The following item ran in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on June 6:
Participants at an anti-Zionist conference in Kiev called for the deportation of Jews from Ukraine.
The call came from one of the participants in the June 3 meeting in the Ukrainian capital. David Duke, a U.S. white supremacist, presided over the one-day conference, titled “Zionism as the Biggest Threat to Modern Civilization.” A number of Ukrainian politicians and public figures took part in the conference, including Levko Lukyanenko, a member of Parliament from the bloc headed by Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko.The conference, which billed itself as an academic event, was held at the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, or MAUP, Ukraine’s largest private university, whose leaders have a history of anti-Semitism.
See our last post on Duke, Ukraine, and anti-Semitism.
It is not anti-Semitic to dis
It is not anti-Semitic to discuss and study the policies and actions of Israel and Zionists. Each and every one of Israel’s neighbors dislike it and its policies. Gee, why is that? Yeah we know, those 1.2 billion people are all wrong and those just 6 million Israelis are right.
Are you a Nazi, or are you just illiterate?
Seriously, I’d like to know. Criticizing Israel, something we do vigorously every day on this website (in case you haven’t noticed) is not anti-Semitic. Calling for expelling the remaining Jews from Ukrainia assuredly is. If that doesn’t pass the litmus test, what the hell does? Is there any standard for real anti-Semitism? Or do we just squak “anti-Zionism-is-not-anti-Semitism” even when David Duke and his vile cohorts are calling for pogroms?
More importantly, is it only fascists and wingnuts who post here? Are you and your Jew-hater, Slobo-sucker, Turko-supremacist and Franco-nostalgist pals truly representative of our readership? Cuz if so, maybe we ought to consider calling it quits. This is not the audience I intend to write for.
Don’t worry. Not all your re
Don’t worry. Not all your readers are right wing nuts. I haven’t read much of your stuff; but it is an interesting read.
I also have found myself in a similar difficult situation as you. I’m against anti-semitism; but also against a lot of Israeli policies. It seems that some people are hard wired in to thinking you’re either an ultra-zionist or an anti-semite. Personally, I think that both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist, and I think you agree. Too bad some people think it’s just one or the other.
Jooish oligarchs
Maybe he is right and you are the one who is wrong. I have visited Ukraine… twice….. have you? Maybe Tymoshenko and her allies do not want the Joos stealing Ukrainian national assets like the Joos did in Russia (nearly three quarters of the Oligarch were Yiddish)ANd when the heat came on the Russian oligarch, the tried to transfer their property to British Heebs (The Rothschilds) ANd Tymoshenko just took back the Krivoy Rog mining interest which Kuchma sold to a dirty joo for pennies on the dollar. Wake the FFF up!
Maybe not all our readers are right-wing nuts
But judging by the posts here, around 99.9% of them are. If we don’t get some intelligent posts to prove this assessment incorrect, we are going to quit. Honest.
Writing for right-wing nuts is not what I intend to do with my life. If at least three of the next five posts are not from reasonable human beings, this blog will be terminated. This is not a bluff.
It’s in your hands, readers.
No, Regular Peaceful Joes Also Read Your Site
You asked for it. Here is attestation to the fact that some regular non anti-Semite types also read your site, for information, not to start into word and idea bashing like some other readers.
I am glad you used the JTA source. Their ‘breaking news’ only stays up for the day and is never archives (only their longer stories are archived).. apart from the David Duke rap, you will periodically find other stories related to the development of Jewish life in Ukraine and anti-Semitic incidents (and other CIS countries) on that site and on the site http://www.fjc.ru (in English, Russian, Hebrew). The site http://www.fsumonitor.com is also good for brief summaries of inter-ethnic, racial and religious discrimination and violence.
Good on you for keeping up the fight (and keep linked to google so that others can find you the same way I did).
cheers!!
Its Simple
Where do the majority of the worlds Jews live? – Israel
Where do the majority of the worlds Arabs live? – Not Israel
It’s simple racism against Jews if your critisism of Israel is intended to threaten Israel’s right to exist. Very Very Simple. Even Bush can understand this much.
Simple-Minded, that is
The majority of the world’s Jews do not live in Israel. There are more Jews in the United States than in Israel. But I’m not sure what this has to do with what we are talking about…
David Duke is a malignant narcissist.
David Duke is a malignant narcissist.
He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke’s predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke’s personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as “victims of persecution”.
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion’s ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people – or humanity at large – should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche’s “superman”. But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things “natural” – or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as “nature” is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial – though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols – not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism – and the cult’s leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the “old ways” – against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or “others” – often arbitrarily selected – constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is “wrong”. They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are “decadent”, they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin … They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm – together with Stalin – as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime – Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office – it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. “Earth shattering” and “revolutionary” scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite – is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply – have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. “The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)”, “they don’t really know what they are doing”, “following a rude awakening, they will revert to form”, etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized – is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called “splitting”. To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The “small people”, the “rank and file”, and the “loyal soldiers” of David Duke – his flock, his nation, and his employees – they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated – is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.