Norman Finkelstein 🎤 in an exchange of ideas withCandace Owensabout Israel, the Holocaust, and his upcoming book,Gaza's Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places.
Norman Finkelstein 🎤 in an exchange of ideas withCandace Owensabout Israel, the Holocaust, and his upcoming book,Gaza's Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places.
By agreeing to a discussion with this notorious far right conspiracist who denies the Holocaust, defends white supremacy and alleges that Bridget Ma cron was born a man, Finkelstein completes his descent into the intellectual gutter.
I think Norman Finkelstein's purpose was to get his message out rather than hers.
He has never been in the intellectual gutter and has more intellectual integrity than the bulk of Israeli intelligentsia.
Flip it to find out what you really think: say he had spoken to Starmer would you condemn him to the intellectual gutter? If what you say about Owens is correct, Starmer is no better than her: he is a genocide denier, he supported war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza and he has armed the genocide and gave it cover. Owens at least disputes being a Holocaust denier - Starmer can't dispute being a genocide denier.
Leveling such serious accusations against Candace Owens demands thorough and substantiated evidence. After listening closely to the interview, I did not perceive any of the defamatory claims you've referenced.
I think a better metric of one's intellect is based on what one says rather than to whom it is said. I could probably think of some scenario in which a person's intellectual decline could possibly be determined by with whom that person enters into a discussion. I don't think this interview is such a scenario. Although I am unsure whether Barry is intending to mean outright intellectual decline, or simply referencing a specific squalid place for certain intellectuals to be metaphorically cast to. As for Owens, iirc, there was, or is, a lawsuit against her regarding comments related to Brigitte Macron. Owens has also made comments regarding the Holocaust, which to say the very least were certainly questionable. It would seem Barry's accusations are not unfounded, although perhaps Enda, you already knew that.
Matt - for Barry to avoid double standard concerns he would need to apply the same criterion to Norman F speaking to Der Starmer. Candace Owens is a far right ideologue who has made numerous noxious observations although disputes the Holocaust denial. Barry is trying to damn Norman F on the basis of what he believes Candace Owens said, not what he said.
Anthony - Yes I agree, that was also the take I got from the comment. There are indeed concerns of double standards, however I think the "standard" itself is the primary concern in need of address in this case.
Anthony - Apologies for the confusion. The "standard" I was referring to, was the idea of assessing someone based on who they are talking to, rather than what they are saying. To me, this was my primary concern, with the double standard being secondary. I hope my additional comments here have made that more clear. It appears to me however that we are in agreeance.
Candace Owens may not have directly denied the Holocaust but she is on record as denying that Joseph Mengele carried out his ghastly medical experiments in Auschwitz. At the very least, she is guilty of Holocaust relativism comparing it to the expulsion of ethnic German populations from liberated East/ Central Europe after the defeat of Nazism as acts of "ethnic cleansing". She is a vocal critic of Black Lives Matter, rejects any narrative of police brutality towards African American and has compared the Democratic Party to a "huge plantation"; a disgusting inversion second only to that of the Holocaust. She peddles conspiracy theories ands opposes abortion rights.
All of which should lead us to ask why a renowned, supposedly radical left activist/scholar like Norman Finkelstein should see fit to broadcast on such an obnoxiously far right platform. The answer may lie in the path he has taken since writing the Holocaust Industry towards advocacy of Holocaust denial being taught in universities (granted that he says it should be done as a means of disproving; in which case why not permit the teaching of creationism, climate change denial and anti-vaccination if only to prove their fallaciousness) and respect for the scholarship of the proven liar and neo Nazi David Irving.
In his critique of Finkelstein's dismissal of New Antisemitism as automatic deflection of criticism of Israel, Alan Johnson quotes the Italian intellectual historian Enrico Treviso, himself a sharp critic of Israel and Zionism, in his take down of the Holocaust Industry as follows:
"Traverso judged the book guilty of lumping together the Jewish Claims Conference, about which he thought 'most' of Finkelstein's points are 'probably correct', and the national commissions that were established in Europe which were based on 'completely different ethical and political rules' and which 'aimed to establish the truth and make and make amends for justice, not to seek profit'. Traverso noted that Finkelstein 'takes the side of Swiss banks, portraying them as victims of a Jewish "racket".
Traverso goes onto say that Finkelstein's denunciatory zeal was a 'simplistic, sectarian, polemical and provocative' form of argumentation'. The very title of his book recalled the old antisemitic myth of a "Jewish Conspiracy", noting that the book was welcomed in Berlin by 'an enthusiastic public of nationalists'
Finkelstein's conspiratorial accounting for the increased attention given to the Shoah as 'an alliance between US imperialism and the State of Israel, with the support of American Jewish elites' seems to disregard the 'many expressions of Holocaust memory which have been such a powerful motor for generations of antifascist, anti- colonialist and antiracist struggles.'
Traverso found repulsive his Finkelstein's claim that Holocaust representations in literature, paintings and films were naught but 'products of a propaganda machine'. What about the works of Primo Levi, Jean Amery, Ruth Kluger, Victor Klemperer and so many other witnesses to the evils of Nazism, he wondered.
Alan Johnson DENIAL. Norman Finkelstein and the New Antisemitism pp.92-99 in Mapping the New Left Antisemitism. The Fathom Essays Alan Johnson (Ed). Routledge 2024
So is Candace Owens and Norman Finkelstein fashioning their own version of the horseshoe?
Barry - Thank you for the additional information. Just to be clear, my comments were not intended as a defence for either Owens or Finkelstein. I am merely stating that I think it is wrong in general, and particularly in this case, to assess someone based on who they are talking with rather than what they are saying, which is what your initial comment suggested. Your secondary comment at least improves by providing reference, however, as Anthony has pointed out, it still leaves wide open the concern of double standards, which will tend to be inevitable in these sorts of circumstances. "Teaching" certain views, such as the examples you gave, creationism, anti-vax etc, is not the same as teaching that these views exist, otherwise indoctrination would be the correct term to use. I understand the problems that can arise by giving a platform to those that have certain views, I certainly find it on occasions rather frustrating myself, although, I am of the mind that perhaps the greater danger lies in trying to deplatform or silence certain views, despite what those views may happen to be.
Barry, Candace Owens is extremely noxious. But that is hardly the point. Norman F most likely opted to reach the widest audience possible and she allows him to expand his reach. You are quite free to criticise him but when you state that he is somehow abominable on the grounds that he speaks to Candace O, your contention becomes weak. If he chose her for the purpose of speaking out against the genocide it seems churlish to chide him. Would you say the same of him if he had an exchange with Starmer? Unlike Starmer, Candace O does not deny the genocide. She never advocated war crimes against the Gazans. Creationism can be taught in schools for the purpose of showing how ridiculous it is. It should not be taught in the science class as science. If sufficient people believe in creationism that belief system needs to be discussed. That is a far short of holding it up as true. School children should be taught about Holocaust denial, not taught that it has meritorious content. Your criticisms of Norman F in your latest comment are far removed from what you said about him in your opening comment.
Recognizing that the horseshoe can indeed come full circle, the uplifting message conveyed in the Owens/Finkelstein interview may well be interpreted as a sign of meaningful hope and progress.
Anyone who broadcasts on a far right , hate mongering and conspiratorial platform like hers have lost all moral credibility. Palestinian activists and scholars have rightfully given her thr wide berth she deserves.
Hello Anthony, I attempted to enter an admittedly long winded comment, but it was rejected on account of being too long. There would be contextual content that would be difficult to edit out. Any suggestions? Thank you, Sean D.
"By agreeing to a discussion with this notorious far right conspiracist who denies the Holocaust, defends white supremacy and alleges that Bridget Macron was born a man, Finkelstein completes his descent into the intellectual gutter."
Why such disregard, contempt, for Norman Finkelstein? Something must have never made its way across the broad Atlantic Ocean.
To fully appreciate the importance of this courageous man, and his similarly minded co-religionists too, you would have to have been immersed in the American experience, post-WW II to the present.
But let's fast forward through the first two decades for which I wasn't around for or wouldn't remember much of. Picking up in 1967, the time of the so-called "Six Day War", the glorification of plucky little Israel really started in earnest.
The legend of this David of an Israel, surrounded by bloodthirsty Goliathan Arab neighbors, led by a one-eyed jack of a military genius in war and a grandmotherly woman in the pacification afterwards, was repeatedly read to the American public.
If we didn't learn through the mass media, we learned in school how a dream was created out of nothing in the empty desert, nurtured by hard working kibbutz volunteers. Internal to this space, hardly a Palestinian intruded.
Who in the American public could be blamed for not knowing that the people who lived in Jordan weren't all Jordanians?
No mention was made of the unprovoked, deliberate, brutal and murderous Israeli attack on the USS Liberty at that time. That was suppressed for years.
Attention was directed to other reading material, ensuring that "The Diary of Anne Frank" was included on required reading lists in school syllabuses across the country.
By the time the mid-1970s had arrived, the American public were sold the longest running global scam ever concocted, the "Camp David Accords".
It was, it still is, a mechanism not unlike a perpetual motion machine. Billions upon billions of U.S. dollars fuel this infernal engine of worldwide woe, and part of the monies sent over to Israel as foreign aid come back over here to be used to lobby anew for more money.
Israel has not only bought the federal government here and enlisted traitorous agents from the Presidential level down, but within many state governments as well, where anti-BDS legislation has been enacted, and where the definition of antisemitism has been corrupted to include anti-Zionism.
The so-called neo-cons here, the ranks rotten with Zionists, were the lead architects of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the destabilization of Libya and the visitations of "forever wars" on many other unfortunate places and the grandest gift of all, that keeps on giving to the military-industrial-congressional complex here, the Ukraine conflict.
I don't see any dismissal of Putin's war of aggression, more an observation that the US is not supporting Ukraine because it cares about protecting people from aggression. If it did it would stop the Israeli genocide instead of arming it. Do you seriously think Western leaders like Biden or Starmer give one flying fuck about Ukrainian civilians or see them as anything other than pawns on a geopolitical strategic chessboard?
I have seen little evidence of Trump supporting Ukraine in its resistance to the supreme war crime of aggression launched on it by Trump's puppet master in Moscow? Were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Spain in the 30s mere pawns on an international chessboard?
Not that the West give too much consideration to the fate of the Czechs. They were prepared to put up with it. By the time he reached Poland Hitler had frightened Britain and France into thinking they might be next. They no more cared about the Poles than they do about Ukrainians. Had Hitler invaded the USSR instead of Poland do you think the West would have gone to war? We see it today with Israeli Nazism. The West is quite happy with it.
His attribution of the Ukraine conflict primarily to the US military industrial complex seems to give Putin a free pass or the role of mere bystander. How is Ukraine supposed to defend itself without international support?
Ukriane could not defend itself without international support. But that international support is not given out of any respect for the right of Ukraine to defend itself. Palestine needs defended against an even worse state than Ukraine does but the support is given to those committing genocide not those resisting it. Ukraine is fortunate that Russia rather than Israel is invading it. Who do you think the West would arm if Israel was behind the war on Ukraine? It would not be the Ukrainians. I think this is the point being made in the commentary.
They found a fifth column here, comprised of the most useful of idiots, a heretical Christian right grouping, the Christian Zionists.
With their advocacy, the U.S. became a fully vested, fully complicit, equal partner and co-belligerent in the Palestinian genocide.
This is an indelible stain upon this country that no amount of bleach or loss of collective memory in a United States of Amnesia will ever remove.
But this has not been enough to satiate Israel's lust. Academic freedom has been squashed. Free association and free speech have been criminalized. Mass surveillance has become ubiquitous here. Mainstream media is controlled by Israeli allies. Police have been militarized, even trained by Israel.
Politicians who may or may not have as earlier or willingly accepted bribes could have been honeytrapped into enthusiastically unqualified support for this apartheid state.
The operators of Kincora, so provincial an operation, would have been awestruck by the breadth of front man Epstein's brothels without borders operation.
Smothering dissent like a soaked blanket, for decades, was the hint, the fear, the charge that criticism of this unholiest of alliances would would be the most politically incorrect of all, resulting in one's banishment for the crime of antisemitism.
That someone in polite society, in the mainstream population might might engage in antisemitism was unthinkable. Yet if did occur, a exile to the back of beyond would be assured.
Only in such a place, off the grid and out of sight, could talk of ZOG be tolerated. Whatever faults such people might otherwise have, even a blind squirrel could find a nut too, in backwoods Idaho.
That was, until people like Norman Finkelstein spoke up. No mere Gentile could take on such power in the United States.
Such a person, the son of Holocaust survivors, he was uniquely qualified to dismantle the protective wall that Zionists had erected to shield their evilness from criticism.
The cancer that so aggressively metastasized from Israel to the United States ravaged unchecked until now. At last, the restraints that long thwarted criticism of Israel, of Zionism, of the American deep state, are loosened.
Norman Finkelstein and the cohort of like minded and decent Jewish intellectuals and commentators such as Noam Chomsky, Gabor Mate, Ilan Pappe, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Katie Halper, Glenn Greenwald and others, are the first of heroes, at the start of a new American revolution. They will be as worthy of remembrance in the future, as the past patriots of the first American revolution are honored today.
Sean D, Finkekstein is held in contempt by scholars on this side of the Atlantic like Treviso for the reasons I have cited and coated. Admiring the scholarship of David Irving is not a good look in Europe.
ZOG is a well known far right, neo-nazi fallacious and dangerous catchphrase. The future "patriots" that Sean D mentions in his last paragraph are notorious whitewashers of Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria and the war crimes of Putin in both Syria and Ukraine in the case of Blumenthal and Aaron Mate in their fake news weblog The Grayzone
ZOG is sometimes used by other Nazis against Israeli Nazis. But the acronym merely merely means Zionist Occupation Government. A fairly accurate description for Israeli policy in the occupied territories.
Noam Chomsky is notorious for his defence of the Bosnian genocide denier Diane Johnstone and refusal to recognise the extent of Khmer Rouge crimes against humanity in Cambodia. Was also a guest of Mr Epstein.
Sean D provides no evidence for Israel or Zionists being behind the Epstein trafficking network nor of how they are responsible for erosion of freedom of speech and association in the US. I am no apologist for the Israeli government but the lack of evidential proof for what he has written.
By agreeing to a discussion with this notorious far right conspiracist who denies the Holocaust, defends white supremacy and alleges that Bridget Ma cron was born a man, Finkelstein completes his descent into the intellectual gutter.
ReplyDelete,
I think Norman Finkelstein's purpose was to get his message out rather than hers.
DeleteHe has never been in the intellectual gutter and has more intellectual integrity than the bulk of Israeli intelligentsia.
Flip it to find out what you really think: say he had spoken to Starmer would you condemn him to the intellectual gutter? If what you say about Owens is correct, Starmer is no better than her: he is a genocide denier, he supported war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza and he has armed the genocide and gave it cover. Owens at least disputes being a Holocaust denier - Starmer can't dispute being a genocide denier.
Leveling such serious accusations against Candace Owens demands thorough and substantiated evidence. After listening closely to the interview, I did not perceive any of the defamatory claims you've referenced.
DeleteI think a better metric of one's intellect is based on what one says rather than to whom it is said. I could probably think of some scenario in which a person's intellectual decline could possibly be determined by with whom that person enters into a discussion. I don't think this interview is such a scenario. Although I am unsure whether Barry is intending to mean outright intellectual decline, or simply referencing a specific squalid place for certain intellectuals to be metaphorically cast to.
DeleteAs for Owens, iirc, there was, or is, a lawsuit against her regarding comments related to Brigitte Macron. Owens has also made comments regarding the Holocaust, which to say the very least were certainly questionable. It would seem Barry's accusations are not unfounded, although perhaps Enda, you already knew that.
Matt - for Barry to avoid double standard concerns he would need to apply the same criterion to Norman F speaking to Der Starmer. Candace Owens is a far right ideologue who has made numerous noxious observations although disputes the Holocaust denial. Barry is trying to damn Norman F on the basis of what he believes Candace Owens said, not what he said.
DeleteAnthony - Yes I agree, that was also the take I got from the comment. There are indeed concerns of double standards, however I think the "standard" itself is the primary concern in need of address in this case.
DeleteMatt, sorry, but I don't understand what you are saying.
DeleteAnthony - Apologies for the confusion. The "standard" I was referring to, was the idea of assessing someone based on who they are talking to, rather than what they are saying. To me, this was my primary concern, with the double standard being secondary. I hope my additional comments here have made that more clear. It appears to me however that we are in agreeance.
DeleteCandace Owens may not have directly denied the Holocaust but she is on record as denying that Joseph Mengele carried out his ghastly medical experiments in Auschwitz. At the very least, she is guilty of Holocaust relativism comparing it to the expulsion of ethnic German populations from liberated East/ Central Europe after the defeat of Nazism as acts of "ethnic cleansing". She is a vocal critic of Black Lives Matter, rejects any narrative of police brutality towards African American and has compared the Democratic Party to a "huge plantation"; a disgusting inversion second only to that of the Holocaust. She peddles conspiracy theories ands opposes abortion rights.
ReplyDeleteAll of which should lead us to ask why a renowned, supposedly radical left activist/scholar like Norman Finkelstein should see fit to broadcast on such an obnoxiously far right platform. The answer may lie in the path he has taken since writing the Holocaust Industry towards advocacy of Holocaust denial being taught in universities (granted that he says it should be done as a means of disproving; in which case why not permit the teaching of creationism, climate change denial and anti-vaccination if only to prove their fallaciousness) and respect for the scholarship of the proven liar and
neo Nazi David Irving.
In his critique of Finkelstein's dismissal of New Antisemitism as automatic deflection of criticism of Israel, Alan Johnson quotes the Italian intellectual historian Enrico Treviso, himself a sharp critic of Israel and Zionism, in his take down of the Holocaust Industry as follows:
"Traverso judged the book guilty of lumping together the Jewish Claims Conference, about which he thought 'most' of Finkelstein's points are 'probably correct', and the national commissions that were established in Europe which were based on 'completely different ethical and political rules' and which 'aimed to establish the truth and make and make amends for justice, not to seek profit'. Traverso noted that Finkelstein 'takes the side of Swiss banks, portraying them as victims of a Jewish "racket".
Traverso goes onto say that Finkelstein's denunciatory zeal was a 'simplistic, sectarian, polemical and provocative' form of argumentation'. The very title of his book recalled the old antisemitic myth of a "Jewish Conspiracy", noting that the book was welcomed in Berlin by 'an enthusiastic public of nationalists'
Finkelstein's conspiratorial accounting for the increased attention given to the Shoah as 'an alliance between US imperialism and the State of Israel, with the support of American Jewish elites' seems to disregard the 'many expressions of Holocaust memory which have
been such a powerful motor for generations of antifascist, anti-
colonialist and antiracist struggles.'
Traverso found repulsive his Finkelstein's claim that Holocaust representations in literature, paintings and films were naught but 'products of a propaganda machine'. What about the works of Primo Levi, Jean Amery, Ruth Kluger, Victor Klemperer and so many other witnesses to the evils of Nazism, he wondered.
Alan Johnson DENIAL. Norman Finkelstein and the New Antisemitism pp.92-99 in Mapping the New Left Antisemitism. The Fathom Essays Alan Johnson (Ed). Routledge 2024
So is Candace Owens and Norman Finkelstein fashioning their own version of the horseshoe?
Barry - Thank you for the additional information. Just to be clear, my comments were not intended as a defence for either Owens or Finkelstein. I am merely stating that I think it is wrong in general, and particularly in this case, to assess someone based on who they are talking with rather than what they are saying, which is what your initial comment suggested. Your secondary comment at least improves by providing reference, however, as Anthony has pointed out, it still leaves wide open the concern of double standards, which will tend to be inevitable in these sorts of circumstances. "Teaching" certain views, such as the examples you gave, creationism, anti-vax etc, is not the same as teaching that these views exist, otherwise indoctrination would be the correct term to use. I understand the problems that can arise by giving a platform to those that have certain views, I certainly find it on occasions rather frustrating myself, although, I am of the mind that perhaps the greater danger lies in trying to deplatform or silence certain views, despite what those views may happen to be.
DeleteBarry, Candace Owens is extremely noxious. But that is hardly the point.
DeleteNorman F most likely opted to reach the widest audience possible and she allows him to expand his reach.
You are quite free to criticise him but when you state that he is somehow abominable on the grounds that he speaks to Candace O, your contention becomes weak. If he chose her for the purpose of speaking out against the genocide it seems churlish to chide him.
Would you say the same of him if he had an exchange with Starmer? Unlike Starmer, Candace O does not deny the genocide. She never advocated war crimes against the Gazans.
Creationism can be taught in schools for the purpose of showing how ridiculous it is. It should not be taught in the science class as science. If sufficient people believe in creationism that belief system needs to be discussed. That is a far short of holding it up as true. School children should be taught about Holocaust denial, not taught that it has meritorious content.
Your criticisms of Norman F in your latest comment are far removed from what you said about him in your opening comment.
Recognizing that the horseshoe can indeed come full circle, the uplifting message conveyed in the Owens/Finkelstein interview may well be interpreted as a sign of meaningful hope and progress.
ReplyDeleteEnda, the horseshoe theory refers to the convergence of far right and far left theory and practice.
DeleteAnyone who broadcasts on a far right , hate mongering and conspiratorial platform like hers have lost all moral credibility. Palestinian activists and scholars have rightfully given her thr wide berth she deserves.
ReplyDeleteAnd Starmer?
DeleteAnd Starmer?---his arguments have always sounded gay to me, and he comes across as a vegan----That makes him 'wank' in my books.
ReplyDeleteSo you are a homophobe as well, Frankie?
DeleteI am also antisemitic and every other charge you lay at my door....TPQ---I am a cunt----but you figured that out in 2008.
ReplyDeleteHello Anthony,
ReplyDeleteI attempted to enter an admittedly long winded comment, but it was rejected on account of being too long. There would be contextual content that would be difficult to edit out.
Any suggestions?
Thank you,
Sean D.
Sean - break the comment up into sections. Post as Part 1, Part 2 . . .
ReplyDeleteHere goes, Part 1:
ReplyDelete"By agreeing to a discussion with this notorious far right conspiracist who denies the Holocaust, defends white supremacy and alleges that Bridget Macron was born a man, Finkelstein completes his descent into the intellectual gutter."
Why such disregard, contempt, for Norman Finkelstein? Something must have never made its way across the broad Atlantic Ocean.
To fully appreciate the importance of this courageous man, and his similarly minded co-religionists too, you would have to have been immersed in the American experience, post-WW II to the present.
But let's fast forward through the first two decades for which I wasn't around for or wouldn't remember much of. Picking up in 1967, the time of the so-called "Six Day War", the glorification of plucky little Israel really started in earnest.
The legend of this David of an Israel, surrounded by bloodthirsty Goliathan Arab neighbors, led by a one-eyed jack of a military genius in war and a grandmotherly woman in the pacification afterwards, was repeatedly read to the American public.
If we didn't learn through the mass media, we learned in school how a dream was created out of nothing in the empty desert, nurtured by hard working kibbutz volunteers. Internal to this space, hardly a Palestinian intruded.
Who in the American public could be blamed for not knowing that the people who lived in Jordan weren't all Jordanians?
No mention was made of the unprovoked, deliberate, brutal and murderous Israeli attack on the USS Liberty at that time. That was suppressed for years.
Attention was directed to other reading material, ensuring that "The Diary of Anne Frank" was included on required reading lists in school syllabuses across the country.
By the time the mid-1970s had arrived, the American public were sold the longest running global scam ever concocted, the "Camp David Accords".
It was, it still is, a mechanism not unlike a perpetual motion machine. Billions upon billions of U.S. dollars fuel this infernal engine of worldwide woe, and part of the monies sent over to Israel as foreign aid come back over here to be used to lobby anew for more money.
Israel has not only bought the federal government here and enlisted traitorous agents from the Presidential level down, but within many state governments as well, where anti-BDS legislation has been enacted, and where the definition of antisemitism has been corrupted to include anti-Zionism.
The so-called neo-cons here, the ranks rotten with Zionists, were the lead architects of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the destabilization of Libya and the visitations of "forever wars" on many other unfortunate places and the grandest gift of all, that keeps on giving to the military-industrial-congressional complex here, the Ukraine conflict.
To be continued...
DeleteSean D, your dismissal of Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine puts the tin hat on that screed of conspiracism.
I don't see any dismissal of Putin's war of aggression, more an observation that the US is not supporting Ukraine because it cares about protecting people from aggression. If it did it would stop the Israeli genocide instead of arming it. Do you seriously think Western leaders like Biden or Starmer give one flying fuck about Ukrainian civilians or see them as anything other than pawns on a geopolitical strategic chessboard?
DeleteI have seen little evidence of Trump supporting Ukraine in its resistance to the supreme war crime of aggression launched on it by Trump's puppet master in Moscow? Were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Spain in the 30s mere pawns on an international chessboard?
ReplyDeleteNot that the West give too much consideration to the fate of the Czechs. They were prepared to put up with it. By the time he reached Poland Hitler had frightened Britain and France into thinking they might be next. They no more cared about the Poles than they do about Ukrainians. Had Hitler invaded the USSR instead of Poland do you think the West would have gone to war? We see it today with Israeli Nazism. The West is quite happy with it.
DeleteHis attribution of the Ukraine conflict primarily to the US military industrial complex seems to give Putin a free pass or the role of mere bystander. How is Ukraine supposed to defend itself without international support?
ReplyDeleteUkriane could not defend itself without international support. But that international support is not given out of any respect for the right of Ukraine to defend itself. Palestine needs defended against an even worse state than Ukraine does but the support is given to those committing genocide not those resisting it. Ukraine is fortunate that Russia rather than Israel is invading it. Who do you think the West would arm if Israel was behind the war on Ukraine? It would not be the Ukrainians. I think this is the point being made in the commentary.
DeleteFinkelstein continued, Part 2:
ReplyDeleteThey found a fifth column here, comprised of the most useful of idiots, a heretical Christian right grouping, the Christian Zionists.
With their advocacy, the U.S. became a fully vested, fully complicit, equal partner and co-belligerent in the Palestinian genocide.
This is an indelible stain upon this country that no amount of bleach or loss of collective memory in a United States of Amnesia will ever remove.
But this has not been enough to satiate Israel's lust.
Academic freedom has been squashed.
Free association and free speech have been criminalized.
Mass surveillance has become ubiquitous here.
Mainstream media is controlled by Israeli allies.
Police have been militarized, even trained by Israel.
Politicians who may or may not have as earlier or willingly accepted bribes could have been honeytrapped into enthusiastically unqualified support for this apartheid state.
The operators of Kincora, so provincial an operation, would have been awestruck by the breadth of front man Epstein's brothels without borders operation.
Smothering dissent like a soaked blanket, for decades, was the hint, the fear, the charge that criticism of this unholiest of alliances would would be the most politically incorrect of all, resulting in one's banishment for the crime of antisemitism.
That someone in polite society, in the mainstream population might might engage in antisemitism was unthinkable. Yet if did occur, a exile to the back of beyond would be assured.
Only in such a place, off the grid and out of sight, could talk of ZOG be tolerated. Whatever faults such people might otherwise have, even a blind squirrel could find a nut too, in backwoods Idaho.
That was, until people like Norman Finkelstein spoke up. No mere Gentile could take on such power in the United States.
Such a person, the son of Holocaust survivors, he was uniquely qualified to dismantle the protective wall that Zionists had erected to shield their evilness from criticism.
The cancer that so aggressively metastasized from Israel to the United States ravaged unchecked until now. At last, the restraints that long thwarted criticism of Israel, of Zionism, of the American deep state, are loosened.
Norman Finkelstein and the cohort of like minded and decent Jewish intellectuals and commentators such as Noam Chomsky, Gabor Mate, Ilan Pappe, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Katie Halper, Glenn Greenwald and others, are the first of heroes, at the start of a new American revolution. They will be as worthy of remembrance in the future, as the past patriots of the first American revolution are honored today.
Sean D, Finkekstein is held in contempt by scholars on this side of the Atlantic like Treviso for the reasons I have cited and coated. Admiring the scholarship of David Irving is not a good look in Europe.
DeleteZOG is a well known far right, neo-nazi fallacious and dangerous catchphrase. The future "patriots" that Sean D mentions in his last paragraph are notorious whitewashers of Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria and the war crimes of Putin in both Syria and Ukraine in the case of Blumenthal and Aaron Mate in their fake news weblog The Grayzone
ReplyDeleteZOG is sometimes used by other Nazis against Israeli Nazis. But the acronym merely merely means Zionist Occupation Government. A fairly accurate description for Israeli policy in the occupied territories.
DeleteNoam Chomsky is notorious for his defence of the Bosnian genocide denier Diane Johnstone and refusal to recognise the extent of Khmer Rouge crimes against humanity in Cambodia. Was also a guest of Mr Epstein.
ReplyDeleteSean D provides no evidence for Israel or Zionists being behind the Epstein trafficking network nor of how they are responsible for erosion of freedom of speech and association in the US. I am no apologist for the Israeli government but the lack of evidential proof for what he has written.
ReplyDeleteI don't know other than there being a lot of suspicion about it, reinforced by the participation of Ehud Barak.
Delete