Muslims Shoot Christians in Egypt

This shocking video shows a shooting that occurred outside a Christian church in Egypt in early January. Muslims apparently drove by the church and opened fire on worshipers as they were leaving the church. Several Christians were killed or wounded in the attack, which took place in Upper Egypt. Muslims attack Christians in Egypt on a pretty regular basis.

The attack took place because of a controversy over a Christian man dating a Muslim woman. Dating between sects is a common cause of fighting between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, but the fights are usually instigated by the Muslims. A common line is, "The Christians are stealing our women."

There are also problems where Christian women supposedly convert to Islam but then are kidnapped by the Christian community and forced to reconvert to Christianity. Christian women are also kidnapped by Muslims on a frequent basis and forced to convert to Islam.

Kim Sun-Il Beheading Video

This is surely one of the most horrible beheading videos I have ever seen. I have only watched it once, soon after it came out. I had earlier watched the Nick Berg beheading video, and it had traumatized me badly for week or two afterward. Then I watched this video. It's way more fucked up than the Nick Berg video!

Kim Sun-Il was a young South Korean man with degrees in theology, English and Arabic from South Korean universities. The Arabic degree was a graduate degree.

He had hopes of becoming a missionary in the Middle East when he signed on with Gana General Trading, a South Korean company that was doing business with the US military as a contractor. He arrived in Iraq on June 15, 2003.

He worked as an Arabic translator for the US military until he was captured by guerrillas on May 30, 2004 in Fallujah by Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, Abu Musab Zarqawi's group that later became Iraqi Al Qaeda.

The group issued a demand of South Korea that they withdraw their 660 medics and military engineers already in the country and that they cancel plans to send another 3,000 troops. Otherwise, they would kill Sun-Il. The South Korean government denied the demands.

The group initially set a June 21 deadline for their demands to be met or they would kill Sun-Il. On June 22, Al Jazeera received a videotape of his brutal execution. His body was later found, but I am not sure where.

The video opens with Sun-Il seated on the ground in front of some Al Qaeda ogres dressed in black and wearing masks. One of them is reading from some script in Arabic. There is Arabic music in the background.

As they are reading in the script, Sun-Il, is, horribly, screaming over and over, ""I don't want to die! I don't want to die!" He is screaming it at the top of his lungs with all the passion you would expect of a man who knows he is doomed.

Finally they finish the speech and one guy grabs Sun-Il and pins him down as he struggles. The other guy pulls out a huge knife and saws the poor guy's head off as he screams. The head is quickly chopped off, then the bloody head is held up for all to see.

It's Sun-Il's head all right, but there are long trails of bloody entrails, guts looking things hanging off his head, the remains of his neck apparently. The entrails are swaying with the head and there is a huge amount of blood dripping off. Then you see the frozen expression on the chopped head. The bloody tissue swaying and dripping off the gross severed head really did it for me.

Truly horrible!

Fucked up!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why I Got Back Into Christianity

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.

Kind of a long story, but I was associating with a lot of radical Arabs, mostly Palestinians. They all had a religion, even though a lot of them were Leftists. I thought that was really interesting. It was religion as identity. I got really interested in the Arab Christians. They seemed to take all of the good out of Christianity and none of the bad.

Like Catholics, they never talked religion, but they did believe. It seemed like more of an identity thing than anything else. Everyone was either a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, or a Yezidi, a Druze, an Alawite, or some kind of religion. Everyone had a religion! I thought that was actually kind of cool. Religion as identity - like ethnicity.

Yeah, I did see Gibson's movie and read a book called The Case For Jesus which offers an empirical basis for the New Testament. But I was heading there anyway. But difference does it really make, in any important way, if I believe? Or if I don't believe? What are the real, hard and fast consequences? None? I'm still going to die. My life won't change one iota. So why just say the Hell with it and be a believer?

Atheism is crap. It offers me nothing at all. I don't care how scientific it is. I die and rot in the fucking ground. There are no morals. There is no right and wrong. There is no afterlife and no soul. Who cares if that's the truth? I don't want any part of it. If there's even a 1% chance Christianity is true, I'm in like Flynn.

Christianity is good because it teaches us to be good people. Too many people I meet, Whites and non-Whites, Christians and not, are just not good people. They are mean, nasty, snake-like, vicious people. They're rude and stupid and have no manners. They use others and have no sense of give and take. They're manipulative, animalistic shits.

Starting in 2001, I went to the Usenet groups because I got into the Middle East. It was my first real exposure to the region and its problems in depth, and it showed me for the first time about my Christian values. At the time, I was an agnostic, having left Christianity a long time ago. But I learned that I still had Christian values even though I left the Church 20 years before.

In the ME groups, we debated Jews. These Jews had values alien to me. You were with them or against them. You were either a Judeophile or you were with those guys who threw them in the ovens. Black and white.

I was raised in a Christian culture that told me to love my enemies, and try to find common ground with those I disagreed with. It taught me that we all sin, so I'm not so special, and the bad guys aren't as bad as I think they are. Christianity is its own kind of moral relativism.

So I didn't hate these Jewish Zionists. I don't care how much they love their shitty little country. We're all fucked up in one way or another. But they hated me. I mean they hated me. I could never get beyond that. It wasn't a Christian way of thinking.

We were also taught to have gentlemanly debates and to fight fair. You didn't bite or scratch or pull hair and when you played "Smear the Queer" you were supposed to go light on the target, not too hard. There were rules about debating, arguing, even play-fighting.

These Jews just seemed to throw out all the rules. That was alien to my Christian values. Now, lots of Christians don't have these kind of values, but you're supposed to.

There was also sort of a "fair play in business" thing I was raised with. Not because it was right, but because it fostered a harmonious community. Don't raise your voice, don't get irritated, don't get angry, control your emotions. Be a gentleman. I don't know if that's Christian? I was raised with that. That's just civilized to me, but to me it seemed Christian. Maybe it was just White middle class.

You give and take in relationships. You don't blatantly and grotesquely use other people. You don't steal. You don't demand things. When you go visit someone, you ask permission for everything. You don't walk in the door and start demanding stuff. You don't turn the channel on the TV or radio. Whatever is on, is on. It's their house, dammit.

You address people as "sir" and say "pardon me". You repay all debts, and even offer to pay interest. To not repay is a shame upon myself and it degrades me. It taints my soul. You vote in elections. It's your civic duty and it's the right thing to do. You work or go to school if you are able to. You don't leech off others. You pay your workers. You don't shaft people or rip them off.

You don't try to sell people your stuff all the time without offering to buy some of their stuff too - this means you are just trying to get money out of them. When you pay a visit to a potential client, you buy a little something in his store, even if you don't need it.

You don't demand or even ask to use other people's stuff. You don't demand rides all the time. You practice give and take in relationships. You apologize when you offend people or make them mad.

It took me a long time to figure out why I wasn't acting like an asshole or an animal like so many of those around me. I knew I had values, but where were they? Where did they come from? I finally figured out that even though I had left Christianity long ago, my values were Christian values. That many were abandoning them meant that our culture was abandoning basic Christian values.

This made me realize the positive aspect of Christianity. It tries to force people to quit acting like animals and start acting like humans. It forces you to be good even when you don't want to. It's hard to be a good Christian. A lot of people just want to be assholes. Our capitalist society tells us to be as big of assholes as we can be. Christianity is very demanding, and many just can't hack it. But that's what is good about it.

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Music For the Russian Neo-Nazi Video

This is a video of the Russian band Arkona doing the song Rus, featured on the famous Russian neo-Nazi video on this site.

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 23:

I'm not encouraging anyone to watch this video who hasn't seen it yet, but for better or worse, there are vast numbers of people who want to see this video on this blog. A lot of people want to see it on a dare, because it is supposed to be one of the grossest videos on the Internet. Others like it because they are Nazis. Antifas watch it to see what a bunch of assholes and scum of the Earth Nazis are.

The purpose of posting the video was the last reason. I hope to awaken people around the world, particularly in the US, just what these guys are up to. I'm not so concerned about US Whites. I really want US Blacks and Hispanics to get a load of these clowns and realize that these Nazis want to kill every single one of you Blacks and Hispanics. They also want to kill Asians, but Asians don't seem to care too much.

Some East Indians in the UK have gotten the hint that these guys are assholes who want to kill East Indians. This video was a hit on antifa boards in Slovakia and especially in Chile. My intention, further, is to discredit Russian neo-Nazis as much as possible around the world, and as part of the larger picture, to discredit neo-Nazis and racist skinheads (the Stormfront idiots) all over the world.

It's not my intention to discredit White nationalism as a whole, because there is a world of difference between Jared Taylor's American Renaissance (racist but very genteel and civilized) and the Stormfront and neo-Nazi militants. I don't agree that they are all the same.

Anyway, I do like the music on that video, and on the boards and on Youtube, people keep asking what the song is, since they love the music too.

The song is by Russian folk-pagan metal band Arkona (Cyrillic Аркона), and the song is called Rus (Cyrillic Русь), after the Kievan Rus (the original seed of the Russian nation). It's off their first album Vozrozhdeniye, or Revival (Cyrillic Возрождение). The band is heavily influenced by Slavic mythology and Russian folklore.

Arkona is the name of the last pagan Slavic city-castle in Russia. Despite the pagan themes, Arkona songs also deal with traditional Russian Orthodox holidays such as Christmas, Maslenitsa (a Russian Orthodox folk holiday), Kupala (equivalent to Valentine's Day - feast in honor of John the Baptist).

Pagan, folk and Orthodox Christian holidays and customs all blend together in Russia and to some extent also in Eastern Europe. To some extent, the same is true here in the uber-commercialized West, but it seems to be much more the case in Russia, where an overtly pagan band can also sing songs about Orthodox religious holidays, and hardly a soul will bat an eye.

They are on Napalm Records (site). Napalm is an Austrian label that specializes in underground heavy metal music. Arkona's official site, in Russian, and in English.

As you can see in the concert, the fans seem to be giving raised fist salutes or even Roman salutes, associated with Nazis. Most of the fans look like skinheads. I'm not too wild about the vibes I got from this band's concert, but there's a lot of this going around over there in Russia these days. The band's lyrics do not seem to me to be overtly racist, White supremacist or neo-Nazi.

Many comments about the famous video have suggested that Russian neo-Nazis are idiots, considering that Hitler despised Slavs and intended to wipe most of them off the face of the Earth.

The Russian neo-Nazis support WPWW, or White Pride World Wide. That's a modern White movement that apparently disassociates itself with Germanophilic and Slavophobic Nazism. I'm not supporting these idiots by saying that; I'm just attempting to clarify some issues.

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The Institute on Religion and Public Policy

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 23:

Joseph Griebowski is one odd fellow. He's head of a very strange organization called Institute on Religion and Public Policy. It will be discussed in an upcoming post. Griebowski himself is some sort of a hardline Zionist. He's also a weird, Strangeglovian-looking character. It's apparently got some kind of big neoconservative and possibly Jewish money behind it.

He goes up on Capital Hill and travels all over the world agitating for "religious freedom", generally in lands that are being targeted by the neocons and International Zionism. He's also apparently waging US imperialism's war of words with China. His specialty is humanitarian intervention bullshit as my commenters have been discussing lately. His particular angle is "religious freedom".

If your country is not allowing enough religious freedom (which, frankly, is none of our Goddamned business) then he's going to wage fake human rights war on you in service of International Zionism or US imperialism. Lately his targets have been South Sudan, Darfur, China and Kosovo. Imperialism doesn't care about S Sudan or Darfur, but Zionism does. Imperialism hates China though.

For Kosovo, imperialism supports them, but probably hard right Zionism hates them for being Muslims in Europe. Looks like they have conned all sorts of suckers into going along with this scam. Looking through the officers and staff, I can't see any reason why most of these people give a flying fuck about "religious freedom".

Furthermore, they for the most part seem to be serving US imperialism in one way or another. So I figure this is just some bullshit "religious freedom" garbage to push the interests of US imperialism and Zionism. On their Board of Directors is a motley collection of Christians (almost all rightwing Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants or Baptists), Jews of various types, wacky New Age kooks, etc.

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Russia and the Jews, 1795-1916

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 23:

A review of Solzhenitsyn's Two Hundred Years Together, a history of Russia and its Jews from 1795-1916. It's the best thing I have ever read on the subject, and I've read a lot of crap about this area from all sides. The author is Richard Pipes and it's published by Benador Associates.

Benador Associates is Neocon Central, home of all manner of rightwing, Zionist, pro-Terror War and pro-Iraq War nasties. From the About US page:

Among the experts are James Woolsey, A.M. Rosenthal, Richard Perle, Amir Taheri, Kanan Makiya and Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

It's supposedly run by some reactionary Peruvian ruling-class woman named Eleana Benador who I've never heard of before. Her photos are here. I hate to make fun of people's appearances, but I will make an exception in here case and call her a hunchbacked dwarf. Why? Because I don't like her, that's why.

Her biography shows you what kind of nasties make up the horrible Peruvian ruling class. Such a malignant bunch of gangsters could only have produced equally malign revolutionaries like the Shining Path. Like creates like; politics is a mirror.

Ms. Benador is also apparently in deep with International Jewry of the nastiest sort, but that's not unusual, because I understand that some members of the Peruvian ruling class are in with them. These folks are fabulously rich, care nothing at all about their country, and don't even spend much time there, they are so busy jet-setting around.

They spend most of their time in foreign cities or on jetliners and they put most of their money in the US, often in the New York Stock Exchange. They're afraid to invest in their own country because it's so "unstable". The reason it's unstable is due to their existence.

I figure she's fronting for some big money lurking somewhere in the background?

I always thought Richard Pipes was a complete prick. He spent most of his life working for the CIA, more or less, as a Sovietologist. Most prominent Sovietologists like Condoleeza Rice were always pretty much just glorified CIA employees. He's another Robert Conquest. Plus, he produced, from the spawn of his loins, an abhorrent ultra-Zionist maniac son named Daniel, he of the fascist Campus Watch.

Pipes was one of the original neocons, along with Frank Gaffney, James Woolsey and Richard Perle. He even worked for Henry Jackson in the 1970's, and you can't much more seminal neocon than that (the neocons were birthed by a largely-Jewish group operating out of Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's). Of course he wrote for Commentary - that's another classic neocon steppingstone.

He opposed detente, served on Reagan's National Security Council in 1981-1982 and teamed up with Paul Nitze and Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the Team B "Beware the Bear!" liars.

He dedicated his whole life to US imperialism's war with the USSR. He lied all day, went to bed, dreamed a bunch of dishonest dreams, got up the next morning, poured some liar crystals into his brewing coffee and started off another day of lying. That was his life; every time he opened up his mouth, it was just the voice of the CIA.

Pipes' work as a Sovietologist, while quality scholarship, was also a politically motivated pack of lies, propaganda and bullshit from the very start, though he did have his moments. Check out his thesis on the cause of the Russian revolution, which I agree with:

Pipes is famous for arguing that the origins of the Soviet Union can be traced to the separate path taken by 15th century Muscovy in a Russian version of the Sonderweg thesis.

In Pipes' opinion, Muscovy differed from every state in Europe in that there was no concept of private property in Muscovy, and that everything was regarded as the property of the Grand Duke/Tsar. In Pipes' view, this separate path undertaken by Russia ensured that Russia would always be an autocratic state with values fundamentally dissimilar to the values of Western civilization.

Nice, huh? It's true in part, but avoids the crucial role of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Anyway, like many of these one-sided characters, once you get them away from the subject of their feverish obsession (in his case, the USSR), they can be surprisingly level-headed, because they're extremely smart and they are finally thinking clearly for once.

Since he is Jewish, I expected the usual Jewish bullshit pile of invective towards the Czar, the Russian people and Russia in general, but this nice review is fair to all sides and sums up the role of the Czar, the Church, Russian nationalists, Jews both traditional and assimilating, revolutionaries, etc superbly.

Check it out and learn something.

I assume his evil spawn Daniel will just go on being an asshole for the rest of his life.

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Jesus Loves Tortillas

Look closely and you can see the Son of God in yellow outline, Shroud of Turin-like, in the center of the heated and rolled slab of dough. If you're schizophrenic, this is a secret message telling you to go to the nearest taco truck, buy two rolled tacos of any type, and eat them, right now. If you aren't and are merely a believer, you may be having a religious experience right now. I'm not, but then, I'm so secular, I'm just this side of agnosticism.

Guy shows up everywhere, huh? All those Mexican Catholics going to Mass all the time and praying finally had an effect. Jesus repays their prayers by showing up on their favorite form of flattened dough.

Wonder if he likes tacos too?

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On Whiteness Studies

First one White nationalist commenter attacked me for supporting Whiteness Studies. According to him, it's nothing but anti-White propaganda. Then I offered an explanation for what I meant here:

Actually I endorse Whiteness Studies in a way. First of all, I want to reject the vast majority of this nutty discipline.

It's filled with contempt for Whites, race-denying nonsense conflated with obsession with race (tell me how that makes sense?!), White groveling, self-abjection and guilt admission and obsession in the face of an implied superiority of non-Whites. In short, it's like modern anti-racism taken to a Mad Magazine extreme of absurdity.

But there is an aspect of Whiteness Studies where the Whites in it sit around and analyze how they themselves are racist against non-Whites and resolve to try to get rid of their racism. And a lot of them have acknowledged that it is going to be a lifetime battle, and some say that they may never be over it.

I kind of like the notion that we all have racist parts of ourselves and that those of us who are better at least work to try to reduce or get rid of our racist feelings.

In anti-racist insane America, you realize that it is a mortal sin to admit that you have ever experienced even the slightest, tiniest, most infinitesimal trace of racism, especially if you are White. Ask around to just about anyone, and they will tell you that not only do they lack the tiniest hint of racism in even the deepest recesses of their soul, but that they have been anti-racist pristine for their entire lives.

Admit to having 1% racism in your 99% anti-racist soul, or that you ever uttered a racist word or thought a racist thought, and be prepared for verbal lashings or deadly stares. Such is the madness of anti-racist America in 2008, and I do applaud Whiteness Studies for their honesty.

Whew! How's that for an outrageous and provocative thing to say? To which a commenter, also a White nationalist but not particularly racist, Uncle Milton, counters:

I went to the blog of the guy named Tom who described either your posts on Black crime or the comments as racist bilge which led me to a "Whiteness" website that was filled with false statements such as Whites commit the highest number of serial murders (nope , per capita it's Blacks..) or that White middle class people have the highest rates of suicide. (nope, tragically it's native Americans..)

Most of what I have seen of Whiteness Studies is self-hating or a rehashing of stereotypes. Everyday I am in an environment where I am a minority (at my work, the majority of my colleagues are Asian..) and generally I have no problems with them since they tend to be civil and competent. However in the past when I have been forced to live or work around an environment that is a majority Black then I have been quite unhappy.

Am I a racist in need of Whiteness studies or perhaps am I reacting to repeat acts of violence towards me (accompanied by verbal epithets such as White Mutha Fucka), theft, and name calling that called attention to the color of my skin?

This commenter exemplifies something that I might call guilty racism. I think he has some racist feelings towards Blacks, but he doesn't really feel good about them deep down inside. Hold on tight now, because we are getting into some religious and spiritual issues here, specifically Christian.

I'm now going to a Catholic Church and I just love it. One of the things that I love about it is the guilt. Guilt is actually a very debilitating thing, but I've been living with it my whole life, so it's very important to me, if even in an awful way.

I think that guilt is badly stigmatized. Guilty types are considered to be criminals, rapists, child molesters, and killers. Nothing is further from the truth. Antisocials are extremely violent and feel no guilt and obsessives, as one example, are the most nonviolent people on Earth and feel tremendous guilt.

The more guilt, the less violence. The more criminality, violence and antisocial behavior and activity, the less guilt. Real simple. All other things being equal, you should feel relaxed with a guilty type. Maybe they aren't any fun, but they probably won't hurt you. Alas, too many find the allure of the guiltless antisocial too delicious to pass up.

One thing I love about Catholicism is that they understood this truism long ago. The people always coming into confession all the time had never even done anything wrong, and were confessing about nothing at all. The best people were confessing the most. The worst people were never showing up at all.

It's still this way, even in psychologists' offices. Yet clinicians don't seem to get it either. Many clinicians can't even seem to reliably spot antisocials. If we train our clinicians to spot anyone, it ought to be antisocials.

Clinicians continue to confuse the worst people on Earth with the best people. This is a very interesting area of human nature, where even the best experts with most degrees and study seem to fail us. One wonders if some simple rural types somewhere would be wiser.

I've got to have a place in my heart for the guilty racist. When you go to White racist fora, you see lots of Whites on there who have had a lot of really bad experiences with minorities, in particular with Blacks.

Many are saying that they just want to wash their hands of Blacks altogether and get away from them. They want a divorce and no more troubles. A part of me feels for these folks. You get hurt, and you want to stay away. Such a perseverative human response.

I guess I'm a Catholic at heart. If you are a racist, just go right ahead and be one. Feel proud about it like 95% of them do. But there is a part of me that says that if you sin, at least feel bad about it. And racism, in my book, is a sin.

A Christian may sin, but if he feels guilt about sin, he gets +1 from me. If he resolves to stop sinning and tries to stop, then there's nothing more that he can do. At that point, one wonders if the person is even a sinner.

This is where Whiteness Studies, in all of its stupidity, insanity and idiocy, is beautiful. It had to have been thought up by a Catholic. Whiteness Studies is full of Whites who acknowledge that they have racist tendencies, but resolve to dedicate the rest of their lives to absolving them and purging them.

Who cannot love a sinner who has the nerve and courage to confess to the world and then try to go on the straight and narrow? That is Christianity in an essence.

An admission of guilt and sin is a beautiful thing to this Christian.

The world is full of those who pronounce moral purity. This has become the litmus test of our day. Moral purity in regard to race is an acid test of our times. It's hard to find a young person nowadays, or often anyone, who will admit to ever harboring the measliest racist sentiment. Oh how pure they are.

Purity, especially the probably dishonest kind, is as oppressive as smog. We are all peculiar mixtures of good and bad. We do good, and we should be proud, we do bad, and at the very least, we should feel bad.

Racism on an individual level is sinful simply because each and every individual should be evaluated on their own self-worth and nothing else. Disliking or shunning someone of one race who you would easily associate with if they were another race has got to be wrong, wrong, wrong. Dislike of groups collectively or from a distance is often perfectly reasonable and expression of self-preservation.

No, Unc doesn't need Whiteness Studies. No one does. You're a free agent and you can feel what you will. But if you want to recognize racism and combat it in yourself, you'll always get a cheer and a hug from me.

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Jesus Makes You Fat

Updated July 7:

Dude shows up in the darnedest places.

Wouldn't you think, being a good guy and all, he would rather apparition himself in some health food?

Now why Jesus, sitting up in Heaven nice and comfy and all, would want to leap head-first into a boiling vat of cooking oil is beyond me, but seeing what he went through on that cross, maybe he likes the victim and suffering thing.

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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.

Notes

1. I incorporated some of my email conversation with perceptive reader James Hajduk in writing this post.

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Rapproachment Between the Orthodox Church and the USSR

The relationship between the USSR and the Orthodox Church was complex to be sure. Keep in mind that Stalin had studied to be an Orthodox priest in Georgia, and conservative Orthodox culture heavily informed his regime and worldview, particularly in reversing the radical experiments in family and sexual life that had begun under the heavily-Jewish Bolsheviks.

It makes the best sense to say that the Jewish era in the USSR was already over by 1927, as Stalin represented a reversal of all of that. There were quite a few Jews in the NKVD for a few years in the 1930's, but that soon dropped to a very low number. Jews suffered very heavily during Stalin's wild, insane and horrible purges on 1937-38.

The Jewish Bolsheviks had brought about radical changes in sexual culture.

Homosexuality and abortion was legalized, and divorce was made simple. A cult of free love reigned in the party, which was naturally exploited by the male comrades: "If you are a real Communist, you will have sex with me." A very similar free love cult with similar dynamics was present in the early days of the Afghan Communist regime in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

It's quite fascinating the way that a total Communist revolution can change some of the world's most sexually repressive societies into sexually liberated zones in just a few years. This indicates that at least young folks do not like to live under puritanism, Orthodox, Islamic or any other kind, and as soon as the shackles go off, they naturally just start fucking like rabbits in tune with our bipedal ape nature.

The early Bolsheviks also attempted radical experiments in family life, with the ultimate goal of getting rid of the family altogether, as the family was a bourgeois institution intimately tied in with capitalism. Kids were sent off to day care all day, and families of workers all ate together in the evening at communal dining halls.

It is interesting that the family dynamic that has been shown to produce the fewest number of sociopaths is the kibbutz system of Israel, where the parents work all day while the kids are in school or day care, and then the parents and kids are at home in the evening.

In the Soviet case, the Bolsheviks actually promoted children questioning and even rebelling against their parents, especially for questioning their parents' bourgeois ways. Even runaways were championed as some sort of Communist heroes. The kids liberation and attempted destruction of the family failed, of course.

You have to consider that whatever its faults, the family has probably been around for as far back as we can go in human history. An institution like that no doubt has some intrinsic merit.

The kids' liberation failed too, similar to the way the hippies of the 1960's promoted this nonsense and then went on to become parents themselves and became the biggest bunch of kid-coddlers the world has ever seen. Parents now wait at bus stops with their high school kids so a murderer doesn't abduct them.

1/3 of all kids are now sent to school with these little cleanliness packs to wipe themselves clean of all the horrible germs in the school bathrooms, as if the soap wasn't good enough. And on and on. One wonders what kind of super-Mama's boys this nonsense will produce.

Well, anyway, the church, and Soviet society in general, especially the peasants, were largely appalled at all the sexual and family liberalism of the Bolshevik Era, and there was a backlash.

Stalin came in in the late 1920's, and by the mid-1930's, he had reversed all of this. What's important is that Stalin, while officially an atheist, was still something of a cultural Georgian Orthodox Church. Note that Putin is still an Orthodox Christian, though he was head of the KGB under the USSR.

One of the most essential aspects of Russian culture, and part of its rejection of and war with the West, is its emphasis on the Orthodox religion. The Orthodox Church is different enough from the Roman Church and certainly the Protestant Church that this alone is enough to set the Russians apart.

There are other aspects to the stew: asceticism, nihilism, authoritarianism, mysticism, contempt for democracy, and opposition to materialism, but Orthodoxy is surely a part of it all.

The West views state and society as separate things, while in Russia they have always been one, and the Church has always been part of the state - these differing views are a product of the Roman Catholic-Byzantine split in the first millennium. Similar to Indian culture, Russians believed that the matters of the world were of little importance, as we can do little to alter these things.

There is a corresponding belief in fate, the Devil and sin. There is a rejection of the West's optimism, the notion of salvation, the elevation of the individual above all else and the idea of good works, and there is a contempt for the senses as a worldly and hence contaminated and inaccurate mechanism for measuring reality. This corresponded to a dismissal of such things as science and mathematics.

The notion that the material world is evil in and of itself, taken to a homicidal extreme by the nihilists of the late 1800's, is similar to the Gnostic view, where man and the world are pure evil. This state of affairs is redeemed in Gnosticism by a tiny spark of good inside each of us, waiting to be lit. Lighting it brings us out of the darkness, at least somewhat.

This classic Russian POV can be seen in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky takes it to an extreme - his characters are almost monastic in outlook and psychologically tend towards masochism or even self-flagellation.

Really this is the struggle between God and the Devil inside of each man. As this struggle will never end, the only expectation is for a life of suffering. This is similar to the Buddhist view enunciated by Jack Kerouac: "All of life is suffering."

Tolstoy actually held that all property and all sex was evil, even inside marriage. This radical view caused his marriage to eventually fall apart. As a nihilist who rejected most everything, he felt that the only solution to the pain of being a man is passive resistance in the face of evil, following Christ's injunction. This leads to a sort of spiritual pacifism.

All of this nihilism and contempt for the violence, materialism and selfishness we in the West hold dear surely seems odd to Westerners raised on such things. Yet this nihilism actually has its roots in Plato himself, and from there to Greece to the Neoplatonists of early Christianity to Byzantium to Orthodoxy.

Plato, after all, held that objective reality had little importance outside of its subjective symbolic truth.

There was a part of Stalin that never left the seminary. A good overview of all of this on Peter Myers' site. It kind of goes on and on, but you can get the picture.

Much has been made of how Stalin utilized religion and nationalism to motivate his people during the German invasion. This has been somewhat overblown, as JP Slavyanski points out here.

Document follows:

Rapprochement between The Orthodox Church and Soviet Government.

Speech of M. G. Karpov at Council of the Orthodox Church, 1945.

Reverend bishops, priests and delegates of the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church! The Government of the USSR has instructed me to greet in its name this exalted assembly and to convey its wishes for the success of your labours in organising the higher administration of the Church.

The Soviet Government has also asked me to greet the guests of honour of the local Council, who have come from the Orthodox East - Patriarch Christophoros of Alexandria, Patriarch Alexander m of Antioch, Metropolitan Germanos representing the Ecumenical Patriarch, Archbishop Athenagoras representing the Patriarch of Jerusalem - as well as those who come from our Georgia - Catholicos Callistratos of all-Georgia - and from the Slav nations, our brothers - Metropolitan Joseph representing the Synod of the Serbian Church, and ail the bishops and priests who accompany them.

The present local Council, called to elect the Patriarch of Moscow and ail the Russians, and to adopt a rule for the administration of the Orthodox Church, will be a landmark in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church.

I am deeply convinced that the decisions of this Council will be of value in strengthening the Church, and will form an important starting point for the further development of its activity in helping the Soviet people to fulfill the major historical tasks which confront them.

The local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church has met at a time when ail the nations of our great country, together with ail the freedom-loving nations of the world, are fighting a holy war of liberation against the imperialist German bandits and are straining every nerve for victory at the cost of lives and possessions of millions of people sacrificed on the altar of patriotism.

Throughout the sore trials to which our country has so often been subjected in the past, the Russian Orthodox Church has never broken its links with the people: it has shared their needs, wishes and hopes and contributed its full measure to the common task.

It was in its churches and monasteries that learning arose and the earliest chronicles of the life of our country were completed; the walls of our churches and monasteries have more than once withstood the assault of foreign invaders, and many eminent churchmen have given their lives for their country.

And now, when the Hitlerite bandits have viciously attacked our sacred soil, when all the nations of the Soviet State have risen and surged forward to fight this great patriotic war in defence of their honour, their freedom and their independence, the Russian Orthodox Church has from the first taken the fullest part in defending the country with ail the means at its disposal.

Having fully grasped the significance of the events, that eminent churchman, that wise and venerable man who was first Metropolitan, then Patriarch Sergius, bestowed his blessing upon the faithful in their task of participating in the defence of the frontiers of their country.

In his many sermons and messages to the Church, he ceaselessly called upon her loyal sons to fight to the death against the barbarous enemy of the Soviet land - Hitlerite Germany. Last year, the Patriarch Sergius died to the great loss of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In accordance with his testament, the government of the Church passed into the hands of the senior Bishop, Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod, Alexis, an outstanding churchman and an ardent patriot who never once left his post during the 900 days of the siege of Leningrad and who, in total unanimity with the other members of the Holy Synod, has guided the Church from the death of the Patriarch to this day.

The Church has not confined its patriotic action to letters and sermons but has collected funds for building tanks and aeroplanes and for helping the sick, the wounded and those crippled or orphaned by the war.

The Soviet Government has shown and continues to show deep interest in the Church's part in the struggle against the enemy. In our country, the triumph of the new regime, a Socialist regime unprecedented in history and the most righteous in the world, has also brought about a new relationship between Church and State.

The great Socialist October Revolution which liberated our people from slavery and gave them freedom, has also freed the Church from the shackles which impeded its internal activity. Freedom of conscience, promulgated by the Decree of 23 January 1918, has been consolidated by the basic laws of our country as embodied in the Soviet Constitution.

The Council of Church Affairs which, by Government decision, has been created and attached to the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, forms a link between the Government and the Patriarch of Moscow and ail the Russians, and provides liaison in ail matters needing government approval.

Without in any way interfering with the spiritual life of the Church, the Council promotes normal relations between Church and State by seeing to the proper and timely application of government laws and decrees concerning the Russian Orthodox Church.

There is no doubt that the normal relations established between the Council and Patriarchate have helped to strengthen the Church administratively; the Council will continue in future to take all necessary steps to remove obstacles of whatever sort which may hinder the Soviet citizen in the exercise of the liberty of conscience granted by the Constitution.

Once again, I sincerely wish the members of the Council success in the task which awaits them.

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Do the Yezidis Worship the Devil?

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 January 29, 2008:

The Yezidis, a Kurdish religious group in Iraq practicing an ancient religion, have been accused of being devil worshipers by local Muslims and also by many non-Muslims. I wrote about the Yezidis in depth in two previous posts; see them for more background on these interesting people.

The Yezidis have appeared in Western media lately due to the stoning death of a Yezidi teenage girl who ran off with a Muslim man. The stoning was done by eight men from her village while another 1000 men watched and cheered them on. Afterward, there has been a lot of conflict between Muslim and Yezidi Kurds.

As Western media turned to the Yezidis, there has been some discussion here about their odd religion. For instance, though the local Muslims condemn them as devil worshipers, the Yezidis strongly deny this. So what's the truth? The truth, as usual, is much more complicated.

The Yezidis believe that a Creator, or God, created a set of deities that we can call gods, angels or demons, depending on how you want to look at them. So, if we say that the Yezidis worship the devil, we could as well say that they worship angels. It all depends on how you view these deities.

In the history of religion, the gods of one religion are often seen as the devils of another. This is seen even today in the anti-Islamic discourse common amongst US neoconservatives, where the Muslim God is said to be a demonic god, and their prophet is said to be a devilish man.

Christian anti-Semites refer to the Old Testament God of the Jews as being an evil god. Orthodox Jews say that Jesus Christ is being boiled alive in semen in Hell for eternity.

At any rate, to the Yezidis, the main deity created by God is Malak Taus, who is represented by a peacock. Although Yezidis dissimulate about this, anyone who studies the religion closely will learn that Malak Taus is actually the Devil.

On the other hand, the Yezidis do not worship evil as modern-day Satanists do, so the Satanist fascination with the Yezidis is irrational. The Yezidis are a primitive people; agriculturalists with a strict moral code that they tend to follow in life. Why do they worship the Devil then?

First of all, we need to understand that before the Abrahamic religions, many polytheistic peoples worshiped gods of both good and evil, worshiping the gods of good so that good things may happen, and worshiping the gods of evil so that bad things may not happen. The Yezidis see God as a source of pure good, who is so good that there is no point in even worshiping him.

In this, they resemble Gnosticism, in which God was pure good and the material world and man were seen as polluted with such evil that the world was essentially an evil place. Men had only a tiny spark of good in them amidst a sea of evil, and the Gnostics tried to cultivate this spark.

This also resembles the magical Judaism of the Middle Ages (Kabbalism). The Kabbalists said that God was "that which cannot be known" (compare to the Yezidi belief that one cannot even pray to God), in fact, the concept of God was so ethereal to the Kabbalists that mere men could not even comprehend the very concept. A Kabbalist book says that God is "endless pure white light". This comes close to my own view of what God is.

Compare to the Yezidi view that God "pure goodness". The Yezidi view of God is quite complex. It is clear that he is at the top of the totem pole, yet their view of him is not the same as the gods of Christianity, Islam, Judaism or of the Greeks, although it is similar to Plato's conception of the absolute.

Instead, it is similar to the Deists. God merely created the world. As far as the day to day running of things, that is actually up to the intermediary angels. However, there is one exception. Once a year, on New Years Day, God calls his angels together and hands the power over to the angel who is to descend to Earth.

In some ways similar to the Christian Trinity of God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost, the Yezidis believe that God is manifested in three forms.

An inscription of the Christian Trinity, the father, or God, as an old man with a beard; Jesus, a young man, and the Holy Ghost, here depicted as a winged creature similar to Malak Tus, the winged peacock angel. Compare to Yezidi reference for Šeiḫ ‘Adî, Yazid and Malak Tus (Father, Son and Holy Ghost)

The three forms are the peacock angel, Malak Tus; an old man, Šeiḫ ‘Adî (compare to the usual Christian portrayal in paintings of God as an old man with a long white beard); and a young man, Yazid (compare to the usual Christian paintings of Jesus as a healthy European-looking man with a beard and a beatific look - a similar look is seen in Shia portraits of Ali).

Since there is no way to talk to God, one must communicate with him through intermediaries (compare to intermediary saints like Mary in Catholicism and Ali in Shiism). The Devil is sort of a wall between the pure goodness of God and this admittedly imperfect world.

This is similar again to Gnosticism, where the pure good God created intermediaries called Aeons so that a world that includes evil (as our world does) could even exist in the first place. On the other hand, Malak Tus is seen my the Yezidis as neither an evil spirit nor a fallen angel, but as a divinity in his own right.

One wonders why the Malak Tus is represented by a bird. The answer is that worshipping birds is one of the oldest known forms of idol worship. It is even condemned in Deuteronomy 4: 16, 17: "Lest ye corrupt yourselves and make a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air."

More likely, the peacock god is leftover from the ancient pagan bird-devil gods of the region. The ancient Babylonians, Assyrians both worshiped sacred devil-birds, and carvings of them can be seen on their temples. The Zoroastrians also worshiped a sort of devil-bird called a feroher .

A winged demon from ancient Assyria. Yezidism appears to have incorporated elements of ancient Babylonian and Assyrian religions, making it ultimately a very ancient religion. Note that devils often have wings like birds. Remember the flying monkey demons in the Wizard of Oz?

The pagan Phoenicians, Philistines and Samaritans worshiped a dove, and the early monotheistic Hebrews condemned the Samaritans for this idol-worship. The pagans of Mecca also worshiped a sacred dove. Pagan Arabian tribes also worshiped an eagle called Nasar.

What is truly odd is that peacocks are not native to the Yezidi region, but instead to the island of Sri Lanka. The Yezidis must have heard about this bird from travelers and incorporated it into their religion somehow.

In the Koran, both the Devil and the peacock were thrown out of Heaven down to Earth, with the Devil and the peacock both suffering similar punishments. So here we can see Islam associating the peacock with the Devil also.

In popular mythology, peacocks tend to represent pride. Note that the Koran says that the Devil was punished for excessive pride (compare with a similar Christian condemnation of excessive pride). Peacocks are problematic domestic fowl, and tend to tear up gardens, and so are associated with mischief.

The Yezidis revere Malak Tus to such a great extent that he is almost seen as one with God (compare the Catholic equation of Mary with Jesus, the Christian association of Jesus with God, and the Shia Muslim association of Ali with Mohammad).

Malak Tus was there from the start and will be there at the end, he has total control over the world, he is omniscient and omnipresent and he never changes. They do not allow anyone to say his name, as this seems to imply that he is degraded. Malak Tus is the King of the Angels, and he is ruling the Earth for a period of 10,000 years.

They also superstitiously avoid saying an word that resembles the word for Satan. When speaking Arabic, they refuse to use the Arabic shatt for river, as it sounds like the word for Satan. They substitute Kurdish ave instead. Compare this to the Kabbalist view of God as "that which can not even be comprehended (i.e., spoken) by man.

In addition to Malak Taus, there are six other angels: Izrafael, Jibrael, Michael, Nordael, Dardael, Shamnael, and Azazael. They were all at a meeting in Heaven when God told them that they would worship no one other than him. This worked for 40,000 years, until God mixed Earth, Air, Fire and Water to create Man, as Adam.

God told the seven angels to bow before Adam, and six agreed. Malak Taus refused, citing God's order to obey only Him. Hence, Malak Taus was cast out of Heaven and became the Archangel of all the Angels. Compare this to the Christian and Muslim view of the Devil, the head of the angels, being thrown out of Heaven for the disobedience of excessive pride.

In the meantime, Malak Taus is said to have repented his sins and returned to God as an angel. So, yes, the Yezidis do worship the Devil, but in their religion, he is a good guy, not a bad guy. They are not a Satanic cult at all. In Sufism, the act of refusing to worship Adam (man) over God would be said to be a positive act, one of refusing to worship the created over the creator, as in Sufism, one is not to worship anything but God.

The Yezidis say that God created Adam and Eve, but when they were asked to produce their essences, Adam's produced a boy, but Eve's was full of insects and other unpleasant things. God decided that he would propagate humanity (the Yezidis) out of Adam alone, leaving Eve out of the picture. Specifically, he married Adam's offspring to a houri.

We can see the traditional views of the Abrahamic religions of women as being sources of evil, tempters, sources of strife, conflict and other bad things. The Yezidis see themselves as different from all other humans. Whereas non-Yezidis are the products of Adam and Eve, Yezidis are the products of Adam alone.

Eve subsequently left the Garden of Eden, which allowed the world to be created. So, what the Abrahamic religions see as man's greatest fall in the Garden, the Yezidis see as mankind's greatest triumphs. The Yezidis feel that the rest of humanity of is descended from Ham, who mocked his father, God.

Compare this to the Abrahamic religions' view of women as a source of corruption. Christians say that Eve tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, causing them to be tossed out. In Islam, women are regarded as such a source of temptation and fitna (dissension) that they are covered and often kept out of sight at all times. In Judaism, women's hair is so tempting to men that they must shave it all off and wear wigs.

The Yezidis say they are descended directly from Adam, hence they are the Chosen People (compare to the Jewish view of themselves as "Chosen People").

Yezidism being quite possible the present-day remains of the original religion of the Kurds, we must acknowledge that for the last 2000 years, the Yezidis have been fighting off other major religions. First Christianity came to the region.

As would be expected, the Nestorian Christians of Northern Iraq, or "Nasara" Christian apostates, as an older tradition saw them, hold that the Yezidis were originally Christians who left the faith to form a new sect. The Nestorians and other ancient Christian sects deny the human or dual nature of Jesus - instead seeing him as purely divine.

This is in contrast to another group also called "Nasara" in Koran - these being the early Jewish Christian sects such as the Ebionites, Nazarenes and Gnostics, who followed Jesus but denied his divine nature, believe only in the Book of Matthew, and retained many Jewish traditions, including revering the Jewish Torah, refusing to eat pork, keeping the Sabbath and circumcision.

Mohammad apparently based his interpretation of Christianity on these sects. The divinity of Jesus was denied in the Koran under Ebionite influence. The Koran criticizes Christians for believing in three Gods - God, Jesus and Mary - perhaps under the influence of what is called the "Marianistic heresy". At the same time, the Koran confused human and divine qualities in Jesus due to Nestorian influence.

Finally, the Koran denied the crucifixion due to Gnostic influence, especially the apocryphal Gospel of Peter. The local Muslims, similarly, hold that the Yezidis are apostates, having originally been Muslims who left Islam to form a new religion.

There is considerable evidence that many Yezidis were formerly Christians, as the Christian story holds. Šeiḫ ’Adî, one of the tripartite of angels worshiped by the Yezidis, was a Sufi Muslim mystic from Northern Iraq in the 1100's. He attracted many followers, including many Christians and some Muslims who left their faith to become Yezidis. Yezidism existed before Šeiḫ ’Adî, but in a different form.

Šeiḫ ’Adî also attracted many Persian Zoroastrians, who were withering under the boot of Muslim dhimmitude and occasional massacre in Iran. Šeiḫ ‘Adî (full name Šeiḫ ‘Adî Ibn Masafir Al-Hakkari) was a Muslim originally from Bait Far, in the Baalbeck region of the Bekaa Valley of what is now Eastern Lebanon.

He came to Mosul for spiritual reasons. He was said to be a very learned man, and many people started to follow him. After he built up quite a following, he retired to the mountains above Mosul where he built a monastery and lived as a hermit, spending much of his time in caves and caverns in the mountains with wild animals as his only guests.

His followers were said to worship him as a God and believed that in the afterlife, they would be together with him. He died in 1162 in the Hakkari region near Mosul. At the site of his death, the Yezidis erected a shrine and it became one of the holiest sites in the religion. However, Šeiḫ ’Adî is not the founder of Yezidism, as many believe. His life and thought just added to the many strains in this most syncretistic of religions.

The third deity in the pseudo-"Trinity" of the Yezidis is a young man named Yezid. They say they are all descended from this man, whom they often refer to as God, as they sometimes refer to Šeiḫ ’Adî. In Šeiḫ ’Adî's temple, there are inscriptions to both Šeiḫ ’Adî and Yezid, each on opposing walls of the temple. In a corner of this temple, a fire, or actually a lamp, is kept burning all night, reminiscent of Zoroastrianism.

There is a lot of controversy about what the word Yezid in Yezidi stands for. The religion itself, in its modern form, probably grew out of followers of Yazid Ibn Muawiyah Ibn Abu Sufyan, the 2nd Caliph in the Umayyad Dynasty of Caliphs. Yazid fought a battle against Mohammad's grandson, Hussayn, in a battle for the succession of the Caliphate.

Hussayn's followers were also the followers of Ali, the former caliph who was assassinated. The followers of Hussayn and Ali are today known as the Shia. The Sunni follow in the tradition of the Umayyads. In a battle in Karbala in 680, Husayn and all his men were killed at Kufa and of the women and children with them taken prisoner.

To the Shia, Yazid is the ultimate villain. Most Sunnis do not view him very favorably either, and regard the whole episode as emblematic of how badly the umma had fallen apart after Mohammad died.

Nevertheless, there had been groups of Sunnis who venerated Yazid Ibn Muawiyah Ibn Abu Sufyan and the Umayyads in general in northern Iraq for some time even before Šeiḫ ’Adî appeared on the scene. Šeiḫ ’Adî himself was descended from the Umayyads.

Reverence for Yazid Ibn Muawiyah mixed with the veneration of Šeiḫ ’Adî in the early Yezidis. It was this, mixed in with the earlier pagan beliefs of the Semites and Iranians discussed elsewhere, along with a dollop of Christianity, that formed the base of modern Yezidism. But its ultimate roots are far more ancient. Yezidism had a base, but it was not yet formed in its modern version.

Here we turn to the etymology of the word Yezidi. It is possible that the figure of "Yezid", the young man-God in the Yezidi trinity, represents Yazid Ibn Muawiyah. By the mid-1200's, the local Muslims were getting upset about the Yezidis excessive devotion to these two men. In the mid-1400's the local Muslims fought a large battle against the Yezidis.

To this day, the top Yezidi mirs are all related to the Umayyads. Muslim scholars say that Yezid bin Unaisa was the founder of the modern-day Yezidis. Bin Unaisa was one of the early followers of the Kharijites, an early fanatical fundamentalist sect that resembled our modern-day Al Qaeda and other takfiri Salafi-jihadi terrorists. Bin Unaisa was said to be a follower of the earliest Kharijites.

These were the first Kharijites. Early split-offs from Ali's army, they took part in the Battle of Nahrawan against Ali's forces outside Madaen in what is now the Triangle of Death in Iraq. In 661, the Kharijites assassinated Ali, one of the penultimate moments in the Sunni-Shia split.

At some point, bin Unaisa split from the Kharijites, except for one of their early followers who were following a sect Al-Abaḍia, founded by ‘Abd-Allah Ibn Ibad. He said that any Muslim who committed a great sin was an infidel. Considering his fundamentalist past, he developed some very unorthodox views for a Muslim.

He said that God would send a new prophet to Persia (one more Iranian connection with the Yezidis), that God would send down a message to be written by this prophet in a book, and that this prophet would leave Islam and follow the religion of the Sabeans or Mandeans. Nevertheless, he continued to hold some Kharijite beliefs, including that God alone should be worshiped and that all sins were forms of idolatry.

In line with this analysis, the first Yezidis were a Kharijite subsect. The fact that bin Unaisa said that the new prophet would follow Sabeanism implies that he himself either followed this religion at one time or had a high opinion of it.

Muslim historians mention three main Sabean sects. They seemed to have derived in part from the ancient pagan religion of Mesopotamia. They were polytheists who worshiped the stars. After the Islamic conquest, they referred to themselves as Sabeans in order to receive protection as one of the People of the Book (the Quran mentions Jews, Christians and Sabeans and People of the Book).

One of the Sabean sects was called Al-Ḫarbâniyah. They believed that God dwelt within things that were good and rational. He had one essence but many appearances, in other words. God was pure good, and could not make anything evil. Evil was either accidental or necessary for life, or caused by an evil force. They also believed in the transmigration of souls (reincarnation).

It is interesting that the beliefs of this sect of Sabeans resemble the views of modern Yezidis. So Yezîd bn Unaisa believed in God and the Resurrection Day, he probably respected angels and the stars, yet he was neither polytheistic nor a true follower of Mohammad.

At the same time, he lined himself up with those People of the Book who said that Mohammad was a prophet, yet did not follow him (in this respect, he was similar to Western non-Muslims who acknowledge Mohammad as the prophet of the Arabs).

Although most orthodox histories of the Yezidis leave it out, it seems clear at this point that Yezîd bn Unaisa was the founder of the Yezidi religion in its modern form and that the Yezidis got their name from Yezîd bn Unaisa. This much may have been lost to time, for the Yezidis themselves say that Yezidi comes from the Kurdish word Yezdan or Êzid meaning God.

After naming their movement after Yezîd bn Unaisa, the Yezidis learned of Šeiḫ ‘Adî's reputation, and become his followers, along with many Muslims, Christians and Iranians.

Like their founder, the Yezidis believe in God and the Resurrection, expect a prophet from Iran, revere angels and stars, regard every sin as idolatry, respect Mohammad as a prophet yet do not follow him and at the same time pay no attention to Ali (recall that the early Kharijites assassinated Ali). Being opposed to both Mohammad and Ali, bn Unaisa is logically despised by both the Sunni and the Shia.

The fact that the Yezidis renounced the prophet of the Arabs (Mohammad) while expecting a new one from Iran logically appealed to a lot of Persians at the time. Hence, many former Zoroastrians, or fire-worshipers, from Iran joined the new religion, surely injecting their strains into this most syncretistic of religions.

There is good evidence that many Yezidis are former Christians. The Yezidis around Mosul go by the surname of Daseni, of Dawasen in the plural. It so happens that there was a Nestorian diocese in Mosul called Daseni, or Dasaniyat. It disappeared around the time of Šeiḫ ’Adî. The implication is that so many of its members became Yezidis that the Diocese folded.

Furthermore, many names of Yezidi villages are actually names in the Syriac (Christian) language, more evidence that many Yezidis are former Christians.

Adding even more weight to this theory, the Yezidis retain two Christian customs - the baptism and the Eucharist.

The Yezidis must baptize their children at the earliest possible age and the priest puts his hand on the child's head as her performs the rite. Both customs mirror the Christian baptism precisely.

When a Yezidi couple marries, they go to a local Nestorian Church to partake of the Eucharist. The cup of wine they drink is called the cup of Isa (Jesus). The Yezidi have great respect for Christian saints and houses of worship, and kiss the doors and walls of churches when they enter them.

When a Yezidi woman goes to the home of her bridegroom on wedding day, she is supposed to visit every every religious temple along the way, even the churches. On the other hand, Yezidis never enter a mosque. Sadly, the Yezidi reverence for Christianity is not returned by the Eastern Christians, who despise the Yezidis as devil-worshipers.

They revere both Jesus and Mohammad as religious teachers, not as prophets. They have also survived via a hefty dose of taqqiya, or dissimulation, in this case pretending outwardly to be some species of Shia Muslims.

This is common for minority faiths around the region, including the Alawi and Druze, who have both proclaimed at the top of their lungs that they are Muslims and have hidden to the aspects of their religion which would cause the Muslims to disown them at best or kill them at worst. The primary Islamic influence on the Yezidis is actually Sufism, not Shiism per se.

There are traces of other religions - Hinduism may possibly be seen in the five Yezidi castes, from top to bottom - Pir, Shaikh, Kawal, Murabby, and Mureed (followers). Mureeds are about on a par with Dalits or Untouchables in Hinduism. Marriage across castes is strictly forbidden, as it has been disapproved in India.

On the other hand, pre-Islamic Iran also had a caste system, and the base of the Yezidi religion seems to be derived from Persian Zoroastrianism. The Yezidi, like the Druze and the Zoroastrians, do not accept converts, and like the Druze, think that they will be reincarnated as their own kind (Druze think they will be reincarnated as Druze; Yezidis think they will be reincarnated as Yezidis).

The Yezidis can be considered fire-worshipers in a sense; they obviously got this from the Zoroastrians. The Yezidis say, "Without fire, there would be no life." This is true even in our modern era, if we substitute "electrical power" for fire, our lives would surely diminish. Even today, when Kurdish Muslims swear on an oath, they say, "I swear by this fire..."

Many say there is a resemblance between Malak Taus and the Assyrian God Tammuz, though whether the name Malak Taus is actually derived from Tammuz is much more problematic. Tammuz was married to the Assyrian moon goddess, Ishtar. But this connection is not born out by serious inquiry.

Ishtar the Goddess of the Moon, here represented as a bird goddess. Worship of birds is one of the oldest forms of pagan idolatry known to man. What is it about birds that made them worthy of worship by the ancients? The miracle of flight?

Where do the Yezidis come from? The Yezidis themselves say that they came from the area around Basra and the lower Euphrates, then migrated to Syria and then to Sinjar, Mosul and Kurdistan.

In addition to worshiping a bird-god, there are other traces of the pre-Islamic pagan religions of the Arabs in Yezidism.

They hold the number 7 sacred, a concept that traces back to the ancient Mesopotamians. The Yezidis have seven sanjaks and each one has seven burners of the flame, their God created seven angels and the sculpture carved on the temple of Šeiḫ ’Adî has seven branches.

The Sabeans, another ancient religion of Mesopotamia who are now called star-worshipers by their detractors, also worshiped seven angels who guided the courses of seven planets - it is from this formulation that our seven days of the week are derived. In the ancient religion of Assyria, Ishtar descended through seven gates to the land of no return. The ancient Hebrews likewise utilized the number seven in their religion.

An ancient seven-armed candelabra, a symbol nowadays used in the Jewish religion, with demonic sea monsters drawn on the base.

The Yezidis worship the sun and moon at their rising and setting, following the ancient Ḥarranians, a people who lived long ago somewhere in northern Iraq. Sun-worship and moon-worship are some of the oldest religious practices of Man. The ancient pagans of Canaan worshiped the Sun.

At the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the religion practiced there had little in common with Talmudic Judaism of today. For instance, the horses of the Sun were worshiped at that temple (see II Kings 25: 5, 11). The ancient Judeans, who the modern-day Jews claim spiritual connection with, actually worshiped the "host of heaven" - the Sun, the Moon and the Planets. So much for "the original monotheists, eh?

In Babylonia, there were two temples to the Sun-God Shamas.

Another pre-Islamic Arab pagan belief is the belief in sacred wells and sanctuaries that contain them. The springs contain water that has curative powers. The holy water found at the Zamzam Well in Mecca is an example; even to this day, Muslims bottle the water and carry it off for this purpose. Often sacred clothes are used to make these pilgrimages, because ordinary clothes are thought to contaminate the holy site.

In pre-Islamic days, when the pagans circled the rock at the Kaaba, they were completely naked. In Islam, men and women are supposed to remove their clothing and wear a special garb as they circulate around the rock. In Mandeanism, both men and women go to the Mishkana, or tabernacle, take off their clothes, and bathe in the circular pool. Emerging, they put on the rasta, a ceremonial white garment.

At the temple of Šeiḫ ‘Adî, there is a sacred pool. The Yezidis throw coins, jewelry and other things into this pool as offerings. They think that Šeiḫ ‘Adî takes these things from time to time. And they must remove their clothes, bathe and wear a special garment when they visit the holy valley where this temple resides.

The ancient Arabs also worshiped trees. There were sacred trees at Nejran, Hadaibiya and Mecca. The pagans hung women's ornaments, fine clothes, ostrich eggs, weapons and other items.

Similarly, the Yezidis also worship trees. They have their favorite trees, and sick people go to these trees and hang pieces of cloth on them, hoping to get well, and believe that whoever takes one of these down will get sick with whatever disease the person who hung the cloth had.

An inscription of a sacred tree from Ancient Babylonian civilization. Trees were worshiped not just in ancient Arabia; they were also worshiped in Mesopotamia.


The Christian Trinity combined with the pagan Tree of Life, in an interesting ancient Chaldean inscription that combines pagan and Christian influences. The Tree of Life was also utilized in Kabbalism, Jewish mysticism from the Middle Ages. Nowadays the symbol is used by practitioners of both White and Black Magic. Radical Islam is committing genocide once again on the Christians of Iraq, including the Chaldeans.


Yet another Tree of Life, this time from ancient Assyria, an ancient civilization in Mesopotamia. The concept of a tree of life is a pagan concept of ancient pedigree.

The ancient Meccans used to worship stones. At one point the population became so large that they had to move out of the valley where the Kaaba resided, so when they formed their new settlements, they took rocks from the holy place and piled them outside their settlements and made a sort of shrine out of these things, parading around the rock pile as they moved around the Kaaba.

In Palestine, there were sacred wells at Beersheba and Kadesh, a sacred tree at Shekem and a sacred rock at Bethel. As in animism, it was believed that divine powers or spirits inhabited these rocks, trees and springs. This tradition survives to this day in the folk religion of the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese.

The Yezidis also have certain stones that they worship. They kiss these stones in reverence.

When the Yezidis reach the goal of their pilgrimage or hajj, they become very excited and start shouting. After fasting all day, they have a big celebration in the evenings, with singing and dancing and gorging on fine dishes.

This hajj, where they worship a spring under Šeiḫ ‘Adî's tomb called Zamzam and then climb a mountain and shoot off guns, is obviously taken from the Muslim hajj. Mecca has a Zamzam Spring, and pilgrims climb Mount 'Arafat on hajj.

The shouting, feasting, singing, dancing and general excitement is typical of a pagan festival. The non-Yezidi neighbors of the Yezidis claim that Yezidis engage in immoral behavior on this hajj. No one knows if this is true or not, but if they do, it may be similar to the festivals of the Kadeshes discussed in the Old Testament, where people engaged in licentious behavior in their temples.

Although the Yezidis have a strict moral code, observers say that they allow adultery if both parties are willing. That's pretty open-minded for that part of the world.

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Who Were the Real Terrorists in Kielce 1946?

Updated February 1, 2008:

This blog presents another essay by the mysterious Eastern Orthodox expatriate US academic Stojgniev O’Donnell (a pseudonym). This blog differs with O'Donnell in a number of areas, but we agree with him in others.

I have published a number of O'Donnell's essays, which I receive through an intermediary as he does not deal directly with any US-based media. Unfortunately, in this essay he moves away from critical-Semitism (which we promote here) into the bigoted terrain of anti-Semitism. Critical-Semitism is humanistic, truthful and rational and anti-Semitism is the opposite of all three.

This blog strongly rejects the Jewish propaganda line that all criticism of Jews, their religion or their state is anti-Semitism, or that anti-Semitism is some bizarre unfathomable evil that occurs for no reason whatsoever.

I think maybe O'Donnell was angry when he wrote it. I strongly suggest that authors let sit pieces that they write when they were angry, and come back to them later when they are in a calm frame of mind and edit them accordingly. This is what we do here at this blog, when we remember to.

Still, because the history of Jews and Poles has been so tragic, it is useful to publish the Polish side of the affair in an effort to try to understand the roots of the problem.

This essay deals with a pogrom of Jews in Kielce, Poland, in 1946, after World War 2 was over, from a Polish nationalist point of view. Although I have not read it, Jan T. Gross' Fear - Anti-Semitism After Auschwitz is supposed to be an excellent work that deals comprehensively with the terrible Kielce pogrom.

Out of a pre-war Jewish population in Kielce of 25,000, only about 200 Kielce Jews survived the war. The surviving Jews returned from the forests and camps and found that Poles had stolen their homes. This was the setting in which the famous pogrom took place.

It is fascinating how Jewish Zionists can rage beet-red about "Poles stealing the homes and land of Jews", while being oblivious to the nightmarish Jewish state occupying Palestine, which has stolen every inch of land it illegally claims.

Although only 39 Jews were killed in the pogrom (relatively few compared to other pogroms), the Kielce Pogrom had great significance for Polish history. After WW2 ended, many Jews had hopes of continuing to live in Poland. For many of them, Kielce ended all of that.

As Stephen Pollard notes, Kielce convinced many of them of the need for a Jewish state (this is actually a dubious assumption on the part of Zionist Pollard). Debate about the Kielce Pogrom and the Polish role in it has continued in recent years.

A Polish commission in 2000 concluded that a mob of local Poles spontaneously attacked and killed the Kielce Jews as a result of "unfortunate coincidences of an historical nature", and dismissed a conspiracy theory that the pogrom was instituted by the Soviet Union.

Last month, on July 6, a memorial to the victims of the pogrom was laid in Kielce on the 60th anniversary of the pogrom. The Polish President's office read a statement at the ceremony describing the pogrom as "a great shame and tragedy for the Jews and Poles". This blog concurs completely in that sentiment.

The essay below deals with an article by Adam Michnik, the Jewish editor or Poland's largest newspaper. This article also sheds light on current Polish affairs and indicates that, alas, all is still not well between the Poles and the Jews.

The piece makes some pointed critiques, which are commonly made, of secular, liberal Jews in the media using that forum to aggressively push a particular type of Jewish tribal agenda onto a non-Jewish population.

Note the anti-Russian and anti-Soviet sentiment in O'Donnell's piece, typical of Polish religious nationalism.

Suffice to say that O'Donnell's views are pretty typical of Slavic Eastern Orthodox Christians in Poland, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and to a much lesser extent among Orthodox Christians in Greece and the Arab World.

Socially conservative yet anti-imperialist and to some extent anti-Western, these Orthodox have also had a tempestuous relationship with the Jews.

These difficulties, and the reasons behind them, have of course been shrouded in fog by the Politically Correct theory of anti-Semitism, which holds that anti-Semitism is a form of mental illness, is not understandable by anyone but a psychiatrist or a prison warden, and occurs for no known reason at all.

I call this the mystification of anti-Semitism, and while it serves ego-defensive purposes for the Jews and philo-Semites who have contrived this nonsense, it surely sheds little light on anti-Semitism.

Furthermore, by promoting Zionism and the Jewish state (one of the worst mistakes the Jews have made in recent years) this mystification serves more nefarious ends. For it is Zionist dogma, elucidated by Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism himself, that the Gentiles will always hate the Jews, everywhere the Jews are, for eternity.

Such it has been, such it is, such it will be.

Hence the need for the armed gangster-state ghetto (It even has a wall around it!) called Israel.

A further elaboration is that worldwide, an eternal epidemic of anti-Semitism has occurred, continues to occur, and most importantly, will always occur, ever since the Jews appeared on Earth, for no intelligible reason whatsoever other than merely a manifestation of evil.

The insidious and disgusting sentiments working here? All Gentiles are anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism is incomprehensible other than as an infection of evil.

Putting the two together, we realize that many ultranationalist Jews actually believe that all Gentiles are evil people. Hence, apparently on some level, they hate us (Israel Shahak said a majority of Israelis had a deep hatred of all Gentiles). And they accuse us of being "haters".

In truth, Jewish suffering has not been particularly unique. Throughout most of the history of feudal Europe, Christian serfs would have gladly traded places with Jews. Certainly there were pogroms and other forms of prejudice and racist hatred, but serfdom for the serfs themselves was one centuries-long pogrom.

If one reviews the history of any ethnic group, tribe or nation, one will find that they have often been in conflict, often armed conflict, with various neighbors for various reasons. Wars have been ongoing, and many members of the tribe or nation were killed. The land was often overrun by invaders, often repeatedly, much of their land stolen, and many of their people killed.

Painful as it may sound, the history of the Jews (until the 1940's anyway) is probably not that much more painful that that of many tribes and nations. Even the extermination attempt in the 1940's was not unique, sadly, as there have been many attempts to exterminate various ethnic groups.

The Tutsis lost possibly 70% of their population in the genocide in 1994. By any accounting, that is more than the 1/3 of Jews lost in the Shoah. One-third of the population of East Timor was killed after Indonesia invaded, equivalent to the Shoah as a percentage. Many American Indian tribes have been wiped clean off the map altogether.

I am not an expert on Slavic Orthodox Christian anti-Semitism but in Poland, in general, Catholic anti-Semitism was religiously-based, or more accurately based on confessionalism (religious bigotry without religious belief). In a nutshell, the Poles wanted Jews to convert to Catholicism and intermarry with Poles. The Jews would do neither, and hence anti-Semitism ensued.

The Chmielnicki Rebellion in the Ukraine from 1648-1654, during which about 20,000 Jews and 100,000 noblemen were killed, has achieved permanent victimology status amongst Jews as merely an outbreak of murderous anti-Semitism, and nothing else.

That it was, but many Jews had formed a middle class that allied itself with the brutal feudal lords. The Jews were often the only face of feudal rule that the serfs ever saw.

The rebellion was probably mostly just a peasant rebellion of serfs against the feudal lords and their allies. Many people were killed on all sides.

Chmielnicki, who led the rebellion, actually implored the Jewish poor to join the fight against their brethren who were allied with the feudal classes. The Jewish poor refused. To this day, Chmielnicki is seen as a hero in the Ukraine, while Jews regard him as some kind of Hitler and see his fame as emblematic of anti-Semitism in the region.

Chmielnicki is probably more akin to, say, Tupac Amaru, who led the Inca against the Spaniards in the late 1700's, or Mao Zedong, or Ho Chi Minh, or Desallines in Haiti in 1804, or other leaders of peasant rebellions. It is useful to note that peasant rebellions, whether involving Jews or non-Jews, are typically bloody affairs.

For example, in 1804, in the Haitian Slave Revolt, the Haitian slaves rose up against French slave-holding families in Haiti and killed most of the 25,000 population of them. This blog regards that wild massacre, as, in general, a great day for humanity (though the children of the slaveowners could have been spared).

Another interesting aspect of the Chmielnicki Rebellion is that the Jews look at the rebellion and the 1600's in which it occurred, as one of, as noted above, an insane outbreak of murderous anti-Semitism, and little else. From the Jewish point of view, this was the century in which people went nuts in the Ukraine and slaughtered Jews for no reason. Not much else happened of consequence in the region at that time.

Never mind that the Jews killed were the public face of inhuman feudal brutality, as noted above. We need also to note that during this same period, Poland was wracked another terrible outbreak of anti-Semitism, but this occurred in the context of general chaos, wild warfare and multiple invasions of Poland by various foreign powers.

During the period in which Jews narcissistically mourn their own losses as the only salient tragedy of the time, an incredible 1/3 of the population of Poland (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) was exterminated. This is a population loss equivalent to the Jewish Shoah. So, while Jews were definitely being killed in Poland during this time, the Poles themselves were also being slaughtered like flies.

Whether Jews were being killed to a greater extent than Poles is open to debate. The critical point here is that this was not so much only another wild outbreak of incomprehensible Nazi-like slaughter of Jews (the myopic Jewish view) but instead, it was simply a period of mass slaughter of the population at large by various actors for various reasons.

The number of dead in the Chmielnicki Rebellion has also been exaggerated, which has been a general tendency of Ashkenazi Jews who have cultivated a victimhood epic. Exaggeration of one's own losses, and the resulting embrace of victimhood, is probably a general human tendency and not limited to Jews.

Jewish sources originally said that 2.4 to 3.3 million Jews were killed during Chmielnicki, and modern-day Jewish sources put the figure at 500,000. An Israeli historian has produced a more accurate figure of about 19,000 Jewish dead out of a population of 40,000. Nobles suffered much more, as they were virtually exterminated from the Ukraine - scarcely one survived.

Nevertheless, one gets the impression that Jewish activists look at Poland in the 1600's and see only dead Jews and no other corpses.

A useful book that deals peripherally with Polish-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish relations is Primo Levi's " If Not Now, When?" (review here) about a group of armed Jewish anti-Nazi partisans operating behind enemy lines in Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Germany in World War 2.

They meet up at one point with a group of Polish resistance fighters. The Jews air their grievances about Polish treatment of Jews to the Poles, who retort with a history of equally lamentable treatment of Poles at the hands of all sorts of invaders and local abusers.

The Jews end up concluding that the Poles have been just as abused as the Jews have, but in their twisted way, many of the Poles took out their rage on the local Jews instead of on the real abusers. Both sides leave with a refreshed understanding of each other. By the way, I enjoyed Levi's book and recommend it.

With that background, we can move on to the piece. As usual, my comments, if any, will appear in bold brackets:

I am no expert on the history of the events that took place in Kielce, Poland in July 1946 and resulted in the death of a group of Jews. And I have no intention of becoming an expert, for several reasons. First of all, I am convinced that the version of the Kielce events which is promoted by Jews as historical reality is, in fact, a clever distortion of the truth.

[RL: I do not think that this is completely accurate, though the standard Jewish line includes various inaccuracies.

The aberrations include that 80, or 50, or however many, Jews were killed - no, it was 39 - and that the Polish army and police and gleefully joined in the killing - in fact, the Polish army fought off the mob for some time, and took the wounded to the hospital, although some other soldiers joined in the pogrom.]

The Jewish version of the notorious “pogrom” has been crafted by Jews because of the propaganda value of its symbolism. Kielce is one of those shticks with which Jews love to thrash Poles. (Always the Jews glorify their distinctiveness. They can’t speak German unless it becomes “Yiddish.” They can’t get their butts kicked unless it’s a racist “pogrom”).

[RL: For the record, Yiddish and German are distinctive languages. Yiddish is not even a dialect of German; it is a separate language altogether. Yiddish is actually a sort of a German-Slavic creole with many Hebrew words mixed in.]

Life is too short to be distracted by what happened in Kielce. Some Jews were murdered by Poles. A Polish boy mysteriously disappeared for awhile (though he turned up unharmed after the violence) and there were rumors of ritual murder.

Substantial evidence suggests that the Kielce “pogrom” was engineered by Soviets in Poland, who used the incident to slander postwar Poland in the international press, while at the same time shoring up and legitimizing the unpopular Soviet occupation, which was bitterly opposed by the vast majority of the Polish population.

[RL: This view is quite popular in Poland, especially with Polish nationalists. A major Polish commission reviewed all evidence about this Soviet conspiracy theory and rejected it out of hand as unproven. There are many problems with the theory.

The main one is that there is little, if any, hard evidence supporting it, only a cui bono theory that suggests that the Soviet Union could have benefited from it.

Another mark against this theory is that, despite the blatherings of Jewish ultranationalists, the Soviet Union was not anti-Semitic at the time or prior, and was not until the disappointing "rootless cosmopolitan" campaign of 1948.]

The reason I raise this topic is because of an interesting article on Kielce by Adam Michnik, the notorious Jewish “dissident” and contemporary media magnate. Michnik’s article appeared in his newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza: “Pogram Kielecki: Dwa rachunki sumienia” (3-4 July 2006, pp. 12, 13, 14 and 10-11 July 2006, pp. 22, 23, 24).

How did Michnik (real name: Adam Szechter) go from poor dissident to publisher of the most powerful daily in postcommunist Poland? I leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusion.

Michnik’s newspaper is a source of rabid anti-Polishness; anti-Christianity; political correctness; strident support of homosexuality, love parades, and social deviance; and propaganda for all of contemporary America’s and Western Europe’s wickedest nonsense on relativism and multiculti.

Michnik occasionally and strategically writes with sympathy about the Catholic Church, which enjoys the backing of the great majority of the Polish population.

[RL: Jewish hostility towards Christianity, to one degree or another, is often seen in even very assimilated US Jews, and is most pointed towards Catholicism, and not so much towards Protestantism. Jews have long memories, and Christian anti-Semitism in Europe was, for the vast majority of its history, Catholic.

We see this Catholic anti-Semitism in Latin America also. Typically, it took the form of a complaint that "Jews killed Jesus". Hence the furor when Mel Gibson, a deeply conservative Catholic, made the movie,"The Passion". Protestants in general have never cared much about Jews one way or the other, though lately many Protestant fundamentalists have become passionate Zionists.]

Michnik’s people will pen some insignificant article on a minor religious celebration, illustrated perhaps with a color photo, while in the same issue publishing a couple of deeply ideological articles which seek to compromise the Polish Church.

[RL: I confess it is beyond me why the secular, liberal, Westernizing Jews that tend to own media outlets so often play with fire in this way.

We have seen so many reports like this of Jewish ethnic activists in the media aggressively pushing a particular secular, liberal, Westernizing Jewish agenda onto a non-Jewish population that it cannot possibly anti-Semitic fantasy. However, to dislike Jews due to the activities of these "media Jews" is a mistake.

Many Jews, especially Orthodox Jews and particularly in Israel, are deeply conservative on social issues like multiculturalism, abortion, homosexuality, etc. They don't have much in common with the species of liberal "media Jew" described above.

Contrast the "media Jew" behavior with the mindset of Overseas Chinese, another minority very similar to Jews in that a tiny minority has often achieved huge economic power in a number of societies. Yet the Overseas Chinese tend to keep their heads down, assimilate, and not provoke the majority.

Pogroms have occurred against the Overseas Chinese, as they have against Jews, which suggests an economic basis for at least some of these violent uprisings. Yet perhaps Jews could learn a thing or two from the Overseas Chinese about how to not go out of one's way to provoke a majority population.]

In the article on Kielce, Michnik demonstrates his mastery of the Jewish art of propaganda.

He goes so far as to quote long passages about the Kielce “pogrom” written by Kielce Archbishop Czeslaw Kaczmarek and later delivered to the American ambassador in Warsaw (international Jewry at that time was agitating the West to defend Poland’s helpless, innocent Jews against racist Polish anti-Semitism).

Archbishop Kaczmarek eloquently explains the Poles’ suspicion of Jews:

Here after the large-scale murder of Jews committed by the German government in recent time in Poland, also in Kielce, there was no negative antagonism towards Jews and there was no anti-Semitism. Everyone sympathized with the Jews, even their most determined enemies. The Poles had saved many Jews, and without Polish aid, not a single Jew would have survived…Jews are unpopular, even hated, throughout Poland. There is no doubt about that.

Jews are hated by those Poles who belong to no political party, but also by those who belong to the ruling [communist] party…The origins of that antagonism are well known, but certainly they have no racial basis. Jews in Poland are the chief propagators of the communist system, which the Polish nation completely rejects….

Jews are everywhere in the government, in [Polish] institutions outside of Poland, in industry, in administrative offices, in the military, and everywhere in the most important, most influential positions. They control the nation’s press; they control all censorship today in Poland. They control the security apparatus and they are responsible for arrests (p. 13).

Something similar took place in other countries of the postwar Soviet bloc, as Jews in the name of communism and the brotherhood of nations with violence and terror “settled their accounts” with Christians.

[RL: The Cardinal's account is self-contradictory and problematic. As a Leftist, I don't necessarily have problems with Jews being Communists. It was true that there were many Jews among the Communists in Europe and the Soviet Union, especially in leadership roles.

These Jews were often outside of normative Jewish culture, religion and even mainstream Jewish identity. The notion that Jews in the Communist movement may have unfortunately used their power to attack their ancient enemies is a long-standing complaint of anti-Semites that deserves examination.

Certainly in the late 1920's and early 1930's in the Soviet Union, the abuse of the Christian religion was almost taken to the form of a fetish.

But note also that the institutional Christian churches in these Eastern Bloc states often opposed the Communist regimes. Jews as part of these regimes (and other government officials) consequently attacked these churches, as they attacked any other dissidents.

The notion that Jewish Communists were attacking dissidents not as Communists first, but as Jews first, is problematical and remains to be proven.

Many Communist Jews in the Eastern Bloc were probably trying to put into practice the noble Jewish tradition of being a "light unto nations". They may have been misguided, but they were probably sincere about wanting a better world.

Furthermore, many Eastern Bloc Jews probably saw Communism as a remedy for long-standing, often irrational anti-Semitism in the region. Note that in the 1960's, the Polish Communist government could no longer be considered Jewish-dominated, and even orchestrated a disgusting anti-Semitic campaign called the Polish 1968 Political Crisis.]

Here I should remind those foolish and naive Poles who worship America that the latter country does not allow any discussion or investigation of the Jews’ role in the communist terror.

[RL: This is simply not true at at all. There are no laws against it. However, there is a taboo associated with the subject. The Nazis made much of the association between Jews and Communism, so anyone equating Jews with Communism since then has been, partly properly, seen as treading in Nazi footsteps.]

According to the American academy, there was no collaboration between Jews and communists (I was recently told that point blank by one American professor).

[RL: Well, that is definitely a bald-faced lie.]

Michnik (along with a handful of other Jews) occasionally admits, however, that Jews truly were responsible for communist terror.

[It's not proper, as I have noted above, to ascribe all Eastern Bloc Communist repression to Jews. I believe that Jews were a minority even amongst, say, the Polish Communist Party.

In the early days, even in Poland, Communism was actually fairly popular, despite what O'Donnell implies, especially among working-class Poles.

Initially, conditions for workers and especially peasants were dramatically improved. Recall that Polish feudalism did not truly die until 1945, and it was the Communists who put the stake into feudalism's dying heart once and for all.

But the Polish Communists made a number of stupid mistakes, especially very heavy-handed repression, and by the mid-1950's or so, much of their popularity had evaporated.]

It is permissible in America for a Jew, but not for a non-Jew, to point out parallels between Jews and communists.

The main point of Michnik’s article is that the Catholic Church is to blame for the murder of innocent Jews in Kielce. (The ultimate implication, then, is that such an institution cannot be legitimate). Michnik quotes other Poles in the Catholic hierarchy and points out the moral failings of their political incorrectness.

And yet Michnik is so daring in his propaganda, so convinced of his skill at selling his “buy-one-get-one-free” illusion, that he is willing at times to argue the side of truth, i.e. the Polish point of view.

Archbishop Kaczmarek’s explanation, as quoted by Michnik, is a balanced, unemotional explanation of the Jewish role in the postwar communist terror in Poland. Reading Archbishop Kaczmarek’s text, one understands that, for historical reasons, Poles will never ever trust a Jew.

[RL: I think that is dubious. People have short memories, and Polish Communism is dead anyway.]

Michnik quotes some words delivered by a certain Rabbi Kahane in Kielce at the ceremonious burial of the Jewish victims of “Polish terror.” Michnik doesn’t provide background information on Kahane, but I have in my mind a definite, colorful snapshot of a spiteful rabbi puffed up with pride and venom.

Michnik, confident in his skill of disinformation, asks:

Polish reality, obligated at that moment, in 1946, to appeal publicly to the Jewish public for [Jews] to avoid cooperation with the communist regime imposed upon Poland, and especially with the security system, which was in fact for Poles a system of persecution? Was not the rabbi obligated to condemn the violation of human rights [in Poland], the persecution of people [from the non-communist, anti-Nazi underground], the excesses of censorship, the fake elections?

[RL: On the other hand, the only proper attitude of the Polish people towards Kielce itself is the statement of the Polish government at the July 7 ceremony discussed above - that it was a shame and a tragedy for both the Jews and the Poles.]

In attempting to appear impartial, Michnik raises some legitimate, essential questions. Why were Jews silent when Jewish communists were arresting, persecuting, and murdering innocent Christians?

[RL: We have dealt with the "Jewish Communists persecuted Christians" bit on this blog before. Recall that over 95% of Poles and 80% of Russians were at least nominal Christians, even during Communism. So any Communist repression was likely to target "Christians" simply because they were a majority of the population.

This essay of O'Donnell's seems to be an example of a Polish phenomenon called Zydokomuna and his complaints about persecution of Poles an example of Polonphobia. Both articles are excellent background for this post.]

The implication is this: Why was your Jewish Holocaust more important than ours?

[RL: It is interesting to note that 3 million non-Jewish Poles were killed in WW2. Poland lost an incredible 1/3 of its total population. That is 1/2 of the Jewish Shoah right there. 22 million Russians died in WW2. That is almost 4 times the number of deaths in the Shoah. Where are the "Russian Holocaust" Museums in America?]

We live in a time of struggle with Jews. The inclination of the Jew is to lead the world to Armageddon.

[RL: This is just rank anti-Semitic nonsense, but as far as the gangster, thuggish state of Israel goes, combined with its determined and often-fanatical opponents, there seems to be some truth in this. Which is another reason that state should have never been created.]

As I have noted before, a great virtue for the Christian is knowing when and how to ignore Jews.

[RL: I think it is important to note the ethnic biases which may be lurking in the propaganda of various ethnic groups. At that point, one can at least choose to ignore that propaganda or decide that it has an ethnic basis that may not be relevant to one's own group.]

One should never permit one’s life to be directed by Jews. Those non-Jews who spend their life in hatred of Jews are foolish, for their hatred is exactly what the Jew thrives upon – it confirms the Jew’s ethnocentrism.

[RL: Unfortunately, I conclude that this is true. Anti-Semitism indeed feeds Jewish ethnocentrism, which then feeds further anti-Semitism, which then...get it? Albert Einstein, who was Jewish himself, noted that Jews were determined to be at war with the whole world and then were surprised when the world did not react favorably to them.

Hostility towards outsiders, along with xenophobia and accompanying paranoia and a victimization fetish, go hand in hand with ethnocentrism. All ethnocentric groups (that means all humans, really) have the potential to display such tendencies. As a group becomes more ethnocentric, they will tend display these qualities more.

Jews, being perhaps the most ethnocentric tribe on Earth, would be expected to display xenophobia and accompanying paranoia along with a penchant to see themselves as eternal victims, in spades.

The solution, as noted by progressives from Marx on, is simply the assimilation of the Jews and the tearing down of all ghettos, physical and mental. Such is the road to liberation.]

I pity those Americans who have, in contempt, adopted the pejorative name “kike.” Never have I heard a non-Jew use that word in conversation. I have encountered “kike” only among Jews, who are hoping and dreaming that someone would legitimize their ethnocentricity by calling them a “kike.” The name “Jew” is enough. Jew says it all.

When a Jew mentions Kielce or Jebwabne, I simply smile and comment on the weather. I refuse to allow a Jew to dictate my thoughts. The point of this article is this: as the Jews become more powerful, they become more daring in their allusions.

[RL: As Kevin MacDonald notes, as Jews increase their power over non-Jews, anti-Semitism seems to increase. It is this, not some incomprehensible sickness of the soul, that holds the key to our understanding of much anti-Semitism.

The question then is, which way forward?

Is there something to be said for the Overseas Chinese tendency to keep one's head down and be discreet? Belligerence and overreach have caused the Jews untold heartache through time. Minorities prosper and live in peace at the whim of majorities, like it or not. Hence, pragmatism mandates reasonable discretion on the part of any minority.]

Adam Michnik and other Jews have come to believe that Poles are so simple-minded that they can be persuaded that Kielce is proof of the inherent evil of Polish society and the Polish Church. The reality is that Michnik, in particular, and Jews, in general, are deceiving charlatans. It is in their nature to deceive non-Jews.

[RL: Once again, more anti-Semitic blather, but let us note one thing. O'Donnell's rage, amply displayed in this piece, comes from something that is not well-known.

I was taught somehow, possibly through the standard pro-Jewish Holocaust line, that Polish Jews had heavily collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews. Let us note that the degree of Polish collaboration with Nazis in Occupied Poland is controversial.

For some alternate views on the Nazi occupation of Poland that show that many Poles collaborated with the Germans and, more commonly, delightfully helped themselves to Jewish property after the Jews were gone, contradicting my general tone in this post, see here, here and here.

It is true that some Poles participated in 22 massacres of Jews during the Holocaust and a number of Poles collaborated with the Nazis. But one point of view is that, unlike Lithuania, Ukraine or other East European states, Polish enthusiasm for collaboration and pogroms during the Holocaust was less than other East European nations.

In fact, most Poles did not cooperate with the Nazi persecution of the Polish Jews at all, and most of the Jews who were killed in Poland were killed by Germans alone (with some exceptions such as the Jebwabne Pogrom).

In the cases where the Nazis had "local" collaborators, it is more accurate to describe them as the Polish Government in Exile did in the famous letter below, as "the dregs of Eastern Europe", rather than only Poles. In other words, Nazi collaborators in Poland came from a variety of East European nations.

There are more Poles listed than any other national group in the Righteous Among Nations Award given by Israel for those who helped to save Jews during WW2.

In Nazi-occupied Poland, hiding Jews was punished by the death penalty. Poland was the only Nazi-occupied country that formally instituted the death penalty for sheltering Jews. Nevertheless, as we noted above, more Poles saved Jews than any other national group.

The Polish government in exile was the first government to tell the world of the existence of concentration camps and the Nazi policy to exterminate the Jews (a copy of that famous document is here).

Anyone who insists, as one of my commenters did at the end of this piece, that the vast majority of Poles collaborated with the Nazi Final Solution, or that the Poles have always been some of the worst anti-Semites on Earth, needs to carefully read this remarkable 15-page historical document.

This document, describing the reality of life in Nazi-occupied Poland in stark, brutal terms, focuses on the plight of the Jews, and describes the Nazi destruction of Polish Jewry in rich, detailed terms. The document could have been written by the ADL or the Israeli government.

We should also note that the Polish government in exile was the only government that set up an organization specifically dedicated to saving the Jews of Poland - this organization was called Zegota.

When I first read O'Donnell's post here, I could not understand his anger and I thought that he was just degenerating into anti-Semitic irrationalism (as he does from time to time). But now that I have learned the reality of the dynamic between Poles and Jews in WW2, I am beginning to understand his anger.

Yes, a number of Poles collaborated and some even killed Jews themselves, but this occurred in most Nazi-occupied countries. But the vast majority of Poles refused to get involved, and a huge percentage of the population either joined or supported an often-suicidal Polish resistance.

The Polish resistance was one of the largest, most potent and accomplished of all of the resistance armies in the Nazi-occupied lands. The Polish resistance, with the support of millions of Poles, worked feverishly to save every Jew in Poland as part of their resistance project. They even organized an amazing resistance organization in the bowels of the Auschwitz itself.

A Pole, Witold Pilecki, was the only person who volunteered to be imprisoned at Auschwitz and the first person to organize a resistance organization there. Those few Jews who survived (a horrifying 90% were exterminated - 3 million in total out of 3.4 million, or 1/2 of the entire Shoah) survived only at the whim of their Polish neighbors who hid them.

The reality of the Polish-Jewish dynamic in Occupied Poland was, as elsewhere in Nazi-occupied lands, more complex than the sound bites the propagandists feed us. Some Poles collaborated but many more did not. Some Poles killed Jews, and many more worked night and day to save them and fight Nazism.

In that light, Jewish chauvinist propaganda depicting Poles as super-Nazi collaborators and the worst anti-Semites on Earth is not only erroneous but it is also disgusting and unfair. And this is the misguided agenda of Organized Jewry (exemplified here by Mr. Michnik).

This agenda needs to be condemned alongside Poland's historical anti-Semitism and the refusal of many Poles to take responsibility for Kielce. Kielce happened, 60 years ago, but it's all over now. It's time to put it to rest and move on towards Polish-Jewish healing instead of this endless, divisive pummeling of dead beasts.

In that context, Jewish obsession with Kielce and other Polish horrors seems misplaced. The latest philo-Semitic notion is that "the world was silent" after Kielce - that seems highly dubious to me.

Instead, Poles should be commended for refusing to collaborate in the Judaicide. Michnik's harping on aberrations like Kielce would not appear to be conducive to rebuilding Polish-Jewish relations.]