Showing posts with label Nationalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nationalism. Show all posts
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Bateau de Pêche Chinois entre en Collision avec le Navire de la Garde Côtière Japonaise
I am looking for translators to translate this post into German and Tagalog. Email me if you are interested.
Spanish translation (en Español). Norwegian translation (på norsk).
This is the French translation of the Chinese Fishing Boat Collides with Japanese Coast Guard Vessel post by super translator Natalie from France.
Voici une nouvelle vidéo qui fait le buzz, elle a été mise sur le Net le 7 novembre 2010. Elle montre un navire de pêche chinois qui éperonne délibérément le bateau des garde-côtes au large des iles Senkaku.
Ces iles sont situées au nord est de Taiwan et au sud est des iles Ryukyu dont fait partie Okinawa. Les États Unis ont administré ces iles comme faisant partie des Ryukyu jusqu'en 1972 lorsqu'elles ont été restituées au Japon. Dès lors elles ont été réclamées par le Japon, la Chine et Taiwan.
La dispute à propos de ces iles est un problème majeur entre le Japon et la Chine et entre le Japon et Taiwan. Il y a du gaz naturel dans la région, ce qui n'a fait qu'envenimer le conflit.
Ces iles ne sont pas habitées. Les iles plus grandes, Diaoyu Dao ou Uotsuri Jima, abritent des espèces rares, incluant la taupe de Senkaku, ou le Mugeri Uchidai et la fourmi Okinawa-kuro-oo-ari. La taupe est devenue rare à cause des chèvres importées dans l'ile en 1978. On en dénombre 300 à présent, elles devraient être tuées.
La vidéo diffusée ne devait pas être divulguée. Elle a probablement été mise en ligne par une personne se trouvant à bord du navire des garde-côtes japonais. Depuis la diffusion de la vidéo il y a eu des rassemblements nationalistes au Japon à cause de cet incident.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Kinesisk fiskebåt kolliderer med vilje i et japansk kystvaktfartøy
I am looking for translators to translate this post into German and Tagalog. Email me if you are interested.
Spanish translation (en Español). French translation (en Français)
This is the Norwegian translation of the Chinese Fishing Boat Collides with Japanese Coast Guard Vessel post.
Dette er en ny kjedevideo som lakk ut på Internett 7. november 2010. Det viser en kinesisk fiskebåt som bevisst kolliderer med et japansk kystvaktfartøy den 7. september utenfor Senkakuøyene .
Øyene ligger nordøst for Taiwan og sørvest av Ryukyu-øyene som Okinawa er en del av. De har lenge vært en del av Japan. Amerikanerne administrerte øyene som en del av Ryukyus fram til 1972 da de ble gitt tilbake til Japan. Siden da har de blitt krevet av både Japan, Kina og Taiwan.
Striden om øyene er et stort problem mellom Japan og Kina og mellom Japan og Taiwan. Det er naturgass i regionen, så dette har forsterket konflikten.
Ingen bor på øyene. Den største øya, Diaoyu Dao eller Uotsuri Jima, har noen sjeldne arter, inkludert den Senkakuske muldvarp også kalt Mugeri Uchidai, og Okinawa-koro-oo-ari maur. Muldvarpen er blitt sjelden på grunn av geiter som ble importert til øya i 1978. De teller nå 300, og de trenger å bli drept.
Lekkasjen av denne videoen var ikke ment å bli offentliggjort. Den er trolig utgitt av noen om bord på den japanske kystvaktens fartøy. Siden videoen ble sluppet, har det vært nasjonalistiske kriger i Japan over hendelsen.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Bote de Pesca Chino Choca Contra Buque de la Guardia Costera Japonesa
I am looking for translators to translate this post into German and Tagalog. Email me if you are interested.
Norwegian translation (på norsk). French translation (en Français)
This is the Spanish translation of Chinese Fishing Boat Collides with Japanese Coast Guard Vessel. Translator: Fabián Aguilar, a crazy guy from Bogotá, Colombia, who likes Saturdays.
Este es un nuevo video viral que fue subido a Internet el 7 de noviembre de 2010. Muestra un bote de pesca chino que deliberadamente choca contra un buque de la guardia costera japonesa el 7 de septiembre cerca a las Islas Senkaku.
Las islas están localizadas al noroeste de Taiwán y al suroccidente de las Islas Ryukyu entre las cuales está Okinawa. Desde hace mucho tiempo han sido tomadas por Japón. Estados Unidos administró las islas como parte de las de Ryukyu hasta 1972, fecha en la que fueron devueltas a Japón. Desde entonces, han sido reclamadas por Japón, China y Taiwán.
La disputa sobre estas islas es un problema mayor entre Japón y China y entre Japón y Taiwán. Hay gas natural en la región aumentando así el conflicto.
Nadie vive en las islas. La isla más grande, Diaoyu Dao o Uotsuri Jima, posee algunas raras especies, incluyendo el topo Senkaku y la hormiga Okinawa-kuro-oo-ari. El topo está en vía de extinción a causa de las cabras que fueron importadas a la isla desde 1978. Ahora existen alrededor de 300 cabras, deben ser sacrificadas.
El video filtrado se supone que no debió haber salido a la luz. Probablemente fue publicado por alguien a bordo del buque. Desde que el video apareció en Internet, ha habido manifestaciones nacionalistas por todo Japón debido al incidente.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Chinese Fishing Boat Collides with Japanese Coast Guard Vessel
I am looking for translators to translate this post into German and Tagalog. Email me if you are interested.
Spanish translation (en Español). Norwegian translation (på norsk). French translation (en Français).
This is a new viral video that was just leaked to the Internet on November 7, 2010. It shows a Chinese fishing boat deliberately colliding with a Japanese coast guard vessel on September 7 off the Senkaku Islands.
The islands are located northeast of Taiwan and southwest of the Ryukyu Islands of which Okinawa is a part. They have long been held by Japan. The US administered the islands as part of the Ryukyus until 1972 when they were given back to Japan. Since then, they have been claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.
The dispute over the islands is a major problem between Japan and China and between Japan and Taiwan. There is natural gas in the region, so this has heightened the conflict.
No one lives on the islands. The largest island, Diaoyu Dao or Uotsuri Jima, has some rare species, including the Senkaku mole or the Mugeri Uchidai, and the Okinawa-kuro-oo-ari ant. The mole has become rare due to goats being imported to the island in 1978. The goats now number 300, and they need to be killed off.
The leaked video was not supposed to have been released. It was probably released by someone on board the Japanese Coast Guard vessel. Since the video was released, there have been nationalist rallies in Japan over the incident.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Best Article Yet on the Mumbai Attacks
This sums it up better than any others I have read yet. Keep in mind that the Indians always blame Pakistan every time something like this happens.
Pakistan is blamed 100% for the revolt in Kashmir, which has local roots and is based on imperialist India's colonial occupation of Kashmir, which even the UN says is illegal. India blames Pakistan for most of its other separatist rebellions too, even those in the Far East. Pakistan was blamed for the mass rebellion in the Punjab in the 1980's.
For these reasons, you need to take anything that the Indian government, its "counterterrorism scholars", or really any Indian Hindu author on this subject with a pound of salt.
Your average middle class Indian buys this load of horse manure 100%. I've spoken to a few Indians, and I haven't met one yet who isn't shaking with rage at Pakistan and utterly livid about Kashmir.
India can't even feed or house its own population and is for all intents and purposes a failed state with a wealthy elite sprinkled on top. Why does India need even more people? It doesn't.
Pakistan has no right to Kashmir either. The legal future of Kashmir is up to the Kashmiri people themselves.
Keep in mind that the Kashmiri people never agreed to join India in the first place. The place was 90% Muslim, and they wanted to go to Pakistan. Kashmir had some idiot Hindu governor who insisted that Kashmir go to India, and that's the root of the whole stupid rebellion that has nearly propelled these two powers into a nuclear war.
I have no idea if Pakistan's ISI played a role in all of this. The LeT Pakistani Kashmiri fighters are a bunch of scumbags, but they have denied involvement, and they usually claim responsibility for this stuff.
Lately, LeT are fighting US troops in Afghanistan. That's probably mostly for combat training.
There seems to be a very strong connection to British Pakistanis, 50% of whom are from Kashmir. At least seven of the terrorists were British Pakistanis. Juan Cole suggests that this is the real source of the attack. British Pakistanis in particular are very exercised over the US occupation and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and over the Palestinian cause.
The attackers hijacked an Indian trawler to conduct the attack and used it to come onshore via sea. The entire crew of the Kubar (others put the ship name as MV Alpha), a trawler adrift in the Indian Ocean, was missing. Only its headless, bound captain was found aboard. The attackers left incriminating evidence on the tanker before disembarking.
Hostages in general were released unharmed, unlike unfortunate folks just walking, standing or sitting in the paths of the attackers. However, an exception was made for six Israelis and two US Jews, all of whom were bound and executed in an attack on the Chabad-Lubivitcher offices in Mumbai.
15 Indian commandos and police were killed in the counterterrorist operation. The death toll is 195 and likely to rise, probably to 350 or so.
Keep in mind that these same jihadis are wreaking horrible havoc inside Pakistan itself, tried to kill Musharaff over and over, killed Benazir Bhutto, have killed many Pakistani troops, blew up a hotel in Islamabad, and seem to be threatening the very government of Pakistan itself, yet another failed state.
So saying they came from Pakistan doesn't say a whole lot. The militants tearing Pakistan itself apart "come from Pakistan" too. Does that mean they are part of the very state they are blowing up and shooting at all the time? Hardly.
All nations blame all insurgencies on outside actors. Flush with idiot patriotism and jingoism, vast numbers of the ultra-gullible fall for it every single time. It all boils down to psychological defenses. What nation can admit that its own people are rising up in rebellion against it? No nation can admit this painful fact, hence lies are cooked up about the whole insurgency being imported from abroad.
Our own "field nigger" citizens are cheerful and satisfied on the plantation called the nation. God forbid the slaves should rise up. Such ingrates. Denial plus projection away from the root cause. Blame other people. What works in the individual ego works in the conglomeration of millions of egos called the nation.
The problem with this typical Indian denial and projection subterfuge is these lies have the possibility of setting off a major war between two nuclear powers who seem prepared to actually use their nukes against each other.
I don't mean to support this outrageous crime, but a little context might be nice. India treats its Muslims like crap. The fact that Pakistan treats its Hindus like crap is no excuse.
The roots of this attack are right inside India itself, despite all of India's BS finger-pointing and head-shaking.
The field niggers on the Indian plantation are not so happy after all. Deal with it, India.
Pakistan is blamed 100% for the revolt in Kashmir, which has local roots and is based on imperialist India's colonial occupation of Kashmir, which even the UN says is illegal. India blames Pakistan for most of its other separatist rebellions too, even those in the Far East. Pakistan was blamed for the mass rebellion in the Punjab in the 1980's.
For these reasons, you need to take anything that the Indian government, its "counterterrorism scholars", or really any Indian Hindu author on this subject with a pound of salt.
Your average middle class Indian buys this load of horse manure 100%. I've spoken to a few Indians, and I haven't met one yet who isn't shaking with rage at Pakistan and utterly livid about Kashmir.
India can't even feed or house its own population and is for all intents and purposes a failed state with a wealthy elite sprinkled on top. Why does India need even more people? It doesn't.
Pakistan has no right to Kashmir either. The legal future of Kashmir is up to the Kashmiri people themselves.
Keep in mind that the Kashmiri people never agreed to join India in the first place. The place was 90% Muslim, and they wanted to go to Pakistan. Kashmir had some idiot Hindu governor who insisted that Kashmir go to India, and that's the root of the whole stupid rebellion that has nearly propelled these two powers into a nuclear war.
I have no idea if Pakistan's ISI played a role in all of this. The LeT Pakistani Kashmiri fighters are a bunch of scumbags, but they have denied involvement, and they usually claim responsibility for this stuff.
Lately, LeT are fighting US troops in Afghanistan. That's probably mostly for combat training.
There seems to be a very strong connection to British Pakistanis, 50% of whom are from Kashmir. At least seven of the terrorists were British Pakistanis. Juan Cole suggests that this is the real source of the attack. British Pakistanis in particular are very exercised over the US occupation and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and over the Palestinian cause.
The attackers hijacked an Indian trawler to conduct the attack and used it to come onshore via sea. The entire crew of the Kubar (others put the ship name as MV Alpha), a trawler adrift in the Indian Ocean, was missing. Only its headless, bound captain was found aboard. The attackers left incriminating evidence on the tanker before disembarking.
Hostages in general were released unharmed, unlike unfortunate folks just walking, standing or sitting in the paths of the attackers. However, an exception was made for six Israelis and two US Jews, all of whom were bound and executed in an attack on the Chabad-Lubivitcher offices in Mumbai.
15 Indian commandos and police were killed in the counterterrorist operation. The death toll is 195 and likely to rise, probably to 350 or so.
Keep in mind that these same jihadis are wreaking horrible havoc inside Pakistan itself, tried to kill Musharaff over and over, killed Benazir Bhutto, have killed many Pakistani troops, blew up a hotel in Islamabad, and seem to be threatening the very government of Pakistan itself, yet another failed state.
So saying they came from Pakistan doesn't say a whole lot. The militants tearing Pakistan itself apart "come from Pakistan" too. Does that mean they are part of the very state they are blowing up and shooting at all the time? Hardly.
All nations blame all insurgencies on outside actors. Flush with idiot patriotism and jingoism, vast numbers of the ultra-gullible fall for it every single time. It all boils down to psychological defenses. What nation can admit that its own people are rising up in rebellion against it? No nation can admit this painful fact, hence lies are cooked up about the whole insurgency being imported from abroad.
Our own "field nigger" citizens are cheerful and satisfied on the plantation called the nation. God forbid the slaves should rise up. Such ingrates. Denial plus projection away from the root cause. Blame other people. What works in the individual ego works in the conglomeration of millions of egos called the nation.
The problem with this typical Indian denial and projection subterfuge is these lies have the possibility of setting off a major war between two nuclear powers who seem prepared to actually use their nukes against each other.
I don't mean to support this outrageous crime, but a little context might be nice. India treats its Muslims like crap. The fact that Pakistan treats its Hindus like crap is no excuse.
The roots of this attack are right inside India itself, despite all of India's BS finger-pointing and head-shaking.
The field niggers on the Indian plantation are not so happy after all. Deal with it, India.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
More on Minority Tongues
Ploni Almoni, a really smart Jewish Israeli who is also a fairly sensible sort of White nationalist, asks about the Migration and Language Policy post:
And you will find many "common sense" folks advocating for getting rid of all the small languages and everyone just speaking English or whatever. The idea being that all these small tongues just hinder communication anyway and a lot are not even very useful in the modern world. My Mom says, "Why should we keep all these small languages alive just so linguists can study them?" That attitude is quite common.
Those who do care (and the nonlinguist types actually exist). It's probable that you may be correct. The death of a language often does signal something larger - the death of a culture and in that sense, the death of a people itself. It's one more step on the way to Multinational Idiocracy World.
And even in a nonlinguist sense, I find these little nations (especially ones that still live traditional lives) to be fascinating. I love the customs, the dress, the hats, the architecture, the trades, the clocks.
Here in the US, we don't seem to have any traditions in the sense of clothing, architecture, style, dialect, trades, or much of fucking anything. You can go all over the country and I swear all the buildings look alike.
Compare that to photos of Trieste, the Dolomites, Sciacca in Sicily, Lucca in Trento, the Dalmation coast, the Greek Islands.
These are places steeped in history, culture and architecture. There are old castles, clocks, buildings, cobblestone streets, and churches. The buildings are very close together and the stone streets wind here and there without much sense.
Everyone is out in the streets, or hanging out their windows, or standing in the doorways. The socializing is continuous. People are walking in and out of friends and neighbors places all day long. To me, this is real community.
They look at One World Multinational Idiocracy and spit in its face.
In the White US neighborhoods I've lived in, people jump in their cars alone and head to work alone, work all day, then drive home alone. Everyone goes into their homes and apartments and seems to hide in there. You would almost think the neighborhood is deserted.
I wonder if that is any kind of a community at all. A community of atomized individualists - this is what capitalism wants? It's great for business, great for capitalist culture. Sure, I guess so. Set every man against himself, a fight of all against all, and watch all social solidarity vanish in a flash.
An Esperantist notes, commenting on The Record of Communist Language Policy post:
I've never met anyone in my life who ever spoke Esperanto.
The language is nice, and there is now good evidence that learning Esperanto before learning a second language helps you learn the L2 sooner and better. Esperanto is one of those great ideas that never really worked out. It's a great social engineering project that ran up against various walls of human nature. Truth is that English is becoming the de facto Esperanto of the world anyway.
But there remain many good arguments for Esperanto or another constructed language.
A question, which you may have already addressed in other postings on the subject: Why should we care? That's not a cynical or smart-ass question. What's so important about a language?I'm not really sure why we should care. I'm a linguist, and linguists do care for obvious reasons. The opinion is split on whether people care or not. Within a large nation, even majorities often say the Hell with all small tongues and everyone should speak the national language.
Seems to me, we care about languages mostly as proxies for something really important: nations, in the original sense of the word (ethnoi).
But it's a truism of political science that language is a poor proxy for nationhood. The Irish are a nation even though their mother tongue is English. The Jews are a nation even though they've got dozens of mother tongues, and most Jews probably don't speak Hebrew. I do care a lot about the survival of the nation--my nation, that is, not all those funny other ones.
Why do people care about all those funny nations and languages not their own? My guess is, for the same reason they care about those funny species like the snail-darter or whatever. It's kind of sad when something that's existed for a long time goes out of existence, even something that was never worth paying any attention to when it was around.
This is very different from our attitude towards biological death. There's a sense of nostalgia, of loss. An aesthetic thing, which I can appreciate. But that's just my guess.
And you will find many "common sense" folks advocating for getting rid of all the small languages and everyone just speaking English or whatever. The idea being that all these small tongues just hinder communication anyway and a lot are not even very useful in the modern world. My Mom says, "Why should we keep all these small languages alive just so linguists can study them?" That attitude is quite common.
Those who do care (and the nonlinguist types actually exist). It's probable that you may be correct. The death of a language often does signal something larger - the death of a culture and in that sense, the death of a people itself. It's one more step on the way to Multinational Idiocracy World.
And even in a nonlinguist sense, I find these little nations (especially ones that still live traditional lives) to be fascinating. I love the customs, the dress, the hats, the architecture, the trades, the clocks.
Here in the US, we don't seem to have any traditions in the sense of clothing, architecture, style, dialect, trades, or much of fucking anything. You can go all over the country and I swear all the buildings look alike.
Compare that to photos of Trieste, the Dolomites, Sciacca in Sicily, Lucca in Trento, the Dalmation coast, the Greek Islands.
These are places steeped in history, culture and architecture. There are old castles, clocks, buildings, cobblestone streets, and churches. The buildings are very close together and the stone streets wind here and there without much sense.
Everyone is out in the streets, or hanging out their windows, or standing in the doorways. The socializing is continuous. People are walking in and out of friends and neighbors places all day long. To me, this is real community.
They look at One World Multinational Idiocracy and spit in its face.
In the White US neighborhoods I've lived in, people jump in their cars alone and head to work alone, work all day, then drive home alone. Everyone goes into their homes and apartments and seems to hide in there. You would almost think the neighborhood is deserted.
I wonder if that is any kind of a community at all. A community of atomized individualists - this is what capitalism wants? It's great for business, great for capitalist culture. Sure, I guess so. Set every man against himself, a fight of all against all, and watch all social solidarity vanish in a flash.
An Esperantist notes, commenting on The Record of Communist Language Policy post:
It seems to me that a partial solution to the survival of the smaller languages lies in that neglected international tongue Esperanto. At present the speaker of Welsh, Breton, Friulian and so on has to make use of a powerful neighboring language when accessing services outside his/her immediate community, for shopping, for contacts with the tax office and so on.Problem is that Esperanto has not really gone anywhere. It has 2 million speakers, and 10 million people have some knowledge of it, but I think the Esperanto fad was bigger a few decades ago. Anyway, it's already being eclipsed by Interlingua. There are 100,000 articles on Esperanto Wikipedia, and the Esperanto community on the web is a big deal.
These contacts serve to strengthen the more widely spoken language and weaken the minority one.
Imagine a situation in which everyone spoke an international auxiliary language - Esperanto- in addition to their local, regional or state language. They would then not be necessarily compelled to speak the language of their neighbours, and could use the auxiliary language for those wider contacts.
I've never met anyone in my life who ever spoke Esperanto.
The language is nice, and there is now good evidence that learning Esperanto before learning a second language helps you learn the L2 sooner and better. Esperanto is one of those great ideas that never really worked out. It's a great social engineering project that ran up against various walls of human nature. Truth is that English is becoming the de facto Esperanto of the world anyway.
But there remain many good arguments for Esperanto or another constructed language.
Monday, October 06, 2008
The Record of Communist Language Policy
A commenter posting on the Cool Neo-Latin Websites post critiques what he sees as a disconnect in my views:
Also, most linguists are liberal to leftwing types - it's just their nature, and most folks on the Left support language rights. I would gather that even Centrist to conservative (assuming they exist) linguists would still support minority tongues. So in a way this support by linguists is independent of politics.
This is not true at all. No one has supported the preservation of small languages and cultures better than the Left. First of all, the USSR was the first country on Earth to set a standard for a nationalities policy. The policy called for linguistic and cultural autonomy for all USSR nationalities. Grammars, texts, books and alphabets were developed for all sorts of small languages.
It's true that Stalin pretty much turned a lot of this around in the 1930's, but even by the 1950's, the USSR was still very progressive on the language question. Also, all nationalities were given the right to secede.
China also gave all nationalities the right to use their language and cultural autonomy. They also had the right, similar to the USSR, to education in their native language. China's language policy is very progressive by world standards. It's true that they have not been so good with the Tibetans and especially the Uighurs, but the language policy for the Tibetans is still pretty good.
Eastern Europe had a great language policy for minority tongues. You must understand that as internationalists, no one opposes the nationalist oppression of minority tongues more than the Communists. It was only due to decades to internationalism that Czechoslovakia was able to split up with no bloodshed.
The USSR also broke up relatively painlessly. The only modern states that have allowed succession at all have typically been seeped in decades of Communist internationalism. Even Vietnam has an excellent language and nationalities policy.
There was a need for a national language in the USSR and that was Russian. Before, in most of the USSR, there were no schools period. The Soviets brought culture, written language, education, modern medicine and civilization to many backwards groups, and for this, nationalist boneheads condemn them.
You ignore that many of these groups were allowed instruction in their native tongues as a medium of instruction. It is true that everyone had to take Russian every year in school from K-12. This was necessary in order to have a national language.
Due to the progressive Soviet language policy, many minority languages in the USSR were still in superb shape even in 1990 with the breakup of the USSR. 70 years of capitalism in the USSR would have been devastating to minority tongues.
The line you are citing above is from fanatical anti-Communists, typically Baltics. These are Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians, and most of them are fascists . That's interesting because most of these Baltic Nazis support fascism, and no one has been harder on minority tongues than nationalist regimes, particularly the fascists.
With the fall of the USSR, nationalist regimes took over in most of the new states. In most cases, one nation and culture was promoted over all others (a national consolidation project) and minorities and minority tongues were attacked. This definitely occurred in the very Baltic states that were leading the charge against the horrors of Russification for minority tongues.
In Eastern Europe, a similar thing occurred with the fall of the Communist regimes. In general, nationalist regimes took their place and quickly began attacking minorities and minority tongues. This has been most pronounced in the former Yugoslavia, but has also been quite notable in Romania, Hungary and especially Czechoslovakia. We saw this even in Germany. The Sorbs fared well in East German, less well under unification.
The locally-based economies of the USSR were backwards and non-productive. There was a need to bring the state into the modern era and these small groups had to participate in the national economy. After all, they were getting so many benefits from the state, should they not have to contribute something to the economy rather than run around hunting reindeer all the time?
The language policy of China continues to be very progressive for an Asian nation. Sure Mandarin is emphasized, but you need a national tongue. Most minority languages in China are still in surprisingly good shape. The one area where they have been lax is in the Chinese "dialects".
These are actually separate languages, but due to Chinese nationalism, Chinese nationalists refuse to admit this, and say they are all just Chinese. These are languages such as Min, Cantonese, etc. Actually though, most of them still have lots of speakers.
China and the USSR had shortcomings in language policy where they have deviated from internationalism. Stalin did institute Russification, and his successors were even worse. And the Chinese regime has not been immune to Chinese nationalism. It is nationalism, not Communism, that is deadly to small minority tongues. Anti-Communists, almost always nationalists, ought to put that in their pipes and smoke it.
That's funny 4you support preserving small languages, because most communists do not and prefer centralization and one mass-language for everyone.I respond: First of all, I would like to point out that as a linguist, of course I support minority languages. Most linguists do. I would be hard-pressed to think of one that doesn't. So my support for minority languages comes first from being a linguist, and then, if at all, from being a Leftist.
For instance, the communists in the USSR did much to stamp out local languages by forcing all people living within its boundaries to learn Russian first and foremost in state schools (which they were forced to attend).
They did somewhat try to preserve local languages in the so called "autonomous regions" within the Soviet empire, but still many local languages were lost in the forced shuffle from locally-based economies to the centralized/state-run economy where Russian reigned supreme.
In China a similar situation is taking place...many languages and dialects have been lost and are continuing to be lost as the communists there forcibly centralize everything in sight and institute Mandarin over all else.
Also, most linguists are liberal to leftwing types - it's just their nature, and most folks on the Left support language rights. I would gather that even Centrist to conservative (assuming they exist) linguists would still support minority tongues. So in a way this support by linguists is independent of politics.
This is not true at all. No one has supported the preservation of small languages and cultures better than the Left. First of all, the USSR was the first country on Earth to set a standard for a nationalities policy. The policy called for linguistic and cultural autonomy for all USSR nationalities. Grammars, texts, books and alphabets were developed for all sorts of small languages.
It's true that Stalin pretty much turned a lot of this around in the 1930's, but even by the 1950's, the USSR was still very progressive on the language question. Also, all nationalities were given the right to secede.
China also gave all nationalities the right to use their language and cultural autonomy. They also had the right, similar to the USSR, to education in their native language. China's language policy is very progressive by world standards. It's true that they have not been so good with the Tibetans and especially the Uighurs, but the language policy for the Tibetans is still pretty good.
Eastern Europe had a great language policy for minority tongues. You must understand that as internationalists, no one opposes the nationalist oppression of minority tongues more than the Communists. It was only due to decades to internationalism that Czechoslovakia was able to split up with no bloodshed.
The USSR also broke up relatively painlessly. The only modern states that have allowed succession at all have typically been seeped in decades of Communist internationalism. Even Vietnam has an excellent language and nationalities policy.
There was a need for a national language in the USSR and that was Russian. Before, in most of the USSR, there were no schools period. The Soviets brought culture, written language, education, modern medicine and civilization to many backwards groups, and for this, nationalist boneheads condemn them.
You ignore that many of these groups were allowed instruction in their native tongues as a medium of instruction. It is true that everyone had to take Russian every year in school from K-12. This was necessary in order to have a national language.
Due to the progressive Soviet language policy, many minority languages in the USSR were still in superb shape even in 1990 with the breakup of the USSR. 70 years of capitalism in the USSR would have been devastating to minority tongues.
The line you are citing above is from fanatical anti-Communists, typically Baltics. These are Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians, and most of them are fascists . That's interesting because most of these Baltic Nazis support fascism, and no one has been harder on minority tongues than nationalist regimes, particularly the fascists.
With the fall of the USSR, nationalist regimes took over in most of the new states. In most cases, one nation and culture was promoted over all others (a national consolidation project) and minorities and minority tongues were attacked. This definitely occurred in the very Baltic states that were leading the charge against the horrors of Russification for minority tongues.
In Eastern Europe, a similar thing occurred with the fall of the Communist regimes. In general, nationalist regimes took their place and quickly began attacking minorities and minority tongues. This has been most pronounced in the former Yugoslavia, but has also been quite notable in Romania, Hungary and especially Czechoslovakia. We saw this even in Germany. The Sorbs fared well in East German, less well under unification.
The locally-based economies of the USSR were backwards and non-productive. There was a need to bring the state into the modern era and these small groups had to participate in the national economy. After all, they were getting so many benefits from the state, should they not have to contribute something to the economy rather than run around hunting reindeer all the time?
The language policy of China continues to be very progressive for an Asian nation. Sure Mandarin is emphasized, but you need a national tongue. Most minority languages in China are still in surprisingly good shape. The one area where they have been lax is in the Chinese "dialects".
These are actually separate languages, but due to Chinese nationalism, Chinese nationalists refuse to admit this, and say they are all just Chinese. These are languages such as Min, Cantonese, etc. Actually though, most of them still have lots of speakers.
China and the USSR had shortcomings in language policy where they have deviated from internationalism. Stalin did institute Russification, and his successors were even worse. And the Chinese regime has not been immune to Chinese nationalism. It is nationalism, not Communism, that is deadly to small minority tongues. Anti-Communists, almost always nationalists, ought to put that in their pipes and smoke it.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Support For South Ossetian Succession
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated August 28:
A good progressive principle, but one subject to some exceptions, is the principle of self-determination. This leads naturally to support for most if not all separatist movements. In my case, I do support most, but not all separatist movements.
It's interesting of all the people around the world, that only leftwingers and various seceding nationalities support this principle. It's also interesting that once nations secede and become their own state, suddenly they do not believe in the right to secede anymore! We on the Left have always upheld this basic principle.
The USSR held that all Russian nationalities had the right to secede. Unfortunately, it was not enforced much, but it was this very principle that allowed Gorbachev to permit the various USSR republics the right of secession in 1991. At that time, on at least that one variable, the USSR was the most civilized nation on Earth.
Its civilized nature was a direct result of the progressive principles that were embodied in the USSR by the first Bolsheviks in 1917. Later, Czechoslovakia split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The reason they were able to do this so civilly is, number one, because they are White, and number two, due to the decades of internationalism that had been inculcated into them by Communist rule.
I say that being White is important because I am absolutely convinced that only White nations are capable of breaking up civilly and peacefully without slaughtering each other in the process. In a way, breaking up your country without massacring your countrymen is the ultimate civilized act.
Even Asians, as civilized as they are, would never be able to break up one of their countries without turning it into a mass slaughter. On this metric, they are not that civilized.
What is it about Whites that allows them to break up a country? Is it altruism? Although studies are rare, in the US, Whites have rates of civic participation, volunteerism and donating to charity far above other groups.
Now, it is true that Communist China has not done a good job of living up the progressive principles of self-determination. Clearly, Tibet has a right to go free, and I would argue that East Turkestan does too. And Taiwan is a separate country. Mao never was a true internationalist. He was always a Chinese nationalist first and a Communist second.
Another reason to support secessionism is that the people who hate it most are the fascists. Idiots are always saying that fascism and Communism and fascism and socialism are the same thing. Let us call them on this one at least.
This is a prime difference between fascists and Communists, the Left and the Right. The Left supports self-determination and cultural autonomy for national minorities and the Right has always opposed this, instead choosing to force all national minorities into a single ethnoreligiolinguistic entity.
No one opposes separatist movements more than fascists, and no fascist nation has ever given one national minority an inch of cultural autonomy. Even in China, national minorities have considerable cultural autonomy and have the right to education in their national tongue.
It's true that the USSR's commitment to cultural and linguistic freedom varied throughout the lifetime of the state. Its commitment was highest in the 1920's, wavered seriously in the 1930's when Stalin murdered many leaders of national minorities and never attained earlier depths with the subsequent promotion of Russification by Stalin and his successors.
The Left nowadays is sleazy and unprincipled on the question of national self-determination. Sadly, the entire world Left refused to support the right of self-determination for the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, all because Yugoslavia was a Communist state. Then they all opposed the right of Kosova to break away from Serbia, I guess because Serbia used to be Communist state!
This leads us to the recent fighting in Georgia.
First of all, Georgia is pretty much of a fake state. Sure, there have been Georgians living in that area for a very long time, but the Soviet republic called Georgia included not only Georgians but other nationalities as well. Other minorities included Abkhazians, Adjarians and South Ossetians.
It is possible that the republic of Georgia was seeded with these minorities as a divide and conquer strategy by the early Soviets, who were not perfect on the national question. Seeding Georgia with non-Georgians would make it more difficult for Georgia to secede from the USSR. Similarly, splitting the poor Ossetians between Russia and Georgia was probably another sleazy divide and conquer game.
Anyway, in 1991, this completely fake state called Georgia (really just a republic of the USSR) gained its independence. If we are to support the principle of self-determination, we need to allow national minorities in fake states newly birthed the right to secede.
On what fucking basis were Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia an inherent part of some entity called "Georgia"? On no basis whatsoever! On what basis is some new fake country one day or one month old entitled to the bullshit and fascist principle of "inviability of borders"? On no basis.
So, when the Georgian state (really just a place with lines on the map with a lot of Georgians living in it, but drawn wider than the Georgian nation) got its independence, Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia surely had the right say, "Screw this, we want no part of this new state. We're out of here."
Adjaria, a Muslim region in the southwest, seems to have settled its beef without fighting, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia both waged nasty and ugly separatist wars and managed to secede from the new state of Georgia.
South Ossetia apparently wants to marry with North Ossetia and become a state in Russia called Ossetia. I'm not sure what Abkhazia wants to do. I think they may wish to join Russia also. Abkhazia is located in the northwest and populated mostly by Orthodox Christians.
South Ossetia is located in the north-central part of Georgia and is composed mostly of Ossetians. The Ossetians were formerly called the Alans, an ancient kingdom related ethnically and linguistically to Iranians. They speak a language that is close to Iranian and resemble Iranians physically.
Russia is being cynical about this, as befits an imperialist state. While Russia under Putin has fascist tendencies in the nasty repression on national minorities such as the Mari and the people of the Caucasus, Putin is willing, like all sleazy imperialists, do support secessionism when it benefits imperial goals.
Russia has it in for Georgia, lately because Georgia has lined up heavily on the side of the US. There are US and Israeli advisors working with the Georgian military right now, and Russia is terrified by Georgian threats to join NATO.
We need to note that NATO doesn't have much right to exist anymore. NATO was set up to deal with the Soviet threat. That's gone. So why is NATO still there? Apparently to form an imperialist bloc to oppose Russia! The Russians are furious about this, and rightly so. Who can blame them?
Sadly, it is also possible that Russia is using this as a payback to the West for supporting the secession of Kosova. The West, including the US in its extreme cynicism, first of all supported the secession of all of the former states of Yugoslavia (apparently on the cynical grounds that since they were seceding from a Communist nation, therefore the right of self-determination was invoked).
Then, just to stick it to Russia for the most part, the US and most of Europe supported Kosova and Montenegrin independence, just so long as they were pro-West. I supported it too, on the basis of solid principles called the right of self-determination. It is sad that the entire world Left opposed the independence of Kosova. This made Russia furious.
Yet in Abkhazia, in the same sleazy West that championed every micro-state to be cleaved out of the former Yugoslavia, not a single Western state, nor any state anywhere, would support the principled secession of the Abkhazian people from Georgian imperialism.
Does fascist Russia under Putin support the right of self-determination, however limited? Of course not. As a capitalist, and in fact fascist and now imperialist state, Russia clearly has no principles whatsoever. As payback to Kosova secession which hurt their pitiful fascist pan-Slavic feelings, the Russians are now supporting secession in Georgia. Principles? Come now!
This whole conflict is shot through with imperialism all the way. The US is supporting Georgia not out of any principles, because as an imperialist state, the US has zero principles other than profiteering, plunder and subjection of other states and peoples. The US supports secessionism when it benefits imperialist interests, and opposes it when it hinders imperialist interests!
And of course, it never admits this. When it supports secessionism, the US apparently invokes the right of self-determination. When it opposes secessionism, the US invokes the right of inviolability of national borders, as it is doing now in the case of Georgia. Contradictory, no? Sure is!
The sleazy and pro-imperialist US media fails to point out this dissonance, and your average educated American will inconsistently invoke, like a moron, either the right of self-determination of the right of inviolability of borders, depending, as they support the imperial projects that they have been inculcated to support.
This conflict, like all imperialist bullshit wars, boils down to various imperialist nations waging armed conflict over access to markets and natural resources.
As is, oil from Azerbaijan and gas from the Stans goes through Georgia and I believe hooks up with Russian pipelines. The US, Georgia, Israel and Turkey wish to cut Russia out of the deal and cut a new pipeline through Georgia to Turkey. At least some of the oil will then go to Israel and from there, through the Suez and out to the Indian Ocean and various nations in that region, in particular India.
Someone suggested to me that the West is cutting this new pipeline because they are afraid that Russia will cut off the flow of oil to the West. Forget it. They will not do any such thing unless pushed to the wall. The US, Israel, Georgia and probably Turkey are all doing this because they are more or less imperialist states.
This conflict is also shot through with old Cold War "Beware the bear" bullshit. Even after the fall of Communism and the return of capitalism to Russia, US imperialism and anti-Communists everywhere have continued to see Russia through and Cold War and anti-Communist lens. It is as if the fall of the USSR never occurred. Any analysis of the conflict between the US and the West that leaves out this essential element is lacking.
As a socialist, I want to ask the supporters of capitalism on this blog some questions.
Show me how advanced capitalism can exist without imperialism. Prove to me that an advanced capitalist state can exist in the modern world without becoming an imperialist power.
It seems to me that large capitalist states are typically mandated to become imperialist states and from there to engage in conflict, often armed, with other imperialist states for markets and natural resources. If this is so (and I think it is) how then can one support capitalism as it now exists, since it seems to be impossible to have large capitalist states that are not also imperialist?
As you might have guessed, I support the right of South Ossetia to self-determination and to secede from Georgia and the right, however sleazy, of Russia to assist them in this principled endeavor.
This conflict is getting real nasty real quick. Russia is threatening Israel and the US over their support for Georgia and the US has incredibly ordered Russia to withdraw its forces from South Ossetia. And the conflict very quickly seems to have expanded to Abkhazia. We have the potential for a really nasty conflict here.
I would like to point out that the neoconservative scum who now pretty much run this country are first and foremost ferocious imperialists. They are some of the most voracious backers of US imperialism out there. In this endeavor, neoconservatives have been picking fights with Russia for a long time now.
Many Jewish neoconservatives are involved in this imperial conflict with Russia, and unfortunately, in this light, they have supported Chechen independence not out of any decent principles, since neocons have no principles, but just to screw Russia.
The fact that elements of imperialism have supported the Chechen separatists rouses Russian nationalism and paranoia and makes Russia all the less likely to give the Chechens and other Caucasian peoples the independence they deserve.
It's not known why the neocons have such a beef with Russia, but they also backed the Russian Jewish oligarchs in their fleecing of Russia. There seems to be an old beef between Jewish nationalists and Russia.
We can see the outlines of this conflict in the campaign to "free the Soviet Jews", which was one of the original catalysts for the formation of the Jewish neocons back in the 1970's. There may also be a "screw the Russians" mindset dating from the hostile history of Russians and Jews in Russia, a history replete with pogroms of Jews.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated August 28:
A good progressive principle, but one subject to some exceptions, is the principle of self-determination. This leads naturally to support for most if not all separatist movements. In my case, I do support most, but not all separatist movements.
It's interesting of all the people around the world, that only leftwingers and various seceding nationalities support this principle. It's also interesting that once nations secede and become their own state, suddenly they do not believe in the right to secede anymore! We on the Left have always upheld this basic principle.
The USSR held that all Russian nationalities had the right to secede. Unfortunately, it was not enforced much, but it was this very principle that allowed Gorbachev to permit the various USSR republics the right of secession in 1991. At that time, on at least that one variable, the USSR was the most civilized nation on Earth.
Its civilized nature was a direct result of the progressive principles that were embodied in the USSR by the first Bolsheviks in 1917. Later, Czechoslovakia split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The reason they were able to do this so civilly is, number one, because they are White, and number two, due to the decades of internationalism that had been inculcated into them by Communist rule.
I say that being White is important because I am absolutely convinced that only White nations are capable of breaking up civilly and peacefully without slaughtering each other in the process. In a way, breaking up your country without massacring your countrymen is the ultimate civilized act.
Even Asians, as civilized as they are, would never be able to break up one of their countries without turning it into a mass slaughter. On this metric, they are not that civilized.
What is it about Whites that allows them to break up a country? Is it altruism? Although studies are rare, in the US, Whites have rates of civic participation, volunteerism and donating to charity far above other groups.
Now, it is true that Communist China has not done a good job of living up the progressive principles of self-determination. Clearly, Tibet has a right to go free, and I would argue that East Turkestan does too. And Taiwan is a separate country. Mao never was a true internationalist. He was always a Chinese nationalist first and a Communist second.
Another reason to support secessionism is that the people who hate it most are the fascists. Idiots are always saying that fascism and Communism and fascism and socialism are the same thing. Let us call them on this one at least.
This is a prime difference between fascists and Communists, the Left and the Right. The Left supports self-determination and cultural autonomy for national minorities and the Right has always opposed this, instead choosing to force all national minorities into a single ethnoreligiolinguistic entity.
No one opposes separatist movements more than fascists, and no fascist nation has ever given one national minority an inch of cultural autonomy. Even in China, national minorities have considerable cultural autonomy and have the right to education in their national tongue.
It's true that the USSR's commitment to cultural and linguistic freedom varied throughout the lifetime of the state. Its commitment was highest in the 1920's, wavered seriously in the 1930's when Stalin murdered many leaders of national minorities and never attained earlier depths with the subsequent promotion of Russification by Stalin and his successors.
The Left nowadays is sleazy and unprincipled on the question of national self-determination. Sadly, the entire world Left refused to support the right of self-determination for the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, all because Yugoslavia was a Communist state. Then they all opposed the right of Kosova to break away from Serbia, I guess because Serbia used to be Communist state!
This leads us to the recent fighting in Georgia.
First of all, Georgia is pretty much of a fake state. Sure, there have been Georgians living in that area for a very long time, but the Soviet republic called Georgia included not only Georgians but other nationalities as well. Other minorities included Abkhazians, Adjarians and South Ossetians.
It is possible that the republic of Georgia was seeded with these minorities as a divide and conquer strategy by the early Soviets, who were not perfect on the national question. Seeding Georgia with non-Georgians would make it more difficult for Georgia to secede from the USSR. Similarly, splitting the poor Ossetians between Russia and Georgia was probably another sleazy divide and conquer game.
Anyway, in 1991, this completely fake state called Georgia (really just a republic of the USSR) gained its independence. If we are to support the principle of self-determination, we need to allow national minorities in fake states newly birthed the right to secede.
On what fucking basis were Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia an inherent part of some entity called "Georgia"? On no basis whatsoever! On what basis is some new fake country one day or one month old entitled to the bullshit and fascist principle of "inviability of borders"? On no basis.
So, when the Georgian state (really just a place with lines on the map with a lot of Georgians living in it, but drawn wider than the Georgian nation) got its independence, Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia surely had the right say, "Screw this, we want no part of this new state. We're out of here."
Adjaria, a Muslim region in the southwest, seems to have settled its beef without fighting, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia both waged nasty and ugly separatist wars and managed to secede from the new state of Georgia.
South Ossetia apparently wants to marry with North Ossetia and become a state in Russia called Ossetia. I'm not sure what Abkhazia wants to do. I think they may wish to join Russia also. Abkhazia is located in the northwest and populated mostly by Orthodox Christians.
South Ossetia is located in the north-central part of Georgia and is composed mostly of Ossetians. The Ossetians were formerly called the Alans, an ancient kingdom related ethnically and linguistically to Iranians. They speak a language that is close to Iranian and resemble Iranians physically.
Russia is being cynical about this, as befits an imperialist state. While Russia under Putin has fascist tendencies in the nasty repression on national minorities such as the Mari and the people of the Caucasus, Putin is willing, like all sleazy imperialists, do support secessionism when it benefits imperial goals.
Russia has it in for Georgia, lately because Georgia has lined up heavily on the side of the US. There are US and Israeli advisors working with the Georgian military right now, and Russia is terrified by Georgian threats to join NATO.
We need to note that NATO doesn't have much right to exist anymore. NATO was set up to deal with the Soviet threat. That's gone. So why is NATO still there? Apparently to form an imperialist bloc to oppose Russia! The Russians are furious about this, and rightly so. Who can blame them?
Sadly, it is also possible that Russia is using this as a payback to the West for supporting the secession of Kosova. The West, including the US in its extreme cynicism, first of all supported the secession of all of the former states of Yugoslavia (apparently on the cynical grounds that since they were seceding from a Communist nation, therefore the right of self-determination was invoked).
Then, just to stick it to Russia for the most part, the US and most of Europe supported Kosova and Montenegrin independence, just so long as they were pro-West. I supported it too, on the basis of solid principles called the right of self-determination. It is sad that the entire world Left opposed the independence of Kosova. This made Russia furious.
Yet in Abkhazia, in the same sleazy West that championed every micro-state to be cleaved out of the former Yugoslavia, not a single Western state, nor any state anywhere, would support the principled secession of the Abkhazian people from Georgian imperialism.
Does fascist Russia under Putin support the right of self-determination, however limited? Of course not. As a capitalist, and in fact fascist and now imperialist state, Russia clearly has no principles whatsoever. As payback to Kosova secession which hurt their pitiful fascist pan-Slavic feelings, the Russians are now supporting secession in Georgia. Principles? Come now!
This whole conflict is shot through with imperialism all the way. The US is supporting Georgia not out of any principles, because as an imperialist state, the US has zero principles other than profiteering, plunder and subjection of other states and peoples. The US supports secessionism when it benefits imperialist interests, and opposes it when it hinders imperialist interests!
And of course, it never admits this. When it supports secessionism, the US apparently invokes the right of self-determination. When it opposes secessionism, the US invokes the right of inviolability of national borders, as it is doing now in the case of Georgia. Contradictory, no? Sure is!
The sleazy and pro-imperialist US media fails to point out this dissonance, and your average educated American will inconsistently invoke, like a moron, either the right of self-determination of the right of inviolability of borders, depending, as they support the imperial projects that they have been inculcated to support.
This conflict, like all imperialist bullshit wars, boils down to various imperialist nations waging armed conflict over access to markets and natural resources.
As is, oil from Azerbaijan and gas from the Stans goes through Georgia and I believe hooks up with Russian pipelines. The US, Georgia, Israel and Turkey wish to cut Russia out of the deal and cut a new pipeline through Georgia to Turkey. At least some of the oil will then go to Israel and from there, through the Suez and out to the Indian Ocean and various nations in that region, in particular India.
Someone suggested to me that the West is cutting this new pipeline because they are afraid that Russia will cut off the flow of oil to the West. Forget it. They will not do any such thing unless pushed to the wall. The US, Israel, Georgia and probably Turkey are all doing this because they are more or less imperialist states.
This conflict is also shot through with old Cold War "Beware the bear" bullshit. Even after the fall of Communism and the return of capitalism to Russia, US imperialism and anti-Communists everywhere have continued to see Russia through and Cold War and anti-Communist lens. It is as if the fall of the USSR never occurred. Any analysis of the conflict between the US and the West that leaves out this essential element is lacking.
As a socialist, I want to ask the supporters of capitalism on this blog some questions.
Show me how advanced capitalism can exist without imperialism. Prove to me that an advanced capitalist state can exist in the modern world without becoming an imperialist power.
It seems to me that large capitalist states are typically mandated to become imperialist states and from there to engage in conflict, often armed, with other imperialist states for markets and natural resources. If this is so (and I think it is) how then can one support capitalism as it now exists, since it seems to be impossible to have large capitalist states that are not also imperialist?
As you might have guessed, I support the right of South Ossetia to self-determination and to secede from Georgia and the right, however sleazy, of Russia to assist them in this principled endeavor.
This conflict is getting real nasty real quick. Russia is threatening Israel and the US over their support for Georgia and the US has incredibly ordered Russia to withdraw its forces from South Ossetia. And the conflict very quickly seems to have expanded to Abkhazia. We have the potential for a really nasty conflict here.
I would like to point out that the neoconservative scum who now pretty much run this country are first and foremost ferocious imperialists. They are some of the most voracious backers of US imperialism out there. In this endeavor, neoconservatives have been picking fights with Russia for a long time now.
Many Jewish neoconservatives are involved in this imperial conflict with Russia, and unfortunately, in this light, they have supported Chechen independence not out of any decent principles, since neocons have no principles, but just to screw Russia.
The fact that elements of imperialism have supported the Chechen separatists rouses Russian nationalism and paranoia and makes Russia all the less likely to give the Chechens and other Caucasian peoples the independence they deserve.
It's not known why the neocons have such a beef with Russia, but they also backed the Russian Jewish oligarchs in their fleecing of Russia. There seems to be an old beef between Jewish nationalists and Russia.
We can see the outlines of this conflict in the campaign to "free the Soviet Jews", which was one of the original catalysts for the formation of the Jewish neocons back in the 1970's. There may also be a "screw the Russians" mindset dating from the hostile history of Russians and Jews in Russia, a history replete with pogroms of Jews.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
The Russian Character Again
It's always a bit difficult to touch on national characters, especially nowadays in PC times, but as long as one avoids biological racism and instead sees national character as cultural and shaped by history, geography and whatnot, it certainly is a valid endeavor.
The very notion that examinations of national character (national culture, really) is "racist" is one of the most sickening notions that has warped out of the anti-racism of the 1960's. In inventing the most un-progressive notion of Identity Politics (essentially ethnic nationalism of one sort or another, and automatically a precursor to some sort of fascism, thus) the Left in the 1960's opened the barn door for this kettle of worms.
Nowadays, rightwing nationalists probably scream racism as much as leftwingers do. If anyone criticizes their crappy and reactionary culture (note the long Left tradition of cultural critique here), the Right, and increasingly, even the Insane Left, screams racism.
This is sad more than anything else.
Every single progressive achievement in the history of mankind has come about through often-ferocious critique of existing reactionary culture. As soon as we mark off every culture, no matter how stupid, insane, backwards, reactionary or horrible, as equally valuable (another mad Left endeavor - the equality of all cultures), we've basically wiped out any chance to change that culture.
In this way the Left has actually jumped into bed with the worst of the cultural conservatives and reactionaries.
I don't really see much hope for change in any of this as long as the Left continues on this idiot phobia about "racism". Culture isn't race. Culture is culture, and it's mutable, often in a brief period of time, as the Maoists showed us. There's nothing essential or biological about culture.
Here at Robert Lindsay, we love to bash any old culture we feel like bashing. In this case, we are taking on the Russians. It's not really a bash - it's more an explication, but the cultural fetishists and Russian nationalists may well take umbrage.
We already looked at the Russian character in a previous post.
Let's expand on this a bit by looking at National Bolsheviks. Now, these guys, and other Third Positionists and "let's move beyond Right and Left" folks, do come around to the blog from time to time. I'm all ears, but everyone like this is pushing some kind of racism, usually some kind of White nationalism.
They are socialists, I'll grant em that, and US White nationalism is so useless and harmless, I'm almost tempted to ally with most any socialist out there, even these guys.
But let's take a look at the National Bolshevik Party in Russia. I read their platform, and I just cannot support them. They are absurdly anti-Semitic, they support the horrible war in Chechnya (!) and they apparently believe that Russia should conquer all of Europe and incorporate it into Russia.
This is actually an old Russian nationalist dream that goes back to 1850 or so - it has a pretty complicated philosophy behind it. Reader James Hajduk refers to it as "Russian messianism".
It has to do with the rivalry and even hatred that Russians feel towards the West. This refers to the conflict with Orthodoxy vs Roman Christianity, and contempt for Western science (recall that Dostoevsky wished to do away with mathematics because it came from the West), materialism, shallowness, violence and inequality.
You can see this loud and clear in both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - Tolstoy rejects almost everything but spirituality. There is a strain of asceticism, contempt for materialism and the pleasures of the flesh, and a strong spirituality running through it. The West may be wealthier but the Russian is more pure, more connected to the Earth, more spiritual and especially he has suffered more.
There is a rejection of the Western tradition that knowledge can be gained through the senses. Similar to the early Gnostics, these Russians felt that the body and the senses were corrupt, tainted and liable to distortion, and hence could not be trusted to reveal the truth.
What could reveal the truth? Only spirituality in the form of Orthodox Christianity. This contempt for the body and the pleasures of this Earth led some leading thinkers such as Tolstoy to even reject sex. This never caught on with Russian peasants, who merely rejected marriage while embracing sex with gusto.
All of these things, especially the suffering, combine to make Russia superior to the West. Therefore Europe needs to be conquered and put under Russian rule to cure the West of its evil. In a way, I think Stalin may have been trying to do this in Eastern Europe.
All of these strains of Russian character were actually present in the USSR too, but most don't realize it. In fact, in order to understand Bolshevism, one must first understand the Russian character. There is also a strong "rejection of everything" and near-nihilism or outright nihilism to this type of thought.
This strain of thinking was very popular in a group of Russian thinkers in the 1850's known as Slavophiles. Some of these intellectuals, known as narodniks, went out to peasant villages to live with the peasants, but were unfortunately rejected by the peasants. There was a big conflict during this time between the Slavophiles and another group called Westernizers.
"Russia" is a complex concept. European, Asian, Roman (Moscow as the Third Rome), Orthodox Christian, atheist and nihilist elements all blend, and different Russians stress different elements. Often, they stress mutually contradictory elements at the same time, such that we see such peculiarities as the Orthodox atheist, the spiritual nihilist, etc.
The Soviet Union, despite the difference in ideology from Tsarist Russia, often pursued similar geopolitical goals.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
The very notion that examinations of national character (national culture, really) is "racist" is one of the most sickening notions that has warped out of the anti-racism of the 1960's. In inventing the most un-progressive notion of Identity Politics (essentially ethnic nationalism of one sort or another, and automatically a precursor to some sort of fascism, thus) the Left in the 1960's opened the barn door for this kettle of worms.
Nowadays, rightwing nationalists probably scream racism as much as leftwingers do. If anyone criticizes their crappy and reactionary culture (note the long Left tradition of cultural critique here), the Right, and increasingly, even the Insane Left, screams racism.
This is sad more than anything else.
Every single progressive achievement in the history of mankind has come about through often-ferocious critique of existing reactionary culture. As soon as we mark off every culture, no matter how stupid, insane, backwards, reactionary or horrible, as equally valuable (another mad Left endeavor - the equality of all cultures), we've basically wiped out any chance to change that culture.
In this way the Left has actually jumped into bed with the worst of the cultural conservatives and reactionaries.
I don't really see much hope for change in any of this as long as the Left continues on this idiot phobia about "racism". Culture isn't race. Culture is culture, and it's mutable, often in a brief period of time, as the Maoists showed us. There's nothing essential or biological about culture.
Here at Robert Lindsay, we love to bash any old culture we feel like bashing. In this case, we are taking on the Russians. It's not really a bash - it's more an explication, but the cultural fetishists and Russian nationalists may well take umbrage.
We already looked at the Russian character in a previous post.
Let's expand on this a bit by looking at National Bolsheviks. Now, these guys, and other Third Positionists and "let's move beyond Right and Left" folks, do come around to the blog from time to time. I'm all ears, but everyone like this is pushing some kind of racism, usually some kind of White nationalism.
They are socialists, I'll grant em that, and US White nationalism is so useless and harmless, I'm almost tempted to ally with most any socialist out there, even these guys.
But let's take a look at the National Bolshevik Party in Russia. I read their platform, and I just cannot support them. They are absurdly anti-Semitic, they support the horrible war in Chechnya (!) and they apparently believe that Russia should conquer all of Europe and incorporate it into Russia.
This is actually an old Russian nationalist dream that goes back to 1850 or so - it has a pretty complicated philosophy behind it. Reader James Hajduk refers to it as "Russian messianism".
It has to do with the rivalry and even hatred that Russians feel towards the West. This refers to the conflict with Orthodoxy vs Roman Christianity, and contempt for Western science (recall that Dostoevsky wished to do away with mathematics because it came from the West), materialism, shallowness, violence and inequality.
You can see this loud and clear in both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - Tolstoy rejects almost everything but spirituality. There is a strain of asceticism, contempt for materialism and the pleasures of the flesh, and a strong spirituality running through it. The West may be wealthier but the Russian is more pure, more connected to the Earth, more spiritual and especially he has suffered more.
There is a rejection of the Western tradition that knowledge can be gained through the senses. Similar to the early Gnostics, these Russians felt that the body and the senses were corrupt, tainted and liable to distortion, and hence could not be trusted to reveal the truth.
What could reveal the truth? Only spirituality in the form of Orthodox Christianity. This contempt for the body and the pleasures of this Earth led some leading thinkers such as Tolstoy to even reject sex. This never caught on with Russian peasants, who merely rejected marriage while embracing sex with gusto.
All of these things, especially the suffering, combine to make Russia superior to the West. Therefore Europe needs to be conquered and put under Russian rule to cure the West of its evil. In a way, I think Stalin may have been trying to do this in Eastern Europe.
All of these strains of Russian character were actually present in the USSR too, but most don't realize it. In fact, in order to understand Bolshevism, one must first understand the Russian character. There is also a strong "rejection of everything" and near-nihilism or outright nihilism to this type of thought.
This strain of thinking was very popular in a group of Russian thinkers in the 1850's known as Slavophiles. Some of these intellectuals, known as narodniks, went out to peasant villages to live with the peasants, but were unfortunately rejected by the peasants. There was a big conflict during this time between the Slavophiles and another group called Westernizers.
"Russia" is a complex concept. European, Asian, Roman (Moscow as the Third Rome), Orthodox Christian, atheist and nihilist elements all blend, and different Russians stress different elements. Often, they stress mutually contradictory elements at the same time, such that we see such peculiarities as the Orthodox atheist, the spiritual nihilist, etc.
The Soviet Union, despite the difference in ideology from Tsarist Russia, often pursued similar geopolitical goals.
Notes
1. I incorporated some of my email conversation with perceptive reader James Hajduk in writing this post.Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Jews Versus Lithuanians
From this Lithuanian nationalist site.
It's pretty familiar stuff, similar to Polish anti-Semitism after the war. Basically, they are claiming that the Jews helped the USSR when the USSR invaded Lithuania in 1940. It's true that there were some arrests and killings in the Baltic States when the Soviets took over. All of the Baltic states have always hated Communism, possibly because it was imposed at gunpoint.
In 1941, the Nazis invaded, and they occupied the place until 1944. It would seem to me that the Nazis were much worse as far as killing folks than the USSR, but that's just a WAG.
The Holocaust in Lithuania was one of the worst in any nation. There were about 200,000 Jews there when the Nazis invaded, and only 3-4% of them survived, about a 98% death rate.
I guess I can see why the Jews welcomed the Red Army with open arms.
The Holocaust here was a bit peculiar because the locals joined in the killing in a worse way than in most other Axis nations. In particular, the local police, and I believe, even regular citizens, joined in the frenzy.
The Polish (AK) and Lithuanian partisans both fought each other here in what was one of the war's sillier moments. Apparently the AK were Polish nationalists who had some territorial designs on Lithuania as a part of Poland. A lot of killing on all sides here, including civilians. Nasty fight.
Apparently some Jews who served under Stalin in 1940 were responsible for killing some Lithuanians, and the nationalists want these Jews to be extradited from Israel, where they have taken refuge, on war crimes charges.
No one has been able to try any Allies on war crimes charges during WW2. Otherwise we have to go after the bombers of Dresden and Frankfurt. History is written by the victors, and they also host the war crimes trials. That's just the way it goes. If you don't like it, don't lose a war, or if you do, try to fight at least slightly civilized while you are in conflict.
I really know little about the situation in Lithuania during WW2, and in particular, I am not able to rebut the nationalists' charges, although I suspect that they are false. The Lithuanians killed 98% of their Jews because some Jews helped the invading USSR a while earlier? Forget it. I don't buy it. But it might be nice to prove it.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
It's pretty familiar stuff, similar to Polish anti-Semitism after the war. Basically, they are claiming that the Jews helped the USSR when the USSR invaded Lithuania in 1940. It's true that there were some arrests and killings in the Baltic States when the Soviets took over. All of the Baltic states have always hated Communism, possibly because it was imposed at gunpoint.
In 1941, the Nazis invaded, and they occupied the place until 1944. It would seem to me that the Nazis were much worse as far as killing folks than the USSR, but that's just a WAG.
The Holocaust in Lithuania was one of the worst in any nation. There were about 200,000 Jews there when the Nazis invaded, and only 3-4% of them survived, about a 98% death rate.
I guess I can see why the Jews welcomed the Red Army with open arms.
The Holocaust here was a bit peculiar because the locals joined in the killing in a worse way than in most other Axis nations. In particular, the local police, and I believe, even regular citizens, joined in the frenzy.
The Polish (AK) and Lithuanian partisans both fought each other here in what was one of the war's sillier moments. Apparently the AK were Polish nationalists who had some territorial designs on Lithuania as a part of Poland. A lot of killing on all sides here, including civilians. Nasty fight.
Apparently some Jews who served under Stalin in 1940 were responsible for killing some Lithuanians, and the nationalists want these Jews to be extradited from Israel, where they have taken refuge, on war crimes charges.
No one has been able to try any Allies on war crimes charges during WW2. Otherwise we have to go after the bombers of Dresden and Frankfurt. History is written by the victors, and they also host the war crimes trials. That's just the way it goes. If you don't like it, don't lose a war, or if you do, try to fight at least slightly civilized while you are in conflict.
I really know little about the situation in Lithuania during WW2, and in particular, I am not able to rebut the nationalists' charges, although I suspect that they are false. The Lithuanians killed 98% of their Jews because some Jews helped the invading USSR a while earlier? Forget it. I don't buy it. But it might be nice to prove it.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Poles, Ukrainians and Russians Versus Jews
This post is in response to a commenter who commented that Ukrainians, Russians and Poles are the biggest anti-Semites of all because Jews dominated their economies for so long and because of the Jewish role in implementing Judeo-Bolshevism on the backs of an unwilling people.
1. They wanted Jews to convert to Catholicism.
2. Catholicism was doctrinally opposed to Judaism.
3. Jews refused to assimilate to Polish culture.
4. Jews often refused to learn Polish (though this has been overblown as many Jews did learn Polish).
5. Competition between poor Jews and poor Poles.
6. Role of Jews in Communism, which most Poles really hated. As Stalin said, bringing Communism to Poland was like putting a saddle on a horse. The main reason Poles opposed Communism was not that they were wonderful people or anything, but it was due to their Catholicism.
The business about Jews promoting Communism mostly applies to the postwar period, so Poles can hardly use it as an excuse for their behavior during the war.
Jews never dominated the economy of Poland at any time to my knowledge, unless you want to go way back in time 100's of years. By the mid to late 1800's, there was a massive population explosion of Polish Jews and this ended up impoverishing a large number of them.
Let this be a lesson to all of those racialists, racists, nationalists and ethnic nationalist pro-natalists who say that having lots of babies is wonderful for the economy!
Many Ukrainians are anti-Semites, but note that there was mass volunteerism when Germany invaded Ukraine. There were quite a few fighting with the Ukrainian Nazis (nationalists), yes, but there were vastly more fighting with the USSR and then in partisan bands. These partisan bands were full of Jews.
Nowadays, many Ukrainians are anti-Semites because many are nationalists. The nationalist-Nazi line has gone over pretty well, but that's mostly in the Western Ukraine. In the eastern Ukraine, there is not much anti-Semitism and they are pro-Soviet. This is part of the Holodomor crowd.
It's not really known how nationalist or anti-Semitic Ukrainians were from 1945-1990. The Ukrainian nationalists blow things way out of proportion. Keep in mind that many more Ukrainians joined partisan bands and volunteered for the Red Army than joined the nationalist bands.
Note that the Red Army and the partisans were in a war to death with the nationalists - a terrible and gruesome war with atrocities on all sides. The Holodomor - Ukrainian nationalist crowd is associated with the nationalist bands who fought alongside the Nazis against the Red Army and partisan bands in WW2.
To say that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians still line up with the nationalist - Nazis against the partisans, or that it was always this way, is completely mistaken. Many Ukrainian peasants were quite happy to be rid of those kulak bastards, and peasants were the overwhelming majority in the Ukraine, not kulaks.
Yes, there was a famine in the Ukraine, but life expectancy exploded in the Ukraine before and afterwards. This was a time of hardship, and people were just taking a lot of this horror in stride.
I would guess that the vast majority of Ukrainians felt or later figured out that the Nazis were far worse for the Ukraine (and had an infinitely worse plan for the future) than Stalin ever did. During WW2 and even afterwards, most Ukrainians did not believe in this Holodomor bullshit, and most felt that about 2 million died.
Ukraine lost 25% of its population during the Nazi invasion, and the Nazis had deadly plans for most of the rest. That's way more than died in any kind of Holodomor, fake or otherwise.
Russians do not hold it against Jews that they played a role in Communism. Communism is actually pretty popular in Russia right now, or at least it is not unpopular. The Russian nationalist fascists like Solzhenitsyn are not that common and even the Russian Nazis are usually socialists and even pro-Stalin. Stalin is positively regarded by most Russians today.
There is resentment against Jews by Russians, but Jews never dominated the economy in either Ukraine or Russia except for now with the return to capitalism, so there is now some resentment due to their role in looting the USSR.
Russians started hating Israel because the Israelis lined up with the West after WW2. That's what that was all about. Also E European Jews (Zionists) were caught spying for the US over and over. The USSR always disliked Jewish nationalism so that was another reason they opposed Israel.
But initially Stalin supported Israel when it looked like they were going to be pro-Soviet or even neutral. They turned pro-West real quick. This explains Stalin's anti-Semitic turn in the USSR after the war.
At one point in the late 40's someone asked Stalin why he was persecuting the leaders of the Jewish organizations in the USSR and he said, "But you do not understand! They are all Zionists!" So he wasn't going after them because they were Jews but because a lot of them were thought to be lining up with the West in the Cold War.Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Z comments: But the most antisemitic people in the world are Romanians."I respond: Ok, first of all, it's not all Ukrainians who are anti-Semites. It's much more prevalent amongst Poles. It's true that Poles are anti-Semites for a variety of reasons:
I'd actually say that the Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles are actually more antisemitic that Romanians, if only because there were so many more Jews in those countries as compared to Romania.
So many of the citizens in all of these Eastern European countries are antisemitic because Ashkenazi Jews dominated their economies for so long (as a non-native ethnic minority) and played such a major role in the repressive form of Communism that existed there...so can you really blame them for harboring ill-will toward them?
1. They wanted Jews to convert to Catholicism.
2. Catholicism was doctrinally opposed to Judaism.
3. Jews refused to assimilate to Polish culture.
4. Jews often refused to learn Polish (though this has been overblown as many Jews did learn Polish).
5. Competition between poor Jews and poor Poles.
6. Role of Jews in Communism, which most Poles really hated. As Stalin said, bringing Communism to Poland was like putting a saddle on a horse. The main reason Poles opposed Communism was not that they were wonderful people or anything, but it was due to their Catholicism.
The business about Jews promoting Communism mostly applies to the postwar period, so Poles can hardly use it as an excuse for their behavior during the war.
Jews never dominated the economy of Poland at any time to my knowledge, unless you want to go way back in time 100's of years. By the mid to late 1800's, there was a massive population explosion of Polish Jews and this ended up impoverishing a large number of them.
Let this be a lesson to all of those racialists, racists, nationalists and ethnic nationalist pro-natalists who say that having lots of babies is wonderful for the economy!
Many Ukrainians are anti-Semites, but note that there was mass volunteerism when Germany invaded Ukraine. There were quite a few fighting with the Ukrainian Nazis (nationalists), yes, but there were vastly more fighting with the USSR and then in partisan bands. These partisan bands were full of Jews.
Nowadays, many Ukrainians are anti-Semites because many are nationalists. The nationalist-Nazi line has gone over pretty well, but that's mostly in the Western Ukraine. In the eastern Ukraine, there is not much anti-Semitism and they are pro-Soviet. This is part of the Holodomor crowd.
It's not really known how nationalist or anti-Semitic Ukrainians were from 1945-1990. The Ukrainian nationalists blow things way out of proportion. Keep in mind that many more Ukrainians joined partisan bands and volunteered for the Red Army than joined the nationalist bands.
Note that the Red Army and the partisans were in a war to death with the nationalists - a terrible and gruesome war with atrocities on all sides. The Holodomor - Ukrainian nationalist crowd is associated with the nationalist bands who fought alongside the Nazis against the Red Army and partisan bands in WW2.
To say that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians still line up with the nationalist - Nazis against the partisans, or that it was always this way, is completely mistaken. Many Ukrainian peasants were quite happy to be rid of those kulak bastards, and peasants were the overwhelming majority in the Ukraine, not kulaks.
Yes, there was a famine in the Ukraine, but life expectancy exploded in the Ukraine before and afterwards. This was a time of hardship, and people were just taking a lot of this horror in stride.
I would guess that the vast majority of Ukrainians felt or later figured out that the Nazis were far worse for the Ukraine (and had an infinitely worse plan for the future) than Stalin ever did. During WW2 and even afterwards, most Ukrainians did not believe in this Holodomor bullshit, and most felt that about 2 million died.
Ukraine lost 25% of its population during the Nazi invasion, and the Nazis had deadly plans for most of the rest. That's way more than died in any kind of Holodomor, fake or otherwise.
Russians do not hold it against Jews that they played a role in Communism. Communism is actually pretty popular in Russia right now, or at least it is not unpopular. The Russian nationalist fascists like Solzhenitsyn are not that common and even the Russian Nazis are usually socialists and even pro-Stalin. Stalin is positively regarded by most Russians today.
There is resentment against Jews by Russians, but Jews never dominated the economy in either Ukraine or Russia except for now with the return to capitalism, so there is now some resentment due to their role in looting the USSR.
Russians started hating Israel because the Israelis lined up with the West after WW2. That's what that was all about. Also E European Jews (Zionists) were caught spying for the US over and over. The USSR always disliked Jewish nationalism so that was another reason they opposed Israel.
But initially Stalin supported Israel when it looked like they were going to be pro-Soviet or even neutral. They turned pro-West real quick. This explains Stalin's anti-Semitic turn in the USSR after the war.
At one point in the late 40's someone asked Stalin why he was persecuting the leaders of the Jewish organizations in the USSR and he said, "But you do not understand! They are all Zionists!" So he wasn't going after them because they were Jews but because a lot of them were thought to be lining up with the West in the Cold War.Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Response to Zionist Apologist
Always-excellent commenter James Schipper responds to Zionist Apologist from a previous post.
Pretty good stuff here. The notion that the problem with Jews is Judaism itself is similar to the arguments of Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir. However, Kevin MacDonald points out that Jewish ethnocentrism does not go away in the absence of Judaism. A good document that makes that clear is his book review of Yuri Slezkine's The Jewish Century.
I disagree with a lot in that review, but all you have to do is look around at a lot of Jewish radicals, and it's clear that they have not yet, and never will, make a complete break with their Jewish identity. So pulling the Judaism out of the Jew does not solve the problem. As my physician noted when I told him that according to Jewish law, you never quit being a Jew, "So they get a piece of you, eh?"
In an unpublished interview with me, I asked Kevin MacDonald if the Jews would ever become less ethnocentric with time. He said emphatically, "No. The Jews will always be ethnocentric.."
Incidentally, I found MacDonald to be a warm, friendly, sane, intelligent and gracious man. I also did not think he was the slightest bit anti-Semitic, but maybe I am mistaken. He seemed to be a Judeophile in a sense; he was totally fascinated with Jews.
Jewish dual loyalty has been a problem everywhere there are Jews and is a direct consequence of their extreme ethnocentrism and nothing else, although James' suggests that Judaism also plays a role.
James' comments:
Giving Uganda to the Zionists would have been just as unjust as giving Palestine to them. Uganda wasn't empty territory either. As to Argentina, it was a sovereign country and at the time of Herzl it had just learned to develop the pampas. Why on earth would they give some of their pampas to outsiders from Europe?
The best territory to cede to the Zionists would have been Western Australia. At the time it was sparsely populated -- it still is -- and unlike Palestine, it could easily have accommodated all the Jews of the world. Granted, Western Australia is mainly arid or semi-arid, but so is Palestine, with the difference that WA is huge. Unfortunately, the stinking British imperialists preferred to be generous with Arab land.
A diaspora is simply the result of emigration. Since 1880, there has been an Italian diaspora. Are these diaspora Italians sick? No, and their diaspora will soon disappear through assimilation because Italians do not have a tribal religion which tells them that Italians are God's chosen people and that Italy is their sacred homeland, to which they should one day return.
The problem of Jews can be summed up in one word: Judaism. It is because of their religion that Jews can't be fully assimilated and will always remain a foreign or semi-foreign body in Gentile societies. Judaism tells Jews that they are a people, not a religious community. Nobody refers to Lutherans. Orthodox, Sikhs, Mormons as a people because those religions are non-tribal.
Consider the difference between Presbyterians and Jews. Most Presbyterians in the world have at least some Scottish ancestry, but Presbyterianism is not at all about Scots or Scotland. Nearly all Sikhs are Punjabis or descend from Punjabis, but the Sikh religion is not in the least about Punjabis. By contrast, Judaism is all about Jews and their promised land.
If people sincerely believe in Judaism, one can have some sympathy for them, in the way that one can sympathize with a Jehovah's Witness who sincerely believes that a blood transfusion is against God's will.
It is much harder to have sympathy for atheists who remain proudly Jewish and become Zionists. To stop believing in Judaism while continuing to believe that Jews are a people and that Israel is their sacred soil is like stopping to believe in Catholicism but continue to obey the Pope.
In one way, Israel made life more difficult for Jews in Gentile countries because the existence of Israel makes Jews vulnerable to the charge of dual loyalty. This charge is more than a figment of anti-Semitic imagination.
Pretty good stuff here. The notion that the problem with Jews is Judaism itself is similar to the arguments of Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir. However, Kevin MacDonald points out that Jewish ethnocentrism does not go away in the absence of Judaism. A good document that makes that clear is his book review of Yuri Slezkine's The Jewish Century.
I disagree with a lot in that review, but all you have to do is look around at a lot of Jewish radicals, and it's clear that they have not yet, and never will, make a complete break with their Jewish identity. So pulling the Judaism out of the Jew does not solve the problem. As my physician noted when I told him that according to Jewish law, you never quit being a Jew, "So they get a piece of you, eh?"
In an unpublished interview with me, I asked Kevin MacDonald if the Jews would ever become less ethnocentric with time. He said emphatically, "No. The Jews will always be ethnocentric.."
Incidentally, I found MacDonald to be a warm, friendly, sane, intelligent and gracious man. I also did not think he was the slightest bit anti-Semitic, but maybe I am mistaken. He seemed to be a Judeophile in a sense; he was totally fascinated with Jews.
Jewish dual loyalty has been a problem everywhere there are Jews and is a direct consequence of their extreme ethnocentrism and nothing else, although James' suggests that Judaism also plays a role.
James' comments:
Giving Uganda to the Zionists would have been just as unjust as giving Palestine to them. Uganda wasn't empty territory either. As to Argentina, it was a sovereign country and at the time of Herzl it had just learned to develop the pampas. Why on earth would they give some of their pampas to outsiders from Europe?
The best territory to cede to the Zionists would have been Western Australia. At the time it was sparsely populated -- it still is -- and unlike Palestine, it could easily have accommodated all the Jews of the world. Granted, Western Australia is mainly arid or semi-arid, but so is Palestine, with the difference that WA is huge. Unfortunately, the stinking British imperialists preferred to be generous with Arab land.
A diaspora is simply the result of emigration. Since 1880, there has been an Italian diaspora. Are these diaspora Italians sick? No, and their diaspora will soon disappear through assimilation because Italians do not have a tribal religion which tells them that Italians are God's chosen people and that Italy is their sacred homeland, to which they should one day return.
The problem of Jews can be summed up in one word: Judaism. It is because of their religion that Jews can't be fully assimilated and will always remain a foreign or semi-foreign body in Gentile societies. Judaism tells Jews that they are a people, not a religious community. Nobody refers to Lutherans. Orthodox, Sikhs, Mormons as a people because those religions are non-tribal.
Consider the difference between Presbyterians and Jews. Most Presbyterians in the world have at least some Scottish ancestry, but Presbyterianism is not at all about Scots or Scotland. Nearly all Sikhs are Punjabis or descend from Punjabis, but the Sikh religion is not in the least about Punjabis. By contrast, Judaism is all about Jews and their promised land.
If people sincerely believe in Judaism, one can have some sympathy for them, in the way that one can sympathize with a Jehovah's Witness who sincerely believes that a blood transfusion is against God's will.
It is much harder to have sympathy for atheists who remain proudly Jewish and become Zionists. To stop believing in Judaism while continuing to believe that Jews are a people and that Israel is their sacred soil is like stopping to believe in Catholicism but continue to obey the Pope.
In one way, Israel made life more difficult for Jews in Gentile countries because the existence of Israel makes Jews vulnerable to the charge of dual loyalty. This charge is more than a figment of anti-Semitic imagination.
References
- MacDonald, Kevin. 2005. Stalin's Willing Executioners: Jews as a Hostile Elite in the USSR - Review of Yuri Slezkine's The Jewish Century. The Occidental Quarterly: 5(3), 65-100.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
An Apologetics For Zionism
This comment was left on my site by a fellow who called himself "Apologist for Zionism". He makes some very interesting points on here. We have dealt with his notion that every ethnic group deserves a state on this blog previously. Non-territorial nations certainly do not deserve a state at all, unless someone wants to donate one to them.
These comments are interesting because in many ways they are straight of out of Theodor Herzl himself. Herzl has been accused by anti-Zionists of being a Jewish anti-Semite, and he was a serious critic of the Jews. He felt that Jews and Gentiles could not live together and he felt that the fault was equally divided between the two groups.
He originally favored Jewish assimilation, but after the Dreyfus Affair in France in the late 1800's (this shocked many people because they thought that anti-Semitism in France was history by this time) he changed his mind and figured that the only way forward was for Jews and Gentiles to live in permanent separation.
He noted that when Jews did well, they become very successful businessmen and aroused the envy and wrath of the Gentiles, and when they sank into poverty, they bred radicals like rabbits.
The question of whether or not nations have carrying capacities for Jews is most interesting, but I don't even want to go there. The author suggests that the US is presently reaching such a capacity.
Another very successful minority similar to Jews is the Overseas Chinese. There have been some pogroms against the Overseas Chinese, but it's nothing compared to what Jews have been through. Only about 3% of the population, they control about ~70% of the economies of, say, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Now, no group of people, no matter how kind-hearted or progressive, is going to put up with that kind of bullshit for long, and there is no way that the Overseas Chinese work 23 times harder or are 23 times smarter than Indonesians or Filipinos. At the outside, perhaps they are 3.5 times more intelligent than Indonesians or Filipinos. This would entitle them, with 3% of the population, to ~10% of the wealth, not an insane 70%.
The problem with capitalism is that in amasses such insane fortunes in the hands of small groups who frankly have not earned it due to either their genes or their harder work. In so doing, capitalism virtually guarantees endless racial conflict.
There are differences between Jews and Overseas Chinese. The Overseas Chinese tend to keep their heads down, keep out of politics, and are not endlessly meddling in the cultural and political affairs of the nation - they just focus on making money. Jews focus on making money too, but they can't seem to help trying to change society, a habit that arouses mountains of anti-Semitism.
This is an interesting comment:
Engdahl is no anti-Semite, but he felt that the predominance of finance capital in Britain led to colonial adventures instead of building up domestic industry, to the eventual detriment of Britain. He then noted that in the 1920's and 1930's, German products were said to be better than British products.
I don't know about Jewish emancipation leading to the Industrial Revolution in Britain and Germany, but I believe that Jews played an essential role in the development of capitalism itself.
I also don't agree with the "German socialist" viewpoint that Hitler later picked up - along with Israel Shamir - that the Jews are a virus-like people, a race of rootless cosmopolitans without ties to the blood and soil and without loyalty to the nation, as the German capitalists supposedly had.
It's my understanding that in the 1920's, many top German capitalists, including factory owners, were Jews. Jews are now heavily involved in industry here in the US. Jews do not limit themselves anymore to finance capital, and they are not very big players in it anymore anyway, as it all seems to be taken over by multinational banks in the US, Europe and Asia with few to no Jewish connections.
The role of the Jews in finance capital in the past was quite large (they almost controlled European banking from ~1850-1930 or so).
The big players in the UK 110 years ago were not Jews but a couple of cabals, one centered around a man named Cecil Rhodes. This cabal also had ties to top UK universities like Oxford and Cambridge.
They went to the top boys schools like Eaton. They were active in colonialism and in groups such as the Oriental Society. They actually formed secret societies. It's true that Lord Rothschild was a member (at the periphery) of one of these secret societies, but he seems to have been the only Jew.
I really doubt that the dominance of finance capital (=Jewish money) in the UK 110 years ago is what led to colonial adventures. This group centered around Rhodes was very much into colonialism, and Britain was a huge industrial power in those days, mostly due to her Navy and her colonies.
Britain ruled the world from 1588 (the defeat of the Spanish Armada - and also the first stirrings of English nationalism - one of the first manifestations of classic European nationalism) all the way up until about 1935, when air power, notably German, successfully challenged British sea and colonial power.
German products have always been better than British products, especially fine machinery. I doubt the superiority of German fine machined products over such British products has much to do with Jewish money. There was plenty of Jewish money floating around Germany around that time too.
This cabal around Rhodes, I believe, continues to run The London Times to this very day, or at least they did in the mid 1960's.
At this point, the Jews are in Israel and they are not leaving. Radical Palestinians want to throw out every Jew who came after 1916 (The Balfour Declaration was in 1917). As a settler-colonist myself whose ancestors were still stealing Indian land for our settler-colonial project as late as 1873 in California (see Modoc Wars), this sort of thing makes me really uneasy.
Any settlement to the conflict in the Holy Land must take into account the safety of the Jews already there. I would hate to see a situation similar to Iraq where maniacal insurgents are running around slaughtering Jews at will and setting off car bombs and killing 100-200 Jews at a time. Arabs are Arabs, and I don't think Palestinians and Iraqis are all that different, except one comes from the Levant and the other from Mesopotamia.
I'm also not sure that Jewish-led industrialization in Germany (assuming it is a fact) led to the alienation and impoverishment of the rural people and the rise of Nazi blood and soil German ethnic nationalism, but it's a complicated question to be sure. The followers of the Nazis were mostly petit bourgeois, lower middle class office workers and the like. Rural dwellers were not so supportive.
Zionist Apologist writes:
These comments are interesting because in many ways they are straight of out of Theodor Herzl himself. Herzl has been accused by anti-Zionists of being a Jewish anti-Semite, and he was a serious critic of the Jews. He felt that Jews and Gentiles could not live together and he felt that the fault was equally divided between the two groups.
He originally favored Jewish assimilation, but after the Dreyfus Affair in France in the late 1800's (this shocked many people because they thought that anti-Semitism in France was history by this time) he changed his mind and figured that the only way forward was for Jews and Gentiles to live in permanent separation.
He noted that when Jews did well, they become very successful businessmen and aroused the envy and wrath of the Gentiles, and when they sank into poverty, they bred radicals like rabbits.
When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of all revolutionary parties; and at the same time, when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse. Herzl, Der Judenstaat, 1896, p.91.The commenter points out that many early Zionists were socialists who felt that one of the problems of the Jew was that he had gotten out of touch with the land itself (however, Jews were forbidden to own land for most of their stay in Europe). To cure this defect, these socialist Zionists supported a sort of back to the land thing that would get Jews' hands dirty and make them into salt of the Earth again.
The question of whether or not nations have carrying capacities for Jews is most interesting, but I don't even want to go there. The author suggests that the US is presently reaching such a capacity.
Another very successful minority similar to Jews is the Overseas Chinese. There have been some pogroms against the Overseas Chinese, but it's nothing compared to what Jews have been through. Only about 3% of the population, they control about ~70% of the economies of, say, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Now, no group of people, no matter how kind-hearted or progressive, is going to put up with that kind of bullshit for long, and there is no way that the Overseas Chinese work 23 times harder or are 23 times smarter than Indonesians or Filipinos. At the outside, perhaps they are 3.5 times more intelligent than Indonesians or Filipinos. This would entitle them, with 3% of the population, to ~10% of the wealth, not an insane 70%.
The problem with capitalism is that in amasses such insane fortunes in the hands of small groups who frankly have not earned it due to either their genes or their harder work. In so doing, capitalism virtually guarantees endless racial conflict.
There are differences between Jews and Overseas Chinese. The Overseas Chinese tend to keep their heads down, keep out of politics, and are not endlessly meddling in the cultural and political affairs of the nation - they just focus on making money. Jews focus on making money too, but they can't seem to help trying to change society, a habit that arouses mountains of anti-Semitism.
This is an interesting comment:
In fact, some theorists and historians even believe that it was the general emancipation of the Jews in the early-to-mid 19th Century that led to the Industrial Revolution in The West and the consequent rise of modern industrial-capitalism, which Jews also played and still played a large part in.That paragraph is most interesting, and led another commenter to rebut that Jews were never a part of industrialization in Germany and Britain; instead they were associated in Britain anyway with finance capital. The commenter then said he was reading a book by a guy named William Engdahl, A Century of War.
The countries in Europe where Jews had the most political and economic freedom, especially England and Germany, were also the first to industrialize on a large scale...coincidence?
Engdahl is no anti-Semite, but he felt that the predominance of finance capital in Britain led to colonial adventures instead of building up domestic industry, to the eventual detriment of Britain. He then noted that in the 1920's and 1930's, German products were said to be better than British products.
I don't know about Jewish emancipation leading to the Industrial Revolution in Britain and Germany, but I believe that Jews played an essential role in the development of capitalism itself.
I also don't agree with the "German socialist" viewpoint that Hitler later picked up - along with Israel Shamir - that the Jews are a virus-like people, a race of rootless cosmopolitans without ties to the blood and soil and without loyalty to the nation, as the German capitalists supposedly had.
It's my understanding that in the 1920's, many top German capitalists, including factory owners, were Jews. Jews are now heavily involved in industry here in the US. Jews do not limit themselves anymore to finance capital, and they are not very big players in it anymore anyway, as it all seems to be taken over by multinational banks in the US, Europe and Asia with few to no Jewish connections.
The role of the Jews in finance capital in the past was quite large (they almost controlled European banking from ~1850-1930 or so).
The big players in the UK 110 years ago were not Jews but a couple of cabals, one centered around a man named Cecil Rhodes. This cabal also had ties to top UK universities like Oxford and Cambridge.
They went to the top boys schools like Eaton. They were active in colonialism and in groups such as the Oriental Society. They actually formed secret societies. It's true that Lord Rothschild was a member (at the periphery) of one of these secret societies, but he seems to have been the only Jew.
I really doubt that the dominance of finance capital (=Jewish money) in the UK 110 years ago is what led to colonial adventures. This group centered around Rhodes was very much into colonialism, and Britain was a huge industrial power in those days, mostly due to her Navy and her colonies.
Britain ruled the world from 1588 (the defeat of the Spanish Armada - and also the first stirrings of English nationalism - one of the first manifestations of classic European nationalism) all the way up until about 1935, when air power, notably German, successfully challenged British sea and colonial power.
German products have always been better than British products, especially fine machinery. I doubt the superiority of German fine machined products over such British products has much to do with Jewish money. There was plenty of Jewish money floating around Germany around that time too.
This cabal around Rhodes, I believe, continues to run The London Times to this very day, or at least they did in the mid 1960's.
At this point, the Jews are in Israel and they are not leaving. Radical Palestinians want to throw out every Jew who came after 1916 (The Balfour Declaration was in 1917). As a settler-colonist myself whose ancestors were still stealing Indian land for our settler-colonial project as late as 1873 in California (see Modoc Wars), this sort of thing makes me really uneasy.
Any settlement to the conflict in the Holy Land must take into account the safety of the Jews already there. I would hate to see a situation similar to Iraq where maniacal insurgents are running around slaughtering Jews at will and setting off car bombs and killing 100-200 Jews at a time. Arabs are Arabs, and I don't think Palestinians and Iraqis are all that different, except one comes from the Levant and the other from Mesopotamia.
I'm also not sure that Jewish-led industrialization in Germany (assuming it is a fact) led to the alienation and impoverishment of the rural people and the rise of Nazi blood and soil German ethnic nationalism, but it's a complicated question to be sure. The followers of the Nazis were mostly petit bourgeois, lower middle class office workers and the like. Rural dwellers were not so supportive.
Zionist Apologist writes:
Every ethnic group has a right to a state. It's a shame that the Jews had to steal Israel, but at least they have a place to call home now. Imperialism is unfortunately a part of humanity's dark history -- and we now have to deal with the dark consequences.
A homeland for Jews (whether in Israel or wherever else) is the ONLY WAY to 'heal' the Jews, and it'll take many generations. I'm sure you've heard the oft-repeated phrase [paraphrasing]: "Diaspora is the disease, and Israel is the cure."
The Zionists were considering places like Uganda or Argentina early on, and places like those would have been a better choice than Israel in the long run since the Jews would have then been able to develop an agricultural base economy, which is the root of a settled and stable nation-state.
However, those places were very rural and undeveloped and hence probably wouldn't have been successful (as the Jews saw many of their 'agricultural colony' experiments in Argentina and Africa and the USA and Canada collapse in dismal failure).
I have noticed that Ashkenazi Jews have a definite inability to settle anywhere in any substantial numbers that hasn't already been fairly heavily settled or where they don't have access to a nearby network of fellow Jews.
It is telling as well that the early Zionist ideals of hard work, agricultural and manual labor, and other mainstays of key Zionist doctrines are now being filled by imported (!) labor (often Asian or Arab) since so many Israelis 'dislike' that kind of work and all want to be lawyers and doctors and professors and journalists and bankers (surprise, surprise) rather than just another cog in Israeli society.
Israel is even having problems with their military draft now. But, you see, THE WHOLE POINT of the Zionist experiment was for Jews to become cogs in a stable Jewish society instead of always being the perpetual Jewish 'Other' in the societies of foreign peoples.
The Zionists also noticed that sometimes Jews tended to take advantage of often-times gullible non-Jewish peoples because of their general intelligence and capacity to facilitate commerce, and they wanted to fix that too.
In fact, some theorists and historians even believe that it was the general emancipation of the Jews in the early-to-mid 19th Century that led to the Industrial Revolution in The West and the consequent rise of modern industrial-capitalism, which Jews also played and still played a large part in.
The countries in Europe where Jews had the most political and economic freedom, especially England and Germany, were also the first to industrialize on a large scale...coincidence?
The problem with this, though, is that this Jewish-inspired industrialization tended to slowly choke the lifestyle and economic systems of the rural/agrarian people of those countries who obviously weren't Jews, thus leading to resentment (antisemitism) - hence the Nazi doctrine of "blood and soil" and their desire to eventually resurrect the German peasantry in the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe.
I have also noticed that every nation has a sort of Jewish 'carrying capacity,' i.e. it is unable to manage, hold, or absorb Jews in very large numbers until antisemitism starts to break out (for instance, history shows that antisemitism in Germany grew very quickly as more and more Jews from Eastern Europe fled to Germany and Western Europe trying to escape poverty or antisemitism or whatever).
And in some ways I think that the saturation point may be close to being reached in North America.I must say that an island nation might actually be best for Jews, as long as it could be mostly self sufficient. As Ezra Pound once said in one of his infamous WWII radio broadcasts: "Sell 'em Australia."
References
- Herzl, Theodore. 1896. The Jewish State. New York: Dover Publications reprint in 1988. Originally published, 1946, New York: American Zionist Emergency Council, edited, original translation by Slyvie d'Avigdor revised by Jacob M. Alkow.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Complex Dance: Poles and Jews in World War 2
We have already been over this subject a few times on this blog and there is no need to rehash it forever, but despite all my reading on the subject, I still cannot seem to figure it out.
See A Short History of 20th Century Poland, Who Were the Real Terrorists in Kielce 1946?, Zionology or Żydokomuna?, Stojgniev O'Donnell, "The Feast of the Resurrection 2007" and It Is Better to Forget Some Things on this blog for background into this immensely complex subject.
The problem is that Polish nationalists and anti-Semites are continuing to use Jewish cooperation with the USSR during and after WW2 as a club to beat Jews over the head with and keep the anti-Semitic fight between Jews and Poles going on forever.
Here are a couple of examples of modern anti-Semitic Jewish nationalist stuff along these lines: Neighbours On The Eve Of The Holocaust. Polish-Jewish Relations In Soviet-Occupied Eastern Poland, 1939-1941 from the Canadian Polish nationalist Electronic Museum site and Jews Murdering Poles, Jedwabne and the atrocities in East Poland 1939-1941 (part II) by Prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak.
A slightly similar piece, but much more balanced, comes from an excerpt from a book called Darkness and Hope by Sam Halpern on the Zionist and Jewish religion site aish.com.
These pieces present a picture of Jews kissing the tanks of the invading Soviet troops, collaborating with the Soviets, and assisting the Soviets as they carried out punitive actions, including executions, against those who were supporting a Polish nationalist insurgency against the USSR.
It is important to note that the Nazis killed 90% of the Jews in Poland, and many Poles were all too willing to help the Nazis by pointing out Jews and in any other way they could think of. It's true that many Poles risked their lives to save Jews, but surely an even larger number helped the Nazis kill Jews by collaborating with them.
From an excerpt of an English translation of Leonid Smilovitsky's The Holocaust in Belarus 1941-1944, we see an entirely different picture, in which the nationalist forces of both Poland and Belarus were actively assisting the Nazis in killing as many Jews as possible.
The persecutors of Jews in the Belarus included the AK or Armia Krajowa, the Polish Home Army, the main Polish resistance group. This complements the common wisdom that the AK was basically a rightwing nationalist army (though they fought both the USSR and Nazi Germany) and they were not exactly Jew-friendly.
Polish nationalists had shown strong anti-Semitic feelings before and after the Nazi invasion. Nationalists of all stripes and their supporters, including Polish nationalists, were among those helping to herd the Jews to their deaths. After the Nazis invaded Eastern Poland and the Red Army retreated, most of the local Jewish men of fighting age were pressed into service in the Red Army, but many others just flat out volunteered.
Of course these Jews kissed the Soviet tanks and later volunteered for the Red Army. It's also not surprising that many Jews collaborated after the war with the Communist government. The USSR meant life for Polish Jews. Nazis and to some extent Polish nationalists and their supporters meant possible to sure death.
Smilovitsky's page indicates that East European nationalists of various stripes were running around killing an awful lot of Jews and even collaborating with the Nazis. They were killing plenty of civilians too.
The Jews were collaborating with the Red Army in their own counterinsurgency against the AK, who were fighting the USSR. There was a dirty war on both sides with killings of villagers and other civilians, massacres, burning of villages, expulsions, and on and on. It was a horrible time in a monstrous war with lots of death all around.
To characterize this whole complex period as "Commie pro-Soviet Jews running around murdering innocent Poles" is completely mistaken.
I'm willing to discuss this matter further if anyone has anything intelligent to add to the conversation.
See A Short History of 20th Century Poland, Who Were the Real Terrorists in Kielce 1946?, Zionology or Żydokomuna?, Stojgniev O'Donnell, "The Feast of the Resurrection 2007" and It Is Better to Forget Some Things on this blog for background into this immensely complex subject.
The problem is that Polish nationalists and anti-Semites are continuing to use Jewish cooperation with the USSR during and after WW2 as a club to beat Jews over the head with and keep the anti-Semitic fight between Jews and Poles going on forever.
Here are a couple of examples of modern anti-Semitic Jewish nationalist stuff along these lines: Neighbours On The Eve Of The Holocaust. Polish-Jewish Relations In Soviet-Occupied Eastern Poland, 1939-1941 from the Canadian Polish nationalist Electronic Museum site and Jews Murdering Poles, Jedwabne and the atrocities in East Poland 1939-1941 (part II) by Prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak.
A slightly similar piece, but much more balanced, comes from an excerpt from a book called Darkness and Hope by Sam Halpern on the Zionist and Jewish religion site aish.com.
These pieces present a picture of Jews kissing the tanks of the invading Soviet troops, collaborating with the Soviets, and assisting the Soviets as they carried out punitive actions, including executions, against those who were supporting a Polish nationalist insurgency against the USSR.
It is important to note that the Nazis killed 90% of the Jews in Poland, and many Poles were all too willing to help the Nazis by pointing out Jews and in any other way they could think of. It's true that many Poles risked their lives to save Jews, but surely an even larger number helped the Nazis kill Jews by collaborating with them.
From an excerpt of an English translation of Leonid Smilovitsky's The Holocaust in Belarus 1941-1944, we see an entirely different picture, in which the nationalist forces of both Poland and Belarus were actively assisting the Nazis in killing as many Jews as possible.
The persecutors of Jews in the Belarus included the AK or Armia Krajowa, the Polish Home Army, the main Polish resistance group. This complements the common wisdom that the AK was basically a rightwing nationalist army (though they fought both the USSR and Nazi Germany) and they were not exactly Jew-friendly.
Polish nationalists had shown strong anti-Semitic feelings before and after the Nazi invasion. Nationalists of all stripes and their supporters, including Polish nationalists, were among those helping to herd the Jews to their deaths. After the Nazis invaded Eastern Poland and the Red Army retreated, most of the local Jewish men of fighting age were pressed into service in the Red Army, but many others just flat out volunteered.
Of course these Jews kissed the Soviet tanks and later volunteered for the Red Army. It's also not surprising that many Jews collaborated after the war with the Communist government. The USSR meant life for Polish Jews. Nazis and to some extent Polish nationalists and their supporters meant possible to sure death.
Smilovitsky's page indicates that East European nationalists of various stripes were running around killing an awful lot of Jews and even collaborating with the Nazis. They were killing plenty of civilians too.
The Jews were collaborating with the Red Army in their own counterinsurgency against the AK, who were fighting the USSR. There was a dirty war on both sides with killings of villagers and other civilians, massacres, burning of villages, expulsions, and on and on. It was a horrible time in a monstrous war with lots of death all around.
To characterize this whole complex period as "Commie pro-Soviet Jews running around murdering innocent Poles" is completely mistaken.
I'm willing to discuss this matter further if anyone has anything intelligent to add to the conversation.
References
- Halpern, Sam. 1996. Darkness and Hope. pp. 37-40, 47-48. New York: Shengold.
Neighbours On The Eve Of The Holocaust. Polish-Jewish Relations In Soviet-Occupied Eastern Poland, 1939-1941. Electronic Museum website.
Nowak, Jerzy Robert, Jews Murdering Poles, Jedwabne and the atrocities in East Poland 1939-1941 (part II), translated by Lesław Kawalec.
Smilovitsky, Leonid. 2000. Katastrofia Evreev v Belorusii 1941-1944
(English translation by Judith Springer: The Holocaust in Belarus 1941-1944), pp. 129-146. Tel Aviv: Biblioteka Motveya Chernogo. From the Jewish Gen Yizkor Project website.
Best Explanation Yet For the Holodomor
First of all, we really ought to note that there was no "Holodomor" as the Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian Nazis have it. According to them, there was a man-made famine in the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that led to 6 million Ukrainians dying.
The harvest was excellent, but the evil Stalinists confiscated all of the grain to starve the people due to their resistance to collectivization. This is the view that Americans have been fed their entire lives by the controlled US propaganda media (There is no free press of any consequence in the USA).
Most historians now completely reject the notion that the USSR intentionally starved anyone to death in order to punish them for resisting the state's directives. There was a famine in 1933, and it continued for a few years afterward, but it extended over most of the USSR and was not confined to the Ukraine. The government was not happy about the famine and took severe measures to curtail it.
Most died of disease after being weakened by famine, not of starvation itself. Poor decisions were made by the state, but historically, this is often the case during famines. One can argue that the famine was caused by state policies, in particular an effort to jump-start collectivization and do it very rapidly.
A similar effort in China in 1959-1962 also caused a famine and led to 15 million deaths, again, mostly from disease. There seems to be a pattern of too-rapid collectivization of agriculture causing disastrous famines in Communist countries (something similar happened during Pol Pot's reign).
There was also an armed struggle going on, with bands of kulaks taking up arms against party officials, collective farms and farmers, etc. In the course of this armed struggle, the state killed 390,000 people, mostly Ukrainians. If you want to call this mass murder or genocide or whatever, you're entitled to do that, but that's not what the Holodomor crowd is arguing.
Also, there was widespread sabotage in the USSR around this time, mostly in the Ukraine again, whereby those resisting cultivation destroyed 50% of the livestock in the USSR and a good part of the grain crop too.
The reasons for the famine and the story of the famine itself are quite complex and go beyond the scope of this post. For now, this review by Mark Tauger of a recent book by Davies and Wheatcroft perhaps sums up the famine in the USSR during this period to the best of our knowledge. Instead of summarizing this complicated review, I will just link to it and let you go read it yourself.
On a related note, it appears that the Ukrainian Nazis (Holodomor crowd) have taken over an article called "Holodomor Denial" and pretty much ruined it. Most of the people accused of being Holodomor Deniers do acknowledge that there was a famine in the USSR during this period that killed at least 1 million people.
Walter Duranty, the famous New York Times columnist, acknowledged at least 3 million deaths from famine. Douglas Tottle, Mario Sousa and Jeff Conlon, all supposedly Holodomor Deniers according to this outrageously biased article, all agreed that from 1-2 million died of a famine in the USSR during this period.
The reason the Ukrainian Nazis have even come up with the phrase Holodomor Denial is to parrot the Jews' Holocaust Denial. The Holodomor was given that name in the late 1980's by Ukrainian nationalists in Canada, most of whom supported the Nazis and often fought beside them in WW2. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial are rampant amongst these fascist supporters.
Just to show you how wicked Wikipedia is, take a look at the talk page for the article. The talk page was taken over by Ukrainian Nazis, I mean Holodomorists. Check out this entry.
The person who wrote that, Jeff Peters, was subsequently permanently banned from working on Wikipedia merely for opposing the Ukrainian Nazis' Holodomor lies. Here is his talk page with all the dirty details. Looks like he was also a supporter of Hezbollah and the Palestinians and ran afoul of the Wikipedia Jews.
This is par for the course on Wikipedia. Most articles on Communism are seriously ruined by the Wikipedia Cabal. The Cabal, which takes orders from Jimmy Wales himself, is heavily loaded with libertarians who are quite hostile to any kind of socialism or social justice.
Jimmy Wales himself is a wild and extreme libertarian who argued that the federal government should not have lifted one finger to help the Hurricane Katrina victims in any way.
It's amazing that not one single article in the "US free press" about Wikipedia or its corrupt founder has ever mentioned the extreme corruption and intellectual dishonesty at Wikipedia, the propaganda cabals that are allowed to run amok, or even Wales' own extreme political views themselves. A free press in the US? It would be a great idea!
Was there famine? Yes. Was there a Holodomor? No.
The most responsible estimate of deaths due to the famine range from 1.5-6 million over a few years across much of the USSR.
It is interesting that in private correspondence, Robert Conquest, who for decades insisted that the famine was intentional (his view is now the received wisdom on the subject in the West) admitted in private correspondence with Davies and Wheatcroft that the famine was not intentional.
It's truly sad that what is now regarded as settled fact among responsible historians is still regarded as wild, unheard-of propaganda in much of the West. But then we get back to that wonderful American "free press" again, right?
The harvest was excellent, but the evil Stalinists confiscated all of the grain to starve the people due to their resistance to collectivization. This is the view that Americans have been fed their entire lives by the controlled US propaganda media (There is no free press of any consequence in the USA).
Most historians now completely reject the notion that the USSR intentionally starved anyone to death in order to punish them for resisting the state's directives. There was a famine in 1933, and it continued for a few years afterward, but it extended over most of the USSR and was not confined to the Ukraine. The government was not happy about the famine and took severe measures to curtail it.
Most died of disease after being weakened by famine, not of starvation itself. Poor decisions were made by the state, but historically, this is often the case during famines. One can argue that the famine was caused by state policies, in particular an effort to jump-start collectivization and do it very rapidly.
A similar effort in China in 1959-1962 also caused a famine and led to 15 million deaths, again, mostly from disease. There seems to be a pattern of too-rapid collectivization of agriculture causing disastrous famines in Communist countries (something similar happened during Pol Pot's reign).
There was also an armed struggle going on, with bands of kulaks taking up arms against party officials, collective farms and farmers, etc. In the course of this armed struggle, the state killed 390,000 people, mostly Ukrainians. If you want to call this mass murder or genocide or whatever, you're entitled to do that, but that's not what the Holodomor crowd is arguing.
Also, there was widespread sabotage in the USSR around this time, mostly in the Ukraine again, whereby those resisting cultivation destroyed 50% of the livestock in the USSR and a good part of the grain crop too.
The reasons for the famine and the story of the famine itself are quite complex and go beyond the scope of this post. For now, this review by Mark Tauger of a recent book by Davies and Wheatcroft perhaps sums up the famine in the USSR during this period to the best of our knowledge. Instead of summarizing this complicated review, I will just link to it and let you go read it yourself.
On a related note, it appears that the Ukrainian Nazis (Holodomor crowd) have taken over an article called "Holodomor Denial" and pretty much ruined it. Most of the people accused of being Holodomor Deniers do acknowledge that there was a famine in the USSR during this period that killed at least 1 million people.
Walter Duranty, the famous New York Times columnist, acknowledged at least 3 million deaths from famine. Douglas Tottle, Mario Sousa and Jeff Conlon, all supposedly Holodomor Deniers according to this outrageously biased article, all agreed that from 1-2 million died of a famine in the USSR during this period.
The reason the Ukrainian Nazis have even come up with the phrase Holodomor Denial is to parrot the Jews' Holocaust Denial. The Holodomor was given that name in the late 1980's by Ukrainian nationalists in Canada, most of whom supported the Nazis and often fought beside them in WW2. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial are rampant amongst these fascist supporters.
Just to show you how wicked Wikipedia is, take a look at the talk page for the article. The talk page was taken over by Ukrainian Nazis, I mean Holodomorists. Check out this entry.
The person who wrote that, Jeff Peters, was subsequently permanently banned from working on Wikipedia merely for opposing the Ukrainian Nazis' Holodomor lies. Here is his talk page with all the dirty details. Looks like he was also a supporter of Hezbollah and the Palestinians and ran afoul of the Wikipedia Jews.
This is par for the course on Wikipedia. Most articles on Communism are seriously ruined by the Wikipedia Cabal. The Cabal, which takes orders from Jimmy Wales himself, is heavily loaded with libertarians who are quite hostile to any kind of socialism or social justice.
Jimmy Wales himself is a wild and extreme libertarian who argued that the federal government should not have lifted one finger to help the Hurricane Katrina victims in any way.
It's amazing that not one single article in the "US free press" about Wikipedia or its corrupt founder has ever mentioned the extreme corruption and intellectual dishonesty at Wikipedia, the propaganda cabals that are allowed to run amok, or even Wales' own extreme political views themselves. A free press in the US? It would be a great idea!
Was there famine? Yes. Was there a Holodomor? No.
The most responsible estimate of deaths due to the famine range from 1.5-6 million over a few years across much of the USSR.
It is interesting that in private correspondence, Robert Conquest, who for decades insisted that the famine was intentional (his view is now the received wisdom on the subject in the West) admitted in private correspondence with Davies and Wheatcroft that the famine was not intentional.
It's truly sad that what is now regarded as settled fact among responsible historians is still regarded as wild, unheard-of propaganda in much of the West. But then we get back to that wonderful American "free press" again, right?
References
- Coplon, Jeff. January 12, 1988. In Search of a Soviet Holocaust. The Village Voice. Douglas Furr's website.
Coplon, Jeff. March 1988. Rewriting History - How Ukrainian Nationalists Imposed Their Doctored History on High School Students CAPITAL Region. Douglas Furr's website.
Davies, R. W. and Wheatcroft, Steven G. 2004. The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Souza, Mario. Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union. North Star Compass website.
Tauger, Mark B. 1991. The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933. Slavic Review 50:1, pp. 70-89.
Tottle, Douglas. 1987. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard. Toronto: Progress Books.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The Jews Have No Right to a State
Commenter James Schipper makes an argument that I have made many times - that the Jews had no right to a state. I would still argue that they have no right to one now. I would add that the Jews have no right to a state, unless someone wishes to donate one to them. As people without a territory similar to the Gypsies, there is no way that territory-less ethnics have a right to a state.
The Gypsies don't have a right to one either. The persecution of the Jews was lamentable to horrifying, depending on the period, but it was close to the same for the Gypsies too. As it stands, the only way for the Jews to get a state was to steal one, and it's the only way the Gypsies will get one either. He coins the phrase "non-territorial nation" to describe both Jews and Gypsies. It's a nice phrase.
Ilan Pappe, the Israeli scholar, makes a similar argument. Pappe says that the Jewish nationalist movement had two positive aspects: it argued for Jewish self-determination and it offered a way for the Jews to protect themselves by means of a state with an armed forces. Both of these are commendable.
But Pappe also states that as soon as Jews decided to make their state in Palestine, Jewish nationalism became an objectively colonialist movement. Even to this day, Zionism is not characterized as a colonialist movement, and it ought to be by the norms of political science.
At the very least, the world should acknowledge that Zionism was and is a colonialist movement. Israel is actually one of the few states on Earth that is continuing to engage in an actively colonialist project. That is the reason for the endless UN resolutions, not some notion of the world being bristling with anti-Semites.
James also points out that language and culture are the usual determinants for making a state out of a nation and religions generally do not get their own state, although Pakistan was an exception.
One of the main problems of the Israeli state is that it is one of the few states on Earth that is not a state of its people. Instead, it defines itself as the state of all of the world's Jews, even those who do not live in Israel. Israeli Arabs seem to be excluded from being full citizens in light of this definition alone, which seems to give more rights to Israeli citizenship to some Jew in New York than an Israeli Arab in Haifa.
James' comments begin here:
The French in North America number between 6 and 8 million, depending on how one does the counting. They are only about 2% of North America's population, but they are overwhelmingly concentrated in the province of Quebec, which can be called their homeland. They are a territorial minority.
Now suppose that those French were spread out all over North America and did not constitute more than 10% of the population of any of the 60 states and provinces in North America, then they would be a non-territorial minority.
The Jews in Europe around 1890 were like that too. They were about 2% of the European population and in no European country were they more than 10% of the population. They were a non-territorial nationality. Unlike other stateless nations, such as the Finns, Poles and Slovenes, they didn't have a homeland.
The difference between a territorial and non-territorial nation is that the non-territorial one can't have a state of its own because it doesn't have a homeland. A nation-state is simply a national homeland that has become sovereign.
The Zionist argument that Jews were like other stateless peoples in Europe is absurd. The Finns and Poles, for instance, already had their homeland, although drawing the right borders for their respective homelands wasn't easy. What the Finnish and Polish nationalists wanted was simply to separate their homeland from Russia and create their own state.
What the Zionist had to do was first to create a homeland, which is something quite different. Jews in Europe should not be compared to Finns and Poles but to the Gypsies. The Gypsies too are a non-territorial minority. Are they also entitled to a country of their own. If so, where should it be located?
To say that the Zionist project was illegitimate from the start does not imply of course that Israel today is illegitimate. For better or worse, there is now a Hebrew homeland in Palestine, and terminating it would be a grave injustice.
If the Zionists in Israel really want to be a normal people, they should call themselves Hebrews and start seeing all non-Israelis, Jews and Gentiles alike, as foreigners. A normal nation is defined by language and culture, not by religion.
I really have no problem with Zionists in Israel. They committed crimes of course, but none of their crimes were unique. Strictly speaking, it is quite possible to be a Hebrew nationalist without being a Zionist. A Hebrew Israeli could take the position that Israel is the country of the Hebrew nation and an Arab minority, and not the sacred homeland of all Jews.
I have zero sympathy for Zionists outside of Israel. If they really believe that Israel is the homeland of all Jews, why don't they go and live there? I wouldn't mind as much if they supported Israel privately, but they want our governments to support a foreign country in which we have absolutely no interest.
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The Gypsies don't have a right to one either. The persecution of the Jews was lamentable to horrifying, depending on the period, but it was close to the same for the Gypsies too. As it stands, the only way for the Jews to get a state was to steal one, and it's the only way the Gypsies will get one either. He coins the phrase "non-territorial nation" to describe both Jews and Gypsies. It's a nice phrase.
Ilan Pappe, the Israeli scholar, makes a similar argument. Pappe says that the Jewish nationalist movement had two positive aspects: it argued for Jewish self-determination and it offered a way for the Jews to protect themselves by means of a state with an armed forces. Both of these are commendable.
But Pappe also states that as soon as Jews decided to make their state in Palestine, Jewish nationalism became an objectively colonialist movement. Even to this day, Zionism is not characterized as a colonialist movement, and it ought to be by the norms of political science.
At the very least, the world should acknowledge that Zionism was and is a colonialist movement. Israel is actually one of the few states on Earth that is continuing to engage in an actively colonialist project. That is the reason for the endless UN resolutions, not some notion of the world being bristling with anti-Semites.
James also points out that language and culture are the usual determinants for making a state out of a nation and religions generally do not get their own state, although Pakistan was an exception.
One of the main problems of the Israeli state is that it is one of the few states on Earth that is not a state of its people. Instead, it defines itself as the state of all of the world's Jews, even those who do not live in Israel. Israeli Arabs seem to be excluded from being full citizens in light of this definition alone, which seems to give more rights to Israeli citizenship to some Jew in New York than an Israeli Arab in Haifa.
James' comments begin here:
The French in North America number between 6 and 8 million, depending on how one does the counting. They are only about 2% of North America's population, but they are overwhelmingly concentrated in the province of Quebec, which can be called their homeland. They are a territorial minority.
Now suppose that those French were spread out all over North America and did not constitute more than 10% of the population of any of the 60 states and provinces in North America, then they would be a non-territorial minority.
The Jews in Europe around 1890 were like that too. They were about 2% of the European population and in no European country were they more than 10% of the population. They were a non-territorial nationality. Unlike other stateless nations, such as the Finns, Poles and Slovenes, they didn't have a homeland.
The difference between a territorial and non-territorial nation is that the non-territorial one can't have a state of its own because it doesn't have a homeland. A nation-state is simply a national homeland that has become sovereign.
The Zionist argument that Jews were like other stateless peoples in Europe is absurd. The Finns and Poles, for instance, already had their homeland, although drawing the right borders for their respective homelands wasn't easy. What the Finnish and Polish nationalists wanted was simply to separate their homeland from Russia and create their own state.
What the Zionist had to do was first to create a homeland, which is something quite different. Jews in Europe should not be compared to Finns and Poles but to the Gypsies. The Gypsies too are a non-territorial minority. Are they also entitled to a country of their own. If so, where should it be located?
To say that the Zionist project was illegitimate from the start does not imply of course that Israel today is illegitimate. For better or worse, there is now a Hebrew homeland in Palestine, and terminating it would be a grave injustice.
If the Zionists in Israel really want to be a normal people, they should call themselves Hebrews and start seeing all non-Israelis, Jews and Gentiles alike, as foreigners. A normal nation is defined by language and culture, not by religion.
I really have no problem with Zionists in Israel. They committed crimes of course, but none of their crimes were unique. Strictly speaking, it is quite possible to be a Hebrew nationalist without being a Zionist. A Hebrew Israeli could take the position that Israel is the country of the Hebrew nation and an Arab minority, and not the sacred homeland of all Jews.
I have zero sympathy for Zionists outside of Israel. If they really believe that Israel is the homeland of all Jews, why don't they go and live there? I wouldn't mind as much if they supported Israel privately, but they want our governments to support a foreign country in which we have absolutely no interest.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
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