young professionals, how they can live without restrictions, while protecting the elderly! The governments around the world ignore these scholarly facts and still pretend that the entire society is in danger. That is nothing but a lie! Period.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the official public health agency in the US, declared that for people under 50 Corona is less dangerous than the seasonal flu, for people age 50–69 it is like a severe flu, and for people over 70 it is more dangerous than the flu. That is why the average age of death of Corona in most countries is over 80 years (in Germany 82 years). Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis emphasized these CDC numbers on his legendary press conference on September 25, 2020, when he lifted most of the lockdown restrictions of his state.

 

He also mentioned, that 25 % of young people age 18-24 in the US alone in summer 2020 had suicidal ideas and were depressive. Mental health is a huge issue when it comes to “social distancing” and irrational politics, based on fear, and not on data.

I fear, that the Clyborns in the Democratic Party will remain unreachable for scholarly research when it comes to Corona. Corona is a serious threat, no doubt about this. But it is a very accurate understandable threat for a very specific group of people – completely different from the Spanish Flu of 1918! The Spanish Flu was 180 times more lethal than Corona, to be sure! People could become sick of that flu in the morning and by late afternoon they were dead. Corona is completely different, even the majority of people on Intensive Care Units in hospitals survive Corona. In Germany, we have zero percent excess mortality in 2020 so far. We might have excess mortalitiy in 2021 and the following years due to postponed cancer operations and screenigns or due the huge and unprecedented economic crisis.

The worst mistakes of all governments was the closure of theaters and cultural institutions. The only way to deal with a crisis is art, culture, cinema, lectures – and a vibrant debate, rallies, social contact, regardless if with or without distance. We would have needed our intellectuals to guide us a path to a realistic analysis of the situation. But the first thing the maniac governments closed were universities, theaters, cinemas and cultural institutions. They wee not “systemically relevant”, while hardware stores were (particularly in a country such as Germany).

What America and Israel and all of us deserve, is a rational analysis of the Corona threat. Panic and antidemocratic action like in Germany, are damaging democracy while not saving a single life of a 85 year old nursing home resident. Nursing homes have been hugely underfunded by the government, as up until 2020 old people did not count at all – let alone workers in these facilities, often immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Currently, Germany has its second lockdown, all cultural sites and restaurants are closed – despite the scientific evidence, that less than 3 percent of all infections happened in restaurants. Even visiting a museum with a few people is illegal. These irrational politics indicate the very low level of democracy, Merkel and all her fellows stand for, including Macron or Johnson.

That was among the reasons one of the best-known restaurants in the heart of (East-) Berlin, the Ständige Vertretung, close to the German Parliament, the Bundestag, made a video, attacking the German government. The two restaurant representatives ordered chancellor Angela Merkel, finance minister and vice-chancellor Olaf Scholz, head of the state of Bavaria Markus Söder, head of the State of Berlin Michael Müller and his Senator for health Dilek Kalayci to stay away from their house.

Hundreds of thousands of car construction workers and millions of others are still working, and they have their lunchrooms, but much smaller restaurants with hygiene concepts suddenly may not work anymore. That is irrational and just panic driven politics. I fear, the Democratic Party will run on this panic driven politics as well and might turn the US to not just another lockdown, but also to (useless) mandatory face mask wearing and ignoring to do the most important: protect the vulnerable.

That is the starting point for the Great Barrington Declaration from October 4, 2020, by Professors Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford, Martin Kulldorff from Harvard, and Sunetra Gupta from Oxford:

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

Among the co-signers are:

Dr. Ariel Munitz, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel, Dr. Eitan Friedman, professor of medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel, Dr. Motti Gerlic, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel, Dr. Uri Gavish, biomedical consultant, Israel, Dr. Udi Qimron, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel

 

plus 11,832 Medical & Public Health Scientists, 34,087 Medical practitioners and 620,456 Concerned Citizens (as of November 8, 2011). This indicates the remarkable support of the Great Barrington Declaration by Israeli scholars in the field of microbiology, immunology and epidemiology, virology and public health.

In an interview, Gupta said the following:

We should have dealt from the outset with this pandemic as an international problem. Instead it was ‚let’s lockdown my country, let me protect my citizens‘, which is incredibly individualistic.

She also emphasized:

„I think the lockdown is really individualistic in its general construction. Things that we normally disperse within the community, such as individual risk, and individual blame. Now I see young people being terrified, even though they realise the risk to themselves is low, that they might infect a friend who will then give it to their grandparents. This chain of guilt is somehow located to the individual rather than being distributed and shared.

We have to share the guilt. We have to share the responsibility. And we have to take on board certain risks ourselves in order to fulfil our obligations and to uphold the social contract. So I’d like the politicians to remind people of that, because that’s what they’ve been elected to do – to see the social contract is being properly transacted.“

In a similar vein, Kulldorff said:

I am aligned with the Left when I defend the COVID-19 strategy in my native Sweden. But here in the United States, when I defend very similar strategies implemented by the Republican governors of South Dakota and Florida, I am perceived as being aligned with the Right. It is a little weird. Among my infectious disease colleagues that favor an age-targeted strategy rather than lockdowns, most are left-wing progressives, while most of my Twitter followers are on the Right.

In the same interview with the socialist magazine Jacobin in the US, Kulldorff and his colleague from Harvard, epidemiologist Katherine Yih, spoke with sociologist Nicole Aschoff. Yih pointed out:

Progressives should be advocating for a sustainable, communitarian approach that is informed by the knowledge that the virus will spread until herd immunity is achieved, acknowledges the need for stringent protections of the vulnerable in order to minimize deaths, and recognizes the harm caused by crude across-the-board lockdowns and their disproportionate impact on workers and people of color.

The pandemic has laid bare the glaring and growing inequalities in our society, if they weren’t evident before. We must continue to fight for a radically fairer society, including, of course, Medicare for All. The need is greater than ever.

The current Corona politics worldwide, though, are lethal – for the developing countries in Africa and Asia. They suffer from hunger, as the Peace Nobel Prize Laureate 2020 clearly says: The World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations. The virus itself is far from being a pandemic on the same scale worldwide – it is mainly a European and American (South and North America) pandemic, if we look at the numbers. But the collateral damage is unbelievable huge – canceled tourist trips to almost the entire world, cut off economic relations, delayed vaccination programs in Africa or Asia (like against measles), increase death and hunger:

As COVID-19 pushed countries everywhere to lock down, the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs have been destroyed, and remittances have collapsed. The impact has been felt hardest by the 2 billion people who work in the informal economy around the world – mainly in middle and low-income countries. Already only one day’s work away from going hungry, in other words living hand to mouth. You and I have food in the pantry in a lockdown. We have enough food for two or three weeks. These people don’t have that luxury. If they miss a day’s wages, they miss a day’s worth of food and their children suffer.  They don’t have the money to buy their daily bread in those circumstances. This inevitably creates a risk of rising social tensions and instability.

The report concludes:

We need $4.9 billion to feed, for one year, all 30 million people who will die without WFP’s assistance. Worldwide, there are over 2,000 billionaires with a net worth of $8 trillion. In my home country, the USA, there are 12 individuals alone worth $1 trillion. In fact, reports state that three of them made billions upon billions during COVID! I am not opposed to people making money, but humanity is facing the greatest crisis any of us have seen in our lifetimes. It’s time for those who have the most to step up, to help those who have the least in this extraordinary time in world history. To show you truly love your neighbour. The world needs you right now and it’s time to do the right thing.

 

Surveillance technics like Corona Apps, panic driven government policies of defamation of any kind of critics of  Corona politics are damaging our democracies like nothing damaged them ever since 1945. Sociologist Michel Foucault (1926-1984) or Public Health scholar and philosopher Ivan Illich (1926-2002) would habe been the best people to analyze the biggest crisis of our world since 1945. We are missing them. I co-published and edited books on Corona so far this year (in German), following, among others, both Foucault and Illich. You can also find a fascinating essay “On Corona Days” by Sajay Samuels, transposing some of the critic by Illich in our crazy Corona times.

Having said this, we still should very much celebrate the defeat of Trump by Biden – that is a historic and long overdue achievement of the democratic voices in the United States, with consequences worldwide!! Equality, anti-racism, anti-sexism, and the fight of antisemitic conspiracy myths must become the bottom line of American politics, again – or for the first time, finally.

Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, by the way a true find of the Jewish state of Israel, who herself is childfree, which might be a good indication for more feminist policies in the White House, might be a great help in that respect as well. She will be the first woman to become Vice-President in the history of the United States of America – and the first black woman, the first daughter of immigrants (from India, and Jamaica, respectively). That is a fantastic symbol of the American dream, of “Possibilities”, as Joe Biden framed it in his victory speech on November 7, 2020.

Finally, to become a reliable political power again, America should rather listen to scholars or to the Great Barrington Declaration and distance itself from unscholarly politicians, who nothing but fuel panic and confuse 1918 with 2020, like No. 3 of the Democratic Party, Jim Clyburn.

About the Author
Dr Clemens Heni is director of The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

Germany alone started WW II – Why is TOI running riot against Yad Vashem?

Dr. Clemens Heni, The Times of Israel (Blogs) |Feb 10, 2020, 6:34 PM

In an article for the Times of Israel (TOI), journalist Sam Sokol, with the help of JTA and TOI staff, chastises Holocaust memorial museum Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, for supposedly inaccurate or even “revisionist” videos, screened at the 5th Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem on January 23, 2020, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Sokol’s article “Scholars urge transparency to restore Yad Vashem credibility after Putin fiasco” raises questions about the quality of TOI’s journalism as well as about the political culture of Holocaust remembrance in Israel and among Jews.

I am not talking about the speeches or remarks at the event (including troubling facts or completely false numbers of Jewish victims in the Soviet Union by Putin in his speech) in question on January 23, 2020, at the 5th World Holocaust Forum. I am only analyzing the major video of that day (7:45 minutes), which is now attacked by the Times of Israel and Sam Sokol and many others, quoted in Sokol’s piece.

We already know about the attempts of gentiles to distort the Shoah. It started shortly after 1945, when Germans compared Auschwitz to the bombing of Dresden. Then, historian Ernst Nolte wrote in the 1970s that Stalin was first, not Hitler and the Germans. This Red equals Brown has become a major ideology of the European Union in the last few decades.

In 1997, French anti-communist (former Maoist) Stéphane Courtois edited the “Black Book of Communism,” claiming that communism killed many more people than Nazism and the Germans: Communism was worse than the Shoah – that is the antisemitic ideology of that kind of people. Those people deny the unprecedented character of Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka, where for the very first time in world history, an entire people was chosen to be eliminated: Germans wanted to eradicate Jews and Judaism from the earth. They almost succeeded and killed six million Jews in the Holocaust. Post-colonialism, for those interested in the field, follows an equally troubling denial of the unprecedented character of the Shoah, by the way.

In 2008, the Prague Declaration, signed by Vaclav Havel and Joachim Gauck, along with Czech, Lithuanian and other politicians and activists, urges the EU to rewrite all textbooks and to warn everyone about the evils of both Nazism and Communism. That downplaying of National Socialism is common among many in Europe and the US.

Professor Dovid Katz dealt extensively with the dangerous “double Genocide ideology” of the Prague Declaration, Baltic politics and European activists alike.

It is to some extent news, however, that Jews and Israelis join the chorus of downplaying the role of Nazi Germany when it comes to the Second World War. Sokol claims that the Soviet Union holds a co-responsibility for the outbreak of WWII because of the Hitler-Stalin-Pact from August 23, 1939. That is a lie, though – as Germany wanted to invade and destroy Poland and the Soviet Union and other states in the East anyway. Realpolitik did not change Hitler’s and Germany’s intention to invade Eastern Europe and to kill European Jews, who were seen behind both Western capitalism and Eastern communism.

While it is unclear how many and which videos he talks about, the main video of that event is linked in the article. It is a 7:45 minute video about the development of German antisemitism and the rise of Nazi Germany to power. The video depicts some famous Jews like Einstein, Freud and Walter Benjamin to emphasize the role Jews played in European culture prior to World War II.

It shows how antisemitism spread in Nazi Germany, from boycotts (1933) and harassment to racial laws, the nights of pogroms (Nov. 9, 1938) to deportation, ghettos, starving, torture, murder and extermination. It then shows Sir Winston Churchill who spoke about the importance to stand “together” against Germany.

Then, the video deals with the fact that only an allied pact of the West and East, the US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union was able to fight, stop and finally defeat National Socialism. Correctly, the video says that the Red Army was the first one to fight back against the Germans.

From the time of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 through to the first landings at Normandy in June 1944, millions of Soviet troops and citizens perished in the battle to push the Nazi armies back. D-Day, June 6, 1944, is correctly shown as the start of the major Western front against the Germans, alongside the Eastern front and the Soviet Union that had been fighting effectively from later 1941 onward.

On July 24, 1944, the Red Army liberated the extermination camp of Majdanek, without realizing, before their entry, the unspeakable catastrophe of the Holocaust that transpired there. Then, the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews in some two months in 1944 is reported, with 450.000 Jews being exterminated. Tens of thousands of Jews would then die in the death marches (from the camps westward to Germany).

The video clearly shows the Allies working together in the liberation of Europe. The Red Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the US Army Buchenwald and Dachau. British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen. The fall of Berlin (to the Soviet and American armies) and the liberation of Theresienstadt ended the war against Nazi Germany.

I had seen that video — which is linked in the TOI article by Sam Sokol —when it was screened in Jerusalem via the Yad Vashem livestream. I have watched it again now: What is the problem with that accurate video? As in any concise synopsis, many things are of necessity left out. But, it rightly explains how the Allies, including, and most importantly in the actual history as it unfolded, the Red Army, liberated Europe from Nazi Germany and indeed, how Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945.

Obviously Holocaust distorting people with a political agenda to “equalize” Nazi and Soviet crimes as per the far right’s campaign led by East European governments, now notice that the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 23, 1939, is missing. Well, for that matter, so are the capitulations of Chamberlain at Munich and all the others. It has nothing to do with January 27, 1945.

Some might see Yad Vashem as nothing but a loudspeaker of Bibi Netanyahu, and I share skepticism about his policies, no doubt about this. However, this is a huge fight about how to commemorate the outbreak of WWII.

If Sokol and his allies succeed in saying that it HAS TO BE MENTIONED that there was the Hitler-Stalin pact when it comes to Auschwitz – antisemitism has succeeded in bringing even Jewish and Israeli scholars and activists in line with right-wing extremist revisionism.

Why? Because that is an antisemitic and far-right revisionist narrative, modified in fine Western style from its far-right East European originators by historian Timothy Snyder, former German President Joachim Gauck and right-wing extremist historians such as Jorg Baberowski of Germany.

The same people say that fact that Poland was occupied by the Soviets is missing!

Yes, after war’s end, completely true. But what has that got to do with a film about defeating Nazi Germany and liberating Auschwitz?

To focus on crimes by Stalin not as a separate issue, but mixed up with the Holocaust, is wrong and historically misleading. It is precisely what German antisemites since Ernst Nolte tried to pursue: both sides are evil, Nazis and Communists, everything is the same, one big mishmash.

Stalin committed many horrendous crimes. These crimes, though, have literally no place in a video dedicated to the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The video does not focus on the failure of the US or Great Britain. – It could have mentioned the widespread antisemitism in America and Britain, the closure of the US border as well as Palestine by the British.

However, the aggressive tone of Sam Sokol and many historians he quotes – from Deborah Lipstadt to Dan Michman and even Efraim Zuroff – speaks volume about the intention to follow the revisionist narrative: Red equals Brown. Sokol goes so far and writes:

The videos presented at the ceremony — which was attended by dozens of world leaders, among them Russian President Vladimir Putin — focused almost exclusively on the Soviet Union’s role in defeating the Nazis, while downplaying the role of America, Britain, and other countries. They also failed to mention Joseph Stalin’s deal with Adolf Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact that preceded the war, Russia’s occupation of parts of Poland, and other facts uncomfortable for Moscow.”

As shown, that is simply incorrect – that video does indeed emphasize the role of the allies! Watch it and you will see.

If Jews now start using anti-Jewish historical revisionism such as that of Ernst Nolte, claiming that Stalin was first or at least as evil as Hitler – then Yad Vashem should stand strongly and clearly against the revisionists.

This is not about belittling the evil intentions of the Stalin-Hitler pact. It is about the misrepresentation by that pact by those in the far right East European antisemitic camp, and their followers in the West, to elevate it to a Holocaust-grade event as part of the effort to downgrade the Holocaust. Many Jews are alive today in Eastern Europe and beyond because from Sept 1, 1939 onward, their forebears escaped from the Nazi to the Soviet held sectors.

It is time for the West, Israel and Yad Vashem to understand which modes of discourse signal the very revisionism that is anathema to all that Yad Vashem stands for.

Finally, let me teach you a lesson about fascism in the 21st century: a few days ago, February 5, 2020, the fascist Björn Höcke and the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) voted in favor of the candidate for the head of the State of Thuringia (some 2 million inhabitants) from the conservative-libertarian FDP, a no-name called Kemmerich. Mr. Kemmerich even accepted the vote after it was clear that he did only win because of the votes by the fascists. Shake-hands with wannabe-Goebbels Björn Höcke followed. Shockwaves through the democratic parts of Germany. That was the first time that a Nazi like party voted for a Prime Minister of a German state since 1945 and their vote was crucial. A few days later, the FDP politician had to resign, due to political pressure from the ruling Christian Democratic Party and the FDP, while both parties had supported Kemmerich just a few hours before!

The main reason for the Conservatives and the libertarian-conservatives to vote alongside with the fascists of the AfD was to avoid the left-wing Prime Minister of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow from the Party of the Left, who is rather a Social Democrat. The fascists and conservatives frame him as “communist” or “socialist” and preferred fascism over communism or socialism.

Those Israeli journalists or Jewish-American and other historians who claim that the Soviet Union allegedly played a pivotal or any role in the outbreak of World War II follow the very same kind of what I call “existential anti-communism.”

Those who want so speak about the crimes of communism when asked about the liberation of Auschwitz, distort the worst crime in history and follow antisemitic revisionism.

The video in question by Yad Vashem is a video dedicated to teach a big audience about the liberation of Auschwitz and that video is correct in not at all focusing on Soviet policies in other aspects, it does equally not focus on the failure of the US and Great Britain to stop Hitler and the Germans long before September 1, 1939.

Sam Sokol seems to be following the very European antisemitic trope of equating Red and Brown and I am wondering why and if historians such as Deborah Lipstadt (““I am absolutely heartbroken that Yad Vashem, which has such a stellar reputation and stayed above the political fray, should have become part of this politicization of history,” she lamented), Dan Michman (“Unfortunately, the short films that accompanied the event, and especially the film that was meant briefly to present the key points of World War II and the Holocaust, included a number of inaccuracies that resulted in a partial and unbalanced presentation of the historical facts”), or Efraim Zuroff (“Yad Vashem has never engaged in Holocaust distortion; exactly the opposite,” commented Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi-hunter who runs the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, surmising that the “material was not reviewed by the leading historians of Yad Vashem” before being presented publicly”) play that game, as he quotes them accordingly.

It is not by accident that historian Dina Porat did not say anything in public so far, which is sad, because she could perhaps tell us a different story about that very video by Yad Vashem.

Nazi Germany was all alone responsible for the outbreak of World War II.

Germans wanted the war, they wanted to invade Poland, the Soviet Union and all of Europe. They wanted to eradicate Jews and Judaism from the earth.

To even mention Soviet or other realpolitik when it comes to the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and to insinuate September 1, 1939 was not Germany’s responsibility alone, promotes an old right-wing extremist lie.

Everybody who rejects the historical truth of the German and only German guilt of starting World War II is part of the problem.

Dovid Katz puts it splendidly:

While the Soviets’ 1939 invasion of eastern Poland was one of thousands of disgraceful and contemptible invasions in world history, it was not “the same” as Hitler’s 1939 invasion of western/central Poland. In the German sector, Hitler’s forces unleashed the Holocaust, the worst genocide in the history of humankind. In the Soviet sector, all of the various peoples were granted full equality to live equally under (lousy, autocratic, freedom-stifling, wealth-stealing) Soviet law. Any Jew that could flee to the Soviet sector was quick to do so. Many thousands of Jews today exist on the planet precisely because their parents, grandparents and others fled to the Soviet sector.

 

“Please give me some latkes before you kill me”: Jews and neo-Nazis in Germany

Dr. Clemens Heni, 11 February, 2019

Our climate is in trouble. Both the climate and climate change as well as the political climate, the political cultures of our societies. My piece about journalist Henryk M. Broder on Tablet Magazine on Monday, February 4, has created some noise among the Far Right. That is no surprise and indicates the importance of the article.

Tablet’s David P. Goldman used “Google translate” to read the German article by Broder in the daily Die Welt. Goldman’s core sentence is the following: “Neither Clemens Heni nor anyone else has the right to scold Henryk Broder for speaking to the AfD, however.”

We have sympathy for a Western naive who doesn’t understand that parties that idolize German history are not to be “negotiated with” and that such legitimization is one of the greatest dangers facing both central and eastern Europe in different ways.

Goldman pleads for an end of Holocaust memory: “My advice to Germans: stop obsessing about the past.” He wants to forget the dead Jews of the Shoah and has no idea about the relationship of forgetting and antisemitism, or he loves the idea that European nations are more than happy to have such a Jewish voice to stop commemorating their crimes. He has no conception about contemporary Europe, Germany and the Western world or likes the  movement underway in Europe and other parts of the world to promote nationalism and Trumpism, to downplay, ignore, forget, obfuscate or deny the uniqueness of the Shoah, the unprecedented character of the Holocaust and the fact that Jews were killed because they were Jews.

According to a CNN poll, 40% of Germans between age 18 and 34 have “no” or “little” knowledge about the Holocaust. In other European countries this shocking percentage is smaller, but still depressing (33%). According to the CNN survey some 25% of Hungarians believe the entire world is to 20% Jewish. 20% of British and Polish young people believe the same. Many more antisemitic myths exist among the European youth.

In January 2018, Lev Golinkin puts it splendidly in the New York Times. A Jew from the Soviet Union, who left the USSR in the 1980s, he knows about the denial or just not mentioning of the Shoah under communist (or state socialist) regimes. Today, though, he sees the threat of forgetting in the Western world and those parts of the former Soviet Union where antisemitism and forgetting are on the rise:

“Today, however, the American Jewish community — including Jewish lawmakers in Washington — is largely silent about the widespread Holocaust distortion being carried out by Eastern European allies. Breaking that silence is imperative, especially given the current global rise of anti-Semitism and the disturbing correlation between Holocaust revisionism and violence against living Jews.”

Perhaps the Goldmans of this world want even more percent of young people in Germany who do not know what their grandparents did during Nazi Germany, the Second World War and the Holocaust? Forgetting the killed Jews is antisemitic in itself, but it also fuels today’s antisemitism, just look at the grotesque numbers of Jews Hungarian, Polish or British young people believe to live on this planet.

Do we need Jewish kosher stamps for forgetting the past and embracing the Far Right? These kind of authors have no problem with antidemocratic regimes and developments, as long as they do not come from the Muslim world. This hypocrisy is well documented in political science and other parts of scholarship and on blogs, Op-Ed pieces, conferences etc. Another aspect is the fact that such authors as Goldman harm both the Jews in the diaspora as well as Israel. For them, Zionism translates into bigotry, and the love for extreme right-wing movements all over Europe, despite the fact that Jewish communities all over Europe know of the threat of the Far Right as well as the danger of Jihad and post-colonial or left-wing anti-Zionism.

In his Tablet piece, Goldman absolves Italian Salvini from his right-wing extremist agenda and praises him alongside with the equally far right government in Austria under Kurz, with (former?) neo-Nazi Strache from the Freedom Party (FPÖ) as main representative of Austria’s most antisemitic party.

Contrary to the fantasies of Tablet’s David P. Goldman, the biggest threat for Jews in Germany are still those almost six million voters for the AfD and their fans, who chanted, “We will build an underground to Auschwitz”.

Contrary to Tablet and Goldman, the Central Council of Jews in Germany is well aware of the antisemitic threat deriving from the AfD. The Jewish Community Berlin held a memorial event at the 80th anniversary of the nights of pogroms in 1938 in November 2018. During the event in the Synagogue at Ryke Street in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg (in the former East-Berlin of the German Democratic Republic until 1990) the head of the Central Council Josef Schuster emphasized the following: They invited all parties in the German Parliament, but not the right-wing extremist and antisemitic AfD. Schuster said, “It would have been unbearable for our community to have representatives of that party [AfD] among us tonight when we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the night of pogroms.”

In a representative poll in summer 2018, the result was no surprise. Asked, if “Jews have too much influence,” some 17% to 20% of supporters of the mainstream parties like the Social Democrats, the Greens or the Libertarians responded with “yes.” That is already a shocking number. Even much worse, 55 percent of followers of the AfD said “yes.”

August 27, 2018, neo-Nazis attacked a Jewish restaurant in the city of Chemnitz. October 6, 2018, far right people attacked a Persian restaurant as well and injured the owner severely.

German Jews and the Antifa in Germany know much better than Tablet or Goldman about the threat of neo-Nazis and right-wing antisemitism.

Muslim antisemitism is a topic, we deal with as well – contrary to Goldman, I wrote the entry about Germany in the World Almanac of Islamism (last update in 2018), published by the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C. In 2011, I did a study (410 pages) about Islamic studies and antisemitism in Germany after 9/11. My PhD was about the political culture in the Federal Republik of Germany from 1970 through 2005, nationalism, antisemitism, racism and anti-Americanism during that period. I do not need right-wing extremist American authors (non-Jewish and Jewish) and media outlets to tell me about the wide range of antisemitism in Germany, to be sure. The first time, we publicly attacked Muslim antisemitism was in 2002 with the German “Muslim-Market,” an online page that promoted a form of BDS before BDS was founded, for example. Goldman is part of the racist tent that insinuates that all refugees are antisemites and dangerous and he ignores that most Muslim antisemitic attacks come from homegrown Islamists and Muslims. Someone who knows Germany should know these facts.

Ignoring reality and joining the AfD ideology, Goldman writes:

“Merkel has put German Jews in a dilemma. After street attacks by young Muslims, the Central Council of Jews in Germany warned Jews not to walk in public with a kippah. Chancellor Merkel deplored the attacks, but her migration policy made them inevitable. Consequently, a small group of German Jews joined the AfD, arguing that the greatest threat of anti-Semitism comes overwhelmingly from Muslim migrants and their supporters on the left.”

This is exactly the ideology of the Pegida (“Patriots against the Islamization of the Occident”) movement and of all right-wing extremist circles. Not a word about the shocking situation with hundreds and hundreds of deaths in the Mediterranean Sea during the “refugee” crisis in 2015 alone. In fact, we have a Nazi crisis and Tablet now is part of the problem. They promote fake news, lies, distortions and right-wing propaganda. June 25, 2018, a nasty crowd of Pegida people shouted enthusiastically “perish by drowning!,” when a speaker talked about refugees.

***

However, this is not at all about an attack of an unprofessional writer and online magazine against my person. The problem goes much deeper. It is about Jews who support the enemies of the Jewish people. I already wrote about this in 2017 at the Times of Israel (TOI). Since then, the situation has even worsened.

Remembrance of the Holocaust is a crucial issue in our times. Eastern Europe is a case in point. Many politicians there distort the history, praise their own nationalist and pro-Nazi leaders and call them “anti-communist heroes.” It is mainstream in Eastern Europe to equate Nazi Germany to Stalinism and to distort the Holocaust. The Red-equals-Brown-ideology is a main aspect of today’s antisemitism. The Prague Declaration from 2008 and their European attempt to have a common European Memorial day, August 23, 1939, instead of Holocaust Memorial Day, speaks volumes about anti-communist and Holocaust distorting antisemitism. For newcomers, check out the scholarly articles by Professor Dovid Katz on the Holocaust, antisemitism and the Red-equals-Brown or Double-Genocide ideology.

Holocaust distortion and the Red-equals-Brown ideology is not at all an East European invention. Take the “Black Book of Communism” from 1997 in France, where the Holocaust looks harmless and tiny compared to the supposedly “100 million victims of Communism.” As if horrible regimes like Stalinism killed an entire people. They did not. The killing in the Soviet Union was not based on ethnicity like Nazi Germany’s eliminationist antisemitism. The antisemitic title “Red Holocaust” was used by German historian Horst Möller in 1998, when he edited a book with articles who are in support of the “Black Book of Communism,” including a piece by Joachim Gauck, who signed the Holocaust distorting Prague Declaration and became German President (2012–2017).

The same dangerous ideology can be found in the US, like at the “Victims of Communism” monument in Washington, D.C., erected in 2007 under George W. Bush. In their initial statement, the organizers wrote that “the Bolshevik Revolution gave birth to the deadliest ideology of mankind”. That is an antisemitic denial of the worst ideology of mankind, Nazi Germany’s. The trope that Nazi Germany was not capitalist, but socialist in nature, is common among neo-Nazis and right-wing extremist scholars and authors. AfD politician Marc Jongen invoked that ideology just two days after Broder spoke at the AfD in the German Bundestag, and attacked Holocaust remembrance.

The fact, that Goldman is a colleague of Jongen and knows him in person, is no surprise at all. Still, Goldman is unable and unwilling to decode the dog whistle of Jongen’s and the AfD’s antisemitism. Framing Nazi Germany as “socialist” is antisemitic, as it denies that Nazi Germany was both capitalist and antisemitic. Jongen and many right-wingers depend on the word “socialist.” That allows them to deny the uniqueness of the Shoah (despite claptrap in Jongen’s speech that there might be something special about the Holocaust, but all other parties in the German parliament understand his right-wing extremist and Holocaust distorting agenda) and to put Nazism in the very same box as Stalinism and Communism. Neo-Nazis understand that dog whistle and Ernst Nolte would have been proud of Jongen.

Jongen has been first criticized in the field of Art, Design and Architecture for his far right politics by professor in architecture Stephan Trüby in 2015. The journal in architecture Baumeister published an open letter criticizing the pupil of German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, Marc Jongen. Several professors in architecture and related fields signed an open letter against Jongen, who at the time was editor of a book series. They criticize his nationalist approach and activism for the AfD. The list includes Prof. Ruedi Baur (Haute école d’art et de design, Genf),Prof. Dr. Friedrich von Borries (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Alexander Gutzmer (Architekturmagazin Baumeister; Quadriga University Berlin), Prof. Dr. Anke Haarmann (Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Lars Koch (Technische Universität Dresden), Prof. Dr. Cornelia Ortlieb (Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Prof. Dr. Michaela Ott (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Stephan Trüby (Technische Universität München), Prof. Dr. Elisabeth von Samsonow (Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien), Prof. Dr. Kathrin Wildner (HafenCity Universität Hamburg).

Trüby is also a critic of „reconstructionist architecture“ like in Frankfurt, where the old-town has been rebuilt – and the voids of the past have been destroyed, no one should remember why Frankfurt was bombed and what happened during Nazi Germany in that town. Trüby found out that far right activists and local politicians were initiative for that kind of architecture, before the mainstream parties joined the project.

In September 2017, during a hearing on racism at the Parliament of the State of Thuringia in Erfurt, Jongen was among the “experts,” and showed his racist thinking, as the other experts analyzed. For example, he bases his thinking on the category of “race” and believes that there is something pure “German” which can be passed on from generation to generation. The denial of the fact, that everyone can become a German when it comes to refugees or immigrants is a common trope among today’s Far Right. On a Facebook post after the hearing, Jongen referred to Gilad Atzmon, a musician from the UK, a self-declared ex-Jew and antisemite who detests Israel.

Then, Jongen’s ally Goldman even accuses the party of the Greens, which is a mainstream, centrist and not left-wing party:

“Jongen reproached the German Left for ignoring the crimes of Communism and for its belief that ‘the Germans are evil, Germany is a criminal nation, and it would be best if Germany were to disappear.’ That is a view often expressed by leaders of Germany’s Green Party.”

That is fake news and no serious homepage or magazine would ever have published it. Tablet Magazine and its editor Jacob Siegel did. That is such absurd a statement, not fact based but ideology driven. It is nationalist and antisemitic. Why? Germans are portrayed as victims of those who remember the German crimes. Scholarship calls that kind of rejection of Holocaust remembrance “secondary antisemitism.” Secondary antisemitism is a form of antisemitism after the Shoah. It is a scholarly term not many Americans, for example, know (but that is not the fault of the term).

The term “secondary antisemitism” was coined by Peter Schönbach, a co-worker of Theodor W. Adorno, around 1960. For example, they had those Germans (West-Germans at the time) in mind, who equated or compared the Holocaust and German crimes to the allies and the bombing of Dresden. That is a typical neo-Nazi trope ever since, many right-wingers call it “Bomb holocaust” to equate the situation of ordinary Germans during the war to the Jews during the Shoah. Secondary antisemitism is a crucial term and scholarly tool to analyze antisemitism.

Writer Martin Walser used that antisemitic language and ideology in his acceptance speech for the Book Prize of the German Book Trade in October 1998. He portrayed the poor Germans as victims of a “moral cudgel Auschwitz.” Standing ovations in Frankfurt’s St. Paul Cathedral followed, with the exception of three people, among them the then head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Ignatz Bubis and his wife Ida.

Political scientist Lars Rensmann helped introducing the term “secondary antisemitism” in the German and international debate since 1998, when he first published a book (in German) on “Critical Theory about Antisemitism,” including the concept of “secondary antisemitism.”

In an interview of Jongen with New Right leader Götz Kubitschek in the New Right journal “Sezession” in June 2016, Jongen attacks Merkel because of her pro-Israel stance. Merkel used the term “reason of state” to emphasize her very strong commitment to defend the Jewish state, a term German President Joachim Gauck did not use when he visited Israel, as journalist Alan Posener pointed out in his critique of Jongen and Kubitschek. In the very same interview, Kubitschek promotes a typical right-wing extremist and antisemitic trope: he says that he might go to Auschwitz one day and on his way back he will then stop in Dresden. This is the exact secondary antisemitic position by millions of Germans, not only by neo-Nazis. They know that the denial of the Holocaust is a crime in Germany, therefore they distort history and trivialize the Holocaust.

Journalist Tuvia Tenenbom once visited Kubitschek and found him and his neo-Nazi like folks rather lovely.

Like Kubitschek Broder says in his typical vulgar tone, that “it is bad manners to put your feet on the table, to burp when you eat or to call the 12 worst years in German history a piece of shit of a bird.” This ridiculous list speaks volumes about Broder himself. For him, antisemitism is a kind of distaste like burping. He himself did a book “Forget about Auschwitz.”

The statement by Goldman is right-wing extremist in its own right and obviously based on the talks he has with extremist politicians in Germany from the Far Right, mainly the AfD.

Why? Well, the two leaders of the Greens are Robert Habeck, who is rather a popstar and proud of Germany. The co-head of the party of the Greens is Annalena Baerbock, also a mainstream politician who would never ever make such remarks (“and it would be best if Germany were to disappear”). They are both anti-Nazi, of course, but part of the right-of-center wing of their Party. Another leading politician of the Greens is Cem Özdemir, who is also part of the more conservative wing of the Greens and not at all “anti-German.” That accusation, though, is part of the hardcore racist agenda of the AfD against politicians such as Özdemir, who is an anti-Nazi and anti-AfD.

This is proof, again, that Tablet’s Goldman has no idea about German society, let alone the leadership of the party of the Greens. Even the party of the Left is very much pro-German and nationalist, take Sahra Wagenknecht, head of the fraction of the party of the Left in the Bundestag, as an example.

Goldman’s ally Jongen frames Nazi Germany as “socialist”. In reality, Nazi Germany was based on “German Socialism,” which is not socialist at all, but based on the capitalist nature of bourgeois society, with a specific volkish, antisemitic and German touch. Good historians or political scientists and other scholars in the humanities and social sciences know that of course. Agitators like the AfD put Communism and Nazism in one box. That absolves them for the German crimes and gives anti-left-wing neo-Nazis a free ride. Anti-urbanism, anti-individualism and the search for a new community of the people (“Volksgemeinschaft”) that both excludes foreigners as well as German Jews, was the ideological fundament of “German socialism.” Ernst Niekisch was among the propagandists of that concept, as political scientist Michael Pittwald has shown. Spengler wanted a German way of “democracy” and rejected any kind of universal human rights or universalist ideas of statehood.

For those interested in a serious analysis of the origins of National Socialism I’d like to remind you to the concept of “German Socialism.” “German Socialism” was based on capitalism, private property and small business (and big German business as well) and a strong state, and antisemitic resentment against the international big trusts and ‘finance capital’ while embracing the “German worker” and in particular the German middle class and the German peasants of course.

National Socialism was about capitalism, German way, based on anti-Marxism as Klaus Fritzsche has shown in 1976 in his study of the “Tat-Kreis” around Hans Zehrer. One could also analyze the völkisch concept of socialism and anti-Roman thinking by Ernst Niekisch and his German-Protestant national revolutionaries, whose main enemy was ‘the Jew’ and the working class likewise. Look at Joseph Goebbels’ and his Nazi pamphlet Der Nazi-Sozi from 1926, which was a major antisemitic booklet and portrayed Jews as “flea.” Nazi-Sozi meant “National Socialist” and translated into pro-capitalist and anti-Jewish. Of course, the Right does not want to face reality, therefore they proclaim Nazis were socialists like “real” socialists were.

Prussian authoritarianism was a core element for the Nazi movement. Combined with a German form of “socialism” that was anti-Marxist in nature, it was the ideology of nationalists such as Oswald Spengler. Without joining the Nazi movement himself, he paved the way for Nazi Germany. No surprise, that Goldman’s acronym is “Spengler.” As political scientist Kurt Sontheimer has shown in the 1960s, Spengler was a leading voice in destroying the Weimar democracy. Spengler’s “Prussia and Sozialismus” (“Preußentum und Sozialismus”) was anti-liberal, and based on his racist idea that every people has its own way of statehood. Spengler detested big cities and a heterogeneous, diverse society. Anti-universalism was a core component of all racist and nationalist thinkers in Weimar Germany. “German Socialism” was then framed “National Socialism” and became the name for Nazi Germany. Anti-Liberalism, anti-Marxism and antisemitism were the elements of “German Socialism.” Anti-individualism and a strong, authoritarian state, the need for a “Führer” were part of it.

Alice Weidel, co-chair of the AfD in the German Bundestag, invited members of her party from her electoral district. July 10, the day after that group had visited Weidel, they went to a tour through the Memorial Site of the former concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, north of Berlin. The group made antisemitic comments, a person denied the existence of gas chambers and the Holocaust and the tour was then stopped by the shocked guide. These are the fans of Alice Weidel. After Weidel had made her foto with Broder, the star author for German right-wing extremists was greeted by Martin Renner, MP in the Bundestag of the AfD. Renner praised Broder for his “courage” and emphasized that he always has a look at the homepage of Broder’s “Axis of the Good” (“Achse des Guten” or “Achgut”), when he is angry about our world. Like other antisemites, Renner distorts the capitalist and bourgeois as well as antisemitic character of Nazi Germany by framing them as “collectivists and socialists” during a debate in the Bundestag in February 2018.

For beginners: from a political scientist point of view, we can explain why the Far Right is right-wing extremist. At a typical AfD rally with Weidel and others in the frontline, they held a poster that read “Freedom instead of Socialism,” many AfD groups share that trope. It is an old parole of the conservative movement in Germany like the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party Christian-Social Union (CSU) during the election campaign of 1976 and before. “Freedom” translates into the denial of criticism of the capitalist system, for example. The AfD is just the latest, most extreme and most dangerous development of this anti-Left agenda of vast parts of the mainstream in Germany. They are on the edge of the right wing. That does of course not ignore the fact, that equally vast parts of the left are anti-Zionist, or distort the Holocaust via post-colonial universalization of the unprecedented crimes committed by Germans against the Jews.

Left-wing radicals, though, as I explained in an interview journalist Katja Thorwarth made with me in December 2017 in the daily Frankfurter Rundschau, is the opposite of the bourgeois society. Left-wing radicalism is not the extreme of the left-of-center Social Democrats, but something that goes beyond the dominant political, cultural and economic systems we know from history. Left-wing radicalism is in search for a place where no one has ever been.

Zionist Gershom Scholem had sympathies for anarchism and such a left-wing radical utopia.

That kind of radical left-wingers were against Stalinism and the East European regimes during the Cold War, but also against the existing regimes in the West, from America and West-Germany, let alone Thatcherism and other forms of bourgeois society.

On the other side, right-wing extremism is a place we already know: Sobibor, Auschwitz, Treblinka, this is the culmination of German antisemitic history, the most extreme form of an already bourgeois and antisemitic German Empire and even before, if we look at antisemitism among German romantics, for example. However, even the most extremist far right people before and even after 1933 could not anticipate Auschwitz and the destruction of European Jewry. They wanted it, but no one could anticipate how and when the Germans would succeed in their eliminations plan to kill European Jewry. For example, they could not anticipate the help of many thousands of local killers like in the Baltics, Ukraine or Croatia and many other places, including Hungary.

Today, anti-left politics go hand in hand with Holocaust distortion. Several examples from the US alone, make this crystal clear: Take, for example, TV programs like Glenn Beck on Fox News in January 2010, when he published his first documentary and spoke about the fantasy of a “Revolutionary Holocaust,” aiming at the Left and communism, again. That is nothing but a form of antisemitism, equating the specific crime against a specific people, the Jews, with totally unspecific (that was at the core of Stalinism) crimes against political enemies. Jews were not political enemies of anyone. Germans had the fanatical fear of being “Jewish inside,” as one leading Nazi agitator, who later converted to Islam and went to the Middle East, Johann von Leers, called it.

Then, take the Bill O’Reilly Show on FoxNews in America on October 21, 2016. In it, O’Reilly talks to the young director of the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington DC, Marion Smith. They speak about “100 million victims of Communism,” a number that makes six million Jews and the Shoah a tiny part and nothing special. And indeed, O’Reilly literally went on to call Hitler and Stalin “the same thing.” He equated those who built Auschwitz to those who liberated it.

Anti-communism still sells and is at the core of all conservative, far right and right-wing extremist people. At the end of the day, they share a common goal: defeat “the” Jew and the Left, including the “Jewish-Bolshevik” coalition, as the Nazis and other antisemites long before and after 1933 framed it.

When a regional legislature in Ukraine calls 2019 the “Stepan Bandera Year” things become clear. On January 30, 2019, the Washington Post puts it like this:

“Bandera’s forces fought alongside the Nazis and were implicated in the murder of thousands of Jews. As Poroshenko was visiting Israel, another memorial was being erected in Kiev for Symon Petliura, whose troops are linked to pogroms that killed as many as 50,000 Jews after World War I. Netanyahu’s outreach in eastern Europe is part of his larger strategy of forging alliances to counter the criticism Israel faces in the United Nations and other international forums over its treatment of the Palestinians. (…) ‘It’s a specific maneuver that legitimizes anti-Semitism and borders on Holocaust denial,’ said Tamar Zandberg, leader of the dovish Meretz party.”

Broder ironically made fun of those who frame the AfD a Nazi like party, because he defames former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor. When she spoke in January at the Bavarian Parliament about the threat of the far right, most MPs of the AfD left the room.

In his talk, Broder’s main enemy was 16-year-old pupil Greta Thunberg from Sweden, the eco-activist who attacks the capitalist and industrialist world and urges politicians to take action against climate change. Like the AfD, Broder is in denial about man-made climate change. In just a few days, Lundberg has become an enemy of the Far Right in Germany, as journalist Katja Thorwarth analyzes in the Frankfurter Rundschau.

As I wrote in my Tablet piece, Broder gave his speech just days after the German Federal Agency for Protection of the Constitution decided to investigate if the AfD is a serious threat to the German constitution and to German society. Goldman is in denial about these findings of the Germany Agency for the Protection of the Constitution. Perhaps he knows much better about German and AfD antisemitism and extremism, as he is a champion in using Google translate?

The worst antisemitic massacre in America took place in a Pittsburgh Synagogue on October 27, 2018. Eleven people were shot by a neo-Nazi who followed the agitation of Trump against liberal Jews who support Latino refugees from America’s southern neighbors.

Neo-Nazis are also champions of the science of dog whistles, like the word “globalists,” aiming at Jews running the economy at Wall Street. As said, in Germany the AfD plays the dog whistle alongside openly racist, vulgar and antisemitic remarks about the purported need to end Holocaust remembrance.

Islamists and jihads share the same authoritarian character with AfD politicians and their huge fan base. Both have an antidemocratic, family based, homophobic, anti-feminist and anti-individual as well as anti-Holocaust remembrance ideology.

One of the most dangerous agitators of the AfD is Goebbels-wannabee Björn Höcke. He is in favor of a volkish Germany with only Germans or “German Germans” while immigrants whose parents came from somewhere else could not count as “real” Germans. As a political scientist, I dealt in my 2006 doctorate with the New Right and political culture in Germany. The term “German Germany” is from Henning Eichberg (1942–2017), who had been the leading New Right agitator in Germany from the late 1960s onwards.

Broder himself immigrated with his parents, Holocaust survivors from Poland, to the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s. He now openly supports the party who would have rejected him and his parents in the first place.

Conservatives, the New Right (or Alt Right), and the AfD agitate against the Left and gender mainstreaming. They deny climate change, defame Islam as such (and do not fight Islamism).

Broder knows all this. For him it is nothing but fun to speak to “Nazis” or “Krypto-Nazis” etc. He intentionally supports the AfD because it fits his own extreme right-wing agenda. In 2007, I had criticized his far-right positions, when he supported TV moderator Eva Herman who publicly flaunted her positive feelings about Hitler’s Autobahn and about family politics. In many other pieces, I also argued against the fanatic right-wing activism of Broder, who is, at the same time, the best-known pro-Israel agitator in Germany. Israel deserves better.

Broder’s flirt with the AfD is at least as bad as Netanyahu doing photo-ops with Hungary’s Orbán, as the invitation of the fascism and antisemitism prone Steve Bannon by the Zionist Organization of America, as the prayer for Donald S. Trump in January 2017 by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

While many in the Antifa in Germany fight both left-wing pro-BDS people, and all neo-Nazis like the AfD, those like Broder now take sides, again and again, with antisemites, racists and right-wing extremist agitators like the AfD. Many in the German pro-Israel camp defend Broder.

Broder, Goldman and Tablet Magazine obviously want a kosher neo-Nazi like Party in the German Parliament. In addition, Goldman is in love with Helmut Kohl, the former (1982–1998) conservative chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who honored Nazi SS soldiers at a cemetery in Bitburg with US President Ronald Reagan in May 1985. Kohl also financially supported an organization dedicated to support former Nazis and SS men, the HIAG. In 1984, during his first visit to Israel, Kohl invited former Nazi party member (NSDAP) Kurt Ziesel to join him. Ziesel became a member of the Nazi party already during the Weimar Republic in 1931. He helped to destroy the first German democracy and paved the way for Nazi Germany and the Shoah.

Broder’s tone was like: “Give me some latkes before you kill me”. And they will serve those latkes never fear.

Tablet might think it is a pro-Jewish magazine. Tablet is not a pro-Jewish magazine as long as it take sides with the most anti-Jewish party in German society and Parliament. Goldman is a long time Tablet author, music critic and he is friends with Jongen who defames Merkel’s pro-Israel position and promotes racism, nationalism and vulgar hatred of the left, gender mainstreaming and defames necessary criticism of German nationalism, including criticism of his anti-intellectual, anti-humanist teacher and superstar, Peter Sloterdijk, one of the uncounted Heidegger followers of our times.

I was among the co-founders of what could be called the unofficial pro-Israel NGO camp in Germany in 2002 and even before. In January 2001, during the second Intifada, before 9/11, we did a brochure about left-wing antisemitism and Palestinian terrorism in Entebbe in 1976 and the repercussions among a specific anti-Zionist wing of the radical left in Germany at the time. I was a co-founder of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) in 2007. In 2017, this tiny group suspended me du to my antifascist position and stance against the pro-Trump position of SPME in the US. These developments as well as the collaboration of Netanyahu with right-wing extremist politicians in Europe as well as his posing as Israeli’s Trump in the current electoral campaign indicates a decline in decency in the pro-Israel camp.

American support for the Jewish state was always based on bipartisanship. Trump, his ilk and Netanyahu are destroying or already have destroyed this bipartisanship. Without Communist help in 1947/48, Israel would not have won the War of Independence, let alone the UN vote on November 29, 1947. Today, the pro-Israel camp believes that only the most hardcore capitalist, the most sexist, racist, anti-Muslim and Holocaust distorting wing of the Western world will be their ally. On the contrary, this predilection will be part of the decline of bipartisan support for the Jewish state. Just listen to an ardent Zionist, head of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Ronald S. Lauder:

“But the greatest threat is to the future of the Jewish people. For over 200 years, modern Judaism has aligned itself with enlightenment. The Jews of the new era have fused our national pride and religious affiliation with a dedication to human progress, worldly culture and morality. Conservatives and liberals, we all believe in a just Zionism and a pluralistic Judaism that respects every human being. So when members of Israel’s current government unintentionally undermine the covenant between Judaism and enlightenment, they crush the core of contemporary Jewish existence.”

Lauder as well as left-wing Zionists and critics of anti-liberalism, antisemitism and the Far Right know: Zionism deserves much better and David Ben-Gurion and Theodor Herzl would be ashamed of the current situation, I am sure.

***

January 29, 2019, Henryk M. Broder spoke at an event of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and they celebrated him as their hero. He was proud and happy, because not even his “own family honors” him like Martin Renner from the AfD did in his inauguration of Broder’s talk. David Goldman and Tablet celebrate Broder and the Far Right, they promote lies about the Greens in Germany and base Goldman’s piece on Google translate and the agitation of Jongen and other AfD politicians. Let us have a final look at some activities of AfD politicians. The faction of the AfD in the city of Potsdam posted a picture of NGO activist Anetta Kahane, showing her with a big nose and big lips, a typical antisemitic caricature.

At a rally in Chemnitz – after the above mentioned attack on a Jewish restaurant and Nazi salutes by many neo-Nazis – AfD politicians and MPs in the Bundestag, marched alongside with criminal and convicted Hitler-fan Lutz Bachmann, right-wing publisher Götz Kubitschek as well as several former leaders of neo-Nazi groups like “National Socialists Chemnitz,” “Wiking Youth,” or “Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend” (“Homeland proud German Youth”) as well as far-right political activist Michael Stürzenberger. The latter is of particular interest, as he is known for his agitation against the circumcision. In 2012, Stürzenberger wrote that Jews like Muslims, if they keep on practicing the circumcision, have “no place in this country” (Germany), as journalist Jörg Lau from the weekly Die Zeit documented with disgust.

Broder knows very well that neo-Nazis would destroy him as a Jew after they took power and “cleaned the Augean stables”.

But he might hope like Tablet or Goldman that he will just be shot some days or even a few weeks after his female neighbor – the journalist with her tender anarcho-communist, pro-immigrant, eco-socialist, anticapitalist and antifascist, left-wing Zionist ideas, her punk-rock style hair, her “Refugees Welcome” T-Shirt and her button “No one is illegal” – would be raped, tortured and killed (based on what AfD followers or neo-Nazis post all the time on social media).

©ClemensHeni

Trump, Zionism and Antisemitism

Von Dr. phil. Clemens Heni, 22. Februar 2017

Times of Israel (Blogs)

Several Jewish and non-Jewish NGOs, scholars, activists, bloggers and authors believe, the Trump administration will fight antisemitism and will be helpful both for Jews and Israel.

Their derealization of sexism is shocking enough. But no surprise either.

Let’s have a look at Trump, antisemitism and Zionism alone.

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) argues that Trump might consider strong anti-BDS legislation. The Simon Wiesenthal Center prayed for Trump at the inauguration and the Louis D. Brandeis Center  is hopeful that Trump will be fighting antisemitism, too.

Journalist Benjamin Weinthal (Jerusalem Post) and his colleague from SPME, Asaf Romirowsky, claim:

In late December, with just weeks left in his administration, former U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a shot in the arm to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, or BDS. Obama instructed the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, to abstain instead of vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution rebuking Israeli settlement activity.

Resolution 2334 deems Israel’s presence in disputed territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illicit. Combined five days later with a didactic anti-Israel speech from Secretary of State John Kerry, the resolution administered a body blow to Israel’s brand.

The Middle East Forum’s (MEF) director Greg Roman attacks the resolution 2334, which is no surprise, but still lacks a scholarly analysis of the resolution. The Simon Wiesenthal Center puts the Obama Administration on place one of their “Top-Ten worst global antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents 2016”:

The most stunning 2016 UN attack on Israel was facilitated by President Obama when the US abstained on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for settlement construction.

What says United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 from December 2016?

Expressing grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967 lines.

That is not antisemitic. On the contrary, the UNSC again reaffirms the very existence of Israel!

John Kerry’s speech was even clearer and very pro-Zionist:

This is an issue which I’ve worked on intensely during my time as Secretary of State for one simple reason: because the two state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, living in peace and security with its neighbors.

This is exactly the position of leading Zionist scholars in the field, such as Fania Oz-Salzberger, Yedidia Z. Stern, Gadi Taub, Ruth Gavison or Anita Shapira, at least in my reading of their book “The Israeli Nation-State” from 2014, which I just translated into German (with my colleague Dr. Michael Kreutz) and published the book (456 pages) this week.

John Kerry wanted to “ensure” that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. Period.

However, the self-declared pro-Israel establishment in the US or Germany, runs riot against resolution 2334 and the Obama administration. Now they embrace Trump, more or less.

Even Kenneth Marcus from the Louis D. Brandeis Center, known for thoughtful analysis and scholarship in antisemitism, rejects any analysis of the very specific way Trump fueled antisemitism in the last 15 months or longer. Marcus rather obfuscates the very new climate in the US after the election of Trump and says:

“In today’s heated political climate Marcus said anti-Semitism is rampant in both pro-Trump supporters and anti-Trump groups, among others, and should not be attributed to one source.“

It is not news that leftists are anti-Zionist, for example, but it is news that the neo-Nazi Alt Right is now sitting in the White House (Steve Bannon, Breitbart). And the unbelievable increase of antisemitic incidents in the US has very close connection to the extrem right and not to the left. Neo-Nazis have been emboldened by Trump, no doubt about this.

Marcus concludes (this is from a report about a talk he gave) and even sees Trump as a possible ally:

“The Trump Administration could be another factor in the battle against anti-Semitism. (…) Marcus credited the Trump campaign for issuing a statement expressing concern about campus anti-Semitism, and for comments indicating that the Department of Justice would address university suppression of Jewish pro-Israel speech. Marcus doesn’t know if any of this will translate into policy, but he’s hopeful.“

Crediting Trump – unbelievable.

Then, those in the pro-Israel camp who defame Kerry should listen to a single speech by Iranian President Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in order to learn how an anti-Israel speech sounds like. Then, they should listen to John Kerry’s speech about resolution 2334 and rethink their unprofessional remarks that Kerry‘s speech was a “didactic anti-Israel speech” as Weinthal and Romirowsky frame it.

If it is anti-Israel to support the Jewish and democratic state of Israel and to be against religious and nationalist fanaticism and the settlements, read: to be for a two-state solution, than most Israelis and Jews in the US and worldwide are anti-Israel.

Palestinian rejectionism is a huge problem, of course, ever since 1947 and before.

But Israeli fanaticism is also a huge problem, just listen to the six Shin Bet directors between 1980 and 2011, who are interviewed in the Oscar nominated film “The Gatekeepers” by Dror Moreh in 2012, featuring Ami Ayalon, Avi Dichter, Yuval Diskin, Carmi Gillon, Yaakov Peri, Avraham Shalom. They emphasize that the Palestinians are not just terrorists. They are political subjects and need political acceptance by Israel (and of course, vice versa, but that is NOT news).

We need a political solution, not a military solution, that is their message – and thesse former Shin Bet directors from 1980 through 2011 might know more about the Palestinians and how to fight terrorism and how not and what is good or bad for Israel than American or European activists.

But there are also those Israeli fanatics in the 1990s, including Benjamin Netanyahu, to be sure, who agitated against Yitzhak Rabin, as the film shows, until Rabin was killed, November 4, 1995. How does Israel look like today?

A Question to all those American and other Trump supporters: Is it a sign of a particular pro-Jewish approach to omit the mentioning of Jews as the only victims of the Shoah on Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2017? Historian Deborah Lipstadt called Trump’s statement a “softcore Holocaust denial.”

Finally, and most importantly, if it is pro-Israel to destroy the Jewish state and to invoke or mention (as a result of stupidity, thoughtlessness or by intention) the “one-state solution” as President Trump did during his shocking and embarrassing press conference with Netanyahu on February 15, 2017, then things are turned upside down. Trump and his folks will call it “alternative facts.”

PRESIDENT TRUMP:  So I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like.  (Laughter.)  I’m very happy with the one that both parties like.  I can live with either one.“

No problem for the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) or the Louis D. Brandeis Center and their allies?

David Horowitz from the Times of Israel concludes:

“And yet, by allowing Trump’s talk of a possible single entity between river and sea to pass without contradiction, Netanyahu himself dealt a stinging, public blow to the Israel we are living in today. For if our prime minister is unwilling to speak up, loudly and clearly, in defense of a Jewish, democratic Israel within internationally recognized borders, who else will? Certainly not President Donald Trump.”

©ClemensHeni

Does Germany need just another Islamist, anti-Israel and antisemitic infusion by John L. Esposito?

By Clemens Heni

75 year old John L. Esposito, Georgetown University’s Director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., will be the keynote speaker of a big conference in Germany, Jan 14–16, 2016, about „anti-Muslim racism and hostility towards Islam in Germany and Europe.“

The conference will take place at the University of Osnabrück in the North-West of Germany, over forty speakers are invited to speak. The event is organized by the “Center for Islamic Theology,” and supported by the German Federal Government and its Ministry of Education and Research, Lower Saxony’s Ministry for Research and Culture, and the Post Graduate Program Islamic Theology.

This Center for Islamic Theology is headed by Bülent Ucar, who is the main organizer of the event alongside with his co-worker, Nina Mühe, an anthropologist and Islamic studies scholar known for her attack on Berlin’s Anti-Hijab Law in classroom. Mühe is a former fellow at a German branch of George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Obviously, attacks like the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher supermarket massacre in Paris in January 2015 are a “reason” for many academics in the humanities and social sciences to focus on an alleged “anti-Muslim racism‟ and not on Jihad, Islamism, Muslim anti-Semitism and Muslim terrorists. This is mainstream in Europe and the Western world ever since 9/11. We are facing in part a racist and nationalist climate in Germany, indeed. But this has nothing to do with the rejection of most academics in the field of Islamic Studies to deal, let alone fight Islamism in all its forms. The true antifascism of the 21st century deals with both the neo-Nazi and Islamist threats.

In his book “Who Speaks for Islam?” (2007, together with Dalia Mogahed), Esposito used the equivalence of anti-Semitism and “Islamophobia.” In his distorted view, Jews aren’t but a “religion” and just one of two “religions with Semitic origins.” In fact, hatred of Jews is a worldwide ideology, while “Islamophobia” is rather an invention by some specific circles, namely Iran and Islamist organizations and their followers.

More recently, Esposito also started to defame Egypts’s anti-Muslim-Brotherhood stance and started his “Brigde Initiative,” dedicated to the analysis of “Islamophobia” and the defamation of all critics of jihad and Islamism.

Esposito is fascinated by the “Iranian Revolution” from 1979, as can be seen in his edited volume “The Iranian Revolution. Its Global Impact” (1990) and his chapter “The Iranian Revolution. A Ten-Year Perspective,” where he also emphasized the outreach of Iranian style Islamism to Muslims outside Iran. In 2010, he co-edited the volume “Islam and Peacebuilding. Gülen Movements Initiates,” where he promotes the Islamist approach of Fethullah Gülen and frames him as a kind of Islamic version of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Both share a “similar belief in mutual understanding, dialogue and optimism,” murmurs Esposito.

This “optimism” (a nice word for the spread of Islamism, no?) can also be seen in the work of leading Sunni cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, another protagonist of Esposito. In his book “The Future of Islam” (2010), the Saudi (Prince Alwaleed) funded scholar says, al-Qaradawi “claims that everything is acceptable (halal) unless proven forbidden (haram).” This makes him a moderate according to Esposito and his German colleagues Gudrun Krämer and Bettina Gräf. Gräf co-edited a book, “The Global Mufti,” with pieces by another Georgetown academic, Barbara Freyer-Stowasser (1935–2012), about “gender equality” in a fatwa about female suiciding bombing against Israel by al-Qaradawi.

In “The Future of Islam,” Esposito also invokes an equivalence between Islamic and Western “fundamentalism,” taking Ronald Reagan and the Iranian Revolution as examples, he also compares George W. Bush to Osama Bin Laden. This cultural relativist approach is well known. But jihad and the rule of religion (Islamism) is not the same as whatever democratic government in the US, Britain or Germany and France etc. does. Mustafa Ceric, former Grand Mufti of Sarajevo, is another Islamist portrayed as kosher, by Esposito. Ceric once went to the Auschwitz Memorial site, not to remember the Shoah but rather to invoke the Muslims-are-the-new-Jews-analogy. Ceric has also been criticized for his ties to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, among other Islamist aspects of his approach.

Finally, Esposito refers to German security expert and former head (1996–2000) of the “Federal Agency for the Protection of the Constitution,” Peter Frisch. In his 2010 book (finished in 2009), Esposito writes about Frisch as if he was head of that important institution in 2009, which is a minor problem compared to the lie, the Georgetown scholar spreads about Frisch. Esposito writes: “In Germany, Peter Frisch, head of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution), has repeatedly asserted, ‘Muslims want to rule the world.’” He does not quote form a single article by Frisch. In 2001, after 9/11, Frisch argued against the defamation of all Muslims. In 1997, Frisch argued against the rise of Islamism and the reluctance in Germany to even deal with that problem. To my knowledge, he never said that all Muslims want to rule the world. This reproach is rather a lie, invented by Esposito – who runs short to substantiate his claim. But Esposito is obviously not interested in research and quotes.

August 5, 2014, during the latest Gaza War, John L. Esposito tweeted the following: “Elie Wiesel plays the Holocaust trump card in Gaza” and links to an antisemitic homepage – “Mondoweiss.” Wiesel had said, that Jews stopped using children as sacrifices some 3500 years ago, Hamas should stop it now, too. Truly a correct statement, taken the fact that Hamas is verifiably known for abusing children and others as human shields. For Esposito this was just another reason to defame Israel and make fun of the Shoah and a Holocaust survivor.

Esposito compares Israel to Nazis, uses even more antisemitic language, promotes Islamists as possible allies and defames German officials, who headed federal offices in the fight against Jihad and Islamism.

Are these enough reasons for the Jewish Museum Berlin’s Yasemin Shooman, the mainstream weekly “Die Zeit” and its author Yassin Musharbash, the left-green-wing daily “taz” and its Daniel Bax, scholars like Andreas Zick from Bielefeld University, who even sits on Board of the US based “Journal for the Study of Antisemitism” (JSA), or historian Wolfgang Benz, former head of the “Center for Research on Antisemitism” at Technical University Berlin, dozens of other scholars, activists and authors, the Government of Lower Saxony and the German Federal Government to support and join such an event?

 

 

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