+ The ADL remarks on "Anti-Semitism 2.0," solicits donations (of course), attempts to suppress free speech by having people report 'antisemitic' websites, and equates all anti-Jewish sentiment with Nazism (see above art):
- "Help ADL fight the next generation of online extremism..."

+ From The Inverted World:
- "Are Jews Really Hypocritical?"
- "Jews Are Not 'Hyperethnocentric' "

+ Recent articles from The Occidental Observer:
- "Rothschild conspiracies, Turks, and Jew-Gentile relations: Several not quite random thoughts" (Part I)
- "Rothschild conspiracies, Turks, and Jew-Gentile relations: Several not quite random thoughts" (Part II)
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- "Jews instinctively fear and feel threatened by nationalistic, particularistic societies" (Part I)
- "Jews instinctively fear and feel threatened by nationalistic, particularistic societies" (Part II)

+ Via Robert Lindsay:
- "Wikipedia Jews Redux"

+ From The JTA:
- "Berlin Jews Approve 'Faith University'" [on the Jewish multicultural agenda]
- "Aussie official wants to teach Shoah" [on the mass-indoctrination of Western children: "To live life, you need to know the Holocaust happened."]

+ A small article on a big-time Jewish gangster, from YNetNews:
- "Russian mob's Jewish godfather" [NOTE: Jewish organized crime is much more extensive than many people realize]

+ Some Jewish American politicians fear being responsible for another war fought by America for Israel (The Jewish Daily Forward):
- "Fearing Iraq Effect, Jewish Democrats Tread Carefully on Iran"

+ Pat Buchanan asks:
- "Was the Holocaust Inevitable?"

+ From the BBC:
- "Reopening Lithuania's old wounds" [Jews were war criminals during World War II just like the Nazis and Communists were; in fact, a vastly disproportionate number of the Communist/Soviet partisans in Eastern Europe during WWII were ethnic Jews]

+ Decent article on the frightening depth of Jewish ethnocentrism, from New York Magazine:
- "She's got her face to the wall, and she's praying. This is what the Satmar rebbe told her to do if she had to sit down with non-Jews: Face the wall and pray."

* Historical note on the above article: the vast majority of modern Ashkenazi Jews in America, Israel, Russia, and elsewhere descend from communities such as these with recent origins in Eastern Europe; these Jewish communities have a long history of hyper-ethnocentrism/xenophobia and fanaticism just like the Satmar Dynasty of Kiryas Joel (New York) which is described in this particular article. It is obvious that many of the Jewish cultural traits described in this article still remain within Ashkenazi Jews to a very large degree and continue to influence their behavior and attitudes toward the non-Jewish people they currently live amongst even though many of them are now entirely secular.

I'VE BEEN INTERESTED IN PHILOSOPHY for quite a few years now.

Lately, as my studies in to The Jewish Question have deepened I've been applying some of what I learned studying Western/Occidental/European philosophy and the history of thought to certain aspects of The Jewish Question.

I've been thinking a lot about how Western/European/Occidental philosophy differs from Jewish philosophy, especially how Western/European/Occidental philosophical ideals/morals/values differ from Jewish philosophical ideals/morals/values.  What I've found in my studies of this topic so far has been extraordinarily telling because the differences between the two philosophical worldviews are stark indeed.

Here's a quick rundown of what I've found (in list form):

+ Jewish Ideals, Morals, and Values

• Anti-Idealism
• Cynicism
• Fanaticism
• Materialism
• Misanthropy/Anti-Gentilism
• Pessimism/Negativity
• Supremacist Beliefs/Attitudes

Jews of course have some ideals, morals, and values which are positive such as rationality/practicality, respect for literacy/intellectuality, strong family ties, and others.  But you will notice that the above-mentioned ideals are all negative.  Indeed, they are the polar opposite of the ideals and values of a healthy civilization and in many respects represent some of the worse aspects of human nature.

A great tragedy of Western civilization, particularly in the last hundred years or so, has been that these Jewish values, morals, and ideals have actually managed to replace or usurp traditional Western ideals, morals, and values, all of which are/were diametrically opposed to Jewish values (which clearly have their origins in the Near East and are definitely not Western).

An article from 1928 which was presumably (?) written by a Jew named Marcus Eli Ravage manages to sum much of this up quite well; here are a few excerpts from his article:

Your real quarrel with us is not that we have rejected Christianity but that we have imposed it upon you!

What use is it wasting words on the alleged control of your public opinion by Jewish financiers, newspaper owners and movie magnates, when you might as well justly accuse us of the proved control of your whole civilization by the Jewish Gospels?

We are intruders. We are disturbers. We are subverters. We have taken your natural world, your ideals, your destiny, and played havoc with them.

Yours was a noble, sensual culture, unirked by the prickings of a social conscience or by any sentimental questionings about human equality. Who knows what great and glorious destiny might have been yours if we had left you alone.

But we did not leave you alone. We took you in hand and pulled down the beautiful and generous structure you had reared, and changed the whole course of your history. We conquered you as no empire of yours ever subjugated Africa or Asia. And we did it all without armies, without bullets, without blood or turmoil, without force of any kind. We did it solely by the irresistible might of our spirit, with ideas, with propaganda.

We have pulled down your idols, cast aside your racial inheritance, and substituted for them our God and our traditions. No conquest in history can even remotely compare with this clean sweep of our conquest over you.

From this time forth your history is little more than a struggle for mastery between your own old pagan spirit and our Jewish spirit. Half your wars, great and little, are religious wars, fought over the interpretation of one thing or another in our teachings. You no sooner broke free from your primitive religious simplicity and attempted the practice of the pagan Roman learning than Luther armed with our gospels arose to down you and re-enthrone our heritage. Take the three principal revolutions in modern times — the French, the American and the Russian. What are they but the triumph of the Jewish idea of social, political and economic justice?

Is it any wonder you resent us? We have put a clog upon your progress. We have imposed upon you an alien book and an alien faith which you cannot swallow or digest, which is at cross-purposes with your native spirit, which keeps you ever-lastingly ill-at-ease, and which you lack the spirit either to reject or to accept in full.

We are conscious of the injury we did you when we imposed upon you our alien faith and traditions. Suppose, we say tremblingly, you should wake up to the fact that your religion, your education, your morals, your social, governmental and legal systems, are fundamentally of our making!

But even these plots and revolutions are as nothing compared with the great conspiracy which we engineered at the beginning of this era and which was destined to make the creed of a Jewish sect the religion of the Western world. The Reformation was not designed in malice purely. It squared us with an ancient enemy and restored our Bible to its place of honor in Christendom. The Republican revolutions of the eighteenth century freed us of our age-long political and social disabilities. They benefited us, but they did you no harm. On the contrary, they prospered and expanded you. You owe your preeminence in the world to them. But the upheaval which brought Christianity into Europe was — or at least may easily be shown to have been — planned and executed by Jews as an act of revenge against a great Gentile state. And when you talk about Jewish conspiracies I cannot for the world understand why you do not mention the destruction of Rome and the whole civilization of antiquity concentrated under her banners, at the hands of Jewish Christianity.

Yet here, if ever, was a great subversive movement, hatched in Palestine, spread by Jewish agitators, financed by Jewish money, taught in Jewish pamphlets and broadsides, at a time when Jewry and Rome were in a death-struggle, and ending in the collapse of the great Gentile empire.

And, mind you, no less an authority than Gibbon long ago tried to enlighten you. It is now a century and a half since "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" let the cat out of the bag. Gibbon, not being a parson dabbling in history, did not try to account for the end of a great era by inventing fatuous nonsense about the vice and degradation of Rome, about the decay of morals and faith in an empire which was at that very time in the midst of its most glorious creative period. How could he? He was living in the Augustan Age in London which — in spite of nearly two thousand years since the coming of Christian salvation — was as good a replica of Augustan Rome in the matter of refined lewdness as the foggy islanders could make it. No, Gibbon was a race-conscious Gentile and an admirer of the culture of the pagan West, as well as a historian with brains and eyes. Therefore he had no difficulty laying his finger on the malady that had rotted and wasted away the noble edifice of antique civilization. He put Christianity down — the law which went forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem — as the central cause of the decline and fall of Rome and all she represented.

Of course, no civilization could forever hold out against this kind of assault. By the year 200 the efforts of Paul and John and their successors had made such headway among all classes of Roman society that Christianity had become the dominant cult throughout the empire. Meantime, as Paul had shrewdly foreseen, Roman morale and discipline had quite broken down, so that more and more the imperial legions, once the terror of the world and the backbone of Western culture, went down to defeat before barbarian invaders. In the year 326 the emperor Constantine, hoping to check the insidious malady, submitted to conversion and proclaimed Christianity the official religion. It was too late. After him the emperor Julian tried to resort once more to suppression. But neither resistance nor concession were of any use. The Roman body politic had become thoroughly wormeaten with Palestinian propaganda. Paul had triumphed.

- http://theunjustmedia.com/Jewish%20Zionists/A%20Real%20Case%20Against%20the%20Jews.htm

I have long believed that 'antisemitism' or anti-Jewish feelings represent a form of idealism because the person or group who harbors anti-Jewish views are opposed to the imposition of Jewish ideals, morals, beliefs, and values on to their non-Jewish culture and seek to shake them off or prevent them from being further imposed on to their society.

Western, European, and Occidental cultures and societies around the world are particularly suffering under the imposition of the Jewish ideal of materialism/commercialism.  We have been suffering under this ideal/value since at least the mid-to-late 19th Century.  This alien ideal, after having been gradually imposed upon The West by Jews and their lackeys, has now been exported to virtually the rest of the entire world and is currently leading to the destruction of our planet on many levels: physical/environmental, economic, cultural, etc.

More on these topics later.

They are now listed on this website in the column to the right under the heading "VARIOUS JEWISH STUDIES BOOKS."  I hope to update this list frequently.  If any of you have suggestions for good books that I've missed, please leave them in the comments section here.

I've found all these works to be extremely helpful in learning about The Jewish Question, and I hope that some of you will find them equally useful in your studies.  Some of them are blatantly 'anti-Jewish,' while others are neutral...still others are pro-Jewish.  Whatever their bias or stance, all of them contain much excellent information regarding The Jewish Question.  Many were written by non-Jews, while others were written by Jews; it is important though, as all experienced scholars know, to choose your sources carefully.

Now, a recommendation:

I recently finished reading a translation (the only translation, I think) of a book by Eugen Dühring entitled The Jewish Question: A Racial, Moral and Cultural Question With a World-Historical Answer. It is obvious that the book was not translated in to English sooner because International Jewry didn't want this valuable information to be made available to the English-speaking world -- in other words, the book was censored by International Jewry for well over 100 years.

This book is a brilliant exposition on The Jewish Question, and it is as relevant now as when it was first written in the late 19th Century. Dühring was a German philosopher and economist, and thus the book is particularly focused on economic and philosophical issues as they relate to The Jewish Question, though there are sociological, religious, political, and anthropological elements within the book as well. In the late 19th Century Dühring and his writings were quite notable, so notable in fact that he was mentioned several times by Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morality.

The edition I have is a translation of the 2nd edition (1881) entitled Eugen Dühring on the Jews; it was translated by Dr. Alexander Jacob and released in 1997 by Nineteen Eighty Four Press in Brighton, England. It is unfortunately not available to buy through Amazon.com or any other major book-selling website that I've been able to find (it may be out of print), but luckily it is for sale on a website called National Vanguard Books.

Sometimes the translation is a bit awkward or gawky (this is normal for many translated works), but generally I think Dr. Jacob’s translation of this hugely important book is well done. Mostly I'm just glad to finally have a translation of this critical treatise available in English. Dr. Jacob’s introduction to the book is also well written and contains much valuable background information, commentary, and personal insights. The bibliography is excellent too and allows for ample further reading in many related topics.

Again, this book is a very important work regarding The Jewish Question. It is surely some of the most ‘high brow’ writing to ever emerge from any Western country regarding The Jewish Question, and it is eminently quotable. This is a brilliant book and I highly recommend it to any serious scholar/researcher of The Jewish Question -- get it while you can.

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* NOTE: many thanks to Friedrich Braun of The Civic Platform for posting about this book back in June and letting me know that it existed. Via Braun's website you can also listen to an excellent interview with Dr. Jacob here. Also, if anyone knows how I could get in contact with Dr. Jacob please drop me a line through e-mail or here in the comments section.

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED how there are very few highly visible and notable figures in modern Western countries who are completely vocal, honest, and blunt regarding The Jewish Question? Why do you suppose this is the case?

I sometimes comment over at Majority Rights even though I am not what might be termed a 'White nationalist.' It is true that I am an American of White/European descent, but I am most certainly not a White supremacist, Neo-Nazi, KKK member, or anything of that sort, though it now seems clear to me that the White/European majority in both America and in Europe is facing some terrible problems now and in to the future and that we need to get much better organized in order to better deal with these problems.

I comment on Majority Rights because they are one of the only websites I know of which writes honestly about The Jewish Question (and they accept comments from readers too which is a big plus). Some of their articles and posts are interesting, while I have no interest in others because they seem too extreme. Anyhow, recently I left a comment there about a few of the methods Jews use to silence their critics. Here is the comment to which I responded followed by my comment:

... The main problem for Euros is the way the Jews have the mass media in pro-race-replacement lockdown and Jewish pit-bull NGOs such as the ACLU, the SPLC, and the ADL have the whole society in pro-race-replacement lockdown. The mayor of a tiny Pennsylvania town takes reasonable, extremely moderate steps to do something about the Mexican invasion and in less than a microsecond the Jewish pit bulls have filed three dozen fifteen-quintillion-dollar lawsuits against his town and him personally, gotten court injunctions paralyzing the town, and sparked major demonization of the town and mayor by the allied Jewish press and media consisting of every major media outfit in the country. Jews are organized for this by their nature. They’re sort of on a war footing from birth. Euros aren’t. Euros simply don’t think or act that way, they don’t expect the blindsiding the Jews are constantly giving them, and they even have trouble believing it when it’s pointed out, so unlike their natures is it. Why do Jews own all the communications media? Jews as an ethnic group make it their business to gain monopoly control of communications media not because they love being journalists but precisely because such control confers immense power to reward and punish — confers immense power on their ethnic group to influence society and to demonize enemies. There are certain societal avenues by which new leaders normally arise spontaneously, in response to new needs. The Jews have all such avenues covered and barricaded specifically against questioners of race-replacement so no new leadership can arise in response to this new need no matter how reasonable, moderate, Jew-friendly or non-Jew-threatening — the Jews instantly swarm out like bees out of a hive and sting him to death. It’s instantaneous. Poor guy never knew what hit him. Prof. Gottfried is wrong that Euros are acquiescing in it. It’s being methodically forced on Euros and the single biggest agent of force is the Jews. They keep leadership from arising through the normal channels or any channels short of armed revolt. (Which may come — pray God it doesn’t.)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 03:29 AM -

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Re: Fred

“There are certain societal avenues by which new leaders normally arise spontaneously, in response to new needs. The Jews have all such avenues covered and barricaded specifically against questioners of race-replacement so no new leadership can arise in response to this new need no matter how reasonable, moderate, Jew-friendly or non-Jew-threatening — the Jews instantly swarm out like bees out of a hive and sting him to death.”

I’ve noticed this as well in many societies where Jews dominate the media/press along with the economic structures, not only in America.

In all societies and cultures where they live, Jews constantly and persistently oppress the people who oppose them using all means necessary. For example, Tsar Nicholas II was murdered along with his family by a gang of Jewish Bolsheviks. Assassinations of opponents of Israel by Jewish/Israeli agents are a routine occurrence in the Middle East and elsewhere. Very early on the Jewish-dominated Soviet Union passed extremely strict laws against antisemitism and anti-Jewish activites—these were instituted by Lenin (he was himself partially Jewish) who was surrounded and influenced by fanatical Jews in the newly-formed Soviet government. More recently, in the Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko was no doubt poisoned (with the intent to kill him) and left permanently disfigured by Jewish/Zionist agents within the Ukrainian government who saw him as a threat to their hegemony there.

I’m not a Neo-Nazi or anything like that, but the Nazis were astute students of the Jewish Question and thus their ideas deserve to be considered. Certain passages which describe this phenomenon are found in Hitler’s Zweites Buch:

“...extirpation of the folkish intelligentsia and its replacement by the members of his own [Jewish] people.”—“The end of the Jewish world struggle therefore will always be a bloody Bolshevization. In truth this means the destruction of all the intellectual upper classes linked to their [non-Jewish] peoples so that he [Jews] can rise to become the master of a mankind become leaderless.”—“...the first attempts to extirpate the [non-Jewish] national intelligentsia were undertaken in the form of revolutions.”—“With the help of the Bolshevik revolution the Russian upper classes and also the Russian national intelligentsia were murdered and completely extirpated [by Jews] amid inhuman agonies and atrocities. For the Russian people the total number of victims of this Jewish struggle for hegemony in Russia amounted to 28-30 million people in number of dead.” - http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/documents/part1/doc5.html

Jews have a very long tradition of marginalizing and belittling their opponents through the mainstream media/press, we all know that. However, if this doesn’t work or if the opposition is too strong it seems that they attempt to overthrow anti-Jewish societies/cultures through revolutions and then seize power (either directly or indirectly), which eventually leads to the imprisonment and/or murder, execution, or assassination of prominent anti-Jewish people and leaders ("the national [native] intelligentsia") who naturally oppose their nefarious agenda.

- http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/a_critic_replies_to_paul_gottfried/#c59687

Now, notice there at the end that I believe the agenda of Jews in America (and in other Western countries, for that matter) is "nefarious." Even though Jews as a whole certainly aren't conspiring to bring down the countries, societies, and cultures in which they live, the eventual dissolution and collapse of countries/societies where Jews have highly disproportionate and significant influence does in fact seem to have occurred with alarmingly frequency throughout history. After much research I've logically, rationally, and carefully come to the conclusion that Jews are like termites which slowly eat away at the foundation of a nation/culture/society.

However, I do believe that it is possible that a tightly organized group (or groups) of 'super Jewish elites' could in fact use their power/influence/money (see: http://zsidozas.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/the-deleterious-influence-of-america%e2%80%99s-jewish-billionaires/) to do planned and methodical damage to Western societies through any and all means necessary: financial/economic control, domination and manipulation of the mainstream media, encouragement of mass immigration with the aim of eventual replacement ('swamping'), promotion of globalism/internationalism, and so on.

Note that Jews first and foremost attempt to silence and marginalize their prominent critics using the press/media. They unleash the most awful smear campaigns in their media which are filled with outright slander and lies: since WWII the person criticizing them is nearly always pegged a "Nazi" who wants to "repeat The Holocaust"; the critic is often accused of being a "failure," "lowlife," "loser," "violent fanatic," etc.; and finally, mud-slinging and personal attacks (the critic is: "crazy"; "drunk"; "a wife beater"; "a liar"; "a thug"; etc.) are liberally and thoughtlessly used even if they are not at all true.

If the media/press method of critical suppression doesn't work, it seems that Jews will next attempt to physically silence their critics. In more recent times this has meant either prison or murder/assassination. Murder/assassination seems to be fairly common in the nation's where the Jews wield the most power and are afraid of losing it like the former Soviet Union, modern America, the UK, Russia, the Ukraine, Hungary, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and so forth. It need not even be a gunshot in a dark alley or a car-bomb either; these modern Jews/Zionists are known for much sneakier methods like poisonings, faked suicides and/or drug overdoses, or "accidents" like car or plane crashes. As an American I often wonder how many honest American politicians who were aware of and semi-actively opposed the Jewish agenda were lost due to these methods -- probably more than you'd think.

Some theorize that the Ukrainian 'Holodomor' during the early 1930s was a method of punishment used by the Jewish-Soviet elite to bring the generally antisemitic citizens of the Ukraine 'in to line' so to speak, to get them to submit to the authority of the Jewish-dominated Soviet Union. I'm not sure about the veracity of that theory, though it is a definite possibility. However, there is no doubt that many of the Ukraine's best non-Jewish citizens were imprisoned and/or killed by the Jewish-dominated Soviet Union during the social/political/economic/legal chaos leading up to World War II, and many were imprisoned or killed after the war too. The Ukraine has always been a hotbed of anti-Jewish sentiment, and as I stated in the above-mentioned quote/comment it is highly probable that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko of 'Orange Revolution' fame was poisoned (with the intent to kill) by Jewish/Zionist agents because they saw him as an opponent of their agenda.

And though I shudder to think the following is true, I've even read/heard that some believe highly-corrupt and organized Jewish doctors might actually be doing certain things to damage and/or otherwise incapacitate the babies and children of wealthy/intelligent/elite non-Jewish citizens through "medical errors" or "vaccinations" which eventually leave those children mentally or physically disabled, i.e. the current autism epidemic and so forth. Stalin and other non-Jewish officials in the Soviet Union believed such things were happening to them after they began to question undue Jewish influence in the USSR.

I was thinking about other methods which Jews use to silence their critics and competitors, and I figured out (during an ah-ha! moment) that another way which Jews manage to eliminate opposition and competition from a nation's native elites/aristocracy/intelligentsia is simply by intermarrying with them, by slowly yet persistently attempting to absorb them in to the Jewish gene pool -- I like to call this the "Jewish infiltration" theory.

If successful, this is a sure way to reduce or eliminate competition and hostility from a nation's elites and could partially explain why Jews (especially the Ashkenazim) are, in general, more intelligent than average. Perhaps over many centuries they have managed to slowly soak up the DNA of many a nation's and people's non-Jewish cognitive elites (financial/intellectual/spiritual/etc.); if this has happened as I believe it has, it has allowed them to enhance their own DNA at the expense of non-Jewish peoples and is, in fact, nothing short of 'DNA theft.' Just think: this has the double-advantage of enriching the Jewish gene pool with the best of a particular country's/culture's/society's DNA along with genetically disarming the non-Jewish masses who are/were naturally subservient to their own social/intellectual/economic/religious/political elite, royalty, or aristocracy. I even recall reading a lot about many Jewish women (especially Jewish lesbians and feminists and such) who have specifically requested to be artificially inseminated by sperm donated by very intelligent and eminent non-Jews like prominent scientists, intellectuals, businessmen, etc., especially those who are of Northern European genetic origin.

It is well known that the British royal family (and the British 'aristocracy,' in general) has many Jewish connections, as do many other royal houses across Europe. Additionally, in pre-1492 Spain many Sephardic Jews managed to intermarry with the Spanish aristocracy and business elite. Many of these Jews with mixed Jewish ancestry actually remained even after the mass expulsion of 1492, and some were even big-wigs in the Catholic hierarchy there for a long time. After much research, this is another historical pattern which I have definitely noticed, so take note and let me state it again: if possible, Jews manage to undermine a nation's elites by attempting to bring them within in the Jewish fold through intermarriage, thus disarming them on many levels and squelching any possible anti-Jewish sentiments from arising amongst them and the native populace.

Now the question is: will Jews and their lackeys soon target this website for suppression/censorship and attempt to shut it down?

OVER ON PHILIP WEISS' BLOG Mondoweiss, commenter Glenn Condell left a good comment (actually, it's a comment about a comment I think) on a post called "Dialoguin' With Richard Witty" which I'm going to reproduce here because it makes some good points.

I read Weiss' blog nearly every day, simply because he is some kind-of 'rogue Jew' that isn't afraid to discuss the glaring issues regarding Jewish power/influence, Jewish politics, Jewish money, and so forth in America; he also writes a good bit about the Jewish/Israel lobby, the Jewish role in fomenting the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars (along with the potential Iran War), and Jewish dual-loyalty issues, all of which are highly taboo topics in the mainstream media. For such material to be discussed openly and honestly by Mr. Weiss speaks volumes about his personal courage. So, if you aren't already familiar with Weiss' blog I suggest that you start reading it.

Anyhow, here is Glenn Condell's excellent comment on a possible scenario if undue Jewish power/influence isn't eventually checked in America:

'If the Jewish lobby continues to threaten American interests then it will eventually be crushed; conditions for this increase--if the US dollar becomes so weak that the US begins to crumble then there will arise American politicians who will blame the collapse of US power on Jews—these politicians will at first be unpopular but as the depression thickens they will win power'

I agree. There is warm complacent bubble of unconcern about this on the surface and I know Phil's optimism precludes any serious entertainment of the thought of a general backlash against Jews, but the desperation of the guilty - look at Doug Feith's frantic backpedalling away from what he championed a few years ago - illustrates a fear that is a long way from irrational.

The fear of Richard's 'posse'. (By the way Richard, a posse was formed was it not by concerned locals to roust up miscreants and criminals? Trouble is, they often ended up causing collateral damage to innocents too. A bit like Iraq, wouldn't you say, or Gaza and the West Bank? How many of the overwhelming 10 to 1 ratio of Palestinian dead, especially the children, were guilty of anything at all? How many of the million plus dead Iraqis were 'evil ones' deserving of their fates? When the blowback arrives we can't get too upset if it doesn't prove terribly forensic in it's targeting.)

The Lobby has persuaded, schmoozed, bought or intimidated it's way into a position that appears impregnable, but if the social dislocation that comes with economic distress is severe enough, all bets are off. Those emerging politicians Charles mentions will encounter strong media and official opposition to begin with, but high decibel talking head hectoring will lose it's power to compel conformity, relative to how bad things get.

If you read James Kunstler or John Robb regularly as I do, perhaps you are more prone to this sort of pessimism, but even George Soros (in the NY Rev) has recently made some uncharacteristically blunt assessments about the short to medium term, with no rosy horizons looming in the long.

I wrote a comment on Antony Loewenstein's blog on 7 May 2005 on a thread on AIPAC pushing for war with Iran. This was only a few days after Larry Franklin surrendered to the FBI. I was marvelling at the Lobby's gall, it's nerve. Spying for Israel on Israel's benefactor and guarantor. And I too pondered the possibility of political antisemitism arising as a result...

'Isn't there a danger that someone, 'some strange beast', at some stage, perhaps when the economic shit really hits the fan and/or a whole platoon of grunts gets clipped by insurgents on primetime... isn't it possible that a charismatic, all American, latter day Barry Goldwater type will emerge from backwoods America to reveal the 'gorilla in the room' in no uncertain terms, destroying the artfully arranged and strictly maintained 'story' of US/Israeli relations...'

(not realising at that point Goldwater was himself Jewish)

'A bit of Pat Buchanan, some David Duke, a dash of Joe McCarthy. An articulate demagogue who won't cut his cloth to Zionist patterns as all US politicians presently do and who, by the simple but forgotten virtue of cussedness, refuses to toe the well-trodden line, starting a debate that, despite the heroically undemocratic efforts of the AIPACS and ADLs and JINSAs to silence it, spirals out into the public sphere as a spark, which in air parched dry by decades of untruth, explodes into an inferno of 'fifth column' and 'dual loyalty' ugliness, the scales falling from a hundred million eyes as their owners decide to reassert 'Christian' and 'American' virtues at the heart of their great nation, and so on til your ears hurt. This scenario becomes more likely if any Mossad involvement in 911, for which there are disturbing signs, can be proved.'

Well, the signs are for foreknowledge rather than involvement, but I think that distinction would be lost under the circumstances likely to obtain if Father Coughlin returns.

'Such a person is of course likely to be cut off at the knees while still in short shorts... there will be film of him jacking off in a motel room or taking a backhander for a friendly vote. Even without that, he would be suffocated by a lack of oxygen, no news being good news in that information-poor society.

But the mob is a dangerous thing and it can be unpredictable when the going gets tough. A severe recession and no amount of media control will prevent people asking the relevant questions, at last. And getting some answers too, though not always the correct ones.

Which is where our 'beast' begins to slouch toward Washington - the problem being that babies will be thrown out with bathwater in a typical American orgy of fright, so that some of it's worthiest citizens, people at the forefront of principled opposition, might be tarred by their ethno-religious association with the spies and fifth columnists...

I don't think he will appear, and I hope to God he doesn't, but there is a strong desire in me and many others for that blindfold that keeps America separate from the rest of us more than any other issue, to be lifted, ripped away, so that they can begin to make decisions (which affect all our futures) on facts rather than fantasies.'

The Gorilla in the Room. Ironically that was the name of another blog some might recall that started with a bang, apparently run by an anonymous Washington insider around the time the war began, and then continued to whimper on for a while after the insider had been encouraged to desist after his activities were discovered by his employer (or so the story went). It was anodyne and harmless thereafter.

There weren't a lot of places to vent about Lobby related issues back then (and some had other fixations I didn't share), Antony being one of the only venues with such a focus. Now of course we have Phil and quite a few other places, a mushrooming of talk and argument which is one of the best ways to avoid the scenarios described above. But it must 'edge into the mainstream' as Phil believes M & W's ideas have done, to be an effective prophylactic.

Posted by: Glenn Condell | July 09, 2008 at 10:37 PM

The comments which I bolded were the most interesting. Which leads me to my next post here on this blog..."A Few Methods Which Jews Use To Silence Their Critics."

JUST TO CLARIFY: I am not a Neo-Nazi or member of the KKK, nor am I a White supremacist, Black supremacist, Arab/Islamic supremacist or terrorist, Hispanic supremacist, Asian supremacist, or anything else that might stereotypically suggest 'antisemitic' attitudes or beliefs.

To put it simply, I am nothing more than a very concerned American citizen who is exercising my legally-guaranteed free speech rights here on this website regarding The Jewish Question.

My username, 'Zsidozas,' is simply a Hungarian term which means, roughly translated, "talking about Jews" -- so that's exactly what I intend to do on this website.

The main reason I started this website is because I, as an American, now understand how much the United States is currently teetering/tottering and creaking/groaning under the undue influence of Jewry, just as so many other nations/cultures/societies have in times past.

This seems to be a definite pattern/cycle as far as Jewish history is concerned; that is, whenever Jews gain too much power and influence (socio-cultural, economic, political, etc.) in a particular nation, culture, or society that nation/culture/society inevitably seems to enter a period of definite decay and decline.

As a conscientious (and very worried) American patriot I now feel it is my duty to help expose the 'Jewish rot' that is currently undermining the United States (along with much of the Western world) before it's too late.

I will write more about this historical pattern/cycle of 'Jewish rot' in future posts.

IN ORDER FOR A PERSON to be able to study the Jewish Question with accuracy and conciseness, I believe that it helps immensely if that person first sits down and  systematizes and/or categorizes all that they already know about Jews, Judaism, Jewish culture, Jewish traditions, and the Jewish way(s) of life.  So that's what I did.  I sat down for a while and took stock of the Jewish-related subjects where I am either very well or fairly well versed.  The following list is the result.

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[NOTE: there are some formatting issues with this post (with the category list) because I wrote this in a word processor and then posted it here.  There are apparently problems viewing it with Internet Explorer, but in Firefox it looks fine to me (albeit awkward because I don't know exactly how to make a tidy list using proper HTML code on this blog yet).]

Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.

That's Proust, not me I should add.

A couple of days ago I googled "Rachmilewitz" and "Woodridge" to see what would come up. The Rachmilewitzes were a family that I knew in Woodridge, a tiny village in the Catskills that I grew up in. I was curious to see what ever happened to their son Philip, who was nicknamed "Rocky" after the family name. Rocky ran a mobile merry-go-round in the center of the village during the summer that I used to ride when I was 7 or 8 years old. A couple of months ago I began reminiscing about this period in my life quite a bit in the course of writing a brief memoir that might be turned into a comic book by someone well versed in the genre.

By coincidence, the google search turned up my mother's name as well as the Rachmilewtizes in a pdf file for a newsletter on the Charlap-Yahya website. They describe themselves as follows:

A Jewish geneological organization and research initiative comprised of well over 17,000 entries, 7,000 of which are living and current members; this extended family spans multiple continents and hundreds of years.

The name of the organization originates with the first Ser, the son of Abraham Charlap, born circa 1740. At the time, Charlap was not a surname but an honorary title; an acronym consisting of four Hebrew letters, standing for "Chief Sage of the Exile in Poland." The Charlaps are a distinguished rabbinic dynasty, whose yichus is well established. They stem from the Ibn Yahya (Don Yahya) rabbis of Spain and Portugal and before that go back to the Exilarchs in Babylonia and Persia.

Somehow my mother had decided to include some genealogical and personal/political material that would have served as an obituary if I had not been forced to write one myself. She wrote:

ANNIE PROYECT SAYS

Ann Proyect (2694,Pl.225) is the granddaughter of Aaron Leibel Sukiennik (2625) of Sokolow and Yente Sima Smolarczyk (2619) of Ciechanowiec, Poland. Yente Sima was one of seven children of Itche Smolarczyk (2614) and Dinah Rivka Kwiatek (2615). We are still investigating the connections of the Kwiatek and Sukiennik families to our tree. However, there is no question about the Smolarczyks. Itche's father, Velvel (3102,Pl.140) was the great-great grandson of Kalman (13954, Pl. 3), a brother of David Charlap (4082) who was born circa 1718. The Smolarczyks are intermarried with several other branches of the family including: Mankuta, Tama, Ser, Lewin, and Kopyto. Annie's parents emigrated to America and settled in Kansas City where she was born. Annie married Jacob Proyect (2695) and moved to Woodridge, New York where she has been active in the Jewish community for many years. Ann is proud of her son Louis (2696) who has been active in socialist and peace politics since 1967. He is writing a book on Marxism and the American Indian as an attempt to correct some dogmatic flaws in Marxism. Ann writes a regular column, "Annie Proyect Says" for her community newspaper. The following is an example.

Thank you to my editors who let me write about my religious faith.

Thanks to my son, Louis Nelson Proyect, who at 53 years of age has come to the realization that it is good to have religion. With the iMac and Hewlett Packard printer he bought for me, Louis wants to start me with a web page entitled "Ann Project. . .Levitas. . .Books." But my other son, Alex Cherviok says, "No." The Levitas stuff has to go into a project for Robert Seltzer, rabbi and student of Irving Levitas, and presently assistant dean at Hunter College. The idea is that if I am focused enough and will reproduce some of the three inches of letters that I have written to Irving Levitas of blessed memory, there will be something worth printing and most of all, good for humanity. After all, it was Irving Levitas who taught us, "If you go into a shul and don't come out a better person, what is the point of going in."

Somebody ought to write that to Hollywood and the motion picture people. If a movie doesn't have a message - and when more needed than now - what is the point!

I don't have the iMac connected yet. When my son was here a couple of weeks ago he, for the first time, criticized the appearance of my home. He started out with, "I can't stand the clutter." I answered, Well, I'm giving some things away." He responded, "Give it away or burn it." That is what living in an apartment does to a person. We in the country know that somewhere there is a need for things. There is a greater need to know where one comes from. I am amused and annoyed by professionals who claim, "I don't believe in religion." They don't accept the fact that they have disciplines that were established even before the Bible was written.

We were taught to welcome the stranger. Hertz's Chumash has meaningful commentary on the Five Books of Moses. For instance, Numbers, chapter VI, verse 26: "The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace." On page 595 we read the verse and at the bottom of the page is a long commentary which essentially says, "Peace, say the rabbis, is one of the pillars of the world. Without it the social order would not exist. Therefore let a man do his utmost to promote it. Thus it is that the greatest sages made a point of being the first to salute passerbys in the street." Please note: Arafat, Netanyahu, and Hussein of Iraq.

If we are busy shaking hands, perhaps we won't reach for the gun. Well, that sounds pollyannish, but Annie says, we have to "do and learn." I look forward to doing a column on "Tricks of the Trade in a World of Volunteers." It would begin with, "If you are a leader, the goal you should have is to work one's self out of the position or title and nurture someone else to be involved; do the job, have the title." Then a leader goes on to do a higher level of work or sits quietly in the background, giving advice with kindness and good, good, good strokes.

* * * *

Reading my mom's words from 10 years ago (I am now 63) reminds me of how much pleasure and frustration she could give me. With her outspoken devotion to the Jewish religion and the state of Israel, she could not help proselytizing with every breath she had left. Why she thought that I was taking religion seriously is something of a mystery to me. Wishful thinking perhaps.

The Irving Levitas mentioned in her piece was a major influence on my mother, about whom a word or two would be of some interest to people who read this blog since he was a kind of exemplary figure in the left-Zionist world. He hailed from Kansas City, as did me and my mom. I was born there in 1945, but moved to upstate NY after my father returned from the war. Levitas was not exactly a rabbi but gave classes in Jewish history at the local reform synagogue that was so important to my mother growing up.

Politically, Levitas was sympathetic to anarchism and even suffered major hearing losses when he served with the anarchists during the Spanish civil war. When I used to visit my mother in Woodridge in the 1970s, Levitas was a frequent houseguest. He gave classes in Jewish history and thought up there just as he had in Kansas City. Needless to say, he was not that thrilled with my Trotskyism but then again neither am I nowadays.

After I discovered my mother's entry in Charlap, I printed out a copy and mailed it to her constant companion Victor who will turn 95 in August. Her death has been even a bigger blow to him than to me. The last time I spoke to him on the phone, he revealed that he still keeps a phone in his bedroom almost expecting a phone call from her. For the past 20 years at least, she made a habit of calling him every morning. As for myself, I had a dream about a week ago in which I spoke to my mom on the phone. With the strong effect she had on me, I expect such dreams to occur for the rest of my life.

THOUGH IT MAY SEEM UNBELIEVABLE to many people, Jews are approximately 40-50% of America’s billionaires even though they are a minuscule 2-3% ethnic minority in the country.  Many concerned citizens would like to know how ‘democratic’ it is that Jews, a tiny ethnic minority in America, manage to comprise that large a number of America’s wealthiest (and thus most influential) citizens.  Many are beginning to wonder how ‘fair’ it is that, under the ‘democratic system’ of ‘majority rule’ and ‘free enterprise’ that we live under as Americans, a perpetually deracinated ethnic minority controls such a distressingly large portion of the wealth and economy in this country all out of proportion to their meager numbers. Many seek to understand the repercussions that Jewish wealth-accumulation and wealth-hoarding has had on the White/European ethnic majority in the United States, and we seek to understand how American Jews peddle and spread their largely malignant influence using this wealth.

Concerned citizens and scholars of the Jewish Question have been asking these questions for many centuries the world over, as rootless-international-plutocratic Jewry (or to use the socioeconomic term: the Jewish “market dominant minority”) is a definite historical theme or cycle which has repeated itself numerous times if you look in to the histories of the countries in which Jews live (or have lived in the past) in any significant numbers. Indeed, strikingly similar Jewish plutocracies currently exist in Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, the UK, Canada, France, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, and other countries/regions. Any forthright scholar, researcher, or historian of the Jewish Question also understands the nefarious role that plutocratic Jews played in the terrible wars which were fought throughout The West during the 20^th Century.

So, in an effort to shine a bright light on the Jewish American plutocracy, I’ve compiled a list of America’s current Jewish ’supercapitalists.’ The names on this list were carefully screened and all are verifiably Jewish; however, due to the large size of the data set I could’ve made a few mistakes, so please let me know because this list is very much a work in progress. If you want to report any errors or omissions, point them out here and I’ll add the names to the list or take them off. Do note that I’ve added the names of a few recently deceased Jewish plutocrats since their billions always remain in the family, of course.  And while the sickening swarm of near-rabid Jewish American ‘economists’ aren’t represented on this list, they of course play an integral part in keeping the whole rotten system afloat - so maybe I’ll compile a list of them next.

Keep in mind that the following list is PARTIAL, taking in to account only about half (200) of America’s top 400 billionaires. The list was compiled using the Forbes 400 list (all of whom are now billionaires; believe it or not many of America’s billionaires don’t even make it on to that list anymore). Also keep in mind that this list would be much longer had I taken in to account all or nearly all of America’s billionaires which I eventually hope to do – rest assured that many more Jewish American billionaires can and will be added to this list.

Additionally, if Jews are about 40-50% of America’s billionaires, one can logically conclude that they probably make up an even higher percentage of America’s millionaires.  A recent Pew poll showed that nearly 50% of American Jews make more than $100,000 a year in a nation where the average yearly income hovers around $50,000 (which means that a majority of Jews make double the national average).  As you peruse the list, take a moment to think about the ramifications of this on the wider society, particularly as it relates to the ability for non-Jewish Americans (especially the White/European ethnic majority) to attain any semblance of social, political, or economic self-sufficiency in a country where all of that largely depends on wealth and the associated influence which comes along with it.

Full permission is granted to anyone who wishes to reproduce the contents of this list. In fact, I very much encourage you all to do so…I encourage you all to print this list out, correct or update it, pass it along to other concerned citizens, make copies and leave it in public places, link to or post it on your own blog, etc.

I hope this will help some of you in your research in to the Jewish Question.

GODSPEED

—

[A FEW] JEWISH AMERICAN BILLIONAIRES

+ S. Daniel Abraham

+ Daniel Abrams

+ Sheldon Adelson & family

+ Annenberg family

+ Arison family

+ Roland Arnall

+ Steve Ballmer

+ Carl E. Berg

+ Leon Black

+ Arthur Blank

+ Leonard Blavatnik

+ Michael Bloomberg

+ Charles Brandes

+ Donald Bren

+ Sergey Brin

+ Eli Broad

+ Edgar Bronfman, Jr. & family

+ Alan Casden

+ Steven A. Cohen

+ Lester Crown

+ Mark Cuban

+ William Davidson

+ Marvin Davis & family

+ Michael Dell

+ Gérard Louis-Dreyfus & family

+ Stanley Druckenmiller

+ Larry Ellison

+ Donald Fisher

+ Kenneth L. Fisher

+ Richard S. Fuld, Jr.

+ David Geffen

+ Malcolm Glazer & family

+ Tom & Alec Gores

+ Pincus Green

+ Maurice R. Greenberg

+ William H. Gross

+ Hasidic dynasties (many are headquartered in the U.S.)

+ Leona Helmsley & family

+ Carl Icahn

+ Barbara P. Johnson & family

+ George Kaiser

+ Jerome Kohlberg, Jr.

+ Bruce Kovner

+ Michael Krasny

+ Henry Kravis

+ Edward Lampert

+ Lauder family

+ Ralph Lauren

+ LeFrak family

+ Al Lerner

+ Leon Levine

+ Peter Lewis

+ Alfred E. Mann

+ Bernard Marcus

+ Michael Milken

+ Robert Warren Miller

+ Paul Milstein

+ Newhouse family

+ Larry Page

+ Max Palevsky

+ Nelson Peltz

+ Ronald Perelman

+ Michael Price

+ Pritzker family

+ Sumner Redstone & family

+ Ira Rennert

+ Marc Rich

+ George R. Roberts

+ Stephen M. Ross

+ Rothschild family (American branch)

+ David Rubenstein

+ Haim Saban

+ Henry Samueli

+ Herb Sandler

+ David Saperstein

+ Tamir Sapir

+ Howard Schultz

+ Stephen Schwarzman

+ Larry Silverstein

+ Herbert Simon

+ Norton Simon

+ James H. Simons

+ Jeffrey Skoll

+ George Soros

+ Steven Spielberg

+ Leonard Stern

+ David Tepper

+ Tisch family

+ Bruce Wasserstein

+ Sanford Weill

+ Les Wexner

+ Stephen Wynn

+ Sam Zell

+ Jerry Zucker & family

+ Mark Zuckerberg

+ Mortimer Zuckerman

—

SOURCE: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/54/richlist07_The-400-Richest-Americans_Rank_print.html

As a sixteen-year-old New York City Parks Department beach cleaner, I used to ride past the boardwalk early summer mornings on the back of a garbage truck. The elderly people who gathered on the boardwalk near seasonal hotels and rooming houses were of my grandparents' generation and did not attract my attention. In the late 70s and early 80s two new interests—drawing strangers in public places and the Yiddish language and its diminishing world of speakers began to connect me to those boardwalk bench sitters, conversationalists, and snoozers.

His fascination with the Yiddish milieu inspired the work above, titled "Warsaw and the Boardwalk". Many of Daniel's paintings are close observations of a New York that is rapidly disappearing under the impact of big money and the homogenization that goes with it, especially in Manhattan. Daniel's deep interest in the immigrant world that made New York the memorable place it once was will be shared by anybody who loves to wander about gazing at the sights of New York's less glamorous but all the more enchanting neighborhoods that have not "benefited" from gentrification. In this respect, Daniel is a kindred spirit of Ben Katchor, another artist who has sought to keep memories of the Jewish immigrant past alive. The following is an illustration from Katchor's "The Rosenbach Company", a musical about Jewish book dealers in the 19^th century Philadelphia!

Although Daniel has been an activist for about as long as I have been, he states, "I rarely make consciously political art." He made an exception for a "mail-art" exhibit in Japan that is a product of invitations sent out on the Internet and other locales. In 2005 he co-organized a "mail-art" event inviting submissions on the theme of Article Nine, the pacifist clause of the Japanese Constitution which is now under serious threat of being undermined. Here was his one of his contributions to the exhibit that can be viewed in its entirety here.

Despite Daniel's reluctance to do "agit-prop", there is no question about his class loyalties, which is to the working people. For many years, Daniel has been painting sewing machines and the people who work for living at them. Although most people associate them with the sweatshops of today that largely employ Latinos and Asian women, there was a time when they were used by immigrant Jews such as the women who died tragically in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster of 1911. Daniel introduces this section of his book thusly:

The sewing machine, first mass-produced in the late nineteenth century, found its way into private homes and soon became part of modern labor history. My grandparents' generation of Eastern European immigrants organized the sweatshops they worked in.

Today dangerous and exploitative sewing factories abound in the globalized economy, from El Salvador to China. The sewing machine, though, can also be a means of self-sufficiency. I have seen tailors at work at machines in their doorways in mountain towns in Colombia, and in the vast marketplace of its coastal city Barranquilla.

I have never operated a sewing machine, but am fascinated by their practical elegance and power. I cannot explain why I paint angels sewing in the night sky.

Here is a work in that series, "Seamstress Angel".

To order your copy of "Heart of Ardor," contact Daniel at dandotdan@yahoo.com

"Harvey Pekar requested that we send along advanced copy of Students for a Democratic Society: a Graphic History in thanks for your hospitality while he was in town earlier this week. I hope you enjoy the book."

The hospitality took the form of allowing Harvey to spend the night at my apartment while he was in town. His co-author Paul Buhle was a guest the previous evening. Both were in town discussing future projects with their publisher, including a series of graphic books on jazz musicians that would cover two of my favorites, Lester Young and Django Reinhardt.

Harvey Pekar

Writing about jazz might seem like a natural topic for Harvey Pekar since he used to be a free-lance reviewer for Downbeat years ago, but SDS? As it turns out, Harvey has always had a deep interest in politics even though it is obvious from his ongoing graphic memoir "American Splendor" that he is not an activist. Partnering with Paul Buhle makes perfect sense, however, since Paul is evolving more and more in the direction of this medium himself as his book on the IWW should make obvious.

For all three of us, the comic books of the 1950s were a big influence. Paul and I have discussed the importance of Mad Magazine, Tales from the Crypt, Little Lulu, Scrooge McDuck et al to us when we were 10 years old or so. If you were looking for something off the beaten track in the 1950s, but were just a bit too young to have discovered the Beats, there was nothing that could top comic books. In May, 2003 Paul wrote an article titled "The New Scholarship of Comics" in the Chronicle of Higher Education that noted:

The growing interest in researching and writing about comics by intellectuals who were born in the 1940s only partly reflects what's happened in the world of commerce. More, I think, many of us are attempting to find, or relocate, ourselves -- almost like an earlier generation tried psychoanalysis. Some of today's more indulgent theorizing about comics, indeed, suggests a considerable overlap between the two. Most of us, however, have simply been struck by how much mass culture, from the early moments when we could take it in as children, has affected us. Memories of childhood grow more intense with aging, and we find Unca Donald (of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, that is), Wonder Woman (speaking for boys, our first sex goddess), and the hilarious Mad comics satires of the likes of them considerably more vivid in recollection than our real-life relatives.

His article also singled out the work of Harvey Pekar, who sought to bring his own working-class experience in Cleveland to life using this medium:

The never-say-die types continue, with a lot of nearly thankless effort. Two decades along, past Crumb-collaborator Harvey Pekar, an occasionally hectoring presence on the Letterman show of the 1990s, still brings out American Splendor, a narrative description of daily life in Cleveland, mostly his own life. An independent film under the same title, barely fictionalizing Pekar's story, won the drama category at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.

Indeed, it was my own passion for Harvey Pekar's work that connected me with Paul originally. Scott McLemee, a book reviewer for a number of venues including the Chronicle of Higher Education at one time, was a subscriber to the Marxism mailing list that I had launched in 1998. After I wrote something about Harvey Pekar to the list, he sent me a copy of an interesting article on Harvey that he had written and put me in touch with Paul, another fan.

Paul Buhle

Harvey Pekar's approach to SDS is an unlikely but altogether compelling mixture of "American Splendor" and Paul Buhle's radical history, a perfect marriage of art and scholarship. If you are going to tell the story of SDS, you are naturally going to have to bring together personal human drama and the overarching struggles of the period.

Some of the stories involve people who eventually left SDS and joined the Trotskyist movement, where I first came in contact with them. Two are now highly regarded scholars of the left, Alan Wald, the literary critic who acknowledges Paul Buhle as a primary influence, and Paul LeBlanc, who--like Paul--is a CLR James scholar. I should add that CLR James, who had a life-long interest in popular culture, is an important figure for people like LeBlanc and me who went through the painful sectarian experience of American Trotskyism and seek a more nuanced kind of Marxism today.

Alan Wald's story is of particular interest since it situated in Cleveland, Harvey's home town:

When I read this story, a flood of associations came to the surface like the madeleine in Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past". Just 4 years later Alan and Cecilia Wald (they had since married) found themselves on the opposite side from me in a bitter faction fight in the Socialist Workers Party. They were in something called For a Proletarian Orientation (FAPO) that was viewed as a concession to the PLP Worker-Student Alliance in SDS. As the name implied, it urged that the SWP send some members into the trade unions.

Up in Boston, FAPO had many supporters. I was asked to move up there in early 1970 to work with Peter Camejo, who had been assigned to do combat with FAPO. Peter, like the majority of SWP leaders, thought that the real action was on campus and sought to keep young Trotskyists in Boston on campus. One of the FAPO supporters was a Harvard student named John Barzman, the son of Hollywood blacklistees Ben and Norma Barzman (Norma was interviewed in Paul Buhle's "Tender Comrades"). John had taken a job as a hospital worker alongside SDS'ers, who disdained the antiwar movement as "petty bourgeois".

Peter Camejo, who is now battling lymphoma and working on a memoir that he hopes he can finish before fate gets in the way, asked me to prepare a contribution to the debate with FAPO on the Cochranites, a group that had been expelled from the SWP in the 1950s. Led by Bert Cochran, an organizer in the UAW in the 1930s, and Harry Braverman, the author of "Labor and Monopoly Capital", this tendency sought to root Marxism in the American rather than the Russian experience and break with sectarianism--just like CLR James and Paul Buhle.

But for the SWP leadership in 1970, the Cochranites were a symbol of capitulation to capitalism. By downplaying the need for a vanguard party and urging the need for broad unity on the left, the Cochranites were supposed to be a symbol of how petty-bourgeois tendencies can afflict even auto workers, who in this case were supposedly being bought off by the 1950s economic boom. I made all these points in my report to the Boston branch, but never really thought that much about what the Cochranites really stood for.

Suffice it to say that both Peter Camejo and I came around to seeing things in the same terms as the Cochranites. For the past 27 years, a much longer time than I ever spent in the Trotskyist movement, I have been advocating the need for Marxism to be rooted in the American experience and to shun sectarianism. While the SDS of the 1960s imploded--largely as a result of the enormous frustrations of trying to end a seemingly endless war--there are many lessons that can be learned from Pekar, Dumm and Buhle's graphic history.

SDS was a grass roots phenomenon that sought to build a movement from the bottom up. Despite the enormous media attention that figures such as Mark Rudd received, SDS was fundamentally a movement that was built from the initiative of young people acting on their own. There will obviously always be a need for such an organization as the rapid growth of the new SDS would indicate. Let's hope that the young radicals of today can withstand the enormous pressures that a new seemingly endless war will generate. So far, the picture looks pretty good. Today's SDS is militant but not self-destructive. Hopefully, its members and young activists in general will read this book to get a better grasp of the problems a previous generation tried to grapple with.

I want to conclude with some brief impressions of Harvey Pekar, who alongside Charles Bukowski, remains one of my favorite cultural icons. Although I didn't have that much time to chat with him, we did manage to cover some topics that are very important to us. Paul had already mentioned to Harvey that I was interested in Jewish popular culture and he wanted to find out a bit about my experiences growing up in the Catskills.

I told him about how Murder Incorporated, a gang of Jewish hit-men led by Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, used to throw their victims in nearby Loch Sheldrake. I told him about all the famous comedians who used to work at local hotels, including Sid Caesar--a vegetarian--who used to buy vegetables from my father's store. I studied piano briefly with the sister of the man who owned the Avon Lodge, where Sid got his start. She was just one of dozens of Communists in my little village that had been driven out of New York City. She had copies of Soviet Life all around her little house. I told Harvey about delivering fruit and vegetables to Joseph Greenstein's bungalow colony. Better known as "The Mighty Atom", Greenstein was a strong man who grew his hair long like Samson and followed a vegetarian diet like Sid Caesar, a strong man in his own right. Harvey had been checking out the career of another famous Jewish strong man, a Pole named Hersche Steinschneider who was the subject of Werner Herzog's "The Immortal."

I was curious about Harvey's father. He told me that he was a shopkeeper like my own father, but a bit older. If he were alive today, he'd be 102. (Harvey is 6 years older than me.) Born in Poland, Harvey's father was a bit more old country than my own father, who was European in his own way. Deeply religious, Harvey's father spent his free hours studying the Talmud. After he retired, he became completely devoted to religious studies and even began wearing a fedora.

Harvey's mother was a communist. She was also quite short, 4'9" to be exact. Harvey's father, who was living as a bachelor in the U.S., hooked up with her on a trip back to the old country. Here's how Harvey described his background and his interest in Jewish culture to ClevelandJewishNews.com:

 Pekar, whose picture adorns a wall in the new Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, admits he doesn’t stay in contact with Jewish institutions much anymore. He went to Hebrew school and had a bar mitzvah ceremony, but grew increasingly alienated from the organized community. “I didn’t show much interest,” admits Pekar about his Hebrew education. “In those days, they didn’t concentrate much on teaching what the (words) meant. Just reading what was there.”

Pekar’s father was a Talmudic scholar who loved cantorial music. His mother was a socialist who supported Progressive candidate Henry Wallace for President in 1948. Both parents had an impact on young Harvey’s views.

“I’m strongly influenced by Jewish culture, but I’m not a nationalist,” he says. “I’d like to see (Israel) make an agreement with the Arabs, get an independent Arab state over there. Maybe internationalize Jerusalem.”

Pekar says he used to speak Yiddish fluently, and characters in his comic books spend a lot of time kibitzing in Jewish delis. Pekar even worked in a deli for a time during his fallow period and occasionally refers to himself in his comics as a “Yid.”

“I got a strong dose of things Jewish,” he says.

Although Harvey comes across as somewhat overwrought in the movie "American Splendor" and in appearances on the David Letterman show, he seemed perfectly relaxed in the time he spent with me. I imagine that being retired and being able to write full-time must go a long way to overcoming a sense of futility that comes with working in a low-paying job in a veteran's hospital. One hopes that he and Paul, who has also just retired, will have many fruitful years of writing projects ahead of them. Insallah, I will be joining them soon.

One of my favorite Harvey Pekar stories from "American Splendor" is about a bit of an argument that took place between him and his father when he still lived at home. As an avid jazz fan, Harvey's tastes were not identical to his father's who preferred Jewish cantorial music. In the story, we see his father playing a record of one of his favorite chazzans (cantors) in the final panel for Harvey, slapping the record cover and proclaiming, "Now that's music."

As it turns out, I am both a jazz fan and a fan of cantorial music. Towards the end of our conversation, I played a performance of "Rozo D'Shabbos" by Pierre Pinchik-- a renowned chazzan--for Harvey. I can only agree with his father: "Now that's music."

Albert Einstein with stars of the Yiddish theater

Playing at the Pioneer Theater in New York until the 28th, "Yiddish Theater: A Love Story" documents the efforts of Zypora Spaisman to keep Yiddish theater alive. As impresario and performer, the 85 year old holocaust survivor was determined to inspire a new generation to appreciate what was once a vibrant part of New York's cultural landscape. Directed by Israeli Dan Katzir, the film is much more of a tribute to her dedication and perseverance than a study of a genre. That being said, there is enough historical context to at least help us understand why Spaisman's struggle was an uphill one. Put succinctly, Yiddish theater died because Yiddish died.

Zypora Spaisman preparing to go on stage for "Grine Felder" performance

In addition to Spaisman, there are interviews with David Romeo, past general manager of the Yiddish Folksbiene Theater. Throughout the film, we see him knocking on doors of wealthy Jews trying to get donations to keep the theater going--mostly unsuccessfully. It becomes clear midway through the film that no matter how rich a cultural legacy Yiddish theater is, contemporary Jews have become so assimilated that they see no value in keeping it alive. Jewish identity for them mostly means the Hebrew language and the modern state of Israel. Yiddish symbolizes weakness, victimhood and the ghetto while Hebrew represents virility, success and power. Zionism was so anxious to destroy the cultural legacy of Yiddish that an organized campaign to stamp out the language was mounted not long after the state of Israel was created. In so doing, the Zionists demonstrated a kinship with Joseph Stalin who also tried to suppress the Yiddish language as well as the Russian-Yiddish theater.

Filmed seven years ago, the documentary is focused on performances of Peretz Hirshbein's "Grine Felder" (Green Fields), a staple of Yiddish theater. As it turns out, this I was inspired to write about this play some years back:

Back in 1959, when I was a unhappy 14 year old in the Catskill Mountains with an unfashionable taste for poetry in a time of rampant materialism and conformity, the school librarian Gussie Kasofsky took an interest in me. Sensing that I needed reinforcement from the world of literature, she fed me books that made me feel less alone, including James Joyce's "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" and Colin Wilson's "The Outsider".

I knew little about Gussie except that she ran a bungalow colony called "Grine Felder" (Green Fields) that was named after a Yiddish play popular in the 1920s. Last night I saw a wistful movie based on the play on Channel 13, the public station in NYC. It tells the tale of a Talmudic scholar from the city gets a job as a tutor with a rural peasant family where he finds romance.

A scene from the 1937 Yiddish film "Grine Felder" directed by Edward G. Ulmer

This morning I did a web search on "Grine Felder" and made the most extraordinary discovery, something that ties together my own political beliefs with early Yiddish theater and the political and culture milieu of Sullivan County, where I grew up and home of the "Borscht Belt." This resort area in the southern Catskill Mountains was not only a hothouse for the development of major talents like Danny Kaye and Sid Caesar, it also nourished left-wing culture at a time when Jews were an oppressed people in the United States.

About 10 years ago Phil Brown, a professor at Brown University and Sullivan County "landsman" began the first of a series of summer conferences on the Catskills. They have included notable talks by people such as CP veteran Phil Foner, who directed a band with his other brothers when the witch-hunt made it impossible for them to work at their regular jobs in the trade unions and the uni