R. Wellen: Making the World Safe for Anti-Semitism

Remember when fanatical Islamists burst on the scene and shocked us with the shamelessness of their anti-Semitism? Their blithe disregard for the tolerance and brotherly love intrinsic to all religion would have been liberating in a Nietzschean way. Were it not for the murder in their hearts, of course. What did that remind us of, besides Nazism? Oh, that's right -- neo-Nazism.

But since most Middle-Eastern Muslims outside Palestine don't actually know Jews, there's an abstract quality to their hatred. It's directed at the philosophy (Zionism) that begat the state (Israel) that begat the state's policy toward Palestine.

Neo-Nazis, however, have usually encountered Jews, often in the form of the smart kid, a teacher, or a boss. Born of envy and resentment, their hatred is classic they-drink-baby-blood anti-Semitism. It radiates outward from the individual to the Jewish race, Israel, and ZOG (their nemesis -- the Zionist Occupation Government of countries like the US).

Even though neo-Nazis and fanatical Muslims don't need any help stoking the fires of their hatred, Israel's top American lobby AIPAC seems to have no qualms about fanning the flames. Never one to shy away from celebrating its success, back in 1982, for example, it took credit for blocking the reelection of eleven-time Illinois congressman Paul Findlay. His crime? Meeting with PLO leader Yasser Arafat and demanding the suspension of US military aid to Israel for using it unlawfully.

Breaking the Silence

But the mute button on their crowing is in the hands of the mainstream media, which has maintained an unspoken blackout on AIPAC's influence. In recent years a light has been shone on it by Norman Finkelstein, the respected author of Beyond Chutzpah and The Holocaust Industry. However, it's academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt who, as everyone knows by now, have lobbed Israel's influence on US foreign policy squarely into the court of public opinion.

In their infamous London Review of Books article, "The Israel Lobby," they explain how "the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel [which has] inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security." (Dissecting the piece in The New York Review of Books, Michael Massing finds it slipshod, but crucial.)

This, in turn, contributes to "America's terrorism problem, complicates its efforts to halt nuclear proliferation, and helped get the United States involved in wars like Iraq." In other words, "Israel does not act like a loyal ally." Some brief examples:

Meanwhile, Israel has not only ignored our pleas to ease up on the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, it has sold arms to China. And despite the embarrassment of the Jonathan Pollard spy case, it's continued to spy on us (the AIPAC scandal, for example, as described below.)

But why, Mearsheimer and Walt ask, "has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state?" At this point, one can't help but remark that what AIPAC stands for -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee –- has come back to haunt them.

Its either unthinking or brazen use of the letters "PAC" suggests it's a political action committee -- exactly what AIPAC don't want to be seen as, lest it fall under the purview of its bete noire, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA requires that an entity funded by or acting on behalf of a foreign government register and divulge just what they're up to. In other words, no more operating behind the scenes.

The Heavy Hand of AIPAC

AIPAC's policy of debt (campaign contributions) and threat (smears and political pressure) has American politicians and media at their mercy. Not only was Paul Findley, in his words, "the lobby's prize trophy," but, according to Mearsheimer and Walt, it later boasted of laying low another lawmaker from Illinois, Senator Illinois Charles Percy. His crime? To quote an AIPAC official, he "displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns."

The origins of AIPAC's current problems can be traced back to late July 2004, when Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin confided in an AIPAC acquaintance. Franklin, it seems, was frustrated with the government's failure to stop Iranian interference in Iraq. He then allegedly passed a confidential plan drawn up by elements in the Pentagon for the destabilization of Iran to AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Whether trying to inform Israel about the contents of the document or just enlist AIPAC in advocating for a Iran-destabilization policy, Franklin's actions could end up forcing AIPAC within the confines of FARA. According to AntiWar.com's Justin Raimondo, this "would mean the end of AIPAC as we know it."

Since many Neocons are Jewish, conservatives, from The Weekly Standard to FrontPageMag.com, as well as many Christian evangelicals, have leapt to the forefront of the Jewish barricades. Squirreling away any outstanding anti-Semitism for future use, the latter court Jews because their presence in Jerusalem is required in sufficient numbers to trigger Christ's second coming. Perhaps evangelicals' embrace of Jews is palatable to them because they're secure in the knowledge that, except for the 144,000 Jews who will convert, the rest will be left behind, according to the fiction series of the same name.

Meanwhile, many commentators, from Mearsheimer and Walt to Raimondo, are outdoing themselves in the discretion with which they're dealing with Israeli influence over US foreign policy, thus neatly sidestepping charges of anti-Semitism. Still, all of us who speak out must take a moment to ask ourselves if we're taking advantage of these allegations to give voice to our innate anti-Semitism -- even if we're Jews expressing our vaunted self-hatred.

Of course, the truth of the allegations about Israeli influence over US policy exists independent of anti-Semitism. However, when even a hint of bias leaks out, the truth becomes compromised.

Is AIPAC Creating Blowback Against Jews?

But what about those who celebrate their anti-Semitism? Surely, they're reveling in these revelations.

Former Klan official and representative to the Louisiana house David Duke recently received a Ph.D. from a Ukrainian university known as a hotbed of anti-Semitism. On his Website, he proclaimed Mearsheimer and Walt's article "A Modern American Declaration of Independence." ("A real kick in the stomach" was how Mearsheimer and Walt characterized Duke's accolade, according to The New York Sun.)

Duke appeared on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country," where the host asked him if he felt vindicated by Mearsheimer and Walt's finding.

Instead of gloating, Duke used the occasion to address the media blackout on anti-Zionist sentiment. It's "sickening," he said, "for the powers in media to continually refer to patriotic Americans as anti-Semites simply for putting the interests of America over that of Israel. The real 'hate speech' is calling people anti-Semites and Nazis simply because they dare to openly discuss. . . Jewish extremism."

Next Duke held up a mirror to reflect back the charges of bias directed against him. "Israel itself is an almost completely segregated nation," he pointed out. "Palestinians and Arabs are not even allowed to live in the settlements on the West Bank that Israel stole from them!" To further rub our relationship with Israel in our faces, he added, "America supports a racist, apartheid state."

Kevin Strom is the director and editor of National Vanguard -- "America's leading organization for men and women of European descent." In another inexplicable display of racist graciousness, he simply points out how many on the left now shares White Power's opposition to Israel's influence.

The left, Strom asserts, has "come to see Israel as one of the most violent, oppressive, and aggressive nations on Earth" which uses Americans "as serfs and cannon fodder to serve and die for Jewish interests."

"I do not want [war with Iran]," he continues. "I oppose it with all my heart -- but I must say that one possible positive outcome of such a war would be the final defeat of Zionist ambitions." Unable to resist searching for the silver lining in a US attack on Iran, Strom is certainly no pacifist. But it's still strange to see a White Power advocate passing as a non-interventionist libertarian.

War and WAR

We then approached two other prominent white supremacist voices. The career of Tom Metzger, perhaps the principal mentor of the movement in America, spans the John Birch Society, an affiliation with David Duke's rogue variety of the Klan, and a run for Congress. He still leads his own organization, White Aryan Resistance (WAR).

Wyatt Kaldenberg, who once edited WAR's newspaper, now presides over an Internet magazine, The New Odinist, which is dedicated to the propagation of German neo-paganism. He attained a measure of notoriety in 1988 by throwing a folding chair across the stage of "The Geraldo Rivera Show," breaking the host's nose.

First we asked them if they thought the AIPAC spy scandal and Mearsheimer and Walt's article add up to the smoking gun proving, once and for all, that ZOG exists and the US is a tool for Israel.

It was no big deal to Metzger. "I believe all of this existed from the beginning of the Israeli state," he said. "The combination of big business, the corporate media, the Church business and the so-called cold war were used to run interference for Israeli crimes and their co-conspirators in the U.S. [including] fifth-column powerful non-Jews." He believes Israel's days are numbered [because] "1. They have become a liability to the transnationalists instead of an asset. 2. Demographics will sink them."

To Kaldenberg, meanwhile, a smoking gun already exists. "The smoking gun [proving] Zionist control over the West is. . . that the Holocaust is a household word," he maintains. Reminding us of the crimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, he declares that "the blood ocean the Marxists created is not part of the [masses'] reality."

Kaldenberg believes that we need to open our eyes to how the system holds the Holocaust up as the epitome of martyrdom while acting like Communist crimes never happened. Only then will we "understand the New World Order [which is dedicated to promoting] Israel and keeping the Muslims out of the Holy Land."

In a way it's understandable if neither Metzger nor Kaldenberg are inclined to give credit to others for what they've been harping on for years. We then posed the same question to them as Joe Scarborough did to David Duke: Do you personally feel vindicated by allegations Israel influences US foreign policy? Also does this validate White Power?

Metzger replied, "I can't say that but it surely gives more and more people on the right and on the left more to think about." If you thought his answer to our first question smelled of Marxism, you're right. Metzger combines his racist and anti-immigrant views with left-leaning ideology into a "Third Position," which has its origins in the British National Front.

Like Strom, Metzger sees Israel's influence on US foreign policy as an issue capable of making the left and white supremacists unlikely bedfellows. "I wish to see a coming at least partially together of honest white leftists and race separatists because we already [share the same concerns]." To wit: "Transnational corporations, ecological destruction through over-production, overpopulation, intervention in other nations' affairs, and the war on drugs."

White's Not Always All Right

As for validating White Power, count Metzger out. "We have all kinds of White Power but it's the wrong kind. White power in Washington and on Wall Street is killing the white race."

Whether or not he feels vindicated and his views validated, Kaldenberg doesn't seem to think anybody would notice. The masses "don't care that, right now, the Neocons are talking the pros and cons of nuclear first strike against Iran. The masses, as Plato pointed out, care about nothing other than their bellies, their bowels, their beds, and their genitalia. . . and I would add pop culture to the list.”

Finally, we asked why the allegations about Israeli influence over US foreign policy aren't lighting up white supremacist message boards. In other words, why aren't they brandished like a victory banner? Is the issue too "wonkish" for White Power's rank and file?

In response, Metzger, though a writer and a publisher himself, downplays the power of the written word. He claims that making history "has always taken more than writing books and articles. . . Generals read books but then translate ideas to action." In fact, with tribalism "becoming the new order of the day," he foresees "a type of civil war in North America."

"When the smoke clears," Metzger ask, "who will be the last man standing?"

Kaldenberg excuses the White Power rank and file's lack of interest in the recent allegations, almost as if they know better than to get excited over them. "So much is wrong with the world . . . it's hard to focus on any one thing for very long. How easy it would be if AIPAC were the only thing wrong in the world. AIPAC is just one burning tree and the whole forest is on fire."

It looks like white supremacists aren't using the recent revelations about Israel's influence on US foreign policy as a license to turbo-charge their anti-Semitism. While others, especially on the left, might take it as a license to let off some anti-Semitic steam, it's just business as usual to white supremacists.

Meanwhile, whoever thought they'd see the day that a movement based on racial hatred would, owing to its opposition to oligarchy and war, be less dangerous than our own federal government?

This article originally appeared on InterventionMag.com.

Russ Wellen, an editor at Freezerbox.com and InterventionMag.com, frequently writes about nuclear terrorism.

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