This time we went too far

Who went too far? The Jerusalem Post. that's who. I reported on their disgusting editorial effectively blaming multiculturalism for the Norway killings and how a postscript to the piece tried to disclaim what the editorial was actually saying. Well apparently the disclaimer wasn't enough and now the Jerusalem Post has an editorial entirely devoted to apologising for the earlier editorial together with a couple of opinion pieces by two of their dodgy journos:

We hope that the Norwegian government and people will accept the 'Post’s apology and forgive us for any offense or hurt caused at this sensitive time.

Of course they only meant to offend foreigners living in Norway, not Norway's liberal establishment.

What do Breivik, CounterPunch, David Duke, Stormfront and the Jerusalem Post have in common?

Damn, no Atzmon on the list.  I saw Duke and read Atzmon.  Silly me or am I?  It seems like only yesterday that  neo-nazi David Duke was distributing his Letter to the Courageous Former Israeli Gilad Atzmon.

I ought to say that it is seriously not nice to try to make political capital over the slaughter that took place in Norway just recently though if there are political lessons to be learned then they should be and there are many outpourings on the web and in the mainstream media that are trying to glean lessons from the Norway killings that go beyond mere security issues.  There are also anecdotes arising out of the commentary and I suppose this post just draws on and adds to those.

So, I got the title for this post from a comment under the Louis Proyect blog, The Unrepentant Marxist post headed, "What do Alexander Cockburn and the Norwegian mass murderer have in common?" For openers:

The short answer to that is an affinity for the writings of paleoconservative William S. Lind. If you do a search on “by William S. Lind” on the Counterpunch website, you will come up with 16,500 hits. It should be understood that many of these hits refer to the same article, but clearly we are dealing with someone who was at one point as much of a presence there as fellow paleoconservative Counterpuncher Paul Craig Roberts is today.

Last October Alexander Cockburn defended this orientation to the right in an article that referred to me as an “old Trotskyist lag” in light of my unaccountable inability to appreciate the Tea Party:

Contrary to a thousand contemptuous diatribes by the left, the Tea Party is a genuine political movement, channeling the fury and frustration of a huge slab of white Americans running small businesses – what used to be called the petit-bourgeoisie…

It could be Hilary Clinton campaigning against Obama.

As the thread develops through Cockburn's (and therefore Counterpunch's) flirtations and affairs, the Jerusalem Post's availing of the opportunity provided by the Norway killings to denounce multiculturalism to David Duke's similarities with the Jerusalem Post, a commentator put the following point:

So, it’s kinda boiling down to “what do Breivik, CounterPunch, David Duke, Stormfront and the Jerusalem Post have in common?”

So what's all that got to do with Atzmon. Well nothing really but very few have put a marker down on David Duke's letter to the courageous chap and I thought somebody ought to. Atzmon on line does a curious mix of bragging, hoaxing, sock-puppetry and smears and, of course, he is always welcome at Counterpunch. And now, Duke isn't just running articles by Atzmon, he is heaping praise on the man whilst setting out a racist position that he fears Atzmon may not have fully considered. Now given that Atzmon loves a bit of praise, I am surprised that he hasn't mentioned or responded to Duke's letter, not publicly anyway.

PS: Actually I think this shoah.org site is an Atzmon effort and it is happy to run Duke's letter so I'm guessing the great man is at least fairly pleased with it though even he has enough decency to be embarrassed by it. He shouldn't be embarrassed of course. He has no responsibility for who supports him and the shoah site links to Jews sans frontieres! Naturally I wish it wouldn't do that but it's not my responsibility. It might be my responsibility if I shared a worldview with the site owner or administrator but I don't.

Zionists and the Norway massacre

The first emails I got on the mass killings in Norway on the weekend were to do with how the first reports assumed an islamist attack. Next up came the reports on blogs (Liberal Conspiracy, Tony Greenstein's blog) that the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, claimed inspiration for his worldview from, among others, the likes of the UK's Melanie Phillips and Jeremy Clarkson. And now there's a Jerusalem Post editorial which comes so close to suggesting that the killings should be used to highlight "the abject failure of multiculturalism", the Editor-in-chief appears to have been panicked into issuing the following disclaimer:

 As a newspaper, The Jerusalem Post strongly denounces all acts of violence against innocent civilians. This editorial is not aimed at deflecting attention from the horrific massacre perpetuated in Norway, nor the need to take greater precautions against extremists from all sides.

So what was it saying?

In the Forward, JJ Goldberg has a very thoughtful piece on the schadenfreude being expressed in both Hebrew and English on the Israeli internet:

The Norway massacre has touched off a nasty war of words on the Israeli Internet over the meaning of the event and its implications for Israel. And I do mean nasty: Judging by the comments sections on the main Hebrew websites, the main questions under debate seem to be whether Norwegians deserve any sympathy from Israelis given the country’s pro-Palestinian policies, whether the killer deserves any sympathy given his self-declared intention of fighting Islamic extremism and, perhaps ironically, whether calling attention to this debate is in itself an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic act.

The comments largely prove the point being made in the article.

What, no Muslims?

Antony Lerman has a good piece on the killings in Norway two days ago.

The herd mentality of pundits and commentators was on display as they fell over each other to immediately blame the Norway killings on Muslim extremists. It wasn’t long before it became clear that the culprit, Anders Behring Breivik, was a blond Norwegian far right sympathiser, an Islamophobe, a Christian fundamentalist and an admirer of the English Defence League and of Geert Wilders.

Muslim extremists have indeed been responsible for atrocities in Europe, but this fact has merged with a more generalised anti-Muslim prejudice to produce a fixation with Muslims as the source of numerous negative trends afflicting Europe. We’re constantly being warned about the dangers of ‘Islamo-fascism’, a seriously flawed concept, while the European fascism that we know and love is being shortsightedly neglected.

You only need to read this article by Gary Younge, dating from 2008, to realise that the heirs of Hitler and Mussolini are once again flexing their muscles as they benefit from alarm over immigration, the failures and iniquities of capitalism, the greed of bankers and high unemployment. Or follow the work of Cas Mudde who warns that the new right as represented by Wilders and others are still closely attached to the ideas of the traditional far right.

And check out who has been cheering for Wilders lately.