Atzmon slagged

Not Quite "Ordinary Human Beings"—Anti-imperialism and the anti-humanist rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon

[The following statement has been published on several websites. The version published here is the final version and contained the most up-to-date list of signers as at 8 March 2012.]

Attempting to latch onto the just, vital, and growing movement in support of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, Gilad Atzmon is one of a very small and unrepresentative group of writers who have argued (in agreement with many Zionists) that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between Jews in general and Israeli atrocities. According to Atzmon, the latter are simply a manifestation of Jews’ historic relationship to gentiles, an authentic expression of an essentially racist, immoral, and anti-human “Jewish ideology.”

Atzmon’s statements, besides distorting the history of Jews and constituting a brazen justification for centuries of anti-Jewish behavior and beliefs, also downgrade anti-Zionism to a mere front in the broader (anti-Jewish) struggle. Atzmon has specifically described Zionism not as a form of colonialism or settlerism, but as a uniquely evil ideology unlike anything else in human history. In addition to any ethical problems, this line of argumentation actually strengthens Zionism’s grip and claim to be the authentic representative of Jews. It obscures the reality that Zionism is an imperialist and colonialist enemy of Jewish people and Palestinians, as well as the Arab people generally and all those oppressed and exploited by imperialism.

In his online attack on Moshe Machover, an Israeli socialist and founder of the anti-Zionist group Matzpen, Atzmon states:

Machover’s reading of Zionism is pretty trivial. “Israel,” he says, is a “settler state.” For Machover this is a necessary point of departure because it sets Zionism as a colonialist expansionist project. The reasoning behind such a lame intellectual spin is obvious. As long as Zionism is conveyed as a colonial project, Jews, as a people, should be seen as ordinary people. They are no different from the French and the English, they just happen to run their deadly colonial project in a different time.[1]

For Atzmon, such views are “pretty trivial” and “lame” because he holds that Jews are in fact radically different from the French and the English. Of the many quotes we could provide in this regard, here is a small sampling:[2]

In order to understand Israel’s unique condition we must ask, “who are the Jews? What is Judaism and what is Jewishness?”[3]

Zionism is a continuation of Jewish ideology.[4]

The never-ending robbery of Palestine by Israel in the name of the Jewish people establishes a devastating spiritual, ideological, cultural and, obviously, practical continuum between the Judaic Bible and the Zionist project. The crux of the matter is simple yet disturbing: Israel and Zionism are both successful political systems that put into devastating practice the plunder promised by the Judaic God in the Judaic holy scriptures.[5]

Sadly, we have to admit that hate-ridden plunder of other people’s possessions made it into the Jewish political discourse both on the left and right. The Jewish nationalist would rob Palestine in the name of the right of self-determination, the Jewish progressive is there to rob the ruling class and even international capital in the name of world working class revolution.[6]

Were Jewish Marxists and cosmopolitans open to the notion of brotherhood, they would have given up on their unique, exclusive banners and become ordinary human beings like the rest of us.[7]

I do not consider the Jews to be a race, and yet it is obvious that “Jewishness” clearly involves an ethno centric and racially supremacist, exclusivist point of view that is based on a sense of Jewish “chosen-ness.”[8]

At the most, Israel has managed to mimic some of the appearances of a Western civilisation, but it has clearly failed to internalise the meaning of tolerance and freedom. This should not take us by surprise: Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, and Jewishness is, sadly enough, inherently intolerant; indeed, it may be argued that Jewish intolerance is as old as the Jews themselves.[9]

Israel and Zionism then, has proved to be a short lived dream. It was initiated to civilise Jewish life, and to dismantle the Jewish self-destructive mode. It was there to move the Jew into the post-herem[10] phase. It vowed to make the Jew into a productive being. But as things turned out, neither the Zionists nor the “anti Zionists” managed to drift away from the disastrous herem culture. It seems that the entire world of Jewish identity politics is a matrix of herems and exclusion strategies. In order to be “a proper Jew,” all you have to do is to point out whom you oppose, hate, exclude or boycott.[11]

The conclusion to such views is not difficult to draw:

The endless trail of Jewish collective tragedies is there to teach us that Jews always pay eventually (and heavily) for Jewish power exercises. Yet, surprisingly (and tragically) enough, Jews somehow consistently fail to internalise and learn from that very lesson.[12]

More precisely, commenting on the climax of State violence directed at Jews in the 1930s, most famously by Germany, but also in most other European nations, Atzmon is clear:

The remarkable fact is they don't understand why the world is beginning to stand against them in the same way they didn't understand why the Europeans stood against them in the 1930s. Instead of asking why we are hated they continue to toss accusations on others.[13]

Within the discourse of Jewish politics and history there is no room for causality. There is no such a thing as a former and a latter. Within the Jewish tribal discourse every narrative starts to evolve when Jewish pain establishes itself. This obviously explains why Israelis and some Jews around the world can only think as far as “two state solution” within the framework of 1967 borders. It also explains why for most Jews the history of the holocaust starts in the gas chambers or with the rise of the Nazis. I have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to understand the circumstances that led to the clear resentment of Europeans towards their Jewish neighbors in the 1920’s-40’s.[14]

It is, as such, not surprising that Atzmon’s work has received enthusiastic reviews by such prominent members of the racist right as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Kevin MacDonald of the Occidental Observer, David Icke, and Arthur Topham’s the Radical Press. It should not be surprising that Atzmon has distributed articles defending Holocaust deniers and those who write of “the Hitler we loved and why.”[15]These connections ultimately serve the interests of Zionism, which seeks to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Jewishness. Zionist agents have repeatedly attempted to ensnare and link Palestinian, Arab, and/or Muslim rights advocates to Neo-Nazism, through dirty tricks and outright lies.

It is more surprising and disappointing, then, that a small section of the left has opted to promote Atzmon and his works. In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party promoted Atzmon for several years before finally breaking with him; his latest book The Wandering Who? has been published by the left-wing Zero Books (a decision that elicited a letter of protest from several Zero authors).[16] In the United States, the widely-read Counterpunch website has repeatedly chosen to run articles by Atzmon. Currently, in February and March 2012, Atzmon is on tour in North America, where several of his speaking engagements are being organized by progressive anti-imperialists who we would normally like to consider our allies.

While perhaps well-meaning, operating under the assumption that any opposition to Zionism is to be welcomed, progressives who promote the work of Atzmon are in fact surrendering the moral high ground by encouraging a belief-system that simply mirrors that of the most racist section of Israeli society. Anti-racism is not a liability; on the contrary, it is a principle that makes our movements stronger in the long fight for a better tomorrow.

As political activists committed to resisting colonialism and imperialism—in North America and around the world—we recognize that there can be different interpretations of history, and we welcome exploring these. Without wishing to debate the question of whether far-right and racist ideologues should be censored, or how, we see no reason for progressive people to organize events to promote their works.

In our struggle against Zionism, racism, and all forms of colonialism and imperialism, there is no place for antisemitism or the vilification of Jews, Palestinians or any people based on their religions, cultures, nationalities, ethnicity or history. At this historic junction—when the need to struggle for the liberation of Palestine is more vital than ever and the fault lines of capitalist empire are becoming more widely exposed—no anti-oppressive revolution can be built with ultra-right allies or upon foundations friendly to creeping fascism.

As'ad AbuKhalil, The Angry Arab News Service, Turlock, CA

Suha Afyouni, solidarity activist, Beirut, LEBANON

Max Ajl, essayist, rabble-rouser, proprietor of Jewbonics blog site, Ithaca, NY

Haifaa Al-Moammar, activist, stay-at-home mom, and marathon walker, Los Angeles, CA

Electa Arenal, professor emerita, CUNY Graduate Center/Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Women's Studies, New York, NY

Gabriel Ash, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Geneva, SWITZERLAND

Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

Dan Berger, Wild Poppies Collective, Philadelphia, PA

Chip Berlet, Boston, MA

Nazila Bettache, activist, Montréal, CANADA

Sam Bick, Tadamon!, Immigrant Workers Center, Montréal, Québec

Max Blumenthal, author; writing fellow, The Nation, New York, NY

Lenni Brenner, author, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, New York, NY

Café Intifada

Paola Canarutto, Rete-ECO (Italian Network of Jews against the Occupation), Torino, ITALY

Paulette d’Auteuil, National Jericho Movement, Albuquerque, NM

Susie Day, Monthly Review, New York, NY

Ali Hocine Dimerdji, PhD student at The University of Nottingham, in Nottingham, UK

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, professor emerita, California State University

Todd Eaton, Park Slope Food Coop Members for Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions, Brooklyn, NY

Mark Elf, Jews sans frontieres

S. EtShalom, registered nurse, Philadelphia, PA

Benjamin Evans, solidarity activist, Chicago, IL

First of May Anarchist Alliance

Sherna Berger Gluck, professor emerita, California State University/Israel Divestment Campaign, CA

Neta Golan, International Solidarity Movement

Tony Greenstein, Secretary Brighton Unemployed Centre/UNISON, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Brighton, UK

Andrew Griggs, Café Intifada, Los Angeles, CA

Jenny Grossbard, artist, designer, writer and fighter, New York, NY

Freda Guttman, activist, Montréal, CANADA

Adam Hanieh, lecturer, Department of Development Studies/SOAS, University of London, UK

Swaneagle Harijan, anti-racism, social justice activism, Seattle, WA

Sarah Hawas, researcher and solidarity activist, Cairo, EGYPT

Stanley Heller, "The Struggle" Video News, moderator "Jews Who Speak Out"

Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon!, Immigrant Workers Center, Montréal, CANADA

Elise Hendrick, Meldungen aus dem Exil/Noticias de una multipátrida, Cincinnati, OH

Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer, New York, NY

Ken Hiebert, activist, Ladysmith, CANADA

Elizabeth Horowitz, solidarity activist, New York, NY

Adam Hudson, writer/blogger, San Francisco Bay Area, CA

Dhruv Jain, Researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academie and PhD student at York University, Paris, FRANCE

Tom Keefer, an editor of the journal Upping the Anti, Toronto, CANADA

Karl Kersplebedeb, Left Wing Books, Montréal, CANADA

Anne Key, Penrith, Cumbria, UK

Mark Klein, activist, Toronto, CANADA

Bill Koehnlein, Brecht Forum, New York, NY

L.A. Palestine Labor Solidarity Committee, Los Angeles, CA

Mark Lance, Georgetown University/Institute for Anarchist Studies, Washington, DC

David Landy, author, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel, Dublin, IRELAND

Bob Lederer, Pacifica/WBAI producer, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, New York, NY

Matthew Lyons, Three Way Fight, Philadelphia, PA

Karen MacRae, solidarity activist, Toronto, CANADA

Heba Farouk Mahfouz, student activist, blogger, Cairo, EGYPT

Marvin Mandell and Betty Reid Mandell, co-editors, New Politics, West Roxbury, MA

Ruth Sarah Berman McConnell, retired teacher, DeLand, FL

Kathleen McLeod, poet, Brisbane, Australia

Karrie Melendres, Los Angeles, CA

Matt Meyer, Resistance in Brooklyn, New York, NY

Amirah Mizrahi, poet and educator, New York, NY

mesha Monge-Irizarry, co-director of Education Not Incarceration; SF MOOC City commissioner, San Francisco, CA

Matthew Morgan-Brown, solidarity activist, Ottawa, CANADA

Michael Novick, People Against Racist Terror/Anti-Racist Action, Los Angeles, CA

Saffo Papantonopoulou, New School Students for Justice in Palestine, New York, NY

Susan Pashkoff, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK

Tom Pessah, UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, Berkeley, CA

Marie-Claire Picher, Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB), New York, NY

Sylvia Posadas (Jinjirrie), Kadaitcha, Noosa, AUSTRALIA

Roland Rance, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK

Danielle Ratcliff, San Francisco, CA

Liz Roberts, War Resisters League, New York, NY

Emma Rosenthal, contributor, Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation, Los Angeles, CA

Penny Rosenwasser, PhD, Oakland, CA

Suzanne Ross, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, The Riverside Church Prison Ministry, New York, NY

Gabriel San Roman, Orange County Weekly, Orange County, CA

Ian Saville, performer and lecturer, London, UK

Joel Schwartz, CSEA retiree/AFSCME, New York, NY

Tali Shapiro, Anarchists Against the Wall, Boycott From Within, Tel Aviv, OCCUPIED PALESTINE

Simona Sharoni, SUNY, author, Gender & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Plattsburgh, NY

Jaggi Singh, No One Is Illegal-Montreal/Solidarity Across Borders, Montréal, CANADA

Michael S. Smith, board member, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, NY

Pierre Stambul, Union juive française pour la paix (French Jewish Union for Peace), Paris, FRANCE

Muffy Sunde, Los Angeles, CA

Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin, Bronx, NY

Tadamon! (http://www.tadamon.ca/), Montréal, CANADA

Ian Trujillo, atheist, Los Angeles, CA

Gabriella Turek, PhD, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

Henry Walton, SEIU, retired, Los Angeles, CA

Bill Weinberg, New Jewish Resistance, New York, NY

Abraham Weizfeld, author, The End of Zionism and the liberation of the Jewish People, Montreal, CANADA

Ben White, author, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy, Cambridge, UK

Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner, NYS Task Force on Political Prisoners, New York, NY

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, founding member, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG)

Asa Winstanley, journalist for Electronic Intifada, Al-Akhbar and others, London, UK

Ziyaad Yousef, solidarity activist

* List in formation

* Organizations listed for identification purposes only

* Contact us at: antiracistantizionist@yahoo.com

Postscript:

This text is not intended as a comprehensive critique of Gilad Atzmon's politics. It was written quickly by some North American anti-imperialists who learned of Atzmon's 2012 speaking tour just days before it was to begin in late February 2012. At first it was thought it would be signed by just a few people, but the initiative quickly took on a life of its own, being posted to the web and to multiple listservs, discussed via email and on Facebook, and elsewhere, even before the wording had been finalized or a decision had been made as to how to use it (the initial assumption had been that it would be passed on to organizers with far less fanfare). Instead of a few signatures, within a week there were dozens, and emails continue to arrive from people wishing to sign on. We believe that this speaks to the deep frustration that many of us feel when confronted with Atzmon's anti-Jewish beliefs, which constitute an affront to our anti-racist principles, as well as a distraction from the essential tasks of opposing colonialist genocide and Israeli apartheid. What this response makes clear is that for many anti-imperialists, opposing such racism remains essential to building a movement against imperialism and the myriad forms of oppression that both feed on and are fed by it.

Any subsequent news or information about this initiative will appear here on the Three Way Fight website (threewayfight.blogspot.com). Those wishing to endorse or discuss this initiative, or for more information, should email antiracistantizionist@yahoo.com. We wish to reiterate that we consider many of those promoting Atzmon's work to be allies, but would ask that they reconsider their decision to do so. This is not a call for censorship, but for consistency and accountability.

---

[1] Gilad Atzmon, "Tribal Marxism for Dummies," originally published in June 2009, republished on his Web site on April 24, 2011.

[2] Many more quotes like these could be provided, but we assume this is enough to show that these are not out-of-context or out-of-character remarks. If not, readers may wish to peruse the section of Atzmon’s website on “Jewishness” at<www.gilad.co.uk/writings/category/jewishness>.

[3] Gilad Atzmon, "Tribal Marxism for Dummies," Atlantic Free Press, July 2, 2009.

[4] Anayat Durrani, "Exposing Dangerous Myths," Interview with Gilad Atzmon, originally published in Al-Ahram Weekly (May 19-25, 2011), republished on Atzmon's Web site on May 19, 2011.

[5] Gilad Atzmon, "Swindler's List: Zionist Plunder and the Judaic Bible," Redress Information & Analysis, April 5, 2008.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Gilad Atzmon, "An Interesting Exchange With A Jewish Anti Zionist," Atzmon's Web site, August 17, 2011.

[9] Gilad Atzmon, "The Herem Law in the context of Jewish Past and Present," Atzmon's Web site, July 16, 2011.

[10] “Herem” is a Hebrew word that refers to banning or excluding someone, it is also the name of the repressive legislation Israel recently passed to enable punitive lawsuits against those calling for a boycott of the apartheid state. For Atzmon, this law is just one more example of Zionism’s Jewish uniqueness (guess he never heard of SLAPPs), as he concludes that “this is what Jews do best: destroying, excluding, excommunicating, silencing, boycotting, sanctioning. After all, Jews have been doing this for centuries.”

[11] Ibid.

[12] Gilad Atzmon, "A Warning From The Past," Atzmon's Web site, May 26, 2011.

[13] Quoted in Shabana Syed, "Time for World to Confront Israel: Gilad Atzmon," Arab News, June 14, 2010.

The Antisemitic League of the US

At each event the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs will be selling Atzmon’s CD “The Tide Has Changed” and his book The Wandering Who?—although as Prof. Garrison Fewell warns, when you finish reading the ­latter, you may likely “see a different face in the mirror.”
For more information call the Washington ­Report at (202) 939-6050 or visit www.wrmea.com or www.gilad.co.uk. To purchase Atzmon’s book visit www.middleeastbooks.com. Atzmon’s DC appearances are co-sponsored by the Washington Report, Deir Yassin ­Remembered, If Americans Knew and Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends. (The Washington Report )

The "different face in the mirror" might be the face of Wilhelm Marr:

Commentary on the “Philosophical Thinking” of Gilad Atzmon

This article is not about Atzmon’s antisemitism, which has been discussed elsewhere [1]. However, Atzmon recently deemed David Landy, who writes here at JSF, alien to “philosophical thinking,” and “unable to grasp… metaphysical depth.”[2] As Atzmon knows, we Jews are tribal. No sooner did I read it than an effervescence of “clannish solidarity” percolated through my veins like echoes of far away drums. I therefore set myself the task of discovering the essence of Atzmon’s fabled “philosophical thinking,” and perused his recent offering, The Wandering Who, blunderingly published by Zero Books.[3] Yet this is no traditional book review. Space and time constraints limit me to commenting a single chapter. I chose chapter nine, which mostly levels unproblematic accusations against Israel. As the commentary is longer than the chapter reviewed, I hope that by the end of it the reader understands why a serious review of the full book is not likely. Unless Zero Books decide to publish an annotated edition.

Atzmon in his own words

What Zionists think of themselves is not very interesting; far more intriguing is the duality referred to above, the chasm between who they think they are and what they actually are, between self-image and public image, consciousness and unconsciousness. Unconsciousness, says Lacan, is the ‘discourse of the other’, which is very much the male fear of impotence. Rather than the anxiety induced by the fear of being caught malfunctioning, it is the fear of being known as dysfunctional. The real terror here is the unbearable threat that the fiasco may become public knowledge.

At the time of the 2006 Lebanon war, the Israelis’ ‘discourse of the other’ encompassed CNN, Sky TV, BBC and the West in general. As the war proceeded, it began to appear as though resentment was mounting amongst those who were no longer willing to accept Israeli brutality. Indeed, this gulf between the confident Israeli self-image and the total contempt of the other is exactly where the neurosis of Yehoshua, Oz, Grossman and the majority of Israelis came into play.

Two and half years after its military flop in Lebanon, Israel found itself once again in the midst of a second disastrous war that it had launched.This was Operation Cast Lead (2008), a total war against the people of Gaza and their democratically-elected leadership, Hamas. Along the campaign,Israel attempted to implement the lesson of the 2006 war. I think, probably optimistically, that by then, somebody at the state hasbara bureau must have read Lacan. The Israelis would try to save themselves from fully grasping who they are and what they do by blocking out every possible mirror.Consequently the IDF barred all foreign media from entering Gaza, in order to guarantee a propaganda success. It wasn’t just about barring Goyim from entering the battle zone, but about preventing Israelis and Zionist Jews around the world from seeing themselves through the gaze of the Goyim. It was a crude attempt to divert the discourse so that Jewish unconsciousness was kept intact.

Atzmon follows with analyzing a detail from a Coen Brothers film, alleging that the key character, a Jewish American physics professor by the name of Larry, sheds light on the same issue.

In the dream, Larry is confronted with his guilt through his Goy neighbour. Rather than the fear of being unethical, it is the fear of being caught out as unethical that torments Larry. It is the ‘discourse of the other’ (the gun-toting neighbour) that introduces Larry unconsciously to a sense of guilt. I link this back to the case of Israel: it is not the idea of being unethical that torments Israelis and their supporters, but the idea of being ‘caught out’ as such.

Atzmon concludes:

The Coens’ Jewish tribal cinematic reality is the Jewish unconscious, of which Jews are far from being proud. Like Al-Jazeera and Press TV in Gaza, the Coens reveal Jewish ghetto malaise to an audience of millions. But they also tackle the notion of Jewish unconsciousness by the means of mirroring.

The Argument

Let’s outline the argument. The chapter introduces three pieces in evidence:

1. the gap between the self-image of Israelis and what was seen on TV during the 2006 Labanon invasion,
2. the gap between the self-image of Israelis and what was seen on TV during operation Cast Lead,
3. the gap between the self-image of Larry as a good man, a fictional American Jew, and the truth.

In each case, the gap produces a strong reaction:

1. the alleged neurosis of Israeli authors (undocumented, we see nowhere evidence or definition of the neurosis),
2. the barring of foreign journalists from covering operation Cast Lead in Gaza,
3. Larry being tormented by his neighbor’s contempt.

The evidence reveals a pattern, a gap between self image and public image, which produces a psychological symptom which fits, according to Atzmon, Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory. Applying Lacan’s theory to the evidence therefore helps identify the “Jewish Ghetto Malaise” and the “‘Jewish ghetto’ mindset”, which explains the evidence and therefore Israel’s behavior.

What is wrong with this argument? Pretty much everything, as I will enumerate.

A Chamber Pot Called ‘Lacan’

Lacan does not use the terms ‘unconsciousness’ and ‘consciousness’ Atzmon attributes him. He uses ‘the unconscious’ and ‘the subject.’ Since the unconscious is Freud’s (and Lacan’s) central theoretical concept, mangling it is the equivalent of referring to Einstein’s “theory of relatives,” or the centrality of “classic struggle” in Marxism. It is a sophomoric term paper blooper of the kind that teaching assistants love to share.[4] Atzmon claims he studied philosophy in graduate school. Perhaps he fell prey to one of those internet scams.

Nor did Lacan say that unconsciousness is “the discourse of the other.” He said that “the unconscious is the discourse of the Other.” Capitalization is important, since ‘Other’ and ‘other’ are in fact opposing concepts for Lacan. The other (uncapitalized) is the object of desire and stands in an imaginary relation with the ego. This fundamentally narcissistic relation is that which Lacan identifies in the act of gazing at oneself in the mirror. The narcissistic relation interrupts the other relation, that between the subject and the Other. The Other (capitalized) is the symbolic order, language and the primary law of signification and desire, which constitutes the subject and is inaccessible to it. Atzmon attributes to Lacan almost the precise opposite of Lacan’s concept of the unconscious. ( la lettre volée )[5]

Therefore, the Lacanian telegram, “the unconscious is the discourse of the Other” refers to the unconscious as that which is both at the core of subjectivity and related to as alien and inaccessible to it, being the external and constitutive symbolic order of language. By no stretch of interpretation can it mean ‘what CNN and Press TV say about me that I don’t know’, which is how Atzmon uses the term ‘unconsciousness.’ Whereas the mirror provides Lacan with the paradigmatic model of imaginary, narcissistic identification, Atzmon uses the image in the mirror and on the TV screen as synonyms with the truth.



Put simply, Atzmon’s alleged theoretical apparatus does not exist.

Distinctions without a Difference

Rather than the anxiety induced by the fear of being caught malfunctioning, it is the fear of being known as dysfunctional.

The syntactic form ‘Rather than A, B’ presupposes a meaningful difference between A and B. Putting aside that I don’t know what “anxiety induced by fear” means, let alone how it differs from fear, what is the difference between the two legs of this construction? Although the muddy prose does not help, it could be that Atzmon distinguishes between the fear of failure in the act (performance anxiety) and the fear of stigma (being known). How does this distinction affect his argument?

If ‘it’ in the above quote refers back to “the male fear of impotence,” which is, we are told, “pretty much” the definition of unconsciousness (according to ‘Lacan’, though certainly not according to Lacan), then Atzmon argues that the male fear of impotence is not performance anxiety but rather the fear of stigma. That would be a questionable assertion, both because these two fears are intertwined—one fears failing at least partially because of the projected stigma—and because I suspect most men would rather not be impotent even when there is nobody around to know it.

Alternatively, ‘it’ could be a forward reference to “the real terror here”, which apparently refers to Israel’s symptom. In that case, the expression “rather than” distinguishes between “the male fear of impotence” and Israel’s symptom, thus arguing that Israel’s symptom is different from unconsciousness. This would invalidate the whole argument which is based on the application of that term to Israelis.

Differences without a Distinction

Since there is allegedly a single ghetto mindset, the three facts in evidence for this mindset should reveal the same psychological pattern. They don’t.

1. The real terror here is the unbearable threat that the fiasco may become public knowledge.
2. The Israelis would try to save themselves from fully grasping who they are and what they do by blocking out every possible mirror
3. Rather than the fear of being unethical, it is the fear of being caught out as unethical that torments Larry.

One can either be in denial about one’s crimes or blasé about them. One cannot be both. If one experiences guilt when caught, that is to the extent that the transgressed value has been internalized. If Israelis tried to avoid fully grasping what they have done (as Atzmon claims they did in Gaza), they could have only done so to the extent that they cared about the ethical implications of their deeds, not only about being caught (as Atzmon claims about Larry’s condition). If, on the other hand, they only wanted to avoid the repercussions of being exposed, they would have no reason to hide their behavior from themselves. The second and third patterns are not merely different psychological states, but mutually exclusive ones.

The first pattern is yet again different. Not revealing that one is an alcoholic is not the same as not revealing that one is a child abuser. Covering up a weakness so as to appear strong is not the same as covering up a crime so as to appear innocent.

In theory, different patterns can have an underlying unity, but they don’t have to, and they most likely don’t have one when they are mutually exclusive. Anyway, underlying unity needs to be shown. But there is no evidence that Atzmon is aware that his examples do not add up.

On The Interpretation of Films

Another example of Atzmon’s ‘Lacan’ at work is his cockamamie interpretation of Larry’s dream in the Coen brothers’ film, A Serious Man.

It is the ‘discourse of the other’ (the gun-toting neighbour) that introduces Larry unconsciously to a sense of guilt.

On the contrary. The dream's gun toting neighbor is not the Other. He is just a neighbor, namely, an other who provides a narcissistic reflection to the ego. One of the film’s main themes is the difference between experience (close to the Lacanian Imaginary), the realm of sense and visibility beneath which is glimpsed the Real, the realm of trauma and events, (the tornado, the disease, the car accident), and the Symbolic, the network of signification, religion, community, tradition, which governs the web of stories and interpretations that allows a person to make sense of the event, to survive, overcome, anchor oneself and relate to experience. We see that theme at the very beginning in the “Hassidic tale,” in which the husband (simple experience, sensible reality, the Imaginary) meets a helpful stranger (the Real) and invites him over to dinner, whereas the wife (tradition, knowledge, community, the Symbolic) possesses the communal knowledge that the man is dead, and therefore, deconstructing the image, interprets the event as a curse and the visitor as a dybuk. The same theme is introduced through the difference in quantum mechanics, between the stories “that help make sense of it”, such as the story of Schrödinger’s cat, and “how it really works”, the mystery that the incomprehensible mathematical formulae seek to represent.

The dream, as Freud notes, is a wish fulfillment fantasy, but the wish is not the manifest content. Larry’s desire, as the whole film reiterates constantly, is for the Other, for answers, for God, for meaning. But the truth of this desire is questioned. Does he really want answers, or does he want the questions to go away? He is asked directly, “do you really want to go back to how things were before?” His predicament in the film is precisely that he does not feel guilty of anything, and that means that he does not know what he wants. It is that predicament which makes the film a meditation on the biblical Book of Job. Larry’s wish therefore appears in the dream as the desire to be punished. By making himself a sinner he becomes the other of the Other, therefore eliciting punishment, which both release him from his predicament (fulfills his wish) and reintegrates him into the Symbolic by giving the misfortunes that befell him meaning. The Symbolic order, and the guilt that is essential to it, is the condition of the continuation of human life, which is why the only appropriate punishment is death. The neighbor who shoots him in the dream does not confront Larry with his real guilt, but is rather the imaginary representation of his own desire to be found guilty, to be guilty so he can continue to live, to be punished by God so that the disruptive question of God's will can go away. This is the paradox of the film, which is the theological paradox of Job, in that, in order to radically fulfill God’s will, one has to sacrifice the desire for order, for meaning, and for a relation with God, and vice versa.

Dream Work: Condensation and Displacement

Atzmon reaches conclusions about “Israelis and Zionist Jews.” However his evidence, to the extent that it is factual, does not have the same scope. The first and second evidence relate to the actions of Israeli authorities, primarily the IDF and the government. The third piece of evidence is a detail from a film, a dream, which relates to a fictional Jewish American character about whose political sympathies nothing is said. How do we get from these specific instances to the mindset that characterizes Zionist Jews and Israelis in general?

Regarding moving from governing authorities to Israelis, Atzmon offers nothing. It must be assumed that there is no such thing as a society, namely, a differentiated whole, divided by class, race, gender, status, etc, rife with both conflict and cooperation, with internal relations of domination, resistance and co-optation.

Otherwise, one could ask for example, are those who were prevented from “fully grasping” what happened in Gaza the same people as those who issued the order to bar journalists from Gaza? If not, what is the relation between them?

Rather than presenting a relation, Atzmon’s drift between the different categories works like a dream. Freud describes the unconscious thought process as the work of two mechanisms of substitution, condensation and displacement, which Lacan translates to metaphor and metonymy. The IDF / Government of Israel / Israel / Grossman / Israelis / Zionists / Jews (and we may continue with terms from elsewhere, Wall Street / Greenspan / the Bund / Marxists, etc. etc. practically ad infinitum) is such a signifying chain, in which every term can be substituted for the others through such mechanisms.

Regarding the move from the fictional Jewish character Larry to Israel, Atzmon is more explicit, although his explanation refers only to crossing the Atlantic and ignores the question of crossing the gulf between fiction and social reality.

…A Serious Man delivers a clear message regarding Israel and Zionism, for Israel is the Jewish state and, despite the Zionist promise to build a civilised nation, it functions as a Jewish ghetto, subject to all the symptoms of abnormality conveyed by the Coens.

What Larry’s case teaches us can be applied to Israel because Larry is Jewish and Israel, Atzmon says, is “the Jewish State” and functions as “a Jewish Ghetto.”

Thus, Atzmon practically declares that what ultimately connects Larry to Israel is a pure signifier, ‘Jewish,’ whose presence justifies substituting one to the other. Presumably, you know one Jewish thing you know them all. However, we need also examine the function of the signifier ‘ghetto’, as it may suggest a more substantial claim, thus giving ‘Jewish’ a positive content.

In what way does Israel function as a ghetto? It does function as such as a simile. There is one aspect of Israel that is like the Jewish ghetto/shtetl of yesteryear. Both are geographically bounded areas in which Jews live among Jews (in Israel, to the extent that Palestinians are segregated). Thus, the simile “Israel is like a ghetto” can be useful if one makes an illuminating argument on the basis of that aspect, but the simile does not exhaust its terms. In other key aspects Israel is not like a ghetto. It is a sovereign state possessing an army and nuclear arms, something the Jewish ghetto usually lacked. It is much larger, much more internally differentiated by class and race, much wealthier in the aggregate, etc. Why is the similar aspect determinant while the differences are not? Ultimately, Israel is like a ghetto in the same way that a gun is like a penis. The simile may illuminate why some men worship guns. But you cannot deduce from knowing that one needs a license to own a gun that owning a penis requires a license as well. What gives Atzmon’s false inference the appearance of solidity is, again, the sliding through the signifier ‘Jewish.’

Furthermore, in what way is the American Jew Larry connected to a “Jewish ghetto”? Larry lives among non Jews, thus lacking even that aspect of the ghetto that applies to Israel. While aspects of Larry’s life as depicted in the film are intensely Jewish, including some that might be illuminated through the metaphor (and not the reality) of the ghetto, there is no reason why either Larry’s ethical lapses or his sex fantasy would be so illuminated, rather than, for example, through male subjectivity, quantum mechanics, suburbia, academic life, theology, etc. Non Jewish men fantasizing about sex with the neighbor are not unheard of, and Larry’s decision to take the bribe is no more Jewish than his student's deciding to offer one is Korean. The connection between Larry’s lapses and the ghetto in which he doesn’t live is a pure semiotic slide through the signifier ‘Jewish’ and its permutations: Larry /Coen Brothers / Jewish / Jewish ghetto / Zionism / Jewish State. Atzmon glides from one term to the other, as if dreaming, or spinning free associations on the therapist’s couch, revealing little about anything other than his own unconscious.

Occam’s Razor and Gyges’s Ring

The Israelis would try to save themselves from fully grasping who they are and what they do by blocking out every possible mirror. Consequently the IDF barred all foreign media from entering Gaza,

Consider these four factoids:

• The Alawite Syrian regime imposes a virtual media blackout on the popular uprising going on in Syria. [6]
• The NYPD prevented journalists from covering the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park.[7]
• The Chinese censor scrubs the internet for any mention of the dissidence.[8]
• Israel barred all foreign media from entering Gaza.

One could offer four different theories, each positing a new entity, one for each fact: an Alawite mindset explaining Syria, a Han Chinese mindset explaining China, an NYPD mindset explaining the NYPD, and a Jewish mindset explaining Israel.

Or one could suggest a single theory that explains why governing authorities or elites seek to control official information despite knowing that the information will spread anyway. To take one example, in Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James C. Scott offers a sophisticated analysis of interactions between dominated and dominating groups, introducing the concept of “the public transcript,” and arguing that the ideological performances of elites that seek to control the public transcript are primarily directed at themselves.[9]

What would Occam do?[10]

A similar appeal to Occam’s razor invalidates every other explanation Atzmon offers in this chapter. Do we need a special Jewish ghetto mindset to explain why the IDF sought to cover up its incompetence during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon? Do we need a special ghetto mindset to explain an illicit sexual fantasy of a fictional character? Do we need one to explain the fact that some ethical rules are sometimes obeyed by some people out of the fear of being caught?

As for the latter, hypothesizing that Atzmon’s graduate studies in philosophy consisted in corresponding with an on-line scammer hawking sham degrees might explain why he is unaware that the question ‘why do people behave justly?’ is somewhat old, as is the argument that they do so out of fear of punishment. In the second book of Plato’s Republic, for example, Glaucon argues:

…that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. [11]

The story proceeds with the myth of the ring of Gyges [12], who becomes corrupt after acquiring the power of making himself invisible. Incidentally, Gyges then

… seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.

Could it be that Glaucon reached his unflattering conclusions after observing the behavior of the many Jews who packed fifth century B.C. Athens? There weren’t any. Were the Athenians themselves so ‘Jewish’? Apart for the inherent offensiveness of the formula, that would be an odd argument given how much hay Atzmon makes from the imaginary opposition he posits between Universalist “Athens” and tribalist “Jerusalem.” (To close a circle with the film, in the following paragraph, accessed through the link above, Plato indeed conjures a Job.)

“Dear Consumer,”

Given that the text falls apart for being breathed upon, one has to ask how it works; what is the pleasure of the text? And, leaving that to another day, why would the author serve his readers the intellectual equivalent of canned dog food? A possible answer could be that he internalized Alan Greenspan’s market ethics. Atzmon cites Greenspan explaining why subprime mortgages were a good thing:

Innovation...has brought about a multitude of new products, such as subprime loans and niche credit programs…With these advances in technology, lenders have taken advantage of credit-scoring models and other techniques for efficiently extending credit to a broader spectrum of consumers.

The same is true of the field of books and articles. If there is a market for intellectual dog food, why ask why? There always will be entrepreneurs eager to satisfy the demand—for a modest return, be it mostly vanity.

Post-Scriptum: a Joke

A man visits a therapist and asks for help. The therapist proposes a Rorschach test. The therapist shows him the first inkblot and asks, what do you see? The man looks at it and replies, I see Jews. The therapist holds up the second image. What do you see? I see Jews. The therapist shows him the third image. What do you see? I see Jews. And so they go through the whole set of inkblots, and the man keep saying for every image—I see Jews. The test finished, the therapist folds the images back into a drawer and says: I think you might have an obsession with Jews. Why? Asks the man, upset. It is you who collects so many pictures of Jews!

NOTES (all links in the text are repeated here)

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[1] http://www.amazon.com/review/R3FQP8JFUYL04Z/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1846948754, http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1KZGNK4HT5FAA/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1846948754, http://www.sue.be/pal/Atzmon.html,
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2011/09/few-point-for-occasion-of-atzmon-saga.html,
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/03/guide-to-sayings-of-gilad-atzmon-anti.html,
http://www.palaestina-portal.eu/Stimmen_Israel_juedische/davidsson_elias_atzmon_the_wandering_who.htm.

[2] http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2011/11/atzmon-and-alderman-preaching-from-same.html

[3] http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/09/zero-authors-statement-on-gilad-atzmon.html

[4] http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~norman/Jokes-file/StudentBloopers.htm

[5] Jacques Lacan, Le séminaire sur « la lettre volée » in Écrits I, Éditions du Seuil, 1966, pp. 66-67.

[6] http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/coverage-syria-truth-victim

[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/15/occupy-journalists-media-blackout

[8] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13281200

[9] http://books.google.com/books/about/Domination_and_the_arts_of_resistance.html?id=tl9q9DbnkuUC esp. pp. 102-103

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

[11] http://www.classicreader.com/book/1788/16/

[12] Plato’s story is most likely one of the inspirations of Tolkein’s the Lord of the Rings.

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Reply to Brian Leiter

Brian Leiter, who has defended Mearsheimer, admirably but a little less critically than I would prefer, from his ugly right-wing attackers, has linked to this blog with the following words:

Chris Bertram (Bristol) directs me to an anti-Zionist blog, which does have a somewhat more sober critique of Atzmon (though it is a bit thin on supporting evidence, and I think misunderstands both 19th-century anti-semitism and Atzmon's position--but read it for yourself and compare it with the linked interview, above).

I don't usually use the space here for one on one back and forth, but I'll break that habit for the occasion, and those not interested should skip.

First, "somewhat more sober" means that he considers what I wrote not sober. Since he has presented no basis for that, that is not serious, which is unfortunate given the context of trying to defend Mearsheimer against "hatchet jobs.". Degrading the discussion to the level preferred by Goldberg is not going to benefit either Mearsheimer, nor certainly the value of "honest intellectual discourse."

Now, he also makes three shorthand critiques, none of them, even if true, justifying describing me as lacking sobriety. The first, is that I am thin on supporting evidence. This is true only of the first half of the post, which indeed doesn't present much evidence, as all relevant evidence (which is tedious and repetitive, because Atzmon writes faster than I read, which isn't a compliment) has been presented by others and I don't feel the need to rehearse it. If Leiter wants to discuss examples of Atzmon's antisemitism, he could address directly, for example, the letter of Zero Books authors, none of whom qualify as right wingers by a long shot.

The second critique is that I misrepresent 19th century antisemitism. I focus on what is in my opinion the most relevant aspect of nineteenth century antisemitism, relevant because, first, it is undeniable that it developed politically as a self-conscious political tendency that had a huge impact on history, and second because it is quite often ignored by liberal and Zionist writers who (for different reasons) want to depoliticize antisemitism (and racism in general) and turn it into either a mere personal sickness, or a purely cultural phenomenon. Of course, there is a lot more, and my one sentence hardly does it justice. However, I compared Atzmon's hedging of his attack on "jewishness" to Marr's, who hedged his attack on the exact same concept, Jewishness, in pretty much the same way. I'm sure Leiter would agree that Marr was an antisemite.

The third critique is that I misrepresented Atzmon's position. I will deal with that later, because I am not particularly keen on representing Atzmon's positions either way. Leiter defends Mearsheimer, and my concern is that he does it with the requisite nuance and critical capacity, rather than merely circle the wagons. Usually, it is fair to assume that what Jefferey Goldberg says is the opposite of the truth. But once in a blue moon he strikes gold. Unfortunately, his ability to make the most damage with it depends on people refusing to believe that it could happen.

Here is what I said in criticism of Mearsheimer. He presented an article by Atzmon as innocently making the uncontroversial point that "jews have agency." I urge Leiter to read that article and form his opinion. I focused on a single issue from many present. The factual premise of the article is that Hitler was reacting to a coordinated Jewish attack on Germany when he ordered a boycott of Jewish businesses. As Leiter surely knows, that isn't just any accusation. In a generalized form, the claim that Germany was under a coordinated Jewish attack was one of the key points of Hitler's Mein Kampf, a staple of the "knife in the back" theory about the outcome of the First World War, and one of the justifications for the anti-Jewish policies of the Third Reich. In its restricted form, that was what Hitler claimed when he announced that boycott on March 28, 1933.

Therefore, when someone claims that this was indeed the case, both directly with regards to the boycott, and as a more general point that the boycott illustrates, she is saying that Hitler's explanation for why he called for a boycott of Jewish business was true and that this explains how the situation of Jews in Germany deteriorated. Of course, one would only be justified in saying this if it were indeed true. Now, it isn't true. It is a gross misrepresentation of both how Jews reacted to Hitler and of the inner dynamics of the NSDAP in relation to Jews. I'm not aware of any reputable historian who thinks it is true. Atzmon, as he is wont to say, isn't a historian. That means that when he makes a historical claim he either invents it or he relies on someone else. In this case, he relies on an article in The Barnes Review, a white-supremacist publication known for its holocaust denial (The Jewish Declaration of War on Nazi Germany The Economic Boycott of 1933 Article from The Barnes Review, Jan./Feb. 2001, pp. 41-45). He also covers his tracks by not citing that source directly, but referring to another site that cites it (but he does include assertions present only in the source article). I urge Leiter to examines that article and the quality of the primary sources and the "research" presented in it, as well as the fact that the article deals with "previous scholarship" by falsely accusing Friedlander of falsifying the chronology, a claim that Atzmon repeats as a generalized claim about "Jewish texts."

Now, my question is, should a Chicago University professor that teaches about the holocaust be able to smell something fishy when he encounters a false claim that effectively repeats Hitler's propaganda? Should he then be able to follow this claim to its sources and evaluate them, or not? Or should he ignore all that and strive to provide a lawyerly interpretation of the article's author's innocent attempt to argue the obvious? Is it possible to criticize Mearsheimer's poor judgement here without being called by Leiter for lack of sobriety?

Now we can go back to the third critique, that I misrepresented Atzmon's positions. Leiter argues this based on an interview with Atzmon. The underlying assumption is that Atzmon is a honest person advancing a fairly coherent argument, including representing his own positions with an accuracy consistent with intellectual norms. Since there is no agreement on that, presenting Atzmon presenting his positions as evidence that I "misrepresented his positions" is what logicians call petitio principii.

But since Leiter cites a specific interview, and since he teaches philosophy, I would like to engage him in analyzing thoroughly this nugget: ‘how can I tell the truth about Israel, the Lobby, and Zionism and still maintain my position as a humanist’? What conception of humanism, truth and the relation between them can make this sentence make sense? Does Leiter agree that telling the truth about Israel, or challenging AIPAC's actions, or explaining why Zionism is wrong, poses a particular difficulty for a humanist but is quite unproblematic for an anti-humanist? Does that mean that Israel, Zionism, and the Lobby have a particularly affinity to humanism? What is that affinity? Of course Jeffrey Goldberg would agree that there is. Does Leiter agree? Has he ever felt that tension? (I haven't.) Does it mean that truth is not on the side of humanism? Is there a similarity in this statement to those liberals who were "mugged by reality" and who have been leading the imperialist right in the US? Or is it a version of Karl Schmidt's "state of exception" argument, in which in order to maintain humanism as a universal law one must suspend it in the case of the Jews. I don't understand what this sentence means other than Atzmon feeling the need to transform humanism into its opposite in order to rehabilitate a particularly anti-humanistic attack on his pet peeve, Jewishness.

A few points for the occasion of the Atzmon saga going mainstream

Of course Atzmon is antisemitic. I think a lot of people who steered clear of him, including yours truly, have been loath to say that because of the way this accusation has been weaponized by Zionists, and the desire not to give them any credibility. But that kind of circumlocution quite often has a price. Had people been less circumspect, the implosion of Mearsheimer might not have happened. It takes a unique kind of genius to cede the moral high ground to the denizens of Harry’s sewer, where every kind of bigotry is acceptable except antisemitism, or the concentration camp volunteer guard Jeffrey Goldberg.

One doesn’t need to parse Atzmon’s most hateful words, or identify his most egregious falsifications, such as asking whether the Nazis wanted to kill Jews, blaming the holocaust of “Jewish pressure”, etc., to show his antisemitism. These are but manifestations. That confusion is the result of not having a clear idea of what antisemitism is. Antisemitism is fundamentally a political analysis that explains social and political pathologies as effects of some essential Jewish attributes. This is Atzmon’s core idea, which he keeps touting as his big contribution. Atzmon’s reflection on why he isn’t antisemitic itself shows that he is, as As’ad Abukhalil called him, not merely antisemitic, but “one of those classical anti-semites.”

Atzmon's key defense is that he speaks neither of Jewish religion nor of Jews, but of Jewishness, which he defines as “Jewish ideology". This distinction precisely repeats the two gestures that establish nineteenth century antisemitism as a political tendency. Wilhelm Marr coined the term Antisemitismus to distinguish his political analysis of Western societies in terms of Jewish pathology from the old anti-Jewish prejudices based on the denigration of Jewish religion. In his programmatic pamphlet, Marr also takes care to dissociate himself from less sophisticated Jew haters, specifically writing, “Not individual Jews but the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world.” (Victory of Jewishness over Germanity) Compare that to Atzmon:

You may note that I neither refer to Jews as a racial or ethnic group; nor am I directing my critique towards Judaism, the religion. And whilst Jews can indeed succumb to what I define as 'Jewish ideology', (and many of them do) it is valuable to bear in mind they can also be its most virulent enemies.

Substituting "Jewish ideology" for "the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness" is all what makes Atzmon's take on Jewishness "ground breaking." Everything else is derivative.

Another point about Mearsheimer's implosion.

As the authors of Zero books have noted in their protest letter about Atzmon, it is easy to be fooled by Atzmon's convoluted and pretentious claptrap. Mearsheimer could have extricated himself from his self-inflicted fiasco with little effort, at most a little uncomfortable 'oops'. Instead, he decided to stand his ground in the most obtuse way, defending an article in which Atzmon effectively plagiarizes white supremacist fabrications as example of Atzmon’s not being an antisemite. All he had to do to find out where Atzmon gets his knowledge of history was click on a few links Atzmon provided, and find the source from which he lifted the claim that

Jewish texts tend to glaze over the fact that Hitler's March 28 1933, ordering a boycott against Jewish stores and goods, was an escalation in direct response to the declaration of war on Germany by the worldwide Jewish leadership.

It doesn’t take a sleuth to determine that the source of this fabrication is an article of writer who advocates something called "ethno-nationalism," published in the holocaust denial publication, The Barnes Review, the brainchild of Willis Carto, an American white-supremacist and a former affiliate of David Duke. The article, linked indirectly by Atzmon, is hosted on a site whose political flavor can be easily gauged by this enthusiastic introduction to another article:

Entire books have been written on the topic of "why Germany lost the War" - or, conversely, "why the Allies won". This booklet exposes a vitally important, but often underestimated factor: the German traitors who worked to destroy the German Reich from within. Their attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 was only the tip of the iceberg. More and more, it appears that the Allies would not have been victorious without their help - and that, in fact, the war might never even have come about without their machinations!

But let alone that Mearsheimer, despite being a political science professor, has a tin ear, and a not very scholarly attitude to checking sources, even more disturbing is the incongruity between his attitude and the fact that he “taught countless University of Chicago students over the years about the Holocaust and about Hitler's role in it.” It is preposterous to accuse Mearsheimer of holocaust denial, and the mainstream people who attack him now have very little integrity. But that is not enough. How does someone who teaches history at Chicago University defends the integrity of an article that is based on a fabricated historical claim, in the area of his teaching, without noting that the core claim is a fabrication? There was no “declaration of war on Germany by the worldwide Jewish leadership.” First, there was no worldwide Jewish leadership (it’s an antisemitic and nazi boogeyman), and, second, as Saul Friedlander writes (and as Lenni Brenner fleshes out in detail) :

most of the Jewish organizations in the United States were opposed to mass demonstrations and economic action.

Atzmon, one can be sure, hasn’t read any “Jewish text” (his racializing code word for competent history) on the matter. He apparently read one article in The Barnes Review, and from this article he took, and made his own, the (yet another) false claim that

Not even Saul Friedlander in his otherwise comprehensive overview of German policy, Nazi Germany and the Jews, mentions the fact that the Jewish declaration of war and boycott preceded Hitler's speech of March 28, 1933. Discerning readers would be wise to ask why Friedlander felt this item of history so irrelevant.

In fact, Friedlander includes the story of the organizing among Jews during the first months of Hitler’s rule in the first chapter, pages 6-11 of the abridged edition of Nazi Germany and the Jews. It is available on line, so it is easy to check. Here is Friedlander actually setting the sequence of events:

Much of the foreign press gave wide coverage to the Nazi violence [from early March]. American newspapers, in particular, did not mince words about the anti-Jewish persecution. Jewish and non-Jewish protests grew. These very protests became the Nazis’ pretext for the notorious April 1, 1933, boycott of Jewish businesses. In mid-March, Hitler had already allowed a committee headed by Julius Streicher, party chief of Franconia and editor of the party’s most vicious anti-Jewish newspaper, Der Stürmer, to proceed with preparatory work for it. (Ibid. my emphasis)

It is funny in a not funny way that a professor of political science would describe a writer who draws his "knowledge" of history quite exclusively from far right white nationalist publications as a “universalist” who “is the kind of person who intensely dislikes nationalism of any sort.” What is not funny in a not funny way is how Mearsheimer managed to destroy his own intellectual standing for defending an insignificant blurb. (And just to be clear, the implosion of Mearsheimer does not mean that AIPAC is any less nefarious an organization than it was last week.)

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[ADDED]
urls not linked in this article:

1. http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/judea-declares-war-on-obama-by-gilad-atzmon.html
2. The Barnes Review, "The Jewish Declaration of War on Nazi Germany", The Economic Boycott of 1933" archived at http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/jdecwar.html
3. http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archivesindex.html
4. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20Editorials/2011/January/3%20o/Jews,%20Judaism,%20and%20Jewishness%20By%20Gilad%20Atzmon.htm

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.