Tag Archives: melanie phillips

Murdoch, Phillips, and Auster on What’s Best for “The Jews”

The Aim Is to Make Israel a Pariah:

Recently, Rupert Murdoch gave an extraordinary speech at an Anti-Defamation League dinner in which he revealed, yet again, that he is a true and selfless friend of the Jewish people and of Israel.

We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews. For the first decades after Israel’s founding, this war was conventional in nature. The goal was straightforward: to use military force to overrun Israel. Well before the Berlin Wall came down, that approach had clearly failed.

Then came phase two: terrorism. Terrorists targeted Israelis both home and abroad – from the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich to the second intifada. The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world. But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government – and they have not weakened Israeli resolve.

Now the war has entered a new phase. This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere: the media … multinational organizations … NGOs. In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.

Tonight I’d like to speak about two things that worry me most. First is the disturbing new home that anti-Semitism has found in polite society – especially in Europe. Second is how violence and extremism are encouraged when the world sees Israel’s greatest ally distancing herself from the Jewish state.

When Americans think of anti-Semitism, we tend to think of the vulgar caricatures and attacks of the first part of the 20th century.

Today it seems that the most virulent strains come from the left. Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel.

Right now we have war. There are many people waging this war. Some blow up cafes. Some fire rockets into civilian areas. Some are pursuing nuclear arms. Some are fighting the soft war, through international boycotts and resolutions condemning Israel. All these people are watching the U.S.-Israeli relationship closely.

In this regard, I was pleased to hear the State Department’s spokesman clarify America’s position yesterday. He said that the United States recognizes “the special nature of the Israeli state. It is a state for the Jewish people.” This is an important message to send to the Middle East. When people see, for example, a Jewish prime minister treated badly by an American president, they see a more isolated Jewish state. That only encourages those who favor the gun over those who favor negotiation.

Ladies and gentlemen, back in 1937, a man named Vladimir Jabotinsky urged Britain to open up an escape route for Jews fleeing Europe. Only a Jewish homeland, he said, could protect European Jews from the coming calamity. In prophetic words, he described the problem this way: “It is not the anti-Semitism of men,” he said. “It is, above all, the anti-Semitism of things, the inherent xenophobia of the body social or the body economic under which we suffer.”

The world of 2010 is not the world of the 1930s. The threats Jews face today are different. But these threats are real. These threats are soaked in an ugly language familiar to anyone old enough to remember World War II. And these threats cannot be addressed until we see them for what they are: part of an ongoing war against the Jews.

Is Rupert Murdoch jewish? Does it matter? As we see here, he’s most concerned about the best interests of “the jews”. He’s pleased that the US government defends the “special nature” of Israelis, never mind that it attacks Whites for wanting anything similar. He sees Israelis and diaspora jews as one cosmic “the jews”, and he vividly imagines they need defending from “the inherent xenophobia” of Europeans and a nuclear Iran. He implies that Europeans and Iranians are of a single mind – hell-bent on Israel’s destruction.

As an aside, Jabotinsky was a jewish ethno-nationalist. He advocated jewish interests without pretending that they didn’t conflict with European interests. The ADL’s role has been to convince Americans and Europeans to think of jewish ethno-nationalism as wholesome and normal, while White ethno-nationalism is pathological and evil.

In language that is familiar to anyone who has been exposed in any way to contemporary mainstream Western media, academia, or politics, Murdoch paints jews as the eternally innocent victims of moral and mental defectives “warring” on them. His description of “threats … soaked in an ugly language familiar to anyone old enough to remember World War II” calls up decades of guilt-tripping and brain-washing. Despite the loud and constant self-pity of wealthy, powerful jews and their wealthy, powerful friends their self-serving manipulations only highlight the anti-White/pro-jewish regime which reigns across the Eurosphere today. Pity for supposedly oppressed “minorities”, jews first and foremost, has been used to justify anti-White “civil rights”, massive transfers of wealth, and genocidal levels of immigration by hyper-fecund non-Whites. If Whites lend a hand to protect anybody, it should be to protect ourselves.

Zionist jewess Melanie Phillips makes her living lecturing others, primarily via British media, about what they should consider wrong, bad, immoral and insane. Very often her lectures revolve around the interests of “the jews”. Phillips referred to Murdoch’s speech in an op-ed grandiosely titled The war for civilisation:

Well at least one man gets it.

Rupert Murdoch has made a direct, to-the-point, ambiguity-free speech about the anti-Israel, anti-Jew frenzy now consuming the west.

It is a rebuke to the world on the single most important and defining issue of our time.

Phillips is accustomed to rebuking the world. As an example of “our” time, Phillips cites Adrian Hamilton’s Israel has no future as a purely Jewish state criticizing a new Israeli “loyalty oath”. Right after telling us how special and important “the jews” and Israel are Phillips insists this oath is really no different than “Britain is British, France French and so on”.

Hamilton says nothing about Israel that hasn’t been aimed at Whites and our countries a million times before, often by jews, and usually in more strident terms. Ideas like “Britain is British, France French” are viciously attacked, from within, and in such cases the voices of naive literal anti-“racists”, like Hamilton, who mistakenly regard jews as equals, are dwarfed and drowned out by the anti-White bigotry flowing from chauvinist jews and jewish organizations who operate under no delusions of equality. There is, to use the terminology of Murdoch and Phillips, a war on Britons. “The jews” are on the other side. Melanie Phillips is with them. When she writes negatively about muslims it’s because she thinks they’re doing something bad for “the jews”. When she denounces those who want Britain to remain British she does so for the same reason.

Just as Murdoch does, Phillips only mentions muslim/arab hostility toward jews in passing. It is plain to see that they both consider the real enemy, the people they are most concerned about waging “war” on “the jews”, to be White/European. This is why Murdoch and Phillips both completely ignore anti-White bigotry. To acknowledge it would require an examination of jewish culpability. In their minds “the jews” are above reproach, special people in one special country who are treated especially bad, especially by Whites. As Phillips writes:

Within the west, it is also the ever-more brazenly explicit reason for the campaign of delegitimisation being waged against Israel. Israel is the one and only country in the world whose right to exist is being questioned. And that of course is the point of Hamilton’s little tirade.

To make his case that Europeans are waging an ongoing “war” against “the jews” Murdoch cited Karel De Gucht, an EU bureaucrat. Phillips makes her case by citing Hamilton, an opinion shaper like herself, reading his mind and putting words in his mouth to write a little tirade of her own:

So what Hamilton wants is for Israel no longer to be.

Phillips concludes by abruptly broadening her fears and smears, naming the crime and the criminals:

Thus the ‘progressive’ western intelligentsia make themselves potential accomplices to genocide.

Self-styled jewish fifth-columnist Lawrence Auster likes to write scolding letters. He addressed one to Melanie Phillips about her remarks on Murdoch, taking the judeo-centrism to an even more bizarre level. Is cosmic Judeo-centrism good for the Jews? (Auster’s emphasis):

Below is an e-mail I sent today to Melanie Phillips, followed by her reply. You will see from her reply why I felt at liberty to post the exchange, which I had no thought of doing when I wrote to her.

I’m sorry to bother you. I know you don’t want to hear my thoughts. But I must say this to you and I hope you will give the 90 seconds it will take you to read this e-mail.

When you say of Rupert Murdoch’s speech on anti-Semitism that it is “a rebuke to the world on the single most important and defining issue of our time,” you are making a big mistake. Is the threat to the Jews a bigger problem than the Islamization of the entire West? When you call anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism the “most important and defining issue of our time,” you are coming across like a typically Judeo-centric Jew who thinks that the Jews are the most important thing in the world. Instead of being concerned first and foremost about the West, you are concerned first and foremost about the Jews. And this supports the anti-Semitic view of Jews, that Jews are not at bottom loyal to the West, but only loyal to the Jews.

I have spent a significant part of my time battling against the anti-Semites on the American paleoconservative and white nationalist right. The fuel that drives the anti-Semites is their belief that Jews are not on the side of the West, that Jews are using the West to advance and protect Jewish interests. You seem to have no idea of how the inordinate Judeo-centrism of your statement would make you appear to others.

I respectfully ask you to ask yourself if it’s really true that anti-Semitism is the “single most important and defining issue of our time,” and whether you are being helpful to the Jews, helpful to Israel, and helpful to the West [Tanstaafl: note the order], when you make the protection of the Jews and Israel the supreme issue of the world.

Lawrence Auster

Melanie Phillips replied:

The war against the Jews is the single biggest and defining issue of our time because (a) it stands at the fulcrum of the west’s repudiation of its own culture (b) the animus against the Jews lies at the core of the Islamic threat against the west and (c) if Israel goes down, the west goes down. Your message is typically as ignorant as it is offensive.

Melanie

What Auster is saying here is, “Hey, it would better advance and protect jewish interests if you would just pretend you cared about the goyim.” “No”, Phillips responds, “Can’t do that.” Their disagreement concerns the significance of “the war against ‘the jews'”, or rather, the significance it should be accorded in public discussions. The “war” itself is taken for granted.

“The war against ‘the jews'” and what Auster calls the effort “to advance and protect jewish interests” are of course two sides of the same coin. The latter can be seen as “the war against those ‘the jews’ accuse of warring against ‘the jews'”, or more simply, “the war to advance and protect jewish interests”.

We’re reminded again that muslims play only a supporting role in this “war”. Phillips’ typically judeo-centric view is that “the Islamic threat against the west” is just one aspect of “animus against ‘the jews'”. Auster’s typically judeo-centric view is that Phillips’ public assertion that “the Islamization of the entire West” is most important because it is bad for “the jews” is itself bad for “the jews”.

Auster brags of his efforts to war on Whites who refuse jewish dominance and he accuses Phillips of making his self-appointed job harder. In doing so Auster concedes more clearly than ever before a point he has long danced around. He does indeed spend a significant part of his time battling White conservatives and nationalists, and clearly he does so because he favors jews and jewish interests more than anything else. See Lawrence Auster, Champion of “The Jews” for more on this point.

Auster takes for granted, de Gucht-style, that ethnocentrism is typical of jews, though he argues it should be masked to best advance their interests. Auster sees Phillips’ approach as too brazen, not wrong. Both cloak their pursuit of what’s good for jews inside a putative defense of the West, or as Auster puts it, “using the West to advance and protect jewish interests”. Auster differs from Phillips largely in his willingness to cultivate his pose as a champion of the West by grappling with the symptoms of the anti-White regime. He even discusses the jewish role in it, though not to worry, it’s only because he thinks it’s bad for “the jews”.

After Auster shares their private email exchange, a critique of Phillips ensues. Much of it applies just as well to Auster:

Jeff in England writes:

Subject: THE BIG BANG(er)

I had to laugh at your latest attempt to get Melanie to become a serious thinker on the primacy of the Islamic threat (vs. the Jewish persecution issue), let alone any issue.

Melanie is NOT a thinker as such, rather she is a “banger.” She simply bangs on (as they say here) with extremely focused robotic-like wordage her limited set of views where Jewish persecution is the permanent never changing number one on her list. The possibility that any issue can threaten the number one status of the Jewish (and Israeli) persecution issue is well beyond her limited intellectual scope.

LA replies:

Jeff’s view of Melanie is very like my own. Before I received his e-mail, I had it in my head to write a comment saying that Melanie has a sharp intelligence, but it is one-dimensional. She focuses only on the things she is attacking, and never reflects on her own positions and thought processes. Anything that lies outside her limited world view is simply wrong and therefore ignorant.

However, Jeff’s rougher way of putting the same idea makes the point better: she’s not a thinker, she’s a banger.

You can’t help but wonder, how does someone get to her late fifties, a successful writer, and still be so primitive and unthinking in her dealings with people?

LA replies:

However, these reflections on Melanie Phillips’s stunning limitations–she’s not called “Mad Mel” for nothing–also make her less useful as an example of some typical Jewish attitude. She’s too extreme a personality to be typical.

Here begins a repeat of a well-worn Auster pattern. A dollop of heresy about “the jews”, in this case their over-the-top judeo-centrism, followed by some talmudic hair-splitting about the meaning of it all, followed inevitably by a shift in focus to some vaguely defined non-jewish scapegoat – “the liberals”, “the anti-semites”, “the majority”, … Here the pattern unfolds once again when Auster confides his thoughts about “the war against ‘the jews'” and who, ultimately, he, Phillips, and Murdoch hold accountable:

LA replies:

. . .

I would say that the war against the Jews is a very grave problem and a threat not only to Jews but to our civilization., But to say that it is at the fulcrum of the West’s repudiation of its own culture is going too far. The West’s repudiation of its own culture has many motivations and components that have nothing to do with the Jews, and it would be happening even if there were no Jews.

That last sentence is an absurd assertion, and Auster knows it, pointing as he does to an older article where he attacks Pat Buchanan and writes: “If the West abandons Israel to a Second Holocaust at the hands of Islamic extremists, that will be an act of collective moral suicide–the true Death of the West.” In other words, “our” “suicide” hinges on “the jews”. To make the point Auster invokes the very same decades of jew-favoring guilt-tripping and brain-washing Murdoch invokes, which is exactly what’s fueling the “suicide”. Hiding in plain sight. “Go ahead”, the jewish warrior says, “point out that it isn’t suicide, jew-hater.”

To drive home that “the jews” are blameless two days later Auster posted a related entry, An interesting view of the Jewish problem:

John Gay writes from Canada:

With respect, it seems to me that both you and Melanie Phillips are missing the point in your aborted exchange about the Jews.

You ask, “Is cosmic Judeo-centrism good for the Jews?” Many Jews certainly don’t like being the focus of the inordinate historical attention focused on their small nation, and many have been murdered for it. But this is the fate of being a Jew, a carrier, or sign, of a revelation of great historical significance. A “Jew” is not simply whatever he is, as an actual person in daily life. And if one day the enemies of the Jews succeed in killing off all the Jews, they will still have a need for “Jews” and they will find them under one name or another, within one resentful conspiracy theory or another, because their identities depend, at their very core, on having “Jews” to resent.

In other words, what Melanie P. is talking about, it seems to me, is the anthropological and historical significance of anti-Semitism, something that transcends the actual lives of Jews, their DNA, and mundane or selfish interests. The “cosmic” significance of the Jew is the anthropological revelation that a loving God who wishes to allow humanity to discover the creative, nation-defining, “republican,” self-ruling possibilities of covenant must offer the choice first to one particular nation, and not to all humanity at once. Someone has to go first; a universal truth can only be revealed from a particular historical vantage point. But it is just this reality that the anti-Semite resents–that he is second, or third, to “discover” some profound existential truth, such as that one and all are in relationship with the one God of monotheism. The anti-Semite resents the creativity, the “firstness,” on which all productive nation building depends (which is not to say that such creativity is necessarily closed to him, but his resentment will often become trapped in a desire for conformity to some already-established relationship to what we signify as sacred or divine, such as the supposedly eternal, and uncreated, cosmically original, Koran).

So, leaving aside the personal animus, I read Melanie’s response to you thus:

“The war against the Jews is the single biggest and defining issue of our time because (a) it stands at the fulcrum of the West’s repudiation of its own culture.”

– Yes, even if all Jews are killed, the war may continue as long as some Western nation takes up the mantle of “Israel.” But when no one plays “Israel,” the war is truly lost. Again, the war against the Jews is not so much against actual persons, though it certainly threatens first and foremost actual Jews, who are the most obvious “Jews,” as it is against what Israel represents in the Western tradition as the first and exemplary nation.

So let’s review.

Plutocrat media mogul Rupert Murdoch pays obsequious homage to “the jews” while accepting an award from a very real, very powerful jewish organization dedicated to defending and promoting specifically jewish interests. In doing so Murdoch makes the extraordinary implication that Europeans are waging a “war” against “the jews”. Professional jewish bigot Melanie Phillips applauds, clarifies, and extends this idea, asserting that the “war” is essentially the European rejection of the validity of “the jews” as the center, the crux, the “most important” part of “our” culture. Jewish fifth-columnist Lawrence Auster adds White American conservatives and nationalists to the enemies list, but insists that “the jews” have nothing to do with it. The “war” against “the jews” is all about Whites killing ourselves. Whites are so crazy with suicidal “the jew”-hate that we’d mistake eskimos for “the jews” if there weren’t any “actual” cosmic “the jews” to pick on.

One thing that’s clear from all this double-talk is that the very people most obsessed with the interests of “the jews” will not acknowledge that anyone else has any interests. In their minds “the jews” are most important. They aren’t shy about letting everyone know this, or lecturing everyone that we too must at least behave as if we accept it. They fret and exaggerate and generalize. They feel free to babble on about a “war” against “the jews” waged by Whites, and when they really work themselves into a froth it’s the whole world against “the jews”. It’s a dishonest way of excusing the arrogance and aggression directed in the opposite direction. To listen to “the jews” it’s all about what’s good for “us” and “our” interests, at least until the mask comes off and all that nonsense gets overridden by whatever they think is good for “the jews”. Any concern for interests explicitly or even implicitly distinct from “the jews” causes an allergic reaction in “the jews”. The reaction is so universal, so strong, that it grips even those who usually present themselves as defenders of abstract White collectives, whether it’s Britain, America, the West, or “our civilization”. With their own judeo-centric moralizing however these poseurs consistently demonstrate that their very highest loyalty is to the collective they call “the jews”.

For more about Auster on “the jews” see Two “Conservative” Jews, Same “Liberal” Dissembling, The First Law of Jewish Influence, Triangulating From the Right, and Suicide vs. Competition.

Everybody Else is Crazy

Israelis Wonder: Has the World Lost Its Mind?, by Yossi Klein Halevi at wsj.com:

The outcry in Israel over the operation against the Gaza flotilla has cut across political lines. Yet unlike the outrage being expressed abroad, the concern here is over tactics, not morality. “It’s not enough to be right,” wrote one liberal columnist in the daily Ma’ariv, “one also needs to be smart.” The assumption that Israel was right to stop the flotilla—and right to maintain its siege on Hamas-led Gaza—is largely a given here.

Israel and the rest of the world seem to be speaking dissonant moral languages. How, Israelis wonder, can pro-Hamas activists wielding knives be confused for peace …

The “dissonant moral languages” problem is that the “the world” is talking morals while the Israelis (and their cheerleaders abroad) are talking tactics.

The derangement of the world, by Melanie Phillips. Her “key point”:

The treatment being meted out to Israel is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the treatment meted out to any other nation. Ever. It’s not just that the tyrannies of the present are not even reported on, let alone seen as a worthy and legitimate target of protest. Even the great progressive causes of the past, such as the campaign against apartheid South Africa, for example, never provoked such hysterical obsession, let alone such a sustained and frenzied onslaught of lie after distortion after fabrication after blood libel. Just like the Jew-hatred of the past, the characteristics of this victimisation are unique; just like the Jew-hatred of the past, it treats the Jewish people as some kind of cosmic evil; and just like the Jew-hatred of the past, ultimately it simply defies explanation. But it is happening, right now, before our disbelieving eyes; it is quite simply a derangement of the world.

According to Phillips, the international campaign against South Africa was “great”, but the toothless disapproval of Israel is “hysterical obsession”, “a sustained and frenzied onslaught of lie after distortion after fabrication after blood libel”, “just like the Jew-hatred of the past” (repeated three times).

Right after Phillips insists the contrast between South Africa and Israel “simply defies explanation” she claims the explanation is “simply a derangement of the world”. A more plausible explanation is that Phillips is deranged. She treats jews as some kind of cosmic victims of unique hatred. An even more plausible explanation is that Phillips is perfectly sane. She’s just hysterically guilt-tripping “the world” about “jew-hate” because she knows that this tactic has worked for jews many times in the past.

For some people it is indeed simple – crazy “jew-hate” explains everything. It’s a liberating idea. It justifies any jewish behavior whatsoever.

Just Torpedo The Next Flotilla, by Jonathan Mark at The Jewish Week:

The beauty of the almost unanimous international condemnation of Israel for attempting to stop the terrorist flotilla like gentlemen — using paint guns? — instead of using serious military force, should send a message to Jews: You can’t win by being polite to terrorists who have a schoolyard bully mentality. Weakness brings out even more outrageous behavior in bullies.

Next flotilla that violently resists a search — just sink it. Torpedo it. See how many more flotillas follow. The condemnation won’t be any different. Better that than even one more Jew being injured while boarding these floating Jenins.

Few events in recent decades have illuminated the complete hypocrisy of the world. There is nothing that Israel can do or could have done that would stop the next diplomatic ambush. So start acting tough.

By Israel fighting as if their lives actually depended on it — which it does — Israel will, in fact, be taken more seriously by the international scholyard bullies. Bring back the “fear factor.” It is the reason why in 1980 Iran released the hostages when Reagan became president, and not during Carter’s presidency, because Carter was rightly seen by the Iranians as a wimp and Reagan was feared as a trigger-happy cowboy.

We are no longer in the general Euopean anti-Semitism mode but deeper into the new run-up (in the Arab mind) to the Final Solution — the extermination of Israel. In old Germany, a Jew sitting on an Aryan park bench was as much of a criminal as a Jew who robs a bank. So we might as well rob the bank. We might as well take out Iran as take out the flotilla.

The Other Side is fearless now. If someone is going to fear anyone, make the bad guys fear Israel. Right now, too many Jews fear the world. Turn the tables. Make the bad guys think that Israel is craziest S.O.B. in the room. Make everyone wonder what the Jews will do. The world will be furious? Imagine that. Imagine winning.

Here Mark is rationalizing bank robbery and torpedoing civilian ships, slinging “blood libels” at Europeans, and he thinks the problem is “the complete hypocrisy of the world”.

The Wages of Tantrum

In The idiocy of Kevin MacDonald Auster takes offense at MacDonald’s statement:

the racial Zionist movement that dominates the politics of Israel today

Auster is so angered by this that he attacks MacDonald personally. The problem, beyond this childish tantrum, is that MacDonald, in terms of Western norms, is entirely correct. Read for example Weston’s analysis in The Israeli Election. Auster, who willfully ignores the disparity between what is considered “racism” in the West and normal in israel, can’t help but list “well-known facts” that indicate only one thing: that racial zionism (Jabotinskyism) does not dominate israel as completely as he would like.

In throwing his tantrum Auster at least brings attention to some excellent writing of MacDonald’s, including his recent post at VDare Memories Of Madison—My Life In The New Left, and his December 2008 TOO essay Ben Stein’s Expelled: Was Darwinism a Necessary Condition for the Holocaust? where he provides some idea how far today’s racial zionism goes beyond what is considered acceptable for today’s White Westerners.

Auster here demonstrates two common tactics of pro-jewish argument: 1) throw nasty, personal insults at someone who says something you don’t like, and 2) answer a complaint about some jewish disparity by claiming jews aren’t powerful enough.

Tactic 2 is related to a tactic even more frequently used in similar circumstances: 3) answer a complaint about some jewish disparity by claiming that the complainer is insanely suggesting jewish power is absolute. In both cases examples are usually offered to demonstrate that jews aren’t doing everything they could to further their own interests, or are doing something that harms themselves.

What these tactics seek to avoid is any acknowledgement that the disparity in question is real, and that that in itself is harm and injustice enough to those of us who aren’t jews.

For other recent examples of these tactics see Melanie Phillips’ Obama prepares to throw Israel to the Wolves, or the comments made by Anonymous to Whose Country is This Anyway?

What makes this phenomena especially annoying is that jews are, as a group, incredibly sensitive to disparities everywhere around them concerning the rights, wealth, and power of everyone, including themselves, at least when they feel victimized. However, when asked to face disparities that reflect negatively on themselves they abruptly become deaf, dumb, blind, and exhibit ZERO intellectual honesty. What’s more, they treat anyone who presses a complaint against them as a mortal enemy. It seems to me a good example of projection.

At this point some philo-semite inevitably shows up to say, “yeah, but that’s perfectly understandable because <insert sob story here>, and after all we’re allies!” To which I say, no. The intellectually and morally bankrupt tactics described above are not only alien and inscrutable to White Western minds. They are indefensible. Two wrongs don’t make a right. These tactics don’t reflect the attitude of an ally. They reflect at best a self-aware and self-absorbed Other, and at worst a mortal enemy. In either case we are not obligated, intellectually or morally, to tolerate these tactics or the people using them.