Even before Mel Gibson made his infamous anti-Semitic remarks, Gibson became a very unpopular and disliked figure in Hollywood due to the controversy over The Passion of the Christ and his remarks that skirted close to Holocaust denial. After a drunk Gibson said, “Fucking Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” Ari Emanuel, undoubtedly reflecting broader sentiment, wrote, “People in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line.”
It will be interesting to see whether Oliver Stone, who has now expressed the classic anti-Semitic view that “Jews dominate the media,” will receive the same treatment. Stone, in the Sunday Times (original behind paywall):
“Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.”
Why such a focus on the Holocaust then? “The Jewish domination of the media,” he says. “There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”
Gibson was an easy target for Hollywood liberals and leftists. A right-winger and a religious Catholic, Gibson was the perfect manifestation of Hollywood liberals’ stereotypes of anti-Semites.
Stone, by contrast, is a Buddhist leftist of partial Jewish descent, the kind of person the Hollywood left usually thinks of as “one of the good guys.” Stone even was clever enough to follow his anti-Semitic remark about Jewish domination of the media, noted in the context of Hitler and the Holocaust, with some pablum about the Jewish lobby, Israel, and American foreign policy. This had nothing to do with the topic at hand, but Stone’s apologists will inevitably claim that his remarks were aimed at the “Israel lobby,” and not Jews per se.
So, what will it be for Hollywood liberals? Is anti-Semitism only unacceptable when it comes from right-wing Christians, or equally bad when it comes from non-Christian leftists, who add a bit of anti-Israel window dressing? (The early returns are not promising; so far, the left-wing blogosphere has responded to Stone’s remarks with deafening silence).
UPDATE: I don’t expect our readers to be scholars of anti-Semitism, but it shouldn’t take a scholar to know that talking about Jewish “domination” of the media, in precisely those terms, is what anti-Semites from Henry Ford to Stormfront have trafficked in for decades. Just Google it, and you get David Duke, Whitehistory.com, etc. Whether or not Stone is himself an anti-Semite, he’s no dummy, and surely is aware of the baggage that “Jewish domination of the media” carries.
Instapundit » Blog Archive » DOUBLE STANDARD? Mel Gibson and Oliver Stone…. says:
[...] DOUBLE STANDARD? Mel Gibson and Oliver Stone. [...]
July 26, 2010, 9:56 amCornellian says:
Ari Emanuel, undoubtedly reflecting broader sentiment, wrote, “People in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line.”
Why “undoubtedly?” Gibson went on to make more movies after that incident, so obviously some people were still willing to associate with him, despite his poisonous views.
I guess you didn’t catch that article about the calculation behind Ari’s remarks. It was easy for him to say that when he didn’t represent Gibson.
And saying that there are a lot of Jewish people in the media, or that there’s a Jewish lobby in Washington, is hardly in the same league as Holocaust denial.
July 26, 2010, 9:58 amTamerlane says:
But my perception — correct me if I’m wrong — is that Jews do dominate the media, particularly in Hollywood; certainly in the sense that they constitute an extraordinarily disproportionate percentage of media owners, CEOs, senior executives, and producers. The same might be said — although with less certainty — of homosexuals. It’s hardly prejudice to state an obvious fact. Whether the conclusions one draws from that fact reflect bias or prejudice is a contingent conclusion.
July 26, 2010, 10:04 am1040 says:
this is pablum?
and saying this makes a person anti semitic?
July 26, 2010, 10:06 amJoseph Slater says:
Well, I’m not “Hollywod,” but I am on the liberal side of things, and I think both Stone and Gibson are idiots. As to the former, I’ve had that opinion since the bizarre, kitchen-sink-of-conspiracy-theories “JFK.” And it’s odious to hear “Jews control the media” from any side of the political spectrum.
Having said that, David, Gibson has done more to earn his reputation as a political and personal nut than Stone has. And Gibson had some pretty vocal defenders on the right after some of his more awful statements, around the time of “The Passion.”
July 26, 2010, 10:06 amKevin says:
And here I was still figuring why Gibson was worse than Polanski the child-rapist. Hollywood’s ethical algebra has some very strange rules.
July 26, 2010, 10:11 amDG says:
““The Jewish domination of the media,”
That makes him an anti-Semite. Period. The first several commenters seem to either agree with or ignore this comment. That works better at Stormfront than here.
July 26, 2010, 10:13 amDavid Bernstein says:
This is pablum, given that it has nothing to do with the topic of the interview, but was obviously added by Stone when he realized that it was impolitic, to say the least, to say that Jews “dominate” the media. And I never said that this part was anti-Semitic, rather that he said this to make his previous anti-Semitic statement sound like some sort of “Progressive” critique of American foreign policy.
July 26, 2010, 10:14 amchaim says:
Wait – why is stating “Jewish domination of the media” anti-semitic? I think that’s more a statement of fact, rather than expression of opinion. Jewish domination doesn’t have to connote ambitions of world domination, it just means several Jews are in the corridors of power, whatever the industry is.
July 26, 2010, 10:16 amDavid Bernstein says:
At high levels (though not at the level of working reporters) Jews are well overrepresented in the media, as they are overrerepresented in many other occupations, including law professors. But discussion of Jewish domination of the media, leading the media to be used as a tool for Jewish interests, is a classic anti-Semitic trope, as Stone is surely aware. Jews are also, for example, well-overrepresented at high levels of philanthropy, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone speak of Jewish domination of charities.
July 26, 2010, 10:18 amJohn says:
“Having said that, David, Gibson has done more to earn his reputation as a political and personal nut than Stone has.”
On a personal level Gibson seems to be thoroughly awful. But Stone has publicly made what amounts to propaganda films for both Castro and Chavez. In one of Stone’s films, he shows Castro meeting with Cubans who have been sentenced to decades in prison for the crime of trying to leave the Island. Stone gave no comment or condemnation of this in the film. Stone later talked about how Castro was like a father figure and how Latins longed for and needed a strong father figure leader like Castro.
Stone has done lots to earn his reputation. And liberals in Hollywood have a lot to answer for as to why he is still considered acceptable in polite society.
July 26, 2010, 10:18 amtg says:
“Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.”
- I don’t see anything anti-semitic here. You can argue against it, but it’s a legitimate position to hold based on simply absolute numbers.
“Why such a focus on the Holocaust then? “The Jewish domination of the media,”
- I’m not sure what the percentages are of directors, producers, and screen writers who are jewish, but it’s reasonable to say it’s significant. Accordingly, you end up with many holocaust movies and very few movies on the forced starvation of Ukranians. Needless to say, there’s nothing wrong with this. If a jewish producer wants to make another holocaust movie then all the power to him. There’s nothing anti-semitic pointing this out.
As for the lobby issue, if AIPAC wasn’t influencing US policies to be 100% behind Israeli actions, then they are clearly doing a bad job.
July 26, 2010, 10:19 amCJColucci says:
Last I looked, Mel Gibson was still a big, bankable star — though his latest outbursts, refreshingly free from political or religious content, may make him marginally less so. I imagine Oliver Stone will still be able to direct movies now and then.
July 26, 2010, 10:19 amI return, though, to the question I’ve asked before. Why this obsession on the right side of the aisle with the politics of Hollywood hacks and hams? (Isn’t dominating most other industries enough?) Especially when you consider which Hollywoods hacks and hams actually run for office and gain real power, and who votes for them.
false seriousness says:
Nobody sees Oliver Stone as anything other than a conspiracy-theorist crank who has nothing to do with the “liberal” blogosphere.
But speaking of deafening silence, where the condemnation of Breitbrat for his poison? Aren’t there a lot of “issues” where I could find deafening silence from David Bernstein? Does that mean he endorses those views he hasn’t commented on, or it suggests his priorities are skewed or vaguely hypocritical?
Or maybe this is just a shallow smear job?
July 26, 2010, 10:20 amben says:
Stone is an idiot. But how is alleging that Jews dominate the media (hey, nothing wrong with that) comparable to blaming them for all the wars in the world?
July 26, 2010, 10:20 amlev Myshkin says:
I wonder if anybody read the original interview in Times.
July 26, 2010, 10:25 amDo not forget where the info is coming from:
NewsBusters, notorious liars and after Breitbart excellent adventure in fake news, who would trust them without verifying with original ?
byomtov says:
Joseph Slater sums it up very well at 10:06.
July 26, 2010, 10:25 amJAFAC says:
Oliver Stone is probably not as newsworthy as Mel Gibson because Journolist killed the story.
July 26, 2010, 10:26 amJoe says:
WHY? Why is that statement “anti-Semitic”? If that statement is anti-Semitic, then I must be an anti-Semite, too. Except…I’m not.
I see nothing wrong with that statement. Anti-Semitism (in my mind) would have to show hatred or intolerance towards Jews. For example, if I said, “Those F—ing Jews dominate the media, and I hate them!” …now THAT would be anti-Semitic. BUT…that’s not what he said.
I don’t like Oliver Stone one bit. I think he’s a pretty rotten guy. I like Jewish people. I think they are great. Judaism is a wonderful religion. I have Jewish friends, and even used to date a Jewish girl. I’m no anti-Semite. But I don’t see saying that “Jews Dominate the Media” makes one an anti-Semite in the least. Unless if it’s said in a hateful or disrespectful manner.
July 26, 2010, 10:27 amFrank Ch. Eigler says:
That argument sounds a little like “if the classic anti-semitic tropists say X, no one else can say X without being one of them”. For values of X such as “the sun rises in the east”, the argument is not true.
July 26, 2010, 10:27 amLt. Dan says:
“Jews Dominate the Media”. Opinion
“Jews are amply represented in the Media and entertainment industry”. Fact.
“Jews dominate the media, unfairly skew the public’s opinion of them and of history and need to be forcibly removed from their positions.” – Anti-Semitism
Which one of these did Stone say? Here’s a hint…its in the above story.
July 26, 2010, 10:27 amJoe says:
You get TRUTH from newsbusters and Breitbart. You get LIES from the New York Slimes.
July 26, 2010, 10:28 amDavid Bernstein says:
I don’t expect our readers to be scholars of anti-Semitism, but it shouldn’t take a scholar to know that speaking of Jewish domination of the media, in precisely those terms, is what anti-Semites from Henry Ford to Stormfront have trafficked in for decades. Just Google it, and you get David Duke, Whitehistory.com, etc. It’s a lot different from saying, “well, a lot of people in Hollywood are Jewish, and have a personal interest in the Holocaust.”
July 26, 2010, 10:31 amSteve says:
Some people have learned the lesson about judging others harshly based upon a brief excerpt of their comments. Other people have yet to learn that lesson.
July 26, 2010, 10:35 amDF Eyres says:
“Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.”
- I don’t see anything anti-semitic here. You can argue against it, but it’s a legitimate position to hold based on simply absolute numbers.
Try to get this through your head. Try percentages and methods. Hitler didn’t wipe out two thirds of the Russians in areas he controlled. Hitler’s police state didn’t force Russians into hiding. Hitler didn’t have an entire legal and industrial apparatus dedicated to the extinction of Russians. Mere existance as a Russian did not condemn a person in Hitler’s empire to tenous life in a concentration camp at “best” or, more likely, a bullet or a gas chamber. Russians were not classified as parasites on society nor categorized as to their percentage of “Russian” blood. With the arguable exception of an attempt at Leningrad, Hitler did not destroy entire communities of Russians, many of which had existed for centuries.
Stone is an idiot on many levels. He’s hit bottom and is digging in. Don’t feel like you have to help him.
July 26, 2010, 10:36 amHoldfast says:
That statement is so breathtakingly, insanely stupid – even if you operate on the principle that bodycount= “moral authority”, you have to at least be aware of the notion of “percentages”.
July 26, 2010, 10:39 amLN says:
So if someone were to say that African-Americans dominate professional basketball, that would be racist. But if a radio talk show host were to ask a black caller to remove the bone from his nose, that’s just funny. Awesome.
July 26, 2010, 10:40 amSarcastro's Little Brother says:
You mean Al Franken?
July 26, 2010, 10:40 amAnderson says:
David Bernstein’s silly post exemplifies why so many of us treat accusations of “anti-semitism” guardedly.
… Eyres correctly distinguishes Hitler’s intent to exterminate the Jews from his plan to murder most of the Russians and enslave the rest. But Stone (who is, let’s stipulate, a dumbass) did not say they were the same. He said that in absolute terms, Hitler killed more Russians than he did Jews.
That is a simple statement of fact, and people much more respectable than Stone have thought it worth pointing out, as the general public is far less aware of Soviet losses than of the Holocaust.
July 26, 2010, 10:43 amMonte says:
I think the problem is a false dichotomy. There are shades of gray in antisemitism just as there are in racism. Stone’s remarks suggest he may be antisemitic, but leave some room for question. While I agree that talking about Jewish ‘Domination’ of the media, particularly in that context, sounds like the language of antisemitism, its in a totally different ballpark from what Gibson said, and doesn’t warrant the same level of response.
Calling Stone out on his remarks is totally appropriate, but without further damning comments, I don’t think he should be ostracized like Gibson.
July 26, 2010, 10:44 amEcoDude says:
It may be an empirical regularity that Jews “dominate” the media by citing percentages regarding ownership, etc. but what if one were to calculate the percentage of men who own studios, are barons of Hollywood, etc? Any group can be shown to “dominate” when using ridiculously simple statistics.
Oliver Stone and his ilk have the same problem: Conspiracy theorists do not understand observational equivalence.
July 26, 2010, 10:44 amalkali says:
The obvious explanations for why the Stone interview isn’t a hot topic of conversation on American blogs:
1) It’s in the Times of London, and behind a paywall.
2) Stone simply doesn’t have broad support on the left, in Hollywood, or anywhere else, such that anyone feels the need to disavow him. To be sure, he has made some impressive films, but he has also made some disasters. His films are produced in a pretty ad hoc way — if he can cobble together enough support to get a particular film made, it might get made. He seems to fund his documentaries out of his own pocket.
Just by way of example, Jane Hamsher, who is a leading blogger on the left (at firedoglake.com), actually wrote a book about her weird experiences with Oliver Stone making the film Natural Born Killers. Having written a memoir in which she calls Stone a “sonofab-tch” — and not affectionately — is she now obligated to point out that she doesn’t share all of his political opinions?
July 26, 2010, 10:48 amEngineer says:
Stone isn’t just saying that there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood, but that they dominate Hollywood as Jews. And Stone is saying that Jewish domination is the reason that Hitler hasn’t gotten properly placed “into context”.
So what is with the soft-pedaling of what Stone said?
July 26, 2010, 10:49 am1040 says:
back to back sentences as opposed to stuff added after probing, but you are still able to infer a whole volume about the inner workings of stone’s mind. and who would have expected you would have found something to dislike about a “hollywood liberal”? we need more brave and insightful policemen of anti semitism like you.
July 26, 2010, 10:50 amA.W. says:
As bad as that is, and I don’t want to diminish it—I mean that is anti-Semitism per se, almost—this interview when he pretty much engages in a show trial in cuba, is much, much worse:
[interviewer]: Let me ask you about the part [in the film] where Castro’s in front of eight prisoners charged with attempting to hijack a plane [to Miami]. He says to them, “I want you all to speak frankly and freely.” What do you make of that whole scene, where you have these prisoners who happened to be wearing perfectly starched, nice blue shirts?
OS [stone]: Let me give you the background. He obviously set it up overnight. It was in that spirit that he said, “Ask whatever you want. I’m sitting here. I want to hear it too. I want to hear what they’re thinking.” He let me run the tribunal, so to speak.
ALB: But Cuba’s leader for life is sitting in front of these guys who are facing life in prison, and you’re asking them, “Are you well treated in prison?” Did you think they could honestly answer that question?
OS: If they were being horribly mistreated, then I don’t know that they could be worse mistreated [afterward].
ALB: So in other words, you think they thought this was their best shot to air grievances? Rather than that if they did speak candidly, there’d be hell to pay when they got back to prison?
OS: I must say, you’re really picturing a Stalinist state. It doesn’t feel that way. You can always find horrible prisons if you go to any country in Central America.
ALB: Did you go to the prisons in Cuba?
OS: No, I didn’t.
ALB: So you don’t know if they’re any different than, say, the prisons in Honduras then?
OS: I think that those prisoners are being honest.
ALB: What about when you ask them what they think is a fair sentence for their crimes, and one of them starts to talk about how he’d like to have 30 years in prison?
OS: I was shocked at that. But Bush would have shot these people, is what Castro said. … I don’t know what the parole system is.
ALB: There is none unless Fidel Castro decides to give you clemency.
ALB: They seemed very willing to bring up sound bites that Castro is partial to—that they wanted to leave Cuba only for economic reasons, not political ones, etc.
OS: You’re going to the theory that they were trying to get good time in front of the camera to get lighter sentences.
ALB: I’m going even further than that. I’m suggesting that they had no choice but to appear there, and that in some ways it was a bit of a mini-show-trial, sort of “Look how well we treat our prisoners.”
OS: It does have that aura, absolutely. But I do maintain that if it were a Stalinist state … they certainly do a great job of concealing it.
Read it all, here: http://www.slate.com/id/2098860/
July 26, 2010, 10:51 amEric Muller says:
Of course Stone’s comment about Jewish domination of the media is anti-Semitic.
The efforts of some here to separate Stone’s statements from their obvious anti-semitic reverberations are laughable. Maybe in some pristine world of logic it’s possible to consider Stone’s assertions as mere factual reports divorced from the history and culture that surround them. But in this real world … come on. Please.
(It’s interesting, too, to compare this post and its comments with the kerfuffle of a couple of months ago, when a third-year law student at Harvard was revealed as having proclaimed her openness to the genetically determined intellectual inferiority of African Americans. That was a racist statement for the same reasons as Stone’s assertion about Jewish domination of the media is anti-semitic. There too, it was possible antiseptically and artificially to treat the student’s musing as a profession of an innocent openness to a scientific possibility, and to divorce it from that scientific possibility’s virulent racist history. But in this real world … come on. Please.)
July 26, 2010, 10:52 amPatent Lawyer says:
If that were all he said, you’d be right. But the full statement, paraphrased, is:
“Hitler killed more Russians than Jews. The Holocaust is therefore overemphasized, and that’s because Jews dominate the media.”
That’s pretty plainly anti-semitic.
Though I wonder what history’s relative judgment of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union would be without the Holocaust–if Germany had been led by a Mussolini or a Franco. Still fiercely aggressive and murderous, but not racist. Maybe Turtledove could write such a novel.
July 26, 2010, 10:54 amPaul Horwitz says:
David, you have written before in defense of your use of vague words like “some,” “many,” and so on. I won’t engage that debate here. Suffice it to say that while you’re free to define your own terms, if they are to mean anything they are subject to reasonable disagreement about whether they accurately describe the larger reality. In this case, at least, there may be a difference between the partisan “left” and the common run of “liberals.” I do not get the sense that Oliver Stone is especially respected by the latter crowd, nor has he been since at least JFK. Your post, reasonably read, seems to make the acceptable but somewhat banal point that some people don’t condemn Stone as much as he deserves, although many people condemn Gibson. But my sense, which I don’t think is any less accurate than yours, is that most people, including most “liberals,” do not take Stone seriously and find these and other comments from him, as well as his support of a variety of dictatorial leaders, well worthy of condemnation. As the commenters have already pointed out, of course, while most people of whatever stripe condemned Gibson even before his latest remarks, not everyone did, and here and there I suppose there was “deafening silence” and even some defenses — certainly there were many defenses of The Passion. I don’t think it’s fair to generalize from that fact to any broad statement about “conservatives” and the “right,” and I think the same is true here. You’re welcome to disagree, but it seems to me that you either have to provide meaningful statistical evidence at that point or concede that your observations may not be especially reflective of the vast majority of liberal or even left opinion, and thus essentially banal.
I would add that I support your post to the extent that it is about consistency: about the duty to apply the same standards of praise or condemnation to one’s ideological allies and adversaries alike. Here, I think both the left and the right often fail and that this is worth pointing out. It’s a perfectly human tendency to focus more on one’s adversaries than one’s allies, and I don’t think anyone should be shocked when this occurs, but those of us who believe in applying standards as opposed to merely winning rhetorical victories ought to demand better.
But I would note that this standard is, naturally, one that one should apply across the board. I don’t generally believe in judging the VC as much by what it chooses not to publish as by what it chooses to publish, especially given that this is a group blog and that you all have other jobs to do. But if you’re going to go down this road, I hope you’ll spare a few moments to beg your own fellows to apply the same rigorous standards of consistency. VC has posted several posts about the Journolist controversy but has not seriously acknowledged any failings in that reporting; nor has it asked whether it makes sense to condemn openly ideological left journalists, especially those who expressly state their opinions in their work, on the basis of reporting done by openly partisan right-wing journalism outlets; nor has it spent much time comparing Journolist to, say, the many Fox News memos that make clear how given stories are to be spun, or the fact that a top Fox News executive consulted privately with the Bush campaign while the campaign was still underway. It has practiced a “deafening silence” on the repeated failings of Andrew Breitbart in the last week. And so on. Again, I don’t think it is fair to judge an opinion outlet for all it chooses not to write. To the extent that you think otherwise, however, surely you can spend some time keeping your (and your colleagues’) own house in order as well as policing the work of others. Surely the kind of integrity you demand from others demands this much from you as well.
None of this is meant to take sides on these stories. My point is procedural, not substantive. I agree with you that, especially for partisan journalism outlets, there is room to criticize such outlets for inconsistency. But once one adopts that standard, one must do it fairly and across the board, and one should not exempt oneself or one’s own blog from criticism or self-criticism.
July 26, 2010, 10:54 amAlanDownunder says:
Any criticism of Israeli foreign policy entails too many classic antisemitic tropes. Best not attempted.
July 26, 2010, 10:55 amJohn says:
“Stone is an idiot. But how is alleging that Jews dominate the media (hey, nothing wrong with that) comparable to blaming them for all the wars in the world?”
Because he says that influence “fucks up American foreign policy”. Why does he object to our foreign policy? Just a guess but I am thinking the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are a big part of it. Stone is saying Jews influence our policy and get us into wars and that basically they are fifth columnists more interested in Jewish good than American good. That is about as anti-Semetic as you can get. Yeah, he didn’t say they ate babies or poisoned wells. But that just means he is a little smarter and subtle than most anti-Semites.
And as far as Stone being accepted on the Left. Someone is funding his movies. If he were a comparable figured on the Right, he would as they say “never work in this town again”. As far as what liberals should do about him. That is their problem. They own him until they disassociate from him. That is how the game is played. Leftists seem to have no problem associated conservatives with nuts like Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. So they can’t really complain when conservatives associate them with nuts on their side.
July 26, 2010, 10:55 amDave N. says:
What is much more alarming is that leftists like Oliver Stone will never acknowledge that Stalin oversaw the murder of many, many more people than Hitler did: One estimate has 61,000,000 under Stalin; 21,000,000 under Hitler.
(Yes, I realize that Stalin was in power for 29 years and Hitler for only 12, but that seems like a rather bizarre defense that Hitler was worse. Let me be clear: Both were monsters. Unfortunately, even with the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the monsters will never be denounced by the Hollywood left)
July 26, 2010, 10:57 amAaron says:
I love the popularity of these kinds of blog posts. Blank did a story about blank, but not blank?!?! Of course, make the subject as ridiculously broad as possible for full effect.
The reason one story is written about more than another is always blindingly obvious. Often it is about bias to some extent – in that they want to give stories their audience wants to hear. However, in cases like this one, one story has legs, and another does not. The NYT did an article about Mel Gibson and not Oliver Stone, because Mel Gibons is a much bigger star who said much more outragous things.
However, the fact that the NYT wrote about hollywood shunning Mel Gibson, but did not write anything about hollywood shunning Oliver Stone, does not lead to the conclusion that now “liberal hollywood” doesn’t care that Stone thinks jews “dominate” the media. In fact, if you individually asked members of what you would consider “liberal hollywood,” I’m sure you’ll get diverse opinions based on a variety of factors, some of which may be based on having personal relationships with Gibson or Stone.
But that is what makes the end of this blogpost so excellent and quitessential of blogdom: “So, what will it be for Hollywood liberals? …(The early returns are not promising; so far, the left-wing blogosphere has responded to Stone’s remarks with deafening silence).” Apparently what Hollywood liberals feel will be decided by the left-wing blogosphere. I guess I did not get the memo where the left-wing blogosphere started representing Jewish people in the movie business.
The left-wing blogosphere will continue to post stories that get the most hits. Mel Gibson being crazy gets more hits than Oliver Stone’s latest half baked political commentary. This has absolutely nothing to do with how “liberal hollywood” feels about anything, not that “liberal hollywood” has any one feeling about anything.
July 26, 2010, 10:57 amHouston Lawyer says:
What I find most interesting in this string is the number of people who want to defend Stone.
Is there any sin a man of the Left can commit that would cause his universal condemnation from the Left?
July 26, 2010, 11:00 amEngineer says:
By the way, if you look at the Journolist archives you can see Jewish names all over the place. Does this mean that the liberal media is “Jewish-dominated”? Some Buchanan-type conservatives are actually saying so.
July 26, 2010, 11:01 amCJColucci says:
You mean Al Franken?
What, you forgot Helen Gahagan Douglas? No, I mean George Murphy, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, the guy who played Gopher, and — what was his name again? — he was pretty good in King’s Row, named an airport after him, if I recall. Well, I’ll figure out his name later. Then throw in the jocks: Watts, Bunning, Largent, Swann… Somebody seems to care a lot about the politics of celebrities, and rewards them.
July 26, 2010, 11:01 amCalderon says:
Anderson — I’m sure DB’s problem with Stone’s statement is not that Stone said the Germans killed more Russians than Jews. If Stone had just said that statement, and then said more attention should be paid to Russian losses, then of course calling him anti-semitic would be silly.
But that’s not what Stone did. He gave an explanation for why there is less attention to Russian losses compared to the Holocaust that is at least arguably anti-semitic (and one can easily think of reasons besides “Jewish domination of the media” as to why more attention is paid to the Holocaust than Russian casualties). DB is objecting to the explanation, not the raw fact of comparative casualties.
To give an analogy, suppose someone said that in the US the average income of Blacks is less than of Whites. That’s simply a raw fact, and no one can describe that statement standing alone as a racist. However, one can certainly give explanations for why that income difference exists that are racist or arguably racist.
On a separate, there’s a big difference between disproportionality and “domination,” especially with a group that is as small as the Jews which only make up 2.2% of the US population. If Jews made up 15% of mhigh-up Hollywood positions, that would be greately disproportionate to their population, but it’s hard to describe 15% as dominating an industry.
July 26, 2010, 11:02 amKeating Willcox says:
I think Jews should be proud of their success. They come from a culture of hard work and accomplishment, in spite of constant hatred of Jews from everywhere. They deserve to be proud. And, if they understand how much non-Jews hate them, it’s no wonder that they prefer economic relationships with each other. One of the Madoff victim’s comments were, how could he do this to his own people. I understand this, I have no problem with this, and I am a 100% fan of Jews and Israel.
(I use the term Jew haters rather than anti-semite which is ambiguous)
Hitler thought of Russians the same as Jews, Homosexuals, and Gypsies. When the morale of Nazi officers in Russia was effected by the mass murder of the Slavs (some had welcomed the Nazis as liberators), then began the train loads of Russians back to the gas chambers. Hitler wanted to do the same to the Russians, and eventually to the USA and our mongrel population, as discussed in his second book. So, not only did the Holocaust exist for Jews, but many others as well, not just for military might but for Hitler’s crazy ideas.
Stone is a nutcase, and as many on the left hate Jews, so does he.
Gibson is an alcoholic, but also the greater danger. His movies are beautiful, spiritual, and inspiring. His personal Catholic faith is legend. That he can harbor such hatred for Jews is very unsettling.
July 26, 2010, 11:03 amtim maguire says:
My reaction is the same as Kevin’s. These people can’t even bring themselves to condemn a child rapist if he has the proper liberal credentials. And you want them to condemn a mere anti-semite? Don’t you get it? He makes liberal movies! All else is details.
July 26, 2010, 11:04 amJohn says:
“The left-wing blogosphere will continue to post stories that get the most hits.”
Yeah. That is why they are so interested in stories that are interesting but hurt their side. Did you actually type that with a straight face? And while Gibson is a bigger star than Stone, Stone is no slouch. And they certainly would be covering it if Stone were a known conservative. Look how much coverage Pat Robertson gets. That guy hasn’t been important in 20 years. Yet whenever he says something crazy, the leftwing blogshpere runs with it as an example of how anyone who disagrees with them about anything is really evil. That is how the game is played.
July 26, 2010, 11:04 amerp says:
If Jews dominate the media, who’s gonna bankroll Stone’s new anti-Semitic film? Just asking.
July 26, 2010, 11:05 amPaul Horwitz says:
John, what I don’t get from your last paragraph, with all due respect, is a sense of the standard that you believe ought to apply. Is it that all this is indeed a “game,” and so the only rule is tit for tat? Is it that everyone *ought* to be associated with the remarks of anyone who shares their same general ideological views, and *should* be required to disavow every such remark? Does it apply regardless of the ideological side involved? Is it your view that consistency and integrity are important values, but that conservatives should only be expected to exhibit them if their adversaries do likewise — and if so, do you see consistency and integrity as transcendent values or, as it would seem to me, merely convenient and contingent ones? Or do you believe that certain kinds of behavior are required of all of us, in which case they should be expected no matter how others act?
I am not trying to pick on you in asking these questions. I think these questions are vitally important. I think the “tu quoque” argument can only really apply effectively if one makes a prior decision about exactly what values we expect everyone to apply and why. The argument against unilateral disarmament makes practical sense, but it is not always effective, and certainly not unless we make a prior decision about what values we ought to follow as an absolute matter. I might say that I do not expect my friends to turn the other cheek if my enemies are unwilling to; but I would not read that as license to, say, murder my enemies’ children, because I would find that behavior repugnant no matter what my enemies choose to do. I think you first need to decide what standards of behavior apply to everyone across the board, and which of those standards are only permissive and which indefeasible. Where you think some standard of behavior is absolute, it will be no defense to that behavior to say that your adversary has engaged in it. I don’t have any reason to doubt that you have some such standards, but I don’t get a very strong sense from your comment about what they are. It would be helpful to everyone, I think, if such discussions turned on what is the right or wrong thing to do rather than what the “other side” has allegedly gotten away with.
July 26, 2010, 11:05 amJoe says:
What I find most interesting in this string is the number of people who want to defend Stone.
Since there are around 40 comments, many simply critical, others calling him a ‘dumbass,’ it might be “most interesting” to you, but perhaps also a matter of where you narrow your focus upon.
As to “universal condemnation,” does that mean everyone on the left in lockstep have to dispute everything he says? Mere criticism appears not to be enough.
“most interesting”
July 26, 2010, 11:07 amYawn says:
Why is it that the subject of Jews and Israel always causes Bernstein to belch forth a stream of logical fallacies? I just can’t figure that guy out.
July 26, 2010, 11:08 amJohn says:
Paul,
Since liberals own most of the media and popular culture, there is little hope that the standards applied to conservatives will change anytime in the near future. Conservatives are associated with and expected to explain all forms of nuts who claim to be on their side and even some who don’t. Liberals in contrast are allowed to embrace and keep in polite company or just ignore the existence of people like Stone. At this point there is two choices, turn the other cheek and let liberals live by the lesser standard or apply the higher standard to them and call out their hypocrisy. In an ideal world, there would be a third choice of convincing liberals to apply a fair standard. But this is not an ideal world. And such a choice does not exist. So the only choice I can see is apply the same standards to them that they apply to conservatives. If conservatives have to explain why they are not like Pat Robertson, every liberal should then have to explain why they are not like Oliver Stone and explain what they have done to distance themselves from him. Perhaps after this standard has been applied to them for a while, they will decide that it is wrong to associate everyone of a particular ideology with the most extreme and deranged adherents to that ideology.
July 26, 2010, 11:15 amYawn says:
Familiar with Generalplan Ost? It does not go too far to say that this plan was functionally equivalent to the Holocaust with respect to the Slavs. It envisaged a legal and industrial apparatus devoted to the resettlement, extermination, and enslavement of tens of millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, etc. Hitler had every intention of destroying entire communities of Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians that had existed for centuries. That Hitler did not win the war in the East and was not able to carry out this plan does not obviate the fact that his plans for the Slavs were every bit as evil as his plans for the Jews.
July 26, 2010, 11:15 amrmd says:
O.
M.
G.
The man can’t really be that stupid, can he?
July 26, 2010, 11:18 amRicardo says:
I think that’s the bottom line. Idiocy — especially for a figure in Hollywood — is to be expected. With Gibson, on the other hand, it really does seem like something more sinister is at work. Look up the interview he had with a Hollywood entertainment reporter who happened to be Jewish. When the guy asks about the incident, Gibson’s expression visibly changes to anger, he leans forward and says “you mean, the remarks that were attributed to me that I didn’t necessarily make” before adding “I gather you have a dog in this fight.”
With Gibson, one gets the distinct impression that he genuinely harbors hatred toward Jews. And yet he still did not become persona non grata in Hollywood. He went on to act in another film and had a gag-worthy interview with Barbara Walters where he told self-deprecating jokes about the incident and blamed it all on his drinking.
Also, I suspect it is pretty difficult for someone to be “just” an anti-Semite. With Gibson, we learn that not only is he an anti-Semite, but also a racist and a very cruel and narcissistic individual.
Yes, “Jews dominate the media” is a classic anti-Semitic trope but does it really demonstrate outright hatred and contempt for Jews by itself? It can be a sign of anti-Semitism in many people and I wouldn’t be that surprised if a conspiracy kook like Stone is also an anti-Semite — conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism often go hand in hand. But by itself, it is not comparable to the long and consistent pattern of anti-Semitism voiced by Gibson.
July 26, 2010, 11:19 amDave N. says:
Apparently, yes.
July 26, 2010, 11:20 amTV watcher says:
CjColucci et al. -
I see your point about celebrity candidates, but the Hollywood Left’s main influence is not about producting candidates, but about (1) big money and (2) spreading their opinions, which for whatever reason do carry currency in our world because of the celebrity status.
On money, I’d guess the split is about 90-10 or even more lopsided. They are a big part of the base for left/Democratic fundraising, especially in the early “money primary.”
On opinions and influence, I think most commenters on this board agree that it’s odd to take give weight to someone’s foreign-policy views because she or he can act well, or play guitar, or sink three-point shots, but our fellow Americans do it anyway. So we should care if someone anti-Semitic or racist or whatever, whether Gibson or Stone, is spreading those ideas. (I am not calling for one iota of censorship or any government control, just for calling people out in public discussion.)
July 26, 2010, 11:23 amJohn says:
“Yes, “Jews dominate the media” is a classic anti-Semitic trope but does it really demonstrate outright hatred and contempt for Jews by itself?”
If you feel that it is important enough to mention more than in passing and think that it has negative effects, yes. Black people dominate the NBA. And if someone went around making a point of how black people dominated the NBA and affected American life or government in some negative way, it would be a pretty good indication that you were in fact a racist and meant blacks harm.
July 26, 2010, 11:26 amArthur Kirkland says:
Because the contention that the restrictions imposed on American foreign policy with respect to the U.S. relationship with Israel harm the United States (when compared with the freedom of being a free agent, particularly in the Middle East) seems strong, let alone reasonable?
Is there an argument that preserving the American relationship with Israel doesn’t generate important and costly problems (for example, reduced flexibility with respect to many issues) for the United States?
July 26, 2010, 11:26 amJohn says:
“Because the contention that the restrictions imposed on American foreign policy with respect to the U.S. relationship with Israel harm the United States (when compared with the freedom of being a free agent, particularly in the Middle East) seems strong, let alone reasonable?”
There is nothing unreasonable about that. It is just when you claim that our friendship with Israel is the result of the influence of the Jews, as opposed to people having a different opinion of U.S. interests that makes you an anti-Semite. When you do that, you are calling Jews fifth columnists and a nefarious influence on American policy. And that is Antisemitism.
July 26, 2010, 11:30 amDangerMouse says:
No kidding. As long as you’re one of the Anointed, you can do no wrong. Obama could personally mow down Tea Party members with a machine gun, and the libs here would defend him. When your ideology is not limited, small government, but instead is centralization of control and the increasing pursuit of power for its own end, then there is no limiting principle to stop you. They defend cop killers like Mumia, child rapists like Polanski, and anti-Semites like Stone, all because such people are liberal. Lying in pursuit of the big truth (“fake but accurate”) is another example.
July 26, 2010, 11:32 amjgreene says:
The left-wing whackjobs in Hollywood are just fine with Oliver Stone because he constantly attacks America.
The anti-semitism in Europe and anti-jewish hatred of Islamofascists is ok with the left wing because everyone know that America and Israel are BAD.
Can you scream the word – HYPOCRITES!
July 26, 2010, 11:32 amPaul Horwitz says:
John, I appreciate your candor and courtesy. I happen to disagree with your description of facts on the ground. I think it is more accurate to say that there are liberals who have no relevant standards of fair conduct or fail to apply them consistently, and that there are conservatives who do the same. You appear to disagree with the first half of my description but you seem to agree with the second half of description, although I think it is fair to say you view this as a strategic necessity rather than a good thing. Of course, there are also some liberals who, rightly or wrongly, share your view from the opposite side: namely, they believe they *would* act with consistency if left to their own devices, but should not do so as long as their adversaries have significant media power.
Personally, I think you are missing the possibility of a third option: namely, that we argue about what the right standards of conduct should be and then do our best to apply them across the board. The value of such an approach is not only that it has integrity, but that we end up arguing over values and not tactics, which I think is a more productive and meaningful debate to have. It is more productive because, as our own exchange demonstrates, in a pluralistic society there will always be debates about who is more or less powerful. As long as no one view is absolutely victorious, there will always be people arguing that we ought to defer any discussion of what is actually the right thing to do until final victory has been achieved. That, it seems to me, is unlikely to happen any time soon, and in the meantime both our public discourse and our sense of our own values may be corroded. I think some people (I don’t have you in mind) take the view that a final victory *is* the most important goal, and that matters of integrity and consistency in argument can and should be deferred until that victory has been won; more than that, they view even the possibility of criticizing their own side, as long as they see villainy on the other side, as somehow showing weakness. Again, I think that defers a basic discussion of values too long and perhaps indefinitely. In any event, if we value our values, so to speak, more than the question of what stands to be gained or lost in terms of strategic ground, then it seems to me that any minor risks involved in such an approach — which, after all, still allows us to criticize the “other side,” but only demands that we not spare ourselves and our friends from criticism — are easily outweighed by the benefits.
I don’t mean to caricature your own views. Nor do I mean to suggest that the left (and I don’t tend to be of the left) or liberals are immune from criticism. To the contrary, my point is that holding both sides to the same standard is always available to us, and that we ought to argue about what that standard is before we get right to the tu quoques. I don’t think it is necessarily the case that the right ought to be required to disavow every nominally conservative person who says something stupid, or that the VC is obligated to blog about failures on the right if it also blogs about failures on the left. I certainly do not think it is barred from arguing that there are more failures on the left than on the right (or that people on the left are barred from arguing the exact opposite). I think we should have that argument too, although it seems to me there are enough rogues and fools to go around on both sides. But I think that any criticism — self-criticism or criticism of one’s opponents — only makes real sense, as opposed to serving as a merely rhetorical strategy, after we have had a discussion about what values ought to apply to everyone. At least then, if, say, one takes the view that the right ought not abide by certain rules of consistency and integrity in argument as long as the left doesn’t (and vice versa), one can be candid about admitting that one’s own side is engaging in what may be a necessary and regrettable but still a clear evil.
July 26, 2010, 11:35 amMike says:
While I would agree that his statements express views likely to be held by an anti-semite (just because most other people would realize that’s how they’re going to be interpreted, and care about being seen as such), I don’t think they’re inherently anti-semitic.
Jews dominating the media is a statement of fact. Diluting the statement with “There are many Jews who work in the higher levels of media” is being PC without changing meaning. There are many Jews working in media. The holocaust holds a very personal meaning to many of them, therefore they are likely to be more interested in making holocaust movies than movies about the Russian front. I can think of several holocaust movies off the top of my head who had Jewish directors.. I have a much harder time thinking of famous movies about Hitler’s damage to the Russians.
Granted, the holocaust is a uniquely interesting story, but there is at least an argument to be made that killing twice the number of people is a greater evil, regardless of why either group was killed, and that it should possibly be a larger part of the public consciousness.
I guess I would say that there are strong and weak versions of the “Jews dominate the media” hypothesis. The first is that many Jews have been successful in media, and they are likely to have a set of interests based on common culture – interests such as being Pro-Israel and holocaust awareness. It would be foolish to think that this will not influence what they decide is appropriate to show on the news, or what movies to make, or how a political debate should be framed (including, for example, which statements are beyond the lunatic fringe of anti-semites and which are valid policy decisions). I don’t think this weak hypothesis is anti-semitic, any more than saying that “the number of white Christians in American media leads to fewer stories on the history of Islam or the Cultural Revolution in China” would be anti-Christian.
The strong hypothesis is that the Jews dominating the mainstream media purposely collaborate in a conspiracy to advance Israel regardless of cost to the US. This is the classic anti-semite conspiracy theory that has been floating around for hundreds of years.
I would venture that the first theory is still incredibly dangerous to say because regardless of its possible veracity, it sounds perilously close to the second, and regardless of its intent will likely cause cries of anti-semitism. I make no inference as to which viewpoint is held by Oliver Stone.
July 26, 2010, 11:38 amzuch says:
[my manufactured quote; I'm not attributing this to anyone]
Quick vote: Anti-semitic or not?
For extra credit: Why?
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 11:40 amr2d2 says:
Of course it is true that some people on the left will react less angrily to antisemitism from Stone. I haven’t seen you make a very good case of it in the post, but I don’t doubt that to some extent it is true.
I don’t really care though. This is the type of point that can be made endlessly about people on both the left and the right. A lot of people do this type of thing on a full time basis.
This blog used to be good. Now it’s a place where David Bernstein talks trash about Greenwald and Hollywood, David Post talks about soccer, and Stewart Baker advertises his book.
July 26, 2010, 11:40 amRowerinVA says:
Actually, I disagree even with John (who otherwise makes a good point). No, blacks do not “dominate” the NBA. “Dominance” requires more than numerical superiority. Black players are a majority of the roster spots and player earnings, yes, but there’s no evidence that they have a majority position in ownership, the licensing phase of the industry, the broadcasting phase, etc., and there is no evidence that they are banding together racially to make such things occur. Where’s the “dominance” being asserted? It looks to me like if you’re white and want to buy a team, your money is what counts, and if you want to play, your play is what counts. E.g., Kobe Bryant demanded and got a good forward to help him win a championship, and Bryant doesn’t seem to have cared a fig that the guy was white.
Just as Jews do not “dominate” the media. Jews are disproportionately highly represented, but they aren’t anything close to a majority (however media is defined), and it is as common to find Jewish reporters disagreeing with each other (even attacking each other) over every issue you can imagine, including Israel issues, as it is to find agreement. The idea of monolithic Jewish opinion or action is a joke. And this is so readily apparent that only bigotry could lead one to claim that “Jews dominate the media.”
If a person by saying “Jews dominate the media” or “blacks dominate the NBA” merely means that “X group is much more likely to be in the Y industry than their share of the population would suggest,” fine, but that isn’t how Oliver Stone was using the phrase.
July 26, 2010, 11:42 amAdam J says:
Maybe its me, but I think there’s plenty of room in Stone’s statements to think he’s not antisemitic but simply ignorant. Of course, in Bernstein’s crazy world he thinks Stone should instantly be treated the same as Gibson since they’ve both made statements which he views as antisemetic, and any evidence that they’re not treated the same is evidence of liberal bias in the media (or perhaps we should call it liberal domination of the media).
July 26, 2010, 11:45 amChuck Deuce says:
There are just some facts, that are about as plain as the nose on my face:
1) Black athletes dominate the NBA and have abandoned Baseball.
July 26, 2010, 11:48 am2) Its a common belief that illegal aliens in the US are of Latin descent.
3) Jews do have a large interest in the media. Is it a conspiracy? No, but I think there’s been more emphasis on higher education in Jewish families more so than others. Also, ethnic cleansing as a way of motivating a community to better itself in the face of extinction might have something to do with it.
3a) Benjamin Netanyahu is on video effectively saying America is easily manipulated into following an Israeli agenda.
3b) The news media has abandoned Murrow-style reporting in favor of opinion-driven ratings grabbers. Facts don’t matter anymore, and Benjy seems to appreciate it and takes advantage of the Americans apathy toward getting the truth.
4) The Nazi killing machine did kill more Russians than Jews. You can split hairs about this, but consider “Russians” could be Jews, Russian Orthodox, Catholic, Agnostic/Athiest, you’re talking about a Nationality instead of a religious sect.
5) White America in general is guilt ridden over sins committed by their ancestors and bend over backwards to accommodate whiny special interest groups. I for one am done apologizing for things I never did.
dcp says:
Didn’t Oliver Stone get into some hot water last week for defending Mel Gibson? Well, maybe not defending him directly, but going pretty far out of his way to paint his controversies with a “what’s the big deal?” brush.
I think there has emerged a very sharp ideological divide on the issues of Israel, anti-semitic historical revisionism and disproportional Jewish power among Hollywood and the liberal elite.
July 26, 2010, 11:49 amBane says:
Actually Gibson is not really right-wing politically, though he seems to be cast as right-wing, presumably because he has made a couple of films (Braveheart, Passion) beloved by Christians and because he himself claims to be Christian. As such, you could say that Hollywood’s double standard — which will no doubt manifest itself shortly in the non-response to Stone — applies broadly to the right-wing, but in this case, specifically to Christians.
And the rest of you idiot commenters need to stop writing treatises in the comments section. This isn’t the place to write books.
July 26, 2010, 11:49 amKen Arromdee says:
You can’t demand that any individual person disavow a remark from someone on the same side. But you can demand that among a large number of people, someone should. Any individual always has a plausible explanation for not condemning people like Stone, even if it’s just “well, I don’t have the time to condemn everyone”. But when the lack of condemnation is repeated over a large crowd, it becomes less credible that nobody in the crowd had the time to condemn Stone when quite a few had the time to condemn Gibson.
July 26, 2010, 11:52 amJoshL says:
You clearly have a separate definition on “dominate” from mine. The Roman Empire dominated much of the Mediterranean world for centuries. The British dominated Ireland for centuries. Hitler was bent on world domination (or at least domination of Europe and northern Asia) Jews do not “dominate” the media, any more than they dominate Congress or the legal profession.
July 26, 2010, 11:52 amRicardo says:
Why yes they are. Just as someone must have funded “Edge of Darkness” in which Mel Gibson had a starring role just earlier this year.
July 26, 2010, 11:52 amSarcastro's Little Brother says:
[Let's not forget Congressmen John Hall (of the band Orleans) and Heath Shuler or Senator Bill Bradley or Detroit Mayor David Bing. But I know your snark was to argue that Republicans are somehow unique in this regard. They are not.]
July 26, 2010, 11:54 amAaron says:
I don’t really see the disagreement here. You are assuming that posting stories that you find more interesting would get more hits than ones that follow a given narrative. I think this has been shown to be incorrect. A lot of the most popular blogs play directly to a narrative, often liberal or conservative in nature. This blog would be an example, although it certainly has more variance than others we could name. Thus, for the leftwing blogosphere, a story that derides a conservative will lead to more hits. Blogs cultivate an audience and then play to it.
The problem with Berstein’s post is that he asserts that the fact liberal blogs are playing up a story that makes a conservative look bad, and not bothering to play a story that makes a liberal look bad, some how tells you what “liberal hollywood” thinks or feels about a person.
I’m certain plenty of liberal Jewish people in hollywood do not work with Oliver Stone for a variety of reasons.
July 26, 2010, 11:56 amzuch says:
This is a strong point worth mentioning, and is a valid and forceful criticism of Stone. The Holocaust was almost unique in its scale and enormity [there have arguably been other genocides in history nearly as complete but mostly on a much smaller scale].
Stone is an eedjit or perhaps quite obtuse in not noticing it. That said, it does not per se make him anti-Semitic. He may well be that, but we’d need more evidence (and to be fair, we ought to look at the evidence — if any — to the contrary as well).
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 11:58 amJim O'Sullivan says:
This Joel Stein piece in the L.A Times is still, IMHO, the best short summary of the topic yet published.
July 26, 2010, 12:01 pmRicardo says:
Mel Gibson’s father Hutton Gibson is a raving anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Mel has been given the opportunity to disavow his father’s noxious views and has never done so. When combined with other statements he has made over the years, a distinct pattern begins to emerge. Mel Gibson apparently doesn’t like George Bush and opposed the Iraq War. So what? David Duke and Pat Buchanan both had similar views.
I really don’t know what political wing Gibson belongs to and don’t really care. He is pretty clearly an anti-Semitic and racist crank.
July 26, 2010, 12:03 pmMike Giles says:
Are Jews the only lobbying group in DC? Do other lobbying groups influence American policy (you know – like Irish Americans or Arab Americans)? Of course they do. So why is that Jews are always singled out as a particular target? I never see it insinuated that other lobbying groups are a sign of dual loyalty. As for Russians killed in the Second World War; WW2 could, and would, not have started without the agreement between Stalin and Hitler. Russian deaths were Stalin’s chickens coming home to roost. Not to mention that Stalin’s decisions were responsible for most of those deaths. Everyone speaks admiringly of the Soviets “Scorched Earth” tactics. But if you burn the crops, and then destroy or carry off everything of use; what happens to the population left behind? If you have to get your best generals out of the Gulag before you can have a competent army, how is that army going to fare at the start of fighting?
As for the differing treatment of Gibson and Stone, until Gibson goes out and makes some left wing agitprop movie he will never be forgiven. Just as Stone will never be attacked until he makes some flag waving epic. Just the way it is out there on the left coast.
July 26, 2010, 12:08 pmzuch says:
Hot off the presses, we have this.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 12:09 pmDG says:
{3) Jews do have a large interest in the media. Is it a conspiracy? No, but I think there’s been more emphasis on higher education in Jewish families more so than others. Also, ethnic cleansing as a way of motivating a community to better itself in the face of extinction might have something to do with it.}
My problem with stuff like this is the idea of a monolithic “Jews” or “The Jews”. Have you people ever met any Jews? We don’t agree on anything. Even if we are over-represented in any given areas, what does it matter? I’m a Jew and I hate holocaust movies, for example.
July 26, 2010, 12:10 pmJonathan Rubinstein says:
If the Jews had been left with 40% of Germany to loot for almost a half century, would Stone think they were overcompensated. A drunk as well as a moron and heavy drug user, unlike Gibson who is a drunk and Christian fundamentalist moron, as well as a beater of women, why are you even writing about these total jerks, it only encourages them. I presume it is “the jews” who still finance his films unless it is Chavez who must be controlled by the jews since we really control the oil he pumps increasingly inefficiently.
July 26, 2010, 12:10 pmkrs says:
I understand that Prof. Bernstein is busy, but I appreciated this comment from Paul Horwitz and would be very curious as to whether Prof. Bernstein has a response.
July 26, 2010, 12:11 pmwfjag says:
True, but there were many more Russians to kill. Stalin did far more damage to the Ukrainians in 2 years than Hitler did in the approximately 3 years that the German Army occupied the Ukraine. Most estimates of deaths during the Holodomor put it in the 7M to 10M range, although some put it as low as around 2.6M and as high as 20M. After the starvation and deportations of the Holodomor, somewhere between 10% to 25% of the Ukrainian population was gone, and especially in the eastern Ukraine, ethnic Russians had been moved in to re-settle the farms, villages and towns that had been depopulated.
Houston Lawyer says:
Say something nice about Karl Rove.
July 26, 2010, 12:12 pmAnderson says:
Goodness, this thread took off.
(1) Jews may well dominate Hollywood or the U.S. media, and that may have some effect on public consciousness of the Holocaust. I don’t know the data, and I don’t care, because such dominance would not matter to me, and there are worse things for the public to hear about.
(2) I don’t see any data cited above (sorry if I missed it) about Jewish influence.
(3) The mere fact that anti-semites like to allege Jewish influence, does not make that influence nonexistent. Baptists have influence, Catholics have influence; why should Jews be uniquely non-influential?
(4) Stone is not wearing his thinking cap if he can’t figure some non-Jewish reasons why the cost to Russia of WW2 has been relatively underplayed in the U.S. (Hint: “the Cold War.”) (Hint: “Soviet secrecy.”)
July 26, 2010, 12:15 pmLugo says:
The scale and the enormity of killing 20+ million Russians (with the intent of killing tens of millions more) certainly exceeds that of the Holocaust. Many Russians were killed as a byproduct of military operations, but many Russians were killed for no other reason than being Russian. Morally, it is hard to see why the Holocaust should be considered much worse than the attempted genocide of the Russians.
July 26, 2010, 12:18 pmBane says:
Then you don’t really care about the purpose of this post or the issue at hand, which is that purportedly right-wing, conservative and/or Christian people who make anti-Semitic remarks are treated differently than liberal/left-wing/non-Christian people who do the same.
July 26, 2010, 12:18 pmStrict says:
“With Gibson, one gets the distinct impression that he genuinely harbors hatred toward Jews. And yet he still did not become persona non grata in Hollywood.”
Because his films make a ton of profits. Money trumps ideology or personal opinions or political beliefs every time, especially in Hollywood.
I want to say two things in defense of Mel Gibson that I haven’t seen said anywhere.
He’s a confirmed manic-depressive. Bipolar people suffering from a manic phase say all sorts of crazy shit, often stuff they don’t even remember saying or they would never even think otherwise. I think there’s a reduced culpability for Mel for the crazy things he says when he’s losing his mind.
He’s also an extremely philanthropic person. To me, action trumps words. Someone who has donated $100 million [Mel has probably reached that, maybe more] to charitable causes is not an awful/evil person if the bad things he’s done are mostly to say bad words or bad things. [This doesn't apply to guys like Madoff, whose misconduct was not mere words]. So when Mel Gibson gave $10 million to Cedar-Sinai Hospital and Mattel Children’s Hospital [both Jewish-founded], that doesn’t “correct” or undue the awful things he said, but it sure counts for a hell of a lot in my book in judging a person as bad or good.
July 26, 2010, 12:19 pmAnderson says:
Have you people ever met any Jews? We don’t agree on anything.
We may have a thread-winner here.
July 26, 2010, 12:19 pmbert says:
ALL Religions are more of the problem in the world than solution because of the way People identify with their Religions. As soon as people put on the belief that their Religion is The One and Only True Religion, and they are The chosen People of God, then their Religion creates division among men and pollutes their mentality with a “holier than thou” vantage point, from this follows war because they tend to Rationalize their agenda as necessarily being One with God’s agenda, therin lies the insanity of Religion, and why people kill and torture their fellow man in the name of Religion,( or otherwise become fanatics). ALL Religions hide from constructive criticism behind the cry “persecution!!,” “infidel!!”, “anti-semite!!” when people try to constructively discuss and dis-agree with the Politics of Religion. The only one true Religion is love, Unity among people, respect and kindness for all. I think people have a right to express frustration with the Politics of Israel without being called an anti-Semite. If one is anti-Religion, all religions, but not an athiest, does that make one an anti-semite?
July 26, 2010, 12:19 pmPaul Horwitz says:
Ken, the Stone story has been around for about a day, I believe. If there is still a conspicuous silence from everyone who is reasonably identified as being on the left three days or a week from now, I will view that as a failure of sorts — not as a sign of support or conspiracy, but as a failure to take note of a newsworthy and idiotic statement by a conspicuous public figure. But this is a low bar to meet, and I suspect it will be met in this case. As you say, the “left” broadly speaking has no obligation to disavow every idiotic statement made by a fellow traveler, any more than the “right” broadly speaking does. But someone usually gets around to it on both sides, despite the number of people who don’t. It’s a big Internet. I would note in fairness that although someone somewhere on the right (and probably more than one, although I can’t be bothered to check) surely has criticized Mel Gibson in the last few weeks, this site hadn’t mentioned him recently at all, as far as I can tell from a quick search, until this post by David. That’s not a knock at the VC, but a reminder that what we don’t expect everyone to cover everything. It is unfortunate, in my view, but unsurprising that each side is better at finding the mote in its adversary’s eye than removing the log from its own. But I appreciate your at least offering a standard that can apply across the board, which is really what my comments have been about.
July 26, 2010, 12:19 pmLugo says:
So in your moral universe, killing ten people out of a population of twenty is worse than killing a hundred people out of a population of a thousand?
July 26, 2010, 12:21 pmAnderson says:
Morally, it is hard to see why the Holocaust should be considered much worse than the attempted genocide of the Russians.
Hitler intended to enslave the Russians, not exterminate them – though quite a few Russians were to die along the way. The Wikipedia article on Generalplan Ost is rather weak, but gives some idea.
July 26, 2010, 12:25 pmAnthony says:
Gibson isn’t destroying his Hollywood reputation by being an anti-semite. He’s doing it by going off on drunken rages. Oliver Stone is obviously a lunatic conspiracy theorist, but as long as he does it politely rather than, say, beating up his wife, Hollywood is content to ignore him.
July 26, 2010, 12:27 pmEMB says:
It seems to me there’s a pretty big difference between expressing a few anti-Semitic opinions in the context of an attack on the US’s foreign policy regarding Israel and
1) making a seriously anti-Semitic movie (but claiming that it isn’t), and then
2) refusing to disavow his father’s holocaust denial, and
3) in a drunken tirade, blaming the Jews for all the wars of the world.
Personally, it’s probably still enough for me to boycott Oliver Stone’s movies (I don’t seem to recall enjoying the two movies of his I’ve seen much anyway), but I can see how some might still be willing to work with him.
July 26, 2010, 12:29 pmRandy says:
Houston Lawyer: “What I find most interesting in this string is the number of people who want to defend Stone.”
I hardly think that calling Stone a ‘nut-case’ equates with defending him
“Is there any sin a man of the Left can commit that would cause his universal condemnation from the Left?”
Funny, we were thinking the same thing about Breitbart & Co.
John: “Conservatives are associated with and expected to explain all forms of nuts.”
Well, conservatives actually support nut cases such as Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle and Michelle Bachman, so no, we’ve pretty much given up hoping that you folks would ‘explain’ them.
“This blog used to be good. Now it’s a place where David Bernstein talks trash about Greenwald and Hollywood, David Post talks about soccer, and Stewart Baker advertises his book.”
Boy, ain’t that the truth! Unfortunately, this blog has devolved where we just have people who attack the “New York Slimes” and make broad assumptions about how evil all liberals are. Comments ike Houston Lawyer and John are just swipes. I confess I occasionally take a swipe too, but usually only like above — to point out that the hypocracies and failings of the left are the exact same as the right. And yes, those hypocracies and failings DO exist — on both sides of the aisle.
I for one have no interest in what Hollywood has to say about anything other than making movies. If any actor spouts off about carbon emissions, foreign policy, taxes or kittens being euthanized, it means nothing to me since they have no more expertise than my plumber on any of these issues. (And my plumber probably has more sense to boot).
If you want to mine that field, it is endless and still very pointless. It’s merely a game of gotcha and adds nothing of value.
July 26, 2010, 12:30 pmCJColucci says:
Conservatives are associated with and expected to explain all forms of nuts who claim to be on their side and even some who don’t.
Lots of black politicians have wondered for years why they have to answer for every inane utterance from Louis Farrakahn and Al Sharpton.
July 26, 2010, 12:31 pmbert says:
PS. I agree w/ Strict up there. Gibson has medical issues and he isn’t very eloquent but I don’t think he is evil or a racist. I think the media frenzy over his breakdown really shows the true colors of all those annoying pundits who are gloating in his mis-fortune, as though their proverbial sh*t doesn’t also stink, and there, but for the Grace of God, go they…in a heart-beat their private sh*t could spill out and they may become media fodder. What a difference a day can make. I believe Karma will call on anyone out there gloating on anyones’ misfortune, and it won’t be pretty.
July 26, 2010, 12:31 pmLugo says:
He planned to exterminate tens of millions of Russians — perhaps even ten times as many as Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. It is absurd to claim this anti-Russian genocide is morally less culpable than the anti-Jewish one simply because Hitler did not plan to kill ALL the Russians immediately (and who knows what he might have done over the long term?).
How can you possibly think that killing on the order of 50% of the Russians west of the Urals does not count as “extermination” and genocide?
July 26, 2010, 12:32 pmzuch says:
R.J. Rummel is not exactly the most authoritative source.
Then there’s this:
also:
Could have fooled me. Off the top of my head, how many wars between just India and Pakistan? (Of course, some might quibble and say that Pakistan wasn’t a “democracy” in the “no true Scotsman” sense, but then again, neither are we in the U.S., progeny of a military uprising). How about WWI? And of course, we can’t count the numerous “civil” wars in such democracy-versus-democracy wars … that might upset our conclusions.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 12:40 pmNI says:
I think the difference is that whether true or imagined, the perception is that the Jews have actually succeeded in making it politically costly to cast anti-Israeli votes in Congress or make Hollywood movies that don’t toe the Zionist line. It isn’t that the Irish and the Arabs wouldn’t like to do the same thing; it’s that there’s at least a perception out there that the Jews are much better at it, and have succeeded in obtaining more power than their numbers would warrant.
And let’s be fair here — does anyone seriously think that if Hollywood were “dominated” by fundamentalist Christians, that we wouldn’t see a huge difference in what kind of movies were made? People — all people, not just Jews — who have power and influence tend to use it to further causes near and dear to their hearts. Even if it really is true that Jews dominate Hollywood, and the media, and government, the real complaint is that they’re doing what any other group would do in their place.
July 26, 2010, 12:40 pmKirk Parker says:
Actually, I think he is wearing it–it’s just so tiny, it’s very hard to see.
July 26, 2010, 12:41 pmzuch says:
Let me know when you find a Republican … any Republican … willing to stand up to Limbaugh for more than 24 hours….
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 12:43 pmwfjag says:
Lugo says:
I have no idea how you arrive at that conclusion. I suspect that it reflects your belief system, not mine.
Murder of 2 people is worse than murder of 1, but, it’s still murder no matter how many. So, I disagree with Stalin. It never becomes only a statistic.
July 26, 2010, 12:43 pmerp says:
zuch says:
“Jews are smarter that average.”
If you mean smarter than the average bear, I agree.
July 26, 2010, 12:46 pmr2d2 says:
Along with krs, I’d like to hear Mr. Bernstein reply to Paul’s post at 10:54.
It is true that the left and right will focus on the errors of the other side while defending or ignoring their own. Mr. Bernstein might have found an example here. But by disproportionately posting about scandals of the left, while ignoring similar issues on the right, some posters on this blog commit the same wrongs as the people they are criticizing.
July 26, 2010, 12:51 pmzuch says:
Well, yes, in the World’O'MakeBelieve.
OTOH, we have Dubya actually violating explicit U.S. law, tearing up habeas corpus, setting up Gulags, and torturing prisoners … all to great applause and accommodation from the Right. Albeit, Obama has been following his tracks on these matters rather too closely for my tastes….
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 12:51 pmneurodoc says:
Not everyone who talks about “Jewish bankers” is an antisemite, not even those who include mention of the Rothschilds or the Federal Reserve. But it is very likely that they are, notwithstanding however many Jewish sounding names they may list.
July 26, 2010, 12:56 pmJack says:
What about left-wing Christians? Oh, I forgot, those don’t exist in neo-conservative narratives.
July 26, 2010, 12:59 pmzuch says:
See your problem?
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 1:00 pmerp says:
The difference between Gibson and Stone: Gibson’s drunken ravings won’t be shown in schools and on the History Channel and Stone’s will be and are.
July 26, 2010, 1:00 pmzuch says:
Unfortunately, taken out of context, this could be taken the wrong way.
Here’s more, just so no one is confused.
Reminds me of that last annual anarchists’ [or is it "libertarians'"?] convention….
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 1:07 pmFedya says:
I presume you’re referring to all the people who were against the idea of Rush Limbaugh becoming a minority owner of the St. Louis Rams?
July 26, 2010, 1:09 pmyankev says:
He is? They’re both still making movies. (And they’re both despicable, though Polanski is the only one whose conduct was criminal, and who if I had my way would not be released from prison during his lifetime.) If Gibson gets axed, it will be because of the racist and sexist remarks he made to his mistress. Stone won’t cause even a ripple.
July 26, 2010, 1:10 pmyankev says:
Jews are overrepresented among homosexuals? That’s a favorite charge of anti-Semites among the paleo-right.
July 26, 2010, 1:12 pmzuch says:
… embearassing typo. Mea culpa.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 1:12 pmlev Myshkin says:
well, again nobody have seen the actual interview with Stone yet.
July 26, 2010, 1:13 pmAre there any other sources besides NewsBusters witch has reputation of lies distortion and exaggeration
Anderson says:
How can you possibly think that killing on the order of 50% of the Russians west of the Urals does not count as “extermination” and genocide?
I’m using “genocide” to mean the murderous elimination of a group, a “genus.” If that’s incorrect, mea culpa.
Arendt argued that what made the Holocaust a crime against humanity, not just against the Jews, was precisely that quality of seeking to eradicate a people as such.
July 26, 2010, 1:19 pmzuch says:
Sometimes there’s a pattern (albeit not all examples were proved true; OTOH, the older questionable quotes may have occurred before transcripts or recorded audio were generally available).
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 1:20 pmyankev says:
It is? Then ask yourself — what percentage of Russians in Europe died as a result of the Nazis? What percentage of those of Russian extraction world wide? Did the Nazis wipe out every trace of Russian culture and civilization in Europe (and nearly world wide), and was this their acknowledged aim? Were Russians singled out for special treatement by the Nazis, with the enthusiastic cooperation of the local concquered populace, everywhere that the Nazis occupied?
As to your comment about domination of the media, see DB’s observations about the difference between disproportionate numbers and domination. Some in the media, such as the Christian of Jewish extraction Sulzberger family at the NYT, used their position in the media to help cover up the Holocaust as it was in progress.
July 26, 2010, 1:22 pmzuch says:
I think you misunderstood. Prof. Bernstein was saying that it has been suggested that both Jews and “homosexuals” were over-represented in Hollywood.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 1:23 pmStrict says:
EMB: “refusing to disavow his father’s holocaust denial”
Disavow? He doesn’t own the views of his father, nor does he hold them. Mel Gibson is not a Holocaust denier. Maybe he didn’t want to go on record attacking his own father, but that’s not the same thing as saying he agrees with everything his father has ever said or done. I’ve disagreed with some things my father has said, but if someone wanted me to go on record saying my father is an idiotic evil person, I wouldn’t.
“Yes, of course” is not denial. Unless we’re using a very, very broad and strange meaning of denial.
July 26, 2010, 1:23 pmViktor Silo says:
I would not harm a Jew just for being a Jew. I would not advocate harming a Jew just for being a Jew. I would not tolerate anyone harming a Jew just for being a Jew.
I believe Israel has a right to exist and I have said, on my own website, that Israel’s enemies are my enemies.
However, I don’t like Jews qua Jews. I find them obnoxious.
Does my not liking Jews make me an anti-semite? I don’t think so and I don’t think any reasonable person would think so.
My reading of Mel Gibson’s opinion of Jews is that he would completely agree with the first paragraph, mostly agree with the second paragraph and completely agree with the third paragraph.
My reading of Oliver Stone’s opinion of Jews is that he would partially agree with the first paragraph, completely disagree with the second paragraph and completely agree with the third paragraph.
July 26, 2010, 1:24 pmTodd Klimson says:
Geez this is the first time I’ve ever seen this happen to a right-wing conservative and silence towards a left-winger in the media. Cmon give it up. Who cares what the media says about anyone. They are bored and so am I listening to all this BS. Why is it that Negative people expect gifts to reign down on them from Heaven for their banal comments. Get a life!!!
July 26, 2010, 1:24 pmyankev says:
Om Ppwerline.com for one. Bill O’Reilly for another. I’ve seen some elsewheere as well but don’t recall just now where.
July 26, 2010, 1:24 pmerp says:
Yankov said:
Jews are overrepresented among homosexuals? That’s a favorite charge of anti-Semites among the paleo-right.
Enough with the accusations and name calling. Who are the paleo-right and which ones of them made that charge?
Zuch: As someone whose typing fingers are a lot faster than their brain, it wasn’t the typo that I was pointing out, your comment just made me laugh thinking of the great “smarter than average,” Yogi Bear.
July 26, 2010, 1:24 pmyankee says:
While I usually think DB is far too willing to call people anti-Semites (or imply that people are anti-Semites without saying so explicitly) he’s right on this one. Are Jews overrepresented in the media? Sure. Do they dominate the media? Nonsense.
Baseless theories of Jewish domination of powerful institutions are classic antisemitism.
July 26, 2010, 1:24 pmyankev says:
Make that Powerlineblog.com. Note to self — put down fork while typing.
July 26, 2010, 1:25 pmyankev says:
Did he say they need to be forcibly removed, or simply imply it?
July 26, 2010, 1:28 pmNew Class Traitor says:
Somebody tell Oliver Stone that the only ones who have more dead Russians (and Ukrainians,…) on their conscience than Hitler (y”sh) are… his beloved commie leaders.
There is a reason why some people in the (thank G-d former) Soviet Union at first looked upon the Nazis as liberators, only to quickly discover they just traded one democidal regime for another.
The best possible outcome for WW II would have been if Stalin (y”sh) had joined his evil twin Hitler on the ash heap of history.
July 26, 2010, 1:30 pmPlugInMonster says:
Define antisemitism. Last I checked Arabs are semites.
July 26, 2010, 1:30 pmAnderson says:
The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps.
Pooh. This is denialspeak. Jews in camps were not killed as part of the war effort. Not to mention the difference between concentration camps and death camps, which were chiefly built to kill Jews.
July 26, 2010, 1:31 pmTC says:
Mel Gibson is not “a religious Catholic” nor a “traditionalist” or “conservative” Catholic.
He is a sedevacantist who basically believes that there has been no valid Pope since Pius XII and that whole post-Vatican II church is in heresy while he and his little band are the real thing.
The Church has certainly done enough to earn the public’s disdain w/o the media holding out Gibson as an RC poster boy.
July 26, 2010, 1:31 pmPlugInMonster says:
Ah that’s nice and toasty racism!
July 26, 2010, 1:31 pmDave N. says:
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
July 26, 2010, 1:32 pmzuch says:
Just to be clear, “over-represented” meaning in numbers greater than would be expected from prevalence in the general population (although some who have made such suggestions or accusations might also have indicated the sentiment that such over-representation was undue or unwarranted [or worse] as well).
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 1:34 pmTodd Klimson says:
And since when did anyone in the media ever contribute to the positive advancement of our society? They are just people who sell news based on their negative comments. They couldn’t run a private business if you gave them 10 million. Affairs of the rabble!!!!
July 26, 2010, 1:34 pmyankev says:
And Stone then goes on to say that the reason that the general public is less aware is because Jews domiante the media and control the flow of information to the public in order to keep the public distracted and ignorant, the better to ensure support for Israel. Read the whole interview. If someone has to explain why that meme is anti-Semitic, there’s not much hope of your understanding it.
July 26, 2010, 1:36 pmStephen Lathrop says:
As nearly as I can tell, it would not be possible to object to Jewish-American advocacy on behalf of Israeli interests under that standard of anti-Semitism. Help me out if I’m wrong.
If I conclude there are some Jews who are “more interested in Jewish good than American good,” and if I conclude those Jews do advocate U.S. involvement in wars that I would prefer the U.S. stay out of, is my anti-Semitism in concluding that, or in objecting to it? What?
I should mention that I do have objections to long-standing U.S. policy in the middle east, and have zero opinion about whether or not U.S. Jewish advocacy determines or influences it decisively. I’m pretty sure there are other factors that might make the policy just what it is, without any Jewish influence at all. But John’s formulation seems to assert there could be conditions of fact which it would be anti-Semitic to acknowledge. I’m uncomfortable with that.
July 26, 2010, 1:37 pmChuck Deuce says:
Don’t believe that Israel isn’t manipulating the US? Help me out in validating this video of Benjamin Netanyahu talks about manipulating Bill Clinton. Think that kind of process started and stopped with the Oslo Accords?
July 26, 2010, 1:38 pmDave N. says:
Here’s an idea: Instead of an ad hominem attack, how about showing an authoritative source that disagrees with his numbers.
July 26, 2010, 1:38 pmStrict says:
“This is denialspeak.”
Really? I guess I don’t know what “denial” is, then. What do you mean by denial? Because he said concentration camp and not concentration AND death camps? As far as I know, concentration camp is an umbrella term. Death camp or extermination camp are within that umbrella as subcategories. So “concentration camp” can properly encompass them all.
Or because he mentioned the deaths of other people in the same breath?
Or because he didn’t give any specific numbers?
I’m not sure. What isn’t Holocaust denial, in your view?
July 26, 2010, 1:39 pmLugo says:
zuch Lugo: Morally, it is hard to see why the Holocaust should be considered much worse than the attempted genocide of the Russians.
See your problem?
Cheers,
No.
When the “attempted” genocide killed four to five times as many Russians as the “actual” genocide of the Jews (with the intention of killing many more), it is, as I said, hard to see why the “attempt” was less morally culpable than the “actual”.
In short, both were real, meaningful genocides. You can’t say the anti-Jewish one was worse unless you think Jewish lives are four to five times as valuable as Russian lives.
Anderson: Arendt argued that what made the Holocaust a crime against humanity, not just against the Jews, was precisely that quality of seeking to eradicate a people as such.
Whereas eliminating “only” half the Russians, destroying their state and culture, and reducing the rest to ignorant helots was not a crime against humanity??? You must put a really low value on the historical and cultural value of Russia (as well as the human value of Russians).
yankev: It is? Then ask yourself — what percentage of Russians in Europe died as a result of the Nazis? What percentage of those of Russian extraction world wide? Did the Nazis wipe out every trace of Russian culture and civilization in Europe (and nearly world wide), and was this their acknowledged aim? Were Russians singled out for special treatement by the Nazis, with the enthusiastic cooperation of the local concquered populace, everywhere that the Nazis occupied?
Why are percentages morally more important than absolute numbers? That’s nuts. By that logic I can annihilate hundreds of millions of Chinese or Indians and it doesn’t “count” as real genocide.
And yes, the Nazis most definitely aimed to wipe out every trace of Russian culture and civilization in Europe.
July 26, 2010, 1:40 pmJeff Norman says:
But then you later say:
So what part is anti-Semitic and what part isn’t?
July 26, 2010, 1:43 pmTamerlane says:
Yankev Says and Zuch:
Reading with comprehension is a useful skill that you both might work on. Professor Bernstein was quoting me in order to disagree with what I wrote. He never referenced the sentence you mention at all. And when I wrote it, I meant to suggest that it was likely that homosexuals were over-represented among media management not among Jews. BWTH this whole thread has been kind of silly.
July 26, 2010, 1:43 pmptt says:
Yeah, a religious, schismatic, dissident, heretical Catholic. But he’s “conservative”, so he must be authentic…
July 26, 2010, 1:44 pmAnderson says:
“Sedevacantism.” Thanks for the new word, TC!
July 26, 2010, 1:44 pmNew Class Traitor says:
Actually, speaking as a Jew, a Zionist, and an anticommunist, I must say they did have a plan to essentially turn European Russia into a slave state that would no longer have a civilization as we think of such:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
Basically, part of the population was to be Germanized, part to be exterminated (by starvation or mass killing), part driven across the Urals, the rest used to create a hereditary slave labor caste. In this manner, “Lebensraum” was to be created for the Germanic “Herrenvolk”.
However, only two ethnicities were slated for total destruction: Jews and (the numerically much smaller) Roma Gypsies.
July 26, 2010, 1:45 pmyankev says:
Ah, so when Stone said “Jews dominate the media” he really meant “I disagree with the following poits of Israel’s foreign ploicy for the following reasons.”
Thank you for clarifying that. And for demonstrating another classic antisemitic trope.
Hint — if you cannot find a way to criticise Israel without using a classic anti-semitic trope, the fault may be with the substance of your criticism.
July 26, 2010, 1:46 pmyankev says:
Of course there is. He could utter a word in defense of Israel. That certainly earned Joe Lieberman near universal condemnation from the left.
July 26, 2010, 1:49 pmJim O'Sullivan says:
Let’s try not to forget that, in discussing Stone and Gibson, we’re not discussing the deeply–considered, well-researched findings of two accomplished social scientists. These are two guys whose brains have been damaged by drugs and/or alcohol who make movies for a living (mostly crummy movies, IMHO). Movies are make believe, folks. Why am I supposed to care what these two turkeys say about the world as perceived through their damaged psyches? Why bother to take umbrage that they are not being denounced voiferously enough?
July 26, 2010, 1:50 pmLN says:
Wow, all those leftist Jews must really hate themselves and Israel. Yet another anti-semitic trope!
July 26, 2010, 1:51 pmyankee says:
If you think it’s OK to advocate for Israeli interests when Christians do it but not when Jews do it, you’re being an antisemite. The problem is that the substantive policies being advanced are a bad idea. The identity of the advocates doesn’t make those policies any better or worse.
::rolls eyes:: The common meaning of “antisemitism” is “bigotry against Jews,” and has been since Wilhelm Marr coined the term in the 19th century.
July 26, 2010, 1:56 pmzuch says:
The American “settlers” from Europe arguably did a comparable job on the natives here as well (with slavery, theft, mass murders, and genocidal policies at various times).
Cambodia was a holocaust too … too bad it was such a small country (strangely enough, the “commie” Vietnamese were more concerned about that than was the good ol’ Yoo Ess of Aye at the time).
I’m not into divining shades of atrocity; Hitler was a sublime evil no matter how you slice it, and Stalin was also pretty terrible by and of himself. Comparisons of such really bring out the “too” in tu quoque.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 2:00 pmJust Dropping By says:
Of course there is. He could utter a word in defense of Israel. That certainly earned Joe Lieberman near universal condemnation from the left.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Joe Lieberman has been an ardent defender of Israel for his entire career and certainly long before he was nominated to be the Democratic VP candidate in 2000. He only became the subject of “near universal condemnation” after he started gratuitously slamming other Democrats on national security issues.
July 26, 2010, 2:00 pmAnderson says:
Jim O’Sullivan: very sensible. It’s like caring what Lindsay Lohan thinks of the New Deal.
… Re: Lugo, he does have going for him the UN definition of “genocide,” which can be of a group “in whole or in part.”
July 26, 2010, 2:00 pmDavid Bernstein says:
My only claim here is that Oliver Stone made an anti-Semitic remark.
July 26, 2010, 2:03 pmPraetorius says:
Stone will get a pass: He’s a leftist.
July 26, 2010, 2:04 pmyankee says:
Then I agree, though the line between saying someone said something racist and calling them a racist is pretty thin.
July 26, 2010, 2:07 pmLugo says:
Most of the “genocide” was courtesy of plagues, not deliberate policy.
We’d just spent 10 years and 50,000 lives being “concerned” about that region… we can hardly be blamed for compassion fatigue after 1975.
July 26, 2010, 2:16 pmStrict says:
“Then I agree, though the line between saying someone said something racist and calling them a racist is pretty thin.”
It’s thin but it’s there.
Does having a single racist thought [or speaking that thought] at one moment in time in a person’s life tar that person as “racist” for all time?
A racist statement is something very specific and it can be analyzed as such.
A racist person is a whole different matter. There’s a lot more to look at.
July 26, 2010, 2:18 pmKen Arromdee says:
It’s not that they’re not being denounced, it’s that they’re selectively denounced. It would be fine if the left didn’t denounce either one, or denounced both. But denouncing one but not the other is a problem, because it’s biased denouncing. And it’s not Stone and Gibson who are important enough to worry about, it’s the ones doing the denouncing.
July 26, 2010, 2:21 pmPlugInMonster says:
Me doeth think you protesteth to mucheth.
July 26, 2010, 2:22 pmBlue says:
There’s no question that there is a large degree of overrepresention of Jews in the media relative to their proportion in the population…but my sense is that it mainly tends to support the general left-liberal slant of the enterprise (since American Jews tend to have that political persuasion) rather than anything sinister about their religious background.
Given that, though, its not clear to me why Stone would think that was a bad thing–he’s basically on the same team, if a lot more extreme. That’s why I think its clear Stone WAS being anti-Semetic when he made his remarks.
July 26, 2010, 2:24 pmKamal says:
Just to clarify, since David Bernstein likes to lump them in together, being anti-israel (not believing that ‘my god says so’ is a valid reason for displacing people from their home) is not antisemitism; it is extremely justifiable, if not morally required.
I am not going into this anymore, since David’s point is to inflame tensions, and to try to claim that since people like Oliver Stone exist, we can’t complain about the atrocities that is Israel.
July 26, 2010, 2:24 pmzuch says:
I am sorry. You are right, and this was my mistake (I mistakenly and perhaps lazily took yankev’s attribution as accurate and didn’t go back to check the source). It was you and not Prof. Bernstein that said that. However, I think I was correct in my assessment of the thrust of the comment.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 2:25 pmLugo says:
Not if your name is Joe Biden or Bob Byrd or Bill Clinton or Ernest Hollings, to name but a few…
July 26, 2010, 2:28 pmerp says:
Jim O’Sullivan said:
… Why am I supposed to care what these two turkeys say about the world as perceived through their damaged psyches? …
Because Jim, the millions of people who see Oliver Stone’s fantasies in theaters, on television, including the History Channel and in schools, believe what they’re seeing is the truth.
July 26, 2010, 2:31 pmPlugInMonster says:
Hey I liked Platoon and Wall Street. Good films.
July 26, 2010, 2:32 pmzuch says:
Unlike what Paris Hilton thinks of McCain’s campaign ads. ;-)
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 2:33 pmr2d2 says:
Along these same lines, do you think that some of the posters on this blog selectively denounce? Both sides are selective in who they denounce, but Mr. Bernstein only gets angry when he thinks the liberals are ones doing it.
July 26, 2010, 2:35 pmzuch says:
Fallacy of bifurcation. And assumes facts not in evidence.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 2:40 pmyankev says:
Implement your pet plan to move ‘em all to Texas, Arthur. That will solve everything.
Until someone starts complaining how they dominate Texas, of course.
July 26, 2010, 2:40 pmStrict says:
“But denouncing one but not the other is a problem, because it’s biased denouncing.”
Time will tell. Mel Gibson has been saying offensive stuff for years. This Oliver Stone quote is new. DB’s complaint is premature.
I also don’t think Mel Gibson is a strictly right wing guy. He is a big supporter of Declare Yourself, an organization founded by [Jewish liberal] Norman Lear which promotes voter registration among young people [who tend to vote Democrat].
Mel Gibson has given millions of dollars to “save the third-world rainforests” charities.
He has stated “I am not a Republican,” and doesn’t give financial support to Republicans or right wing politicians.
His latest movie was about an evil corporate conspiracy.
He has expressed pacifist and anti-war views [including criticizing George W. Bush and the Iraq War] and has made anti-war films [e.g. Gallipoli].
He’s just crazy dude who has had substance abuse problems since the age 13. It’s not like he’s the poster boy for right wing politics or conservative America or the Republican party.
He was criticized because his conduct warranted criticism, not because the criticizers were biased or politically motivated.
July 26, 2010, 2:41 pmzuch says:
I wasn’t assigning blame. Just reciting the facts.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 2:42 pmTGT says:
Really?
It’s clear that “Jewish Domination of the media” is not a standalone statement. In the quotes listed, this domination is not due to their being more Jewish reporters and produces, but the rabid way AIPAC operates. The lobby attacks anything that doesn’t hold to their party line, and they claim Anti-Semitism anytime someone points it out.
Stone simply pointed out what was occurring, and Bernstein did exactly what Stone was criticizing. Stone’s comments are not anti-semitic; they’re an accurate depiction of what AIPAC has done to discussions about Israel.
July 26, 2010, 2:44 pmyankev says:
And the more time you spend with Jews the more you realize it is a joke. We even make jokes about it.
July 26, 2010, 2:45 pmzuch says:
You’re assuming that “left-liberal” tendencies are [at least here] what’s important as to whether a particular group might have heightened sensibilities (warranted as they may be) concerning particular genocides….
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 2:45 pmDavid Bernstein says:
And exactly what did a discussion about Russian losses in WWII as compared to Jewish losses, and more generally about Hitler and Stalin, have to do with Israel?
July 26, 2010, 2:46 pmyankev says:
Are you aware of the Einsatzgruppen, that went through Russia and Ukraine specifically to kill Jews?
Jews lived in Russia. That made them Russian Jews. It did not make them ethnically Russian. And if you think the ethnic Russians did not make the Jews aware of that fact, I can introduce you to a lot of Jews from the former SU who can disabuse you or your notions.
July 26, 2010, 2:48 pmzuch says:
“Two Jews. Three opinions.”
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 2:48 pmbyomtov says:
Strict,
The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps.
It is denial because it implies, in the context of the rest of his response, that there was no deliberate plan to exterminate the Jews. Gibson is admitting that Jews died, true. But to concede that Jews were among the millions who died in WWII is hardly the same as recognizing the existence of a definite plan, an extremely successful one, to murder them.
Gibson is saying, in effect, “Yes, Jews, Catholics, Methodists, etc. all died in great numbers in WWII.” True, but irrelevant to the question.
July 26, 2010, 2:52 pmyankev says:
Yes, we have one Jewish American columnist publicly offering unsolicited advice to the head of a foreign state, Israel, on how to get the US to take action that the columnist thinks would be to the benefit of both countries and of the entire world (with the possible exception of Iran and its clients). Proof positive of a Jewish dominated media and entertainment industry manipulating the news and entertainment to make sure that Americans stay ignorant of history, the better to secretly manipulate US policy for the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of the US.
July 26, 2010, 2:57 pmPlugInMonster says:
You know when the Jew haters stop hating, DB will start blogging about law.
July 26, 2010, 2:58 pmStrict says:
It does not imply that there was no deliberate plan to exterminate Jews.
Are you saying that Mel Gibson believes the deaths of Jews in WWII was accidental or coincidental or incidental or a result of passivity as opposed to active violence? I don’t see any proof of that whatsoever.
So “Holocaust denial” no longer means denial that the Holocaust happened, it means implicit coded contextual insinuations that the perpetrators of the Holocaust didn’t intend it to happen? What?
July 26, 2010, 3:01 pmyankev says:
Apparently a religion to which you do not subscribe. Either that or you are ironically demonstrating your own thesis about the downside of religion.
July 26, 2010, 3:01 pmSpikETBonE says:
July 26, 2010, 3:06 pmwfjag says:
Apparently Stone wishes to put Hitler “in context” and believes that Jewish influence in the US prevents him from so doing. However, I wonder how much more context is needed when the subject is a drug-addled, megalomaniac with one testical?
July 26, 2010, 3:11 pmLugo says:
Nope. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic killing of a group. The vast majority of native Americans who died after 1492 died as a result of diseases that Europeans neither caused, nor deliberately inflicted, nor understood themselves. This fact is abundantly in evidence. To compare this “genocide” to the Nazi genocide is therefore absurd and erroneous.
July 26, 2010, 3:12 pmStrict says:
Byomotov,
By that logic, Mel Gibson in his comment “In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933″ there’s an implicit denial that anyone was to blame, an implicit denial that the Holodomor was the result of policies or plans, and an implicit denial that those policy makers/planners intended its effects and results.
But I don’t see that. I think he was making a simple statement of what happened. The Holocaust happened. The Holodomor happened. In those times lots of bad shit happened. That doesn’t mean he was trying to excuse or absolve anyone, or deny the role of anyone in bringing about all that bad stuff. That doesn’t mean he was arguing that there were no plans, that all that bad stuff just happened accidentally or coincidentally.
July 26, 2010, 3:12 pmyankev says:
I should have made it clear that I was talking about extrme fringe, far to the right of even Buchanan. Here is the letter I was thinking of when I typed that, but for more samples, try googling jew+homosexual or jewish+homosexual. To find the letter (which I had seen some years ago) I had to add +lapin.
July 26, 2010, 3:12 pmben says:
Prof. Bernstein: Do you recognize any difference between the comments of Gibson and Stone, or do you believe they are equally anti-Semitic?
July 26, 2010, 3:15 pmyankev says:
Anti-semitism has a well known history and an established meaning. Neither has anything to do with Arabs. Or Chaldeans. Or Hyksos. Anyone who stoops to the quibble that you just interjected is (a) incredibly and willfully ignorant, or (b)deliberately trying to distract people from the disussion at hand, or (c) and anti-semite themselves, or (d) both b and c and possible a.
In your case I will give you the benefit of the doubt. (a) is curable. Try spending 3 minutes worth of time doing some research (try a dictionary, or even wikipedia, for the history and meaning of the term).
July 26, 2010, 3:19 pmyankev says:
Of course it would have been. The crime of mass murder. But not the crime of genocide.
Depending on other factors, it may count as attempted genocide. It certainly counts as mass murder.
July 26, 2010, 3:24 pmerp says:
yankev, do you think that a letter, even if authentic, from an obvious crank, if not lunatic, written ten years ago is enough evidence for you to make the statement that paleocons (you haven’t explained who or what they are) think there is a disproportionate number of homosexuals for the Jewish demographic?
July 26, 2010, 3:25 pmyankev says:
I apologize to paleocons and you are correct. Please subsitute extremist nativist right wing fringe crank groups.
July 26, 2010, 3:30 pmFloridan says:
Sorry, but the rule is that for every transgression by someone on the right, there must be an equivalancy found on the left. It’s called procustean politics.
July 26, 2010, 3:31 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Texas could use the improvement.
Have you formulated a reasoned objection to my proposal to offer Israeli citizens humanitarian refuge in the United States? Positioning them to die in pursuit of others’ religious fantasy, I will state in advance, won’t count; neither will “because God said they should stay.” I don’t doubt a legitimate criticism exists, but it won’t be one of those two.
July 26, 2010, 3:34 pmStrict says:
Yankev,
I disagree with the distinction between attempted genocide and genocide, because under the most common definitions, genocide does not require a 100% success rate.
The 1972 Tutsi genocide of Hutus and the 1994 Hutu genocide of Tutsis both left plenty of survivors. Neither were carried out to “completion.” But both are genocides.
The Holocaust was a genocide, but it wasn’t completed. It was interrupted and cancelled.
The Nazis, if given the opportunity and time, would have killed and enslaved most Russians and eliminated all traces of Russian culture, language, and religion. But they were not entirely successful, they didn’t complete the goal. Arguably it was a genocide.
July 26, 2010, 3:36 pmzuch says:
We have one columnist suggesting that some foreign nation attack another with nuclear weapons if we don’t do something first:
But he’s hardly the only person that has suggested such aggressive action (even if you take “Bomb, Bomb Iran” as somewhat tongue-in-cheek). This has been a neocon wet dream for a while.
I suspect the “entire world” might disagree as to the wisdom of such a measure for their purported “benefit”.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 3:36 pmPaul says:
I agree. Although Stone probably intended it with some negative connotation, on its face and by itself, what’s the difference between this and, say, the statement “black domination of basketball” or “Kenyan domination of long-distance running”? We can all judge the veracity of the statements independently, without having to make judgments of the speaker.
July 26, 2010, 3:41 pmyankee says:
Well, the genocide in question has to do with what the Europeans and their descendants did to the survivors. Germ warfare by the colonizers was also not completely unknown, see Jeffrey Amherst and his smallpox blankets.
July 26, 2010, 3:41 pmzuch says:
I gave you a number of atrocities, “genocidal policies” being just one.
And I gave you a link. You have a thumb, presumably opposable. Use it if your fingers fail you.
Where is the backing for your assertion?
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 3:44 pmneurodoc says:
Since we’re talking about Hollywood and Jews here, how about what Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, famously had to say when speaking on MSNCB a few years ago:
July 26, 2010, 3:48 pmfalse seriousness says:
That was not your only claim. You also made a claim that suggesting the “deafening silence” from the liberal blogosphere indicated their double standard and/or moral inferiority.
What about your own deafening silence on [insert issue X] here? Does that suggest your complicity / agreement with horrible [issue X] here?
I think you went for a lazy slur in your rush for victimization about Stone’s stupid and anti-semitic comment. But one can criticize the immorality of Israeli policies without being an anti-semite can’t one? In reality, no you can’t, but it should be that way.
July 26, 2010, 3:49 pmRandy says:
yankev: “I should have made it clear that I was talking about extrme fringe, far to the right of even Buchanan.”
Well, that’s a relief!
But seriously, we all know there are extremist cranks of every political and social stripe. You should see the letters gay rights organizations or blogs receive on a daily basis, many of which threaten violence. We can spend hours and hours reviewing their letters, views, blogs, and diatribes. So what? I think the less energy we spend on them, then better. Let them die out of their own inconsequence.
July 26, 2010, 3:50 pmVictor Silo says:
PlugInMonster says:
Viktor Silo: However, I don’t like Jews qua Jews. I find them obnoxious.
Ah that’s nice and toasty racism!
July 26, 2010, 1:24 pm
Well, that’s just perfect, isn’t it. Your comment on my comment is taken totally out of context and is indefensible. Unfortunately for you, the evidence is there for all to see.
July 26, 2010, 3:51 pmneurodoc says:
Gee zuch, I was so hoping you would return to answer those questions in response to your anti-Israel comments and that “argument by assertion” nonsense in the previous Bernstein thread. http://volokh.com/2010/07/10/kerstein-on-greenwald/
July 26, 2010, 3:55 pmEMB says:
It wouldn’t have taken much of an “attack” on his father, beyond not saying that his father “never lied to [him] in his life” later in the same interview.
Mostly though, it would simply have taken saying “Yes, the holocaust really happened” rather than saying that “yes, of course” atrocities happened, including the deaths of some Jews in concentration camps (but perhaps not in death camps, and perhaps not as part of a policy of complete extermination of the Jews).
July 26, 2010, 4:02 pmAlessandra says:
“So, what will it be for Hollywood liberals? Is anti-Semitism only unacceptable when it comes from right-wing Christians, ”
As with anything else…
July 26, 2010, 4:09 pmerp says:
yankev says: Please substitute extremist nativist right wing fringe crank groups.
Will do.
July 26, 2010, 4:10 pmDavid Bernstein says:
The idea that Jews are responsible for all the worlds’ wars is so transparently absurd and also outside the mainstream of anti-Semitic thought that it’s a lot less dangerous than claiming that Jews dominate the media to their benefit. So the former may be the product of a more deranged (and drunken) mind, but the latter has worse consequences, and was said, presumptively, sober. Six of one, half a dozen of other overall.
July 26, 2010, 4:14 pmLugo says:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they always drag out the Amherst example. It does not make a compelling case for systematic, centuries-long, Nazi-style, deliberate, systematic European genocide in the New World. See this about Amherst:
One guy, once, with no provable effect =/= the full apparatus of state-sponsored industrial genocide.
The vast majority of Indians died of diseases that the Europeans did not intentionally inflict, period.
July 26, 2010, 4:18 pmAlessandra says:
“Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.”
Why such a focus on the Holocaust then? “The Jewish domination of the media,” he says.
========
If Armenians dominated Hollywood like Jews do, we would have the same disparity in terms of film production about the Armenian genocide compared to other ones.
I can’t comment on precisely which were the ideological differences between the Nazi views of Jews and Russians. In any case, Stone dismisses them, whatever they may or may not be.
Aside from that (to me, unanswered) question, there is the simple fact that in the case of the Holocaust, Americans played their hero role in finally doing something to defeat the Germans, whereas, in the Russian case, we also have to give credit to what the Russians did themselves as heros (both to defend themselves and to defeat Hitler).
Already right there you hit a push-button propaganda problem by having to admit that the “horrible” communists had their role as “heros against Hitler” in WWII, and that doesn’t play well in the American ideological contest for hearts and minds or manipulating historical narratives.
July 26, 2010, 4:18 pmAdam J says:
yankev- Um… you should take powerline off the list of conservatives upset with Breitbart, as they’ve changed their minds and instead think Breitbart was cleverly tricking the NAACP into overreacting. (Apparently its okay for Breitbart to possibly ruin a person’s career so long as he’s trying to make an organization that conservatives don’t like look bad) See here. . And then we have Ann Coulter, who makes the completely baseless claim that Breitbart was “set up“.
July 26, 2010, 4:21 pmJoseph Slater says:
I was wondering when somebody would mention Donahue’s quote. Was that denounced on this blog? I honestly don’t remember and am too lazy to check.
More generally, while again I think both Stone and Gibson are idiots and both have said anti-semitic things, I also think it’s a bit lazy for A to denounce B for failing to denounce C. People of all religions and of all political stripes say dumb, offensive things, and we should be careful about getting all indignant about lack denounciations from folks vaugely on the same “side.” As to this case, that’s especially true since Stone’s statement is pretty recent.
July 26, 2010, 4:22 pmLugo says:
I disagree entirely. They didn’t have to kill all of them for it to be genocide.
Atrocities =/= genocide. Nice try, though.
Use your opposable thumbs to do a little more research on Amherst, unless your mind is already made up on the subject. Indeed, even if he was the man you think he was, it does not make the post-1492 European colonization of North America a Nazi-style genocide.
July 26, 2010, 4:22 pmben says:
Thanks for the response, with which I largely agree.
July 26, 2010, 4:29 pmSarcastro's Little Brother says:
zuch isn’t a zealot. He’s a dispassionate observer on the political scene. He’s completely fair and balanced in all of his posts. Why, I bet he even voted for McCain!!
July 26, 2010, 4:34 pmzuch says:
That’s an intriguing thought. The more absurd and extreme a suggestion, the less power it has, and the more we should ignore it. Let’s put that into practise….. ;-)
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 4:37 pmStrict says:
“Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It‘s not a secret, OK? And I‘m not afraid to say it…Hollywood likes anal sex.”
That’s a nice bit of crazy right there.
I will say that there are a lot of films out there that depict the Catholic Church or the priesthood in a poor light. Priest, Daens, Noelle, Doubt, The Crime of Padre Amaro, the Magdalene Sisters, The Boys of St. Vincent, The Golden Compass, 8 1/2, The Great Madcap, Mexican Bus Ride…But these are probably counterbalanced by the number of films with positive or sympathetic depictions e.g. The Keys to the Kingdom, Gran Torino, I Confess, Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, Salvador [Oliver Stone!], all sorts of Christmas movies, etc
However, they aren’t all [or any?] made by Jewish writers, directors, or producers. They aren’t all made by Hollywood. They aren’t all untruthful. And they aren’t all hatemongering.
July 26, 2010, 4:39 pmzuch says:
Nice “straw man”. Anyone see an argument around here?
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 4:41 pmluke1249 says:
Whether or not Jews dominate the media is a question that can be answered positively with no racist or bigoted intent simply by defining “dominate” and getting some statistics.
July 26, 2010, 4:43 pmcityduck says:
For the record, liberal websites like Daily Kos have already called out Stone, so the very premise of this diary seems false.
July 26, 2010, 4:44 pmzuch says:
While we have our differences on other matters, I’d have to say that Alessandra has a reasonable point there. That said, I think there’s more to interest in the Holocaust than simply some group interest amongst the Jews in Hollywood, regardless of prevalence there.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 4:45 pmneurodoc says:
Yes, America did its part in defeating the Germans in WWII. But is it your understanding of history that the US entered WWII for the purpose of preventing/stopping the persecution/murder of Jews or that it somehow altered its plans for prosecuting the war to serve that purpose? What would you say to someone who would argue that that was more of an incidental outcome of defeating the Nazis than a major motivation for the course(s) of action that the US chose to pursue?
In your view, the Communists deserve plaudits for responding to the attack upon their country after Hitler breached the “friendship” treaty they signed? (You have heard of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, haven’t you?) And you don’t think that the biggest manipulative historical narrative with regard to the Soviet Union during WWII was the portrayal in the US of Stalin as a benevolent leader, Uncle Joe, with no dwelling on any of the horrors under the Soviet system. How about the fate of Russian prisoners of war repatriated to the Soviet Union at the end of WWII? How exactly do you think an unmanipulated historical narrative would be? (Ever see the movie Enemies at the Gates?)
July 26, 2010, 4:46 pmStrict says:
DB, I agree that Gibson’s deranged [Gibson later said that he said the war comment in a "moment of insanity"] and drunken and absurd comment was much less dangerous than Stone’s comment.
But I don’t think it’s so clear that liberals attacked Gibson because Gibson is right-wing or that liberals have failed to attack Stone because Stone is left-wing.
First, Gibson isn’t a clear right-winger. His strong attacks on George W. Bush should make that clear. Second, Gibson’s comments were much more “attackable” in the sense that no reasonable person in any way could ever agree with any of it – there’s simply nothing to debate or discuss about it. Third, only time will tell if liberals leave Stone alone. Fourth, Gibson is a much more prominent person than Oliver Stone. Stone’s last film has grossed a whopping $50,000 or something. W barely broke even at $25M. Gibson’s Passion grossed $612 million on a $30 budget. It was a huge event in the film world.
July 26, 2010, 4:54 pmDavid G Epstein says:
On the whole, Oliver Stone is a political fool.
Even fools, however, stumble into the truth every now and then. Read Neil Gabler’s An Empire of Their Own for a sympathetic portrayal of the Jewish role in Hollywood. Look at the personnel of the major TV and news conglomerates. With the exception of Murdoch, who is pro-Zionist, ethnic Jews are very much overrepresented. More significantly, the expression in these media of views that are anathema to Zionists and Jewish liberal prejudices (e.g., on immigration and multiculturalism) is rare, and often met with howls of outrage.
Jews are very much part of the Establishment these days. Why should this subject be taboo?
July 26, 2010, 4:56 pmStrict says:
“For the record, liberal websites like Daily Kos have already called out Stone, so the very premise of this diary seems false.”
And Huffingtonpost.
DB hears a “deafening silence” because he’s not listening.
July 26, 2010, 5:00 pmerp says:
We’re getting far off topic here, but I can buy that many Indians were felled by European diseases for which they hadn’t built up immunities. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it makes sense that it could have happened, but hundreds of years ago even the best educated medical minds had little knowledge of contagion or how disease was spread. The idea that adventurers in the American wilderness could manipulate them at will is preposterous.
July 26, 2010, 5:01 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Times such as these sorely test people who wish to be charitable and call religion a wash — roughly as much good as bad from religion over the long haul.
July 26, 2010, 5:03 pmbindle says:
If you can’t tell the difference between the Gibson’s rant and Stone’s statement, then you’re a dumbass.
July 26, 2010, 5:03 pmSarcastro says:
Funny how everyone outside of this blog seems to be making a big deal of Gibson’s possible domestic violence, not this whole Jew thing. It’s almost as if antisemitism alone isn’t enough to get you shunned by Hollywood if you bring in the bucks! To bad Stone seems unable to fulfill that conditional these days, or we could have more yelling about double standards between things that are quite different.
And zuch may play a good objective game, but everyone in the know knows he’s Paul all the way.
July 26, 2010, 5:04 pmAlessandra says:
Hitler most certainly DID NOT. (Himmler did, however).
By all accounts, Hitler had quite a perverse sexuality mind himself, and he was very, very cozy with people with a homosexual problem. So much so, that perhaps what we can call his best friend for years, the immensely powerful SA chief Enrst Rohm, was a virulent homosexual zealot.
Hitler had known Rohm was a homosexual for a long time, along with several other Nazi men and other Hitler supporters. It was through Hitler’s personal invitation that Rohm got the top spot at the SA. Remember those savage, brutal Nazis (including all the little homosexual ones) with boots and brown shirts? The SA was a political army that protected the party leadership, battled opponents such as the Communist Red Front and terrorized Jews.
The reason for the elimination of Rohm in 1934 has to do with his increasing power and consequential threat to take over even Hitler’s power, putting him in a collision course with other top Nazis, such as Goring, Gobbels, and Himmler. It has nothing to do with Hitler being opposed to homosexuality.
BTW, the first Nazi concentration camp was built under the command of Rohm, such a little victim that he was.
July 26, 2010, 5:05 pmbyomtov says:
Are you saying that Mel Gibson believes the deaths of Jews in WWII was accidental or coincidental or incidental or a result of passivity as opposed to active violence? I don’t see any proof of that whatsoever.
No. I am saying that he sees no difference between the reasons lots of other people died – disease, lack of food, violence, etc. – and the reason lots of Jews died. he does not seem to think that Jews were particularly targeted. It also sounds to me as if he does not think “concentration camps” were intended to murder their inmates, or that Jews were systematically sent to them, but that they were unpleasant work camps where lots of people were confined and died, among whom there happened to be a fair number if Jews.
That’s how I read his answer, anyway.
July 26, 2010, 5:06 pmEric says:
I wasn’t assigning blame. Just reciting the facts.Cheers,
There are quite a few prominent Leftists who explicitly denied the Cambodian genocide; Noam Chomsky comes to mind. (Although he denies being a denier; however, the messages read in context make it quite clear that he believed the contemporaneous reports to be right wing lies.)
July 26, 2010, 5:07 pmKen Arromdee says:
I think there’s a hierarchy of “what makes left-wingers consider someone a right-winger”. In this hierarchy, being a member of a weird Christian sect (and making religious jabs at the Jews) takes precedence over one’s beliefs about George Bush. Even though Gibson may not strictly speaking be a right-winger if you analyze all his positions, any double standards towards right-wingers will treat him as being on the right-winger side.
July 26, 2010, 5:09 pmr2d2 says:
DB: So, what will it be for Hollywood liberals? Is anti-Semitism only unacceptable when it comes from right-wing Christians, or equally bad when it comes from non-Christian leftists, who add a bit of anti-Israel window dressing? (The early returns are not promising; so far, the left-wing blogosphere has responded to Stone’s remarks with deafening silence).
Although the early returns were not promising, the “left-wing blogosphere” is making a timely response. Daily Kos and Huffington Post have reported on Stone’s comments. This post was a cheap attempt to score political points, and you haven’t even done that.
July 26, 2010, 5:17 pmPraetorius says:
And this is news, how? JFK, the movie jerk-fest about Castro, clearly the person most impressed with Stone is …. Stone.
July 26, 2010, 5:17 pmJoseph Slater says:
Well, it will be interesting if the folks in this thread who have claimed a double standard — and there have been several — will now retract that charge.
July 26, 2010, 5:17 pmPraetorius says:
You specified “with power”. Franken is a one-trick pony: His electorate won’t put up with him falling asleep on the job (during hearings) or his other idiocies.
He wasn’t that good as a comedian, and his career as a comic writer seems well past it’s prime too.
July 26, 2010, 5:20 pmPraetorius says:
Or Jimmuh Carter, or Barack Hussein Obama, or the journolist crowd, or Jesse Jackson, or Rev Al Sharpton, or Nasty Pelosi, or Babs Boxer or Dianne Fienstein or, or, or ……
July 26, 2010, 5:25 pmArthur Kirkland says:
The “homosexual problem” was people like Hitler, and continues to be people who harangue (or worse) gays because of what Keith Richards called “petty morals.”
Speaking of Keith Richards, this point reminds me of another outstanding observation: ‘I’ve never had a drug problem, mate. I’ve had a police problem.’
July 26, 2010, 5:29 pmAlessandra says:
neurodoc, can’t debate all these points, which does not mean I would confirm or dispute them in various ways had I interest in having more info to do so. WWII is not a white-against-black historical episode, with all the good guys on one side (or country), all the bad ones on the other, although for rare instances, that is the Hollywood narrative. And it is exactly the Hollywood narrative because it sells. Why? It pleases the egos of the targeted American audience.
In the political battles of WWII (meaning not the concrete, military battles) there were several ugly pacts and deals happening for a long time, involving many different players, including on the allies’ side.
As per our dear wiki, “The battles on the “Eastern Front” constituted the largest military confrontation in history.” I will let you expound on all the horrors of Stalin. However, I do not share the view that all the population of the S.U. at the time was composed solely of Stalins and that they did not have their share of heroism in battling Hitler.
I mean, if you had been born in the S.U., what would you have done? Taken a loud-speaker and say Stalin was a monster?
====
The Eastern Front was the largest and bloodiest theatre of World War II. It is generally accepted as being the deadliest conflict in human history, with over 30 million killed as a result.[61] It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined. The distinctly brutal nature of warfare on the Eastern Front was exemplified by an often willful disregard for human life by both sides. It was also reflected in the ideological premise for the war, which also saw a momentous clash between two directly opposed ideologies.
Aside from the ideological conflict, the mindframe of the leaders of Germany and the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin respectively, contributed to the escalation of terror and murder on an unprecedented scale. Stalin and Hitler both disregarded human life in order to achieve their goal of victory. This included terrorization of their own people, as well as mass deportation of entire populations. All these factors resulted in tremendous brutality both to combatants and civilians that found no parallel on the Western Front. According to Time: “By measure of manpower, duration, territorial reach and casualties, the Eastern Front was as much as four times the scale of the conflict on the Western Front that opened with the Normandy invasion.”[62]
July 26, 2010, 5:32 pmSteveMG says:
Who exactly are “The Jews”? The definite article must have some importance?
To paraphrase (I believe) Maistre (yes, risky given the topic), I have met many Jews but as to this “The Jews”, I am not familiar.
Are they related to “The blacks” or “The Catholics” or “The Muslims”?
July 26, 2010, 5:35 pmAlessandra says:
Evidently you know nothing about Hitler or Nazi history.
One of the many “homosexual problems” we have in society is just how many people are outright lying about any issue in which homosexuals or bisexuals are perpetrators of harmful or violent acts or attitudes, whether 80 years ago or now.
July 26, 2010, 5:39 pmRandy says:
Alessandra: ” he was very, very cozy with people with a homosexual problem.”
I wonder if Hitler was also cozy with people who were gay but didn’t have any problems?
” It has nothing to do with Hitler being opposed to homosexuality.”
Nonetheless, the infamous Paragraph 75 made clear that homosexuality would get you a one way ticket to the gas chambers, and gays were rounded up with as much enthusiasm throughout the 1930s as were jews and other minorities.
Clearly, you and the Nazi party share the same thoughts about gays as having “problems” and should be shunned by society to some degree.
July 26, 2010, 5:58 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Good for them. The reactions aren’t over till the fat lady sings.
July 26, 2010, 6:07 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Actually, that they dominate the entire media, not just Hollywood. In fact, I don’t normally think of “Hollywood,” i.e, the movie industry, as part of the “media,” but rather the “entertainment industry.”
July 26, 2010, 6:11 pmPraetorius says:
The efforts by the Allies (the US, British Commonwealth, France to an extent, the Soviets) to end the war had little at all to do with stopping the Holocaust. In fact, given clear and overt opportunities to take actions to minimize the loss of Jewish (especially) and other lives in the camps, the allies decided at the highest levels (Roosevelt, Churchill, the little yappy guy with the flat head, the notorious murderer Stalin) decided to not use their military might to interdict (bomb) railroad crossings and railyards, and even once the camps were reached, did little to relieve the suffering. When eye-witnesses from camps in Germany and Poland escaped to London, their reports were ignored, or overtly derided as forgeries and lies.
Which makes the attitude of US Jews towards the demoncratic party, and FDR, quite surprising, but typical of the attitude the Jews who died in the ghettos and camps had.
For this Jew, all I can say is Never Again.
July 26, 2010, 6:11 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Uh, the Holocaust was a deliberate plan to eliminate the Jews. If the perpetrators “didn’t intend for it to happen,” then there was no Holocaust; there were just a lot of dead Jews. That’s classic Holocaust denialism, as you can see if you head over the IHR or Stormfront or lots of other similar sites: “Sure, lots of Jews died, but there wasn’t any plan to kill them. It was a war; lots of people of all ‘races’ died.”
July 26, 2010, 6:21 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Could you identify some of the other “homosexual problems” — other than violence by homosexuals? Thank you.
July 26, 2010, 6:28 pmRandy says:
Alessandra: “One of the many “homosexual problems” we have in society is just how many people are outright lying about any issue in which homosexuals or bisexuals are perpetrators of harmful or violent acts or attitudes, whether 80 years ago or now.”
How true! And one of the many heterosexual problems we continue to have is how many lie or ignore about their violence and harmful acts. Seems to be an equal opportunity disease. But I’m sure you’ll clear that up for us.
July 26, 2010, 6:38 pmRandy says:
BTW, I soured on Mel Gibson a long time ago, as did most gays, when he clearly established himself as anti-gay. I guess that’s another thing Alessandra has in common with him, though.
July 26, 2010, 6:39 pmA.W. says:
Rmd
> The man can’t really be that stupid, can he?
Look, if you want to BET that he isn’t, I’ll take any odds on that. easier than printing money. :-)
Zuch
> Quick vote: Anti-semitic or not?
There can be bigoted love or hate. Its bigoted, either way. And this kind of attitude is often used to foment hate. Look at the panic we used to have that the japense are taking over.
July 26, 2010, 6:41 pmyankev says:
It did, however, succeed in one major goal — the elimination of Jewish culture and civilization in Europe. Jews may have survived, but what was left of the European Jewish civilization was transplanted from Europe to the US and Israel.
July 26, 2010, 6:42 pmyankev says:
I did not realize that Bomb, Bomb, Iran was considered to be the result of Jewish domination of the press and the entertainment industry. Live and learn, I guess.
July 26, 2010, 6:45 pmyankev says:
I’m curious — what is the Zionist view on immigration to the US?
July 26, 2010, 6:53 pmPeter says:
Off-color humor @ Kevin, 10:11 a.m.
“And here I was still figuring why Gibson was worse than Polanski the child-rapist. Hollywood’s ethical algebra has some very strange rules.”
Sanhedrin 54b,Aboda Sarah 37a, Yebhamot 11b
July 26, 2010, 7:21 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
It’s interesting, though, that the Holocaust’s eleven million Jewish, Rom, Slav, Gay, chronically ill and off-brand religious victims have somehow become six million dead Jews. Many of those who excoriate Holocaust revisionism miss the fact that they’re defending Rev One themselves.
July 26, 2010, 7:25 pmleo marvin says:
To the extent Gibson’s ravings were more widely reported than Stone’s, the reason isn’t political — it’s that Gibson’s made better infotainment. If Stone were quoted by an arresting cop as blaming the “fucking Jews” for all wars, we’d have seen Stone’s mug shot on the evening news too. And if Stone were then caught on tape screaming at an estranged girlfriend that her fake boobs and slutty attire were going to get her raped by a gang of “n*****s,” Stone would be the one scrambling to salvage any vestige of a public career.
July 26, 2010, 7:55 pmJK says:
A big problem with this post, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen DB do this, is to treat antisemitism as a binary “you are or you are not” condition. Gibson said some seriously antisemitic things (like Jews cause all wars) and he was publicly and harshly criticized (I was going to say “shunned,” but is there any evidence anyone important actually refused to work with him?), ergo consistent people should treat Stone’s antisemitic remark the same way.
If it’s true that you’re either an antisemite or you’re not that makes sense (I agree Stone’s remark was antisemitic). But don’t the specifics of how bad a statement is matter at all? We all put up with a certain amount of bigotry in our daily lives without making a fuss, I for one would feel pretty hypocritical for attacking film industry people for not making a fuss over this just because they did over Gibson’s extreme statements. We all have to choose our battles, would you really choose a battle over someone with a lot of friends and influence in your line of work saying “Jews dominate the media” or the equivalent low-grade bigotry directed at your ethnic group?
July 26, 2010, 8:03 pmDavid G Epstein says:
@Yankev (“I’m curious — what is the Zionist view on immigration to the US?”)–
The organized Jewish community, including Zionists, almost unanimously supports unfettered immigration to the U.S.–the exact opposite of the policy of the ethnostate of Israel, which is extremely restrictive of non-Jewish immigration. For example, see the posts of Jennifer Rubin on Commentary‘s Contentions website. Here’s a quote from the reflexively pro-Israel ADL: “As an organization with a long and proud tradition of defending civil liberties for all, ADL has in recent years taken a lead role in exposing the virulent anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric that has risen to the surface as part of the national debate over immigration. ADL speaks out against discrimination and bigotry and advocates a meaningful and substantive policy that honors America’s promise as a nation of immigrants.” The implication–disagree with a permissive immigration policy, and you are a bigot.
July 26, 2010, 8:05 pmJK says:
I’m just no good at this conspiracy theory reasoning, how exactly does this advance the Zionist agenda?
July 26, 2010, 8:08 pmCicatrizatic says:
I understand that blaming all wars on Jews is ridiculous. But I don’t think it’s anti-semitic simpliciter to make the observation that Jews to dominate the media. It’s an empirical observation that can be readily supported. It’s not some conspiracy theory, but something that can be verified by confirming the ethnic background of the people who own most media companies.
July 26, 2010, 8:21 pmAmerican Jew says:
Excuse my bluntness, but I hope both Gibson and Stone rot in hell.
July 26, 2010, 8:30 pmleo marvin says:
As usual, Paul Horwitz is a voice of reason. He deserves his own blawg, maybe with a few other prawfs.
July 26, 2010, 8:33 pmzuch says:
Yes, dispassionate. That’s me to a “T”. Which may be why my nick comes up often when talk turns to banning commentators.
But you’re wrong about voting for McCain. Why would I risk a felony charge?
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 8:36 pmbyomtov says:
A big problem with this post, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen DB do this, is to treat antisemitism as a binary “you are or you are not” condition.
I don’t see why this is a problem. Are there people who are, say, 36.4% anti-semitic? Certainly not every anti-semite is Hitler – that’s an impossible standard to meet – but that doesn’t mean there’s no reason not to draw a line.
July 26, 2010, 8:39 pmzuch says:
Well, yes, one might find the pink triangle a bit of a “problem” in Hitler’s Germany….
I have to admit that here is where I depart company from Alessandra once again.
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 8:41 pmzuch says:
Reading between the lines, were you?
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 8:43 pmzuch says:
Did I say it was?
Cheers,
July 26, 2010, 8:47 pmPeter says:
@ David M. Nieporent says: See next comment
@New Class Traitor says:
“and (the numerically much smaller) Roma Gypsies”
Amen and glad somebody else said what I was thinking. Not to beat the dead anti-Semite label horse but David does a good job exposing the post-war liberal western guilt brainwashing about (insert_bad_thing_like_anti-Jew,American_black_slavery,wife_beating_etc) but ignoring the facts. The fact (I would be willing to bet 25% my annual salary) that the vast majority of US people believe the German Nazi genocide program / Holocaust was only about the Jews does wonders to hammer home the point about how Jews are self-servingly controlling the narrative which requires real control of the media else this propaganda wouldn’t have traction.
@zuch says:
“The Holocaust was almost unique in its scale and enormity [there have arguably been other genocides in history nearly as complete but mostly on a much smaller scale].”
Are we talking numbers or percentages. I believe the argument folk in your camp have been making against the Russians argument is “it doesn’t matter the numbers, it’s the percentages” yet here you seem to be arguing it’s the numbers not the percentages leading to cake+have+eat. By the numbers Hitler killed more Russians, by the percentages he killed more Gypsies … tell me again how the Jewish narrative is magically? Also I am pretty sure that all the cultures and peoples that were salted to the earth of which nothing remains not even records after being conquered by the Assyrians, Babylonians, or pretty much bronze age empire would disagree with your “arguable”.
July 26, 2010, 9:04 pmEric says:
Having worked in Hollywood for ten years as a Jew myself, I reiterate this statement. Hollywood and the entertainment industry is indeed dominated by Jews. This makes me an anti-Semite? I don’t think so…
July 26, 2010, 9:08 pmJK says:
Well make up your mind, is it binary or a matter of degree? You tear down a silly straw man by saying that you can’t put a precise numerical value on how antisemetic someone is, and then back off the far extreme of your own argument. Do you really not see a meaningful difference between “Jews have caused all wars” and “Jews dominate the media”? Why should we treat these speakers the same?
July 26, 2010, 9:14 pmThe Awful Truth says:
Wow this is one hot thread. A few points.
First, the statement that Hitler killed 25-30 million Russians is factually incorrect, although commonly repeated. The vast majority of the civilian deaths in the USSR were Ukrainian or Byelorusian.
Russian civilan deaths were well below Chinese civilan deaths at the hands of the Japanese. They were probably less than German civilian deaths in WWII. The siege of Leningrad probably accounted for most actual Russian non-combatant mortality.
This is not a pedantic point. Ukrainians somehow have never made onto the list of groups that enlightened people feel they have to be sensitive too (The NYT, in their treatment of the whole Duranty mess, seem to assume Ukrainians are group you have to be insenstive to). If they were on the list, no one would blithely equate Ukranians with Russians.
I think given the level of Ukrainian suffering in the 20th century in the Russian Civil War, the Hodomor and WWII and the paucity of attention this suffering have recieved, they deserve sensitive treatment.
So remember Ukrainians are not Russians. It’s important.
I’m not Ukrainian, just eccentric.
July 26, 2010, 9:22 pmLugo says:
The argument, chief, is that the European colonization of North America was not genocide – even Amherst’s actions did not make it so – and certainly was not comparable to the Nazi genocide in Europe in intention or implementation.
July 26, 2010, 9:35 pmAmerican Jew says:
Peter wrote:
They do, they are correct, and it was. The Wannsee Conference was exclusively about eliminating all Jews; the anti-Roma programme was added administratively long after.
The crematoria were built for Jews. Period.
Interesting how the word “Jew” on even a reputable web site, brings the anti-Semitic vermin out of the woodwork.
July 26, 2010, 9:48 pmWilliam Cook says:
Thank you punctuating this story tonight, Mark. The ‘Minor Media’ will never draw the curtain back on one of their own. Hob-knobbing with the White House must be pretty special. Should the Obama White House ever succeed in nationalizing the Mainstream Media, the change will be indiscernible. They have become the “Ventriloquist’s dummies.”
July 26, 2010, 9:48 pmThe Awful Truth says:
I think the idea that genocide is worse than other mass murders (or Democides) is untenable. It’s illogical and morally repulsive.
Genocide is usually as the deliberate murder targeting some ethnic or religous group. At it’s most extreme it attempts to annhilate that group. So in the great hierarchy of moral outrage were supposed to believe Annhilationist Genocide > Partial Genocide > Mere Democide. This just doesn’t work.
Small tribal groups in the Amazon, New Guinea and elsewhere are in constant state of warfare. Annual casualties are high in percenatage terms. In many of these conflicts, the aim is annhilation. Sometimes the goal is achieved an entire tribe is wiped out. Are these conflicts morally worse than the Ukrainian Hodomor or Cambodian mass murders? I think the answer is clearly no, but logic of “Genocide” compells you to say yes.
A second example of the logical tangle that using the Genocide model gets you into is Indonesia in the 60s. A large number of Indonesians of Chinese descent were killed after the fall of Sukarno. If they were targeted because they were Chinese, it’s partial genocide and we can all get outraged. But they have been targeted because they were members of the Indonesian Communist Party. In this case we can all relax: it’s merely democide.
Beyond the logical problems of the genocide construct, there’s a real moral ugliness to its application. It compells you tell victims of the Cambodian democide or the cultural revolution that their suffering just doesn’t matter very much.
I think all government directed mass murders should be sources of outrage. I think it would be better to just drop the term genocide and use the term of democide.
July 26, 2010, 10:01 pmrpt says:
“Nationalizing” General Electric? Time Warner? Newscorp? Disney? Comcast? Do you think that’s likely?
July 26, 2010, 10:05 pmRandy says:
American Jew: “The crematoria were built for Jews. Period.”
So no non-jews were cremated? That’s news to a lot of people.
July 26, 2010, 10:05 pmRandy says:
American Jew: “The Wannsee Conference was exclusively about eliminating all Jews; the anti-Roma programme was added administratively long after.”
Strange. The Wansee Conference was held in 1941. The concentration camps were built and in use as early as 1933. From the website of the Holocaust Museum: ” Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and persons accused of “asocial” or socially deviant behavior.”
Non-Jewish Poles were part of the program too: “In the eastern European regions, millions of Poles — Jews and Catholics alike — were murdered by the SS and police personnel in the field or in killing centers such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. In the ideology of the Nazis, the Poles were considered an inferior “race.” The Germans intended to murder members of the political, cultural and military elite and reduce the remainder of the Polish population to the status of a vast pool of labor for the so-called German master race. It is estimated that between 5 and 5.5 million Polish civilians, including 3 million Polish Jews, died or were killed under Nazi occupation. This figure excludes Polish civilians and military personnel who were killed in military or partisan operations. They number approximately 664,000.”
It’s true that extermination camps came later: “The extermination camps were designed for efficient mass murder. Chelmno, the first extermination camp, opened in December 1941. Jews and Roma were gassed in mobile gas vans there.”
Note, however, that Roma were gassed along with the Jews, contra your statement. Furthermore, the earlier concentration camps resulted in the deaths of millions before the Wansee Conference. I’ll admit that the Conference established a plan far more reaching than anything earlier, but I don’t think anyone who died prior to 1941 in a camp would find much solace in that.
July 26, 2010, 10:18 pmRandy says:
Awful Truth: “Beyond the logical problems of the genocide construct, there’s a real moral ugliness to its application. It compells you tell victims of the Cambodian democide or the cultural revolution that their suffering just doesn’t matter very much.”
I would tend to agree. However, I think that if you are trying to exterminate not just a group of people, but their culture and history, that raises the level. But I agree that official policy of killing people under any circumstances by a gov’t ranks among the worst that humanity can do.
July 26, 2010, 10:24 pmhorgan says:
Is there a fancy term for the rhetorical device where you try to discredit a particular statement just because some horrible people have made it in the past?
Even a casual observer would note a vastly disproportionate presence (I guess you could call it domination) of Jews in the media.
That is simply true.
Just because some antisemitic people have noted that in the past doesn’t make it any less true.
July 26, 2010, 10:33 pmShelgeyr says:
Well I too am confused. I’m almost 50, and my whole life I understood the “Jews dominate the media” statement to supposedly reflect the numbers, not as an anti-Semetic slur. Though not Jewish myself, I’m very pro-Jew and pro-Israel, so I’m a bit surprised to find the cliche is offensive. Note taken!
July 26, 2010, 10:48 pmAmerican Jew says:
Randy has a tenuous grasp of history.
The “concentration” camps, unlike the “elimination” camps, were originally built to “concentrate” slave labour for German industry.
The genesis of the “extermination” programme (in particular the objective of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Chelmno, and Belzec) lay in the plans laid out in detail at Wannsee, to eliminate every Jew possible. Wannsee made no mention of other groups; even the Roma were caught in the net by afterthought.
The Einsatzgruppe, too, had as particular charge finding and eliminating all Jews, without exception — but in the end were deemed too inefficient for the job. Hence the crematoria.
To overlook the specificity of the Endlösung, as Randy would, is to victimise the victims yet one more time.
July 26, 2010, 10:58 pmThe Awful Truth says:
The problem is that “the Jews dominate the media” is usually followed by an anti-semitic slur. Even if you only mean in it a neutral, statisical sense people hearing/reading you are going to jump to the wrong conclusion about you.
July 26, 2010, 11:02 pmAmerican Jew says:
Let’s add more detail to one of Randy’s misconceptions.
During 1941 the German leaders shifted more firmly from enslavement/deportation to the “Final Solution.” Thus existing concentration camps did not yet have the purpose of extermination.
Further, once extermination was decided, the clear and sole targets of the extermination planning were Jews; Randy is invited to read the Wannsee transript.
The secondary and sole other targets for complete extermination, the Roma, were added as an afterthought almost a year after the Wannsee conference. Cavalier as it may seem, the Nazi thinking seemed to have been, “We’ve made an extermination apparatus for the Final Solution of the Jewish problem; we might as well use it for the Roma, too.”
But note that the NSDAP use of the term “Endlösung” was commonplace as early as 1931, again in reference to the Jews only.
July 26, 2010, 11:16 pmAmerican Jew says:
Peter wrote,
Er, no. Hitler kiled 90% of the Jews under his control but about 50% of the Gypsies.
July 26, 2010, 11:32 pmBetina says:
The funny thing with the charge of antisemitism is that when it is made, it is automatically assumed that the person saying the antisemitic remarks is…lying. It’s a great charge actually, kind of like the racist! charge. You get to appear holier-than-thou, the accused is made to look like a liar and worse, and you get to shut off the debate. Whether or not the charge is actually true is beside the point. The main point is just to shut up everyone who might be saying something that you don’t want anyone else to hear. Over the past Americans who are still sentient were made aware of something called a JournoList which was comprised of some 400 people in the media, academia, etc. who CONSPIRED to set the parameters of the debate during the November 2008 election in order to destroy anyone opposed to Obama. When the list was published lo and behold, the overwhelming majority of those on the list have JEWISH SURNAMES. Now…are we not supposed to notice this? If we do, should we not say sh-t with a mouthful? And if we do, does that make the person making the observation an anti Semite? The thing with this charge is those making it get to do what they do without question because they have effectively shut everyone else up. It has become a strong tool of censorship and SUPREMACY and like the charge of racism, it has lost much of its sting. You cannot say that if anyone says Jews dominate the media that automatically makes them an anti-Semite, WHILE HAVING CLOSE TO 400 HUNDRED PEOPLE, MOSTLY OF JEWISH BACKGROUNDS HIJACKING AN ELECTION AND PERVERTING THE NEWS AND DEBATE TO THROW AN ELECTION TO YOUR FAVORITE CANDIDATE. WHILE SMEARING ANYONE WHO GETS IN YOUR WAY. Which is is going to be? Or can only certain privileged GROUPS HAVE IT BOTH WAYS????
July 26, 2010, 11:40 pmStrict says:
First, the plans for extermination camps did not originate at Wannsee. Wannsee marked an important turning point, a refocusing of priorities and a restructuring of central command, but that’s not where the ideas of extermination came from. There’s plenty of evidence of exterminationist/genocidal intent well before then.
Second, Wannsee was a quick meeting that lasted little over an hour. It would be impossible to lay everything out in detail in such a short meeting.
Third, “concentration camp” is a word that can encompass both labor/slave camps and killing/death camps. It’s just an issue of semantic preference.
Fourth, the netting of the Roma started long before Wannsee. The persecution of Roma had nothing to do with “afterthoughts” – I find it bizarre that you describe the persecution of Roma as something coincidental, incidental, almost accidental or merely convenient. Roma had been targeted well before the war started [e.g. 1938 Himmler decree against Gypsies, although later Himmler became concerned that extermination of all Gypsies would interfere with his anthropological and linguistic research projects]. Heydrich, the guy who ran the Wannsee Conference, had already well before Wannsee expelled all the Roma from Germany into Poland, where they would be dealt with later.
July 26, 2010, 11:42 pmRandy says:
American Jew: “Randy has a tenuous grasp of history.”
You should inform the Holocaust Museum of their error.
“To overlook the specificity of the Endlösung, as Randy would, is to victimise the victims yet one more time.”
Please don’t play that card. Having had Polish relatives (non-jews) who perished in the Holocaust, I know that a great many people died at the hands of the Nazis, and many people of different ethnicities and political persuasions. Part of the Nazis plan was to exterminate the Poles leadership and enslave the rest.
““We’ve made an extermination apparatus for the Final Solution of the Jewish problem; we might as well use it for the Roma, too.”
And your point? The Roma were gassed by the Nazis just as definitively as the Jews. So were others, and in significant numbers. This isn’t a contest to see who suffered more, okay?
July 26, 2010, 11:44 pmRandy says:
Thanks Strict. Most everyone who had a brain in Germany in the 30s knew the real purpose of the concentration camps, and they were burning people well before 1941, and most of them were indeed Jews.
July 26, 2010, 11:49 pmThe Awful Truth says:
I get the feeling that this is exactly what this is.
July 26, 2010, 11:51 pmStrict says:
“Thus existing concentration camps did not yet have the purpose of extermination.”
So wrong. The purpose was there. It was just latent potential waiting to be actualized.
Hitler was a gradualist and a long-term planner. His goal all along was extermination. For many reasons, mostly practical, he just couldn’t jump right into wholesale extermination in 1933. Instead the persecution progressed gradually. A lot of groundwork had to be laid first.
It’s not as though these Nazis woke up one morning in January 1942 [Wannsee] and said “Wait, I have an idea – let’s kill them! Brilliant! How did that never cross my mind?”
July 26, 2010, 11:53 pmReed the Viking says:
The Perfect Girlfriend…
So last week, I started putting up pictures of scantily clad broads and I saw a huge uptick in my traffic… surprise surprise. I’ve come to terms with the fact that no matter how good I think I have written a post, you all just care about boobs. That…
July 26, 2010, 11:56 pmRicardo says:
The purpose of the thread was to compare Stone’s and Gibson’s remarks. The comparison is simply invalid.
July 27, 2010, 12:08 ammack says:
I don’t see either Stone or Gibson as icons of the political left or right. And neither has been heavily involved or connected to politics as far as I am aware. Perhaps one could argue that they are representative of some cultural war – though that again is problematical also as they are both very much unique – and the concept of cultural war has some racial baggage that generates more heat than light.
Stone is a talented director – though I have never really cared for his work – as I think there are many more talented than he – but he obviously has his personal issues that draws him to conspiracy and to champion or defend third world despots like Castro. His major sin in Hollywood’s eyes to my mind is that he hasn’t make a big picture in years.
Gibson is more interesting to me – he was raised by a virulent anti-Semite – he reportedly suffers from alcoholism and manic/depression or bi-polar disorder – and has obviously deeply conflicted feelings and struggles to square his religious beliefs with his life experience. In his personal life his soon to be ex-wife is defending him – he has in the past reportedly reached out to help Robert Downey jr. and Britney Spears amongst others – and he has given time and money to many charities. Yet he displays intemperate tirades of the most base and disgusting nature. He seems very much a man at war with himself. The public face of Hollywood is very embarrassed by him but reportedly he has many loyal friends of both political stripes who are distraught over his recent struggles.
Ironic that he was taken to task for the movie The Passion as being anti-Semitic when the primary fans of the movie were fundamentalist protestant Christians who are some of the biggest supporters of Israel. Probably a difference of perspective – as Christians were focused on Christ and the central message of their faith and those that were not Christian focused on tangential material. The modern American Christian Protestant Church movement – particularly the fundamentalist or evangelical branches are from my perspective – some of the most hard core defenders and supporters of the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Perhaps to the annoyance of the Jewish community.
July 27, 2010, 12:15 amRicardo says:
He’s also an alcoholic which may increase his culpability a bit as a self-inflicted condition. It’s not really clear what is going on in his warped mind but a lot of people who harbor genuine anti-Semitic prejudice seem to have mental illnesses of some kind. Bobby Fischer is another good example. I wouldn’t be confident in saying Richard Nixon was completely free of mental illness of any kind either.
It seems to me that if we excuse hateful statements because they may be tied to mental illness of some kind, we are in danger of not being able to condemn genuine prejudice when we see it. I see your point that there is a line between condemning actions and condemning people. But this is a move toward the idea that people really cannot be responsible for hateful or bigoted actions as long as they are alcoholics/drug addicts/manic-depressives/victims of child abuse. If you really cannot be held culpable for any of your actions, you belong in a mental hospital under constant supervision.
So was Bernie Madoff.
July 27, 2010, 12:21 amAmerican Jew says:
Randy wrote:
Once again Randy shows himself clueless. Your non-Jewish Polish relatives perished in World War 2 (includng the German occupation of Poland), not in the Holocaust.
According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
July 27, 2010, 12:25 amThe Awful Truth says:
But Gibson was philanthrophic with his own money.
July 27, 2010, 12:28 amRicardo says:
Those were the primary fans in the U.S. The film also reportedly played in sold-out movie theaters in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Qatar among people who were presumably neither fundamentalist protestant Christians nor defenders of Israel.
July 27, 2010, 12:29 amAmerican Jew says:
Strict claimed:
Except for the word “enslave” the rest is an assumption on your part; the Germans formulated no formal plans for such, unlike their clear and written plans for the Jews.
It is in fact unlikely the Germans intended to “kill … most Russians” as that would have conflicted with the German intent to exploit the “Slavic peoples” through slavery.
July 27, 2010, 12:34 ammack says:
Alcoholism, childhood abuse, mental illness – are explanations for behavior not excuses. Alcoholics and the mentally ill get well not by excusing their behavior but by taking responsibilty for it. Mr. Gibson and to a lesser degree Mr. Stone are the primary victims of their own behavior – I don’t think too many take glee in their self-destruction. Mr. Madoff did much more material damage then either Stone or Gibson and his charity was giving others peoples money not his own.
July 27, 2010, 12:34 amrickygee says:
Well Said! That ends it for me, thanks. off to bed. I suggest the rest of you catch some zzz’s as well.
July 27, 2010, 12:36 amThrobert McGee says:
When did he clearly establish himself as anti-gay? I know that he clearly established himself as a staunch opponent of anal sex, but that’s not the same thing as being anti-gay, is it? (Unless, of course, you take for granted that futtbucking is a central and essential component of gay male identity.)
Gibson famously pointed to his backside and said, “this is strictly for taking a shit,” or words to that effect. He could have pointed to his lips and said “these should never be used by a man to French-kiss another man”, or gestured towards his crotch and said, “a dude’s meat and two veg should never go in another dude’s mouth.”
Yet he didn’t.
July 27, 2010, 12:38 amAmerican Jew says:
Strict wrote:
More clueless nonsense. The earliest concentration camps were established in 1933, nearly a decade before the decision to exterminate the Jews. They had only internment facilities, not mass extermination facilities. The mass extermination facilities were developed explicitly for the Jews during the 1941-1942 time period.
This thread is shocking in its revelation of ignorance by so many presumably educated individuals.
July 27, 2010, 12:40 ammack says:
“Those were the primary fans in the U.S. The film also reportedly played in sold-out movie theaters in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Qatar among people who were presumably neither fundamentalist protestant Christians nor defenders of Israel.”
Which means what? Are you implying that the primary focus or purpose of the movie wasn’t a presentation of the central teaching of the Christian faith? Or that muslims saw the movie and interpeted it some other way than was intended? Or that the movie was somehow intended to inflame non-Christians against Jews?
July 27, 2010, 12:43 amRicardo says:
Money is fungible but in fact Madoff ran a perfectly legitimate securities firm — I’m not sure whether or not his involvement in charity predated his fraudulent hedge fund but that’s hardly the point. The point is that whether someone engages in charity is completely irrelevant to whether they are a good person or not. It has literally nothing to do with the question. Lots of bad people give to charity as a way to effectively buy indulgences and excuse the bad behavior they engage in.
The way to really judge a person is to observe how they act when the cameras are not around for photo ops. What we see of Gibson is not promising.
July 27, 2010, 12:44 amRandy says:
American Jew: ” The mass extermination facilities were developed explicitly for the Jews during the 1941–1942 time period.”
Agreed. They were also developed explicitly for gays and other groups.
If, on the other hand, you are just arguing that the Nazis planned to kill Jews, but didn’t plan to kill others, and that is just somehow happened by accident, that is contrary to the record. The Nazis clearly planned to kill all sorts of undesirables. I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, and the record is clear there that not just Jews were targeted.
If you think they are wrong, then your argument is with them, not me. I’m not really interested in continuing a game of semantics (that my relatives died in the “war’ but not an extermination camp!) Or that gays weren’t specifically targeted by the Nazis. Or the Roma, or others.
If you want to play the victim card (which you already have), than that shuts the conversation, and it is fruitless to argue with someone who merely wishes to distort the record for whatever personal gain you might believe is necessary.
July 27, 2010, 12:52 amRicardo says:
The point is that I don’t see the “irony” of Gibson being condemned for anti-Semitism just because his biggest American fans are supposed supporters of Israel. I would think the central teachings of the Christian faith would be contained in the 90% or so of the Gospels that are not focused on the crucifixion. You are certainly free to believe otherwise just as you are free to ignore the historical connection between Passion plays and anti-Semitism.
But in the case of Gibson, we can’t ignore the connection. We know he grew up in a fever swamp of anti-Semitism that he has yet to repudiate. He was certainly aware of the historical connection between what he was doing and past anti-Semitism. And then he makes his drunken rant about the Jews being responsible for all the wars of the world and refuses to really issue something in the way of a genuine apology. Again, see his interview with the Hollywood reporter and see his reaction when the subject comes up. Why is it so difficult to believe that the film was made with anti-Semitic intent? You are creating a mystery where none exists.
July 27, 2010, 12:54 amAmerican Jew says:
More cluelessness from Randy:
The Germans did not begin large-scale mechanised murder until 1941, via the Einsatzgruppen, which buried their victims rather than burning them.
Within the concentration camps, crematoria did not come into existence until 1940 and did not enter large-scale use until 1941.
The engines of large-scale mechanised murder and burning were specifically intended for the Jews, the result of the decision during 1941 to eliminate the Jews rather than transferring, deporting, or expelling them.
July 27, 2010, 12:54 ammack says:
Engaging in charity giving may or may not by itself be indicative of the nature of a man’s character – it depends on why that person chose to do it. I would not defend Mr. Gibson’s behavior – but neither do I know the man’s soul enough to ultimately judge him. I assume like most he is a mix of good and evil, obviously he has a lot of problems that he needs to continue to work on.
As far as Mr. Madoff – well personally – I would rather be called names by a racist jerk – than lose my retirement or a substantial part of it to a slick con-man.
July 27, 2010, 12:57 amAmerican Jew says:
Gibson’s film was far more hostile to Jews than the Gospels, due to the influence upon Gibson of an eccentric (or even mentally ill) and virulently anti-Semitic 19th-century nun by the name of Anne Catherine Emmerich.
http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/topics/commentary_emmerich.htm
July 27, 2010, 12:59 amTGGP says:
I second the Joel Stein recommendation. “Jews totally control Hollywood. And lucky for that!” Murdoch-owned media is hardly more partial toward Stone’s preferred policies.
I agree that Stone is a long-time whackjob, but I would like to point out how little attention other victims of the Holocaust have received, even small minorities like Jehovah’s Witnesses and gypsies. We still don’t like them that much, so we’d rather not remember their victim status.
July 27, 2010, 1:03 ammack says:
The central teachings of Christianity for Christians are all dependent of the crucifiction and are nothing without it. The passion play for the majority of Christians has nothing to go with Anti-Semetism – unless of course one wants to claim that Christianity is inherently Anti-Semetic.
July 27, 2010, 1:05 amAmerican Jew says:
Randy wrote:
False. The German developed their mass extermination techniques (massive use of Einsatzgruppen, Zyklon B and crematoria) especially for the Jews. The elimination campaigns against other groups were very small in comparison, and did not have the explicit, planned objective of complete elimination of the entire group, without a trace.
You didn’t read very well. I cited the Holocaust Museum above; its definition of Holocaust explicitly applies to the Jews only.
The distinction which you have failed to grasp (both from the museum and from my earlier comments) is that the NSDAP may have hated and murdered semi-randomly among many groups, but (1) intended to eliminate every last vestige of only one of those groups without a trace, the Jews and (2) wrote explicit plans (at Wannsee) to locate, identify, round up, deport, and exterminate every last vestige of only one of theose groups without a trace, the Jews.
The NSDAP extended such plans administratively to the Roma about one year after creating the plans (and mass extermination machinery) explicitly for the Jews.
July 27, 2010, 1:11 ammack says:
“Gibson’s film was far more hostile to Jews than the Gospels, due to the influence upon Gibson of an eccentric (or even mentally ill) and virulently anti-Semitic 19th-century nun by the name of Anne Catherine Emmerich.”
Odd, Ironic even – that most Christians didn’t see the film as anti-semetic – and that amongst mainstream Christian churches it did not elicit Anti-Semetic sentiment. Most Christians seem to remember that amongst the Jews depicted in the film were – Jesus, Mary, Peter, etc…
July 27, 2010, 1:14 amJK says:
No one said it was a major aspect of the film, just that there are some rather unflattering depictions of non-proto-Christian Jews. Most of the film was just torture porn and had nearly nothing to do with politics or serious theology.
July 27, 2010, 1:24 amleo marvin says:
Hold the Passion play anti-Semitism a second. As Betina shows, anti-Semitism needn’t rely on old tropes. It can invent new Jewish conspiracies, and mix them with old tropes. So sure, Jews may control the media, but it’s not to conquer the world and drink the blood of Christian virgins. It’s to help Obama conquer the world (when he’ll presumably join us in drinking the blood of Christian virgins).
Also note the tried-and-true crescendo to a FRENZIED PEAK OF STRING-PULLING JEWS IN ALL CAPS.
OK, now back to Mel Gibson’s too much crazy.
July 27, 2010, 1:39 amAmerican Jew says:
Strict
Complete bollocks. Wannsee was the formal launch of the NSDAP extermination plan, free of the earlier wavering between transfer (to Madagascar, among other places) and extermination.
Again dodging the issue. The conference represented the launch of an extensive, planned genocide. The conference put forth the objective to all organisational heads of indentifying and eliminating every last Jew. Whether details were left to individual departments to develop and coordinate does not change the formal written nature of the planning and subsequent extension. The conference dealt solely and explicitly with the Jews and with plans to eliminate them. Roma, homosexuals, Russians, and other groups were not discussed.
http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/wansee-transcript.html
You ignorant fellows seem to have a hard time understanding elementary concepts. The NSDAP hated and persecuted many groups from the start. However, it did not formally decide to eliminate all members of any groups except the Jews and Roma. And, it did not make that decision (of elimination) definitively for the Jews until mid to late 1941, and for the Roma not until late 1942.
Randy
The point which Randy refuses to grasp is that the Germans designed for the Jews — and specifically for the Jews — a system which woud track down, identify, mark, and eventually eliminate every last man, woman, and child of an entire race, without exception, without mercy, without much possibility of escape, for the explicitly-stated and well-planned purpose of making that entire race extinct within a short time period.
The Germans did not apply this concept of complete elimination to any other race until — one year after initiating the mass murder machinery for Jews — they included the elimination of the Roma as an administrative afterthought; that is, the specific order to treat the Roma exactly as the Jews, was on December 16, 1942. Both due to the later start and to other factors, the Germans succeeded in eliminating a far lower percentage of Roma than of Jews.
The gas chambers, Zyklon B, and crematoria were developed specifically to implement the elimination plans for the Jews, not the Roma, homosexuals, or any other group.
Both Strict and Randy could benefit from reading one or a few histories of the Holocaust.
July 27, 2010, 1:55 amRandy says:
AJ: “The gas chambers, Zyklon B, and crematoria were developed specifically to implement the elimination plans for the Jews, not the Roma, homosexuals, or any other group.”
I formally concede that your dead relatives outrank my dead relatives.
July 27, 2010, 2:23 amBuck Turgidson says:
I actually find myself in moderate agreement with the first statement–by both Stone and tg. But not completely. There are several complications here. Jews constituted 6 million victims in WWII. Majority were civilians rounded up and exterminated indiscriminately. The is not merely the number but the methods. “Soviet citizens” constituted, according to Russian figures, 20 million dead. Some fraction of that was from hunger, some civilian casualties and a large fraction on the front. But this also includes close to half of the Jews killed as well. No one argues that the Soviets, as a whole–not just Russians, mind you–suffered greatly during WWII. But not all of that was a consequence solely of German invasion and occupation. Some numbers in those figures may include those killed during retreat or returning or escaping POWs and other victims of Soviet, not Nazi repression. Belorussian official figures are that one out of four Belorussian citizens (again, including a large number of Jews) was killed during the war–again, it’s not clear if some victims of Soviet repressions were included in that number. By some calculations, victims of the Soviet state between the Revolution and Stalin’s death comprise anywhere from 20 to 40 million–and it seems likely that a sizable fraction of that is an overlap with the WWII casualty figures.
An famous Russian film, Osvobozhdenie (Liberation) scrolls the figures of casualties, by state, at the end of the film. The shock of going from thousands for some countries, to millions for Germany and Poland to 20 million for the Soviet Union is remarkable. So, in this sense, it should certainly be noted that, yes, Stone is correct on this point–the “Soviets” did suffer greatly. But they were not victims of genocide to the same extent as the Jews. They were not hunted and exterminated (although many were left to starve quite deliberately, including POWs in German camps). If anything, both are worth mentioning, despite the fact that the Soviets used to be our mortal enemies–they were allies during WWII and, as allies, they suffered greatly.
But the second part of Stone’s statement–and tg’s defense–is classic antisemitism. This is not the first time Stone has been on record with antisemitic statements. As an avowed political radical–more totalitarian than liberal–this should not be too surprising. But he also shares his distrust of Jews in the media–and in banking, academia, and other major historically non-guild trades–with “conservatives”, such as Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul and George Allen.
Buchanan can be classified as the founder of “liberal elite” school of antagonism. When his brand of virulent antisemitism came into focus, as he desired to become a mainstream political candidate, he had to change the language of his usual attacks on “Jewish conspiracies” to pass for an average Republican candidate. So he replaced “Jews” with “cultural elite”. It was a classic dog-whistle move–those who shared his views knew exactly whom he was talking about and the media would print it as standard campaign pablum. In this light, his opposition to support and aid for Israel is an understandable development, although, in isolation, it would not have been an indication of antisemitism. Ron Paul shares much of his foreign policy with Buchanan and the publication he nominally edited (or, more precisely, one that he claims was edited in his name, but for which he used to be only too happy to take credit) was as antisemitic and Buchanan’s earlier campaigns. Perhaps Paul is not really an antisemite (I find it hard to believe, but am willing to entertain the possibility), but he still shares much of his anti-Jewish and anti-Israel rhetoric with Stone and Buchanan.
Finally, George Allen’s personal animosity toward Jews would have gone unnoticed had it not been for his Macaca moment. Allen’s father’s family is virulently antisemitic, which is interesting, considering his mother’s family is unquestionably Jewish. I have friends who were family acquaintances with them in Tunis. Unfortunately, Allen Jr. either knew nothing about it (which is very hard to believe) or he chose an antisemitic exterior with the intent to rebuff the rumors of his Jewish roots. This is where the Macaca moment comes in. Although well known for the specific Macaca comment, Allen also made a remark in the same tirade, accusing his opponent of “hobnobbing” with Hollywood, media and other cultural “elites”. Given the location–rural Southern Virginia–there is little question of its dog-whistle intent. What has essentially ended Allen’s career was not merely the distaste of the moderates and liberals for his Macaca comments, but also the his inevitable shunning by the white supremacists and other Southern antisemites, on whose vote he was counting in the election.
Of these three, only Paul has been moderately rebuked by fellow Republicans for putting himself in a position of being accused of antisemitism (and, of course, it is a badge of honor for some of his supporters). Allen and Buchanan have been pilloried by the Left, but never by the Right. In fact, while Allen got some rebukes from the Right on his racist past, following Macaca, few conservatives, including this site, have ever discussed his self-loathing antisemitism. And Buchanan’s antisemitism–which became open again last year–has rarely been mentioned here.
I would suggest that there is a greater chance of the Hollywood liberals shunning Stone than there is of conservatives of any stripe–even Jewish intellectuals, such as most VC bloggers–shunning the likes of Buchanan, Paul and Allen, or their followers. I would love to have asked Rand Paul a question about the US Middle East policy before his primary victory–there is little doubt that his Republican handlers have cleansed his rhetoric since then. But watch for “cultural elites” in Republican speeches this summer–only the most ignorant among them will believe that the mean “liberals”. Most will imply “Jews”.
It is disappointing to see such arguments made here as well. As I said, most of the regular bloggers at VC are Jews (in fact, I can only think of two exceptions and they are fairly recent additions–and I am not sure about a couple of old regulars). I shudder every time I see “cultural elites” or “media elites” in the posts on VC. I can only hope that the terminology is used in ignorance–I can’t imagine these bloggers (whom I shall not name) using dog whistles to rouse the antisemitic base.
But it does not take much to bring the likes of TG or others who posted earlier on this thread. I fight Left antisemitism (largely masquerading as pro-Palestinian movement) every day. I simply do not have enough energy to jump on board here every time this topic comes up. Reading the comments on this thread makes me very disappointed, but not even as much as the fact that Bernstein did not acknowledge the origin and “bipartisan” use of the specific phrasing.
So it’s not mere pablum. Words matter. And Stone likely chose them carefully, just as Buchanan and Allen choose theirs. I can see someone like John McCain using such phrasing out of ignorance (and because his advisers tell him to). No so for many others.
July 27, 2010, 2:39 amThe Awful Truth says:
I think AJ is doing more to promote Holocaust denial than David Irving every could.
July 27, 2010, 3:03 amAmerican Jew says:
Buck, good comments. I agree on the whole except for two details:
1. McCain’s whole family seem to be Christian Zionists — particularly the staunchly Zionist speech given by his brother to a synagogue about ten years ago.
http://www.ikehillah.org/joemccainonthejewsisrael/
2. “I would suggest that there is a greater chance of the Hollywood liberals shunning Stone than there is of conservatives of any stripe–even Jewish intellectuals, such as most VC bloggers–shunning the likes of Buchanan, Paul and Allen, or their followers.”
In point of fact Buckley determined to eliminate anti-Semitism from the conservative intellectual core and did so in the 1950′s. More recently he fired Sobran and devoted a whole NR issue to Buchanan’s anti-Semitism.
In a number of countries for a number of years, the centre-right has been far more strongly pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist than the centre-left. Just compare WSJ or NR articles on the Gaza flotilla to those at the NYT or HUffPo.
July 27, 2010, 3:03 amAmerican Jew says:
Awful Truth
Making such a statement to a Jew in defense of those here (Strict, Randy) intent on denying the obvious specificity of the Holocaust, is pure, simple, and disgusting anti-Semitism.
I see it takes little more than a web thread to bring out gentile ignorance of, and cavalier dismissal of, the Shoah. Both Fackenheim and Kahane were right, it seems.
Lechu lehizdayen.
July 27, 2010, 3:10 amAmerican Jew says:
Buck wrote:
It seems Buck has understood what Randy, Strict, and AwfulTruth resolutely reject. They border on Holocaust revisionism.
July 27, 2010, 3:16 amAmerican Jew says:
Buck, you may be interested in some recent work on anti-Semitism of the left. There are chapters in the books by Bernard Harrison, Jamie Glazov, Robin Shepherd, Norman Podhoretz, and two books by Bruce Bawer.
July 27, 2010, 3:19 amAmerican Jew says:
A French priest, Patrick Desbois, of far greater decency (thankfully) than Randy, Strict, and AwfulTruth:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,647526,00.html
Desbois knows — and is trying to document — the German intent to track down and murder every last Jew, in large numbers of unmarked mass graves. The Germans mis-treated but certainly did not attempt to track down and eliminate every last Ukrainian, Pole or Russian.
July 27, 2010, 3:36 amleo marvin says:
Nobody wins an argument over hierarchies of suffering, and I’m not sure why anyone would want to. It would take a special kind of idiot to tell a Roma family whose grandparents died in Auschwitz, “you’re lucky you’re not Jewish.” That said, I think there are two good reasons the Jewish side of the Holocaust is better known than the Roma. First, the Roma are a secretive, oral culture, while Jews write prolifically, and aren’t shy about telling their stories. Second, Hitler gave his hatred for the Jews a unique public notoriety. Obviously he thought little enough about the Roma to try to exterminate them, but Jews held a special place in his fevered imagination, and he made them the worst villains in Nazi mythology. Jews and Roma were both vermin, but Jews were almost supernaturally evil vermin. If you asked a German consumer of Nazi propaganda, he’d probably tell you he detested the Roma, but he detested and feared the Jew.
July 27, 2010, 3:38 amThe Awful Truth says:
You have spent at least a dozen posts belittling the deaths of all non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murder. You have called Poles deliberately massacred by the Nazis as merely “perished in WWII” as if they were collateral damage of some bombing or battle. Even the Roma seem not to qualify fully as victims to you. In the process you have called everyone who objects to your moral imbecility clueless, ignorant or an anti-semite.
I can’t imagine how you think all this is advancing the cause of sympathy for Holocaust victims.
I honestly think if your posts were read widely by Poles, Ukrainians, or Roma, they would create more Holocaust deniers than the writings of David Irving. If this hurts your feelings, tough.
The sufferings inflicted on the Jews by the Nazis were terrible. They deserve a better advocate than someone whose first instinct is to piss on non-Jewish corpses.
July 27, 2010, 3:50 amAmerican Jew says:
Good points, Leo. I have, however, noticed Rom authors complaining that only Jewish Holocaust survivors seem to fully understand the Roma and their pain — of being hunted, of the Porrajmos.
Some here have given evidence of that lack of understanding.
July 27, 2010, 3:55 amleo marvin says:
I don’t disagree that the right is generally more pro-Zionist than the left, but I have to wonder if you actually read this and this.
July 27, 2010, 4:05 amAmerican Jew says:
Awful Chazar:
More anti-Semitic tripe. I have done no such thing.
I have, however, pointed out that:
1. Only the Jews and Roma were singled out for complete and inescapabe extermination down to the last man, woman, and child.
2. The massive bureaucratic and physical machinery of annihilation was consciously created by the Germans (at roughly the beginning of 1942) for the Jews specifically (as Leo understands), with the Roma swept up by the machine a year after its creation.
3. The Germans managed to murder 90% of the Jews within reach, but (fortunately) only 25% to 50% of the Roma within reach.
Apparently in the rush of anti-Semites like yourself, Randy, and Strict to reject the Jewish experience, you are completely incapable of acknowledging the above three points, which are quite simple and well-documented by historians.
Fackenheim has written extensively about the specificity of the Holocaust. But then, I don’t expect the three anti-Semitic musketeers of this thread to ever stoop to reading the works of a rabbi. Rather, their view seems far closer to, “Why don’t you Yids stop whining?”
Nauseating.
July 27, 2010, 4:09 amRicardo says:
Historically, the passion play is indeed related to anti-Semitism. The Nazis were known to be fans of the Oberammergau Passion Play just as the seedier elements in Islam seem strangely in favor of a film that literally promotes blasphemy by Islamic standards (Muslims do not believe in the crucifixion).
The reality is that there is so little detail in the Bible about the crucifixion that anyone who wants to do a film or play about it is going to have to take some artistic license in many different areas. There are undeniably certain passages in the Bible that have historically been used for anti-Semitic purposes. Whether the director draws attention to those passages or downplays them says a lot about the director.
July 27, 2010, 4:16 amAmerican Jew says:
Yes, Leo, I do notice and read HuffPo’s quite insincere and inadequate attempts at balancing its virulent anti-Semitism with the occasional token article. Two swallows do not a spring make.
You might want to read these commentaries on HuffPo:
July 27, 2010, 4:16 amhttp://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=21&x_article=1656
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2010/03/anti-semitic-myths-alive-on-the-huffingt/
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=101131
American Jew says:
Leo, in the lower right of the following page, you will find multiple articles in which Huff-Watch specifically tracks the considerable “anti-Semitic hate at HuffPost”:
http://huff-watch.blogspot.com/
July 27, 2010, 4:22 amRicardo says:
Niall Ferguson gives a fascinating argument for why the Nazis reviled the Jews so much. In the 1920s, rates of intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles in urban Germany were high and seemed to be increasing. At the same time, many Jews were secular and really considered themselves more German than Jewish.
For the deranged race-theorists in the Nazi Party, this meant that Jews were slowly “polluting” the pure Aryan blood of the German people without most Germans even knowing it. There was also a lot of nauseating propaganda about how Jewish men lusted after German non-Jewish women.
So if it is even possible to step into such a warped mindset, the Nazis saw a kind of demographic problem where German blood was being slowly diluted and polluted with the blood of Jews who at the time were less than 1% of the population of Germany. Genocide was seen as the only way to solve the “Jewish question” once and for all.
I agree with American Jew and Leo here. The Nazis hated many groups but if you read the speeches, publications and propaganda pieces of the Nazis, they very clearly singled out the Jews.
July 27, 2010, 4:27 amAmerican Jew says:
Ricardo: “Whether the director draws attention to those passages or downplays them says a lot about the director.”
Excellent observation. Compare Scorsese’s film to Gibson’s.
July 27, 2010, 4:33 amleo marvin says:
American Jew,
I’ll read the links about HuffPo tomorrow, but before signing off I wanted to urge you to lighten up on the accusations of anti-Semitism. I’ve read enough of Randy and strict here to be pretty sure neither is an anti-Semite, and nothing they’ve said on this thread is necessarily anti-Semitic. The Awful Truth I don’t know as well, but his comment that provoked your reaction was an objection to you, not to Jews. Taking a heated criticism personally doesn’t make it anti-Semitic. Anyway, to some extent I agree with him (or her). Wild accusations of anti-Semitism don’t win us any friends. More important, they’re unfair and wrong, like any casual accusations of bigotry.
July 27, 2010, 5:13 amPersonFromPorlock says:
AJ’s such a caricature of the Rev One revisionist that I have to wonder if he’s not a ringer.
July 27, 2010, 9:13 ambyomtov says:
JK,
Do you really not see a meaningful difference between “Jews have caused all wars” and “Jews dominate the media”? Why should we treat these speakers the same?
Of course there are differences among anti-semites, just as there are differences among murderers. But that doesn’t mean it’s silly to treat murderers vs. non-murderers as a binary distinction for some purposes.
July 27, 2010, 10:59 amneurodoc says:
Does “wild” equate with “baseless,” “unfounded,” “wrong,” etc., or does it simply mean that in your opinion the accusation has not been proven so as to satisfy the accuser’s burden of proof, whatever that may be under the circumstances? What do you think the burden of proof should be? Agree/disagree that somehow it has been raised to something approaching “beyond reasonable doubt” (think David Duke), while the burden of proof for “racism” hasn’t been reduced to “mere scintilla,” but has been reduced considerably, making it much, much harder to prove “antisemitism” than “racism” in discourse like this?
Oh, and I don’t think the first consideration should be will it “win us any friends,” but whether it is defensible or not. We’re not talking comity, public relations, or the like.
(NB: I haven’t read all the comments upstream, so am not referencing anyones in particular and the merits of any claims of bigotry in them.)
July 27, 2010, 11:09 amzuch says:
And exactly who “reported” this? Perhaps some people that might have a vested interest in linking mostly-Muslim countries to purported anti-Semitism?
On the face of it, this seems improbable. Why would predominantly Muslim countries be interested in a [not very favourably reviewed, where the 'spoiler' is already well known] movie about Christianity? Aside from verging on blasphemy, Islam is not a religion much inclined to movies much in the first place, much less movies that purport to depict religious figures….
Cheers,
July 27, 2010, 11:27 amyankev says:
that the term ‘anti-Semitism’ has nothing to do with linguistic families nor with animus against Arabs, and that term was coined by Jew haters to describe hatred toward Jews in order to make the hatred seem scientifically based.
July 27, 2010, 11:38 amzuch says:
Citing WhirledNutzDaily is not going to make your case for hate and extremism on the left.
Cheers,
July 27, 2010, 11:43 amyankev says:
Writing without ambiguity is a useful skill that you might work on.
July 27, 2010, 11:44 ammack says:
Actually the Christian bible covers alot of what is typically in the passion play in quite a bit of detail. I won’t disagree that those who are predisposed to be anti-Semitic can find it anywhere as can those that want to make claims of anti-Semitism. It is true that historically, the Christian church has had strains of virulent anti-Semitism – nor would I argue that Mr. Gibson has not been anti-Semitic. Whilst the Passion Play could be used for anti-Semitic purposes – that relies not so much on the content of the play itself as the individuals who would choose to misinterpret the principle purpose and meaning of the play.
Most mainstream Christianity in the later twentieth century has disavowed anti-Semitism – which is probably part of the reason that evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in America are some of the most supportive and accepting of Jews and Israel. Undoubtedly that change has been strongly influenced by the horror of Holocaust and the also by the evangelical and fundamentalist movement towards a fuller reading of the entire Christian bible which has included a new embrace of the Christian Old Testament and the fuller understanding of historical context and Jesus as a Jewish man.
I know in this country the movie, The Passion did not engender anti-Semitism – and I would find it odd if it did in other countries – including Muslim countries since the whole concept and message of the movie is blasphemy to Muslims and a Christian blasphemy at that.
Given the research that was done by Mr. Gibson amongst others into producing the movie – to the level of to using Aramaic – and the fact that the Jews who were depicted negatively in the film were also similarly depicted negatively in the Christian bible – (through out the bible Jesus is harshly critical of the Pharisees and Sanhedrin and high priests) – and given the graphic and gruesome and often gratuitous punishment meted out by the Roman soldiers – it is difficult to see that there is some special anti-Semitic message or bias to the film. I would agree that if one were not a Christian then the film would be torture porn. The film made the brutal point to Christians that on the cross Jesus took on all of the worlds pain, all of the physical and emotional pain of all humanity, and all of the burden of the sins of humanity and that by doing so Jesus earned and thus may offer the forgiveness of all sin, the healing of all pain and suffering. Thus Jesus on the cross is with all men at all times – and the magnitude of his suffering and love to choose the cross is the point – to humble oneself and to let go of the burden of self and to accept Christ as one’s Lord and savior – (in the Christian Ethos).
Gibson’s public statements – for whatever they are worth – indicate that he made that film to honor his Catholic/Christian faith – and evidence indicates that his target audience was primarily Christians as he went to many meetings of church groups to promote and discuss the film and his vision of it. The Jews who are depicted negatively in the film are no more negative than their portrayal in the Christian bible – and as stated before there are many positive depictions of Jews in the film – including Jesus, Mary, Peter, etc… The most negative portrayals in the film are the Roman soldiers. In fact if one were to view most of the previous films that depict the crucifixion one would see similar if not harsher depictions of Jews and a more sympathetic treatment of Romans. Personally, I think the evidence supports that the film was considered from the outset by that segment of the media that tends to be secular and dismissive of faith if not anti-Christian, to be an embarrassing and worthless piece of crap that promoted a faith and ideas that should be let to die – and that said critics were happy to throw any criticisms that they thought might stick at the film and that anti-Semitism was a particularly useful charge to make – in light of both past Christian history and Mr. Gibson’s personal history.
I also wonder what anti-Semitism the film fomented – as I know that in the states at least it did nothing of the kind.
July 27, 2010, 11:54 amyankev says:
I see. As opposed to, say, the ethnostate of Japan’s restriction on non-Japanese immigration.
The fact that the ADL takes a given position on immigration to the US hardly makes that a Zionist position, just as the ADL’s position on same sex unions hardly makes that a Zionist position, any more than the ADL’s position about church-state separation, same sex unions, abortion or other issues are ‘Zionist’ positions.
From this and your other statements, I take it that you think being pro-Israel is a bad thing.
By the way, Commentary is at least as reflexively pro-Israel as the ADL, but is often critical to the ADL and well to the right of the ADL politically. Did Jennifer Rubin endorse Fozman’s statement, question it, or criticise it?
If you think there has been noe, you are in denial, though I suspect that you and I would agree that there has not been nearly as much as the ADL thinks.
That’s certainly one reading, and a position tthat emanates from a lot more sources than just the ADL. And one of many disagreements that I have with the ADL. That being ssaid, the fact that the ADL holds a given position on an issue having nothing to do with Isarel or Zionism hardly mmakes it a Zionist position.
July 27, 2010, 11:56 amyankev says:
Fine. Substitute “He could say that there were sound reasons for the US to topple Sadaam and that Bush, Rove et al did not lie the US into war.”
July 27, 2010, 12:05 pmyankev says:
What does deliberately spreading lies about the world’s one Jewish state make you? You are aware by now that the modern state of Israel was founded primarily by socialist atheists who did not profess a belief in G-d and did not use that as a justification for founding the state. For shame – Herzl? Ben Gurion? Sharon? Dayan? Appeals to Dvine Right were the last thing on their minds.
We can disagree about the degree to which people were displaced and the reasons for it, but to posit that the Histradut, the Palmach, the Mapam and other early founders were motivated by religious considerations is sheer fantasy. This has been pointed out to you before but you continue to dismiss those facts.
Ah, yes — that took longer than I expected; anti-Semitism is a false or at best irrelevant charge that Zionists dirty Jews and their Christian fanatic enablers use to distract people from the unforgivable, inexcusable and uniquely racist crimes of Israel against humanity.
July 27, 2010, 12:16 pmyankev says:
Be careful about that. Yankev was being deliberately mischievious.
July 27, 2010, 12:22 pmneurodoc says:
Thanks for calling attention to that influence upon Gibson and his movie. You saved me the time to search for her name.
But I just read your post at 4:09AM and must agree with Leo Marvin that you have been too free with the charge of antisemitism, at least where Randy is concerned (unless the comments I haven’t read yet including some really damning stuff from him, which I tend to doubt). Stick to those who clearly deserve the label, they are numerous enough.
July 27, 2010, 12:30 pmyankev says:
Don’t kid yourself. Plenty of Sunni states are terrified of a nuclear armed Iran and are secretly hoping that Israel will do something about it.
And I suspect that when Germany started rearming in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, few would have considered it in the interest of the entire world to stop Germany and depose Hitler before Germany built the strongest military force in Europe. Instead, the world let him invade the Sudetenland because he had become too strong to stop. By the time he invaded Poland, it was too late.
And to go back to our original point, it is far short of proof of Jewish domination of the media, or of manipulating the news for the benefit of Israel.
July 27, 2010, 12:31 pmAnderson says:
Hitler was a gradualist and a long-term planner. His goal all along was extermination.
This is debatable at the least. It now seems that extermination looked technically impossible to the Nazis until 1941 when the Einsatzgruppen succeeded so fearfully well.
July 27, 2010, 12:36 pmyankev says:
Hmm. Stone says that Jews dominate the media and use their dominance to skew the facts in favor of Israel. As proof, you point out that a group of journalists, with a disproportionate number of Jews, conspired to skew the news in order to elect the most anti-Israel president in the history of the United States?
Do you see any difference between saying a buncj of liberals, many or whom are Jewish, conspired to advance liberal ends, and saying “A bunch of Jews conspired to advance Jewish ends”? Because if you can’t see the difference between those two statements, this discussion is not goint to accomplish much.
July 27, 2010, 12:42 pmyankev says:
Thank you. I did not realize the term meant the same thing as ‘rootless cosmopolitans’. But I suspect that Buchanan has few fans among any of the Jewish posters at VC.
July 27, 2010, 12:59 pmyankev says:
There is also the web site Brothers of Judea which does the same.
Having now scrolled through the comments, I’d say your doubts were well founded, and not just from what I already know of Randy. I’ve certainly had my disagreements with him on a variety of subjects, and I may disagree with him about Nazi plans for extermination, but I can’t think of a comment he’s made on this thread or any other that I would characterize as being anti-Semitic.
July 27, 2010, 1:10 pmJeff Norman says:
News flash!
People sometimes speak imperfectly, especially when commenting extemporaneously.
Anyone who claims to be sure what Oliver Stone meant when he used the word “dominate,” is delusional.
July 27, 2010, 1:22 pmzuch says:
Huh? How is Obama the most “anti-Israel president in the history of the United States”? Or perhaps you were not serious, and proffered this as explanation for any [suspected] Jewish preponderance on the JournoList.
Cheers,
July 27, 2010, 1:32 pmmack says:
“Gibson’s film was far more hostile to Jews than the Gospels, due to the influence upon Gibson of an eccentric (or even mentally ill) and virulently anti-Semitic 19th-century nun by the name of Anne Catherine Emmerich.http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/topics/commentary_emmerich.htm “
Interesting little quote – let’s leave aside that Anne Catherine Emmerich was granted sainthood by the Catholic church in 2004 for reasons that obviously do not relate to her being, “eccentric (or even mentally ill) and virulently anti-Semitic.” As honestly, I do not know enough about her personal history to say one way or the other.
But focusing instead on the reported influence on Gibson’s film – through the book – The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ – and the article’s claim that – “Jews who are not followers of Jesus are, with few exceptions, portrayed as possessed by an unexplained obsession with seeing him tortured to death. Demonic presences and impossible amounts of blood and pain are common to both works as well.” This is patently false – as even someone with a cursory first hand knowledge of book would know that the book depicts those who actively seek the death of Jesus as possessed and controlled by Satan and not acting of their own volition. If one is inclined to believe the specific characterization of the book and it’s supposed anti-Semitism – I would suggest that one first read the book or at least read some reviews on Amazon for some balance. The book is commonly embraced by Christians who are not the least anti-Semitic – either before or after reading it – and it is not understood or seen as anti-Semitic in the Christian community.
I would be interested in some very specific examples of anti-Semitism in the film itself – surely for all the purported anti-Semitism in the movie it should be a fairly simple task to extract some specific damning examples?
July 27, 2010, 1:43 pmAnderson says:
Jews who are not followers of Jesus are, with few exceptions, portrayed as possessed by an unexplained obsession with seeing him tortured to death
As opposed to the Romans, who have an unexplained obsession with, um, actually torturing him to death.
I am disappointed that so anti-latinic a film has not received the condemnation it deserves.
July 27, 2010, 2:11 pmyankev says:
If you need this explained to you, you are not liekley to understand the answer. Any number of able columnists have elaborated on this theme much better than I could do. Take a few minutes and google them.
July 27, 2010, 2:18 pmCheers.
yankev says:
I am sure you consider this a very cute and clever remark. You may be unaware of a few historic facts.
1. The Romans did not do anything to the carpenter of Nazareth that they did not do to thousands and thousands of Jews, and thousands upon thousands of other Roman subjects. They did so before his birth, during his lifetime, and after his death.
2. For two millennia, Jews were routinely stigmatized as being responsible for that man’s death, and for that reason were routinely persecuted by the Church and by Christians, facing periodic expulsion, mass murder, being barred from crafts and skilled trades and from owning real property, confiscation of movable property.
3. It was also commonly argued that by refusing to worship him, the Jews were murdering him all over again, thereby justifying these consequences on people who admittedly were not born until a millenium or more after his death.
4. The Christians were originally persecuted by the Romans as another troublesome Jewish sect. When the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity and made it the official religion of the empire, Christians gained not only political respectability but political power. They were not about to seek revenge on the Romans who gave them that power, regardless of who nailed who to a cross. It became very safe, on the other hand, to go after the Jews.
5. For these reasons, anti-Latinism is a silly attempt to dismiss concerns about anti-Semitism, proffered by someone who wishes those whiny Jews would simply shut up and go back to wherever they came from — just not Israel. Brooklyn, maybe? Or Oswiecm?
July 27, 2010, 2:32 pmzuch says:
You don’t say…. First rule of performing arts: “guess you have to know your audience”, eh?
BTW, are all Christians (the “Christian community”) — unlike the “two Jews, three opinions” — of one voice?
Cheers,
July 27, 2010, 2:41 pmzuch says:
I should hope so.
Cheers,
July 27, 2010, 2:43 pmzuch says:
Yankev:
I’m getting it from both sides. Either I’m doing something right, or I’m just too damn morally unconcerned as to take a firm stance on such burning questions, eh?
Cheers,
July 27, 2010, 2:48 pmAmerican Jew says:
Anderson wrote: “It now seems that extermination looked technically impossible to the Nazis until 1941 when the Einsatzgruppen succeeded so fearfully well.”
It is gratifying to finally see someone here who actually knows something about the Holocaust.
July 27, 2010, 3:43 pmAmerican Jew says:
Leo: “Wild accusations of anti-Semitism don’t win us any friends. More important, they’re unfair and wrong, like any casual accusations of bigotry.”
Unless the accusations are correct, which they obviously are in the case of the three musketeers (Randy, Strict, Awful).
1. Complete rejection of the obvious specificity of the Holocaust, is rank anti-Semitism.
2. Comparing a Jewish poster to David Irving simply for explaining that specificity, is anti-Semitism.
The Jews coud learn a lesson from Sharpton — call out bigotry every time it occurs.
July 27, 2010, 3:49 pmyankev says:
Wrong lesson. The lesson I would learn from Sharpton is calling out bigotry that isn’t there may play well to a predisposed audience but is dangerous to bystanders and to oneself. People died because of Sharpton’s antics regarding Gavin Cato and his antics at Freddie’s Fashions.
Please don’t understand this as a defense of Strict. I don’t remember enough of Awful to have an opinion.
I think you are being unfair to Randy.
July 27, 2010, 4:20 pmAmerican Jew says:
Leo, I should add that the posts by the three musketeers have shown them grotesquely ignorant about the Holocaust. Those who do not know, and do not know that they do not know, are dangerous.
July 27, 2010, 4:21 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
From Sharpton, the lesson – which you, at least, have learned very well – is to call out “bigotry” in reply to any criticism.
July 27, 2010, 4:30 pmAmerican Jew says:
Yankev, one can learn one lesson from Sharpton — calling out bigotry — without learning another from him — instgating violence.
Sharpton’s strategy of being over-sensitive to bigotry has worked to sensitise the general population to anti-black racism, which it no longer takes lightly. The same approach should be taken towards anti-Semites.
I think you are being unfair to Randy.
Not in the least. All his posts in this thread not only show ignorance but also indifference to the specificity of the Holocaust — accompanied by a rejection of any attempt to explain it to him. His posts could be reduced to, “Why don’t you self-centred Jews stop whining?”
July 27, 2010, 4:38 pmAlessandra says:
American Jew: “Further, once extermination was decided, the clear and sole targets of the extermination planning were Jews; ”
I would also say Jews were the fundamental target, although maybe not the sole. Homo activists usually just spout anything that can fool people about the real role of homosexuals in Nazi history.
” and gays were rounded up with as much enthusiasm throughout the 1930s as were jews and other minorities. ”
Never. Ever.
The number of homosexuals sent to camps is absolutely, ridiculously small compared to the total estimated number of homosexuals in all Nazi dominated countries. Furthermore, many were simply imprisoned for some time, and let go, it is clear they were not there to be exterminated. The Nazis had no big enthusiasm for exterminating homosexuals as they did for Jews, and there is plenty available historical research showing that the motive for sending a considerable number of these homosexuals to the camps was because they were political enemies of the Nazis. The homosexual charge just made it expedient.
‘Clearly, you and the Nazi party share the same thoughts about gays as having “problems” and should be shunned by society to some degree’
Did Hitler choose a Jew to be the head of his vicious SA? A Gypsy? No way. He chose a homosexual, who jumped up at the opportunity, because they had been such good friends for such a long time. Let’s not forget that Rohm was a fanatical homosexual like you, Randy, if you want to talk about having things in common with the Nazis. Before you throw out your little cheap shots, maybe you should discover just how many homosexuals were in the Nazis and how many people they terrorized, murdered, raped, and tortured. I don’t that, your pals did.
And Hitler just loved his homo pal Rohm to pieces. I say you have a lot more in common with both of them than I do. Like the other of your VC pals.
‘Clearly, you and the Nazi party share the same thoughts about gays as having “problems” and should be shunned by society to some degree’
Rohm completely normalized homosexuality and wanted to shove it down society’s throat, much like you. Himmler had a few fundamental preoccupations with homosexuals, and, specially after 1934, they intensified. One regarded homos in the SS and he echoed it repeatedly: homosexuals formed cliques, cliques that would go on to hatch treasonable conspiracies against the state.
(And what happened in the Catholic Church abuse scandal, btw?)
What is good about developing a homosexual psychology? Nothing. I certainly don’t think any person with a homosexual or bisexual mindset was pre-determined by genes to be this way. Similarly, I don’t think that a girl who develops anorexia was pre-determined to experience this, nor do I think we should stop researching and asking questions as to why some people develop anorexia. The same for homosexuality. I am not satisfied with your simplistic sound-bites to explain human psychological phenomena concerning sexuality, because I know they are not based on knowledge.
Furthermore, it is exactly because homosexuality fundamentalists are stifling research, engaging in smear tactics, and outright lying about numerous issues which involve homosexuals or bisexuals as perpetrators of aggression, violence, or harmful sexual behavior that I will happily continue to expose their little lies.
Your little “ad hom” about me wanting to “shun” homosexuals in society is hogwash. We are talking about millions of people who constantly engage in a variety of harmful and violent behaviors against others (although not every individual homosexual does), who are lying about this and playing a most shoddy victim card. It’s not a question of shunning, but exposing lies and having them be accountable for all the harm they do in society.
Or are you going to take a lead in exposing just how many homosexuals and bisexuals sexually harass other people, how many have perverse attitudes about sexuality, how many engage in domestic violence, abuse, murder, etc etc? I haven’t seen homosexuality zealots do this.
From which we conclude that homosexuality fundamentalists not only have a lot in common with Enrst Rohm, they certainly share a lot with Goebbels as well. Lies and more lies. But in a way that certainly pleases the audience!
July 27, 2010, 4:39 pmAmerican Jew says:
Person
Bollocks. Randy, Strict, and Awful have rejected any attempt to explain to them the specificity of the Holocaust, becoming abusive in the process — how else should one term comparison of an American Jew to David Irving?
I think the three of them, had they any decency, would make a general apology to the Jewish people. But then, I doubt they’d ever do so.
July 27, 2010, 4:43 pmLATB says:
I’m a little surprised this post left out this gem from the interview:
Oliver Stone also suggested that we all “walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view.”
July 27, 2010, 4:47 pmAmerican Jew says:
Alessandra, by “clear and sole targets of the extermination planning,” I meant the lack of a Wannsee conference to plan the extermination of every last homosexual (or Pole or Russian or …), as the Wannsee conference did to Jews.
July 27, 2010, 4:48 pmMichael B says:
So, the following essentially receives a pass, via a follow-up PR rep’s statement?
Oliver Stone’s statement is a sober minded, premeditated statement during an extensive interview. Gibson’s earlier rant, at best, will need to be placed under the “in vino veritas” rubric, a category that, depending upon specifics, depending upon circumstances, can be considered merely convenient, or might in fact reflect the truth of the matter at hand.
I no longer defend Gibson fils as I did initially, though I also am not certain about the views of Gibson; he’s undeniably either deeply confused and conflicted about his own views and some personal/family life issues, or perhaps he is given to some highly dubious views. I no longer defend him, though I remain uncertain, in either regard.
Otoh, do we really want to open a can of worms and reflect upon the still larger context? E.g.: Why does such a sizable quarter of the Jewish community concern itself with people like Mel Gibson, when his views are not so clear as is imagined? Why does (or did) a section of the Jewish community concern itself with labeling people such as Robert Novak – a Jewish convert to Xianity, to Catholocism – an “anti-Semite,” when there’s dubious evidence, at best, in support of such a view? (A sizable section of the Jewish community, in a similar vein, would seemingly shun or ostracize even such luminous converts as Edith Stein before they would concern themselves with shunning/ostracizing even such malevolent historical players as a Lazar Kaganovich, a right-hand man of Joseph Stalin during both the Ukrainian mass murder as well as Stalin’s now proven attempt to co-opt the Spanish govt. during the Spanish Civil War. Priorities, priorities.)
Further, I’d suggest Oliver Stone’s views, especially in light of his dubious, well documented views concerning Che, Castro and others, remain, bare minimum, problematic – the release of a terse, reactive PR statement notwithstanding.
It is Ahmadinejad & Co. – including Iran’s trade and other alliances with Venezuela, German industrialists (yes, still, to this day), North Korea, China and others, also including Obama’s words and actions vis-a-vis Israel – remain the central problem at hand, “Page Six” styled gossip and certitudes concerning an easy target such as Gibson notwithstanding.
In the area of 97%, 98% of the time, I defend Israel and Jews in general. But one and all, including some notable members of the Jewish community at large, have the opportunity to look inward; Gibson certainly, Stone as well, but one and all with few exceptions indeed.
July 27, 2010, 5:01 pmleo marvin says:
American Jew,
The lesson I’ve learned from Al Sharpton is that I don’t want anyone smearing innocent people in the name of defending Jews the way he’s smeared innocent people in the name of defending African-Americans, or trivializing the harm of anti-Semitism the way he’s trivialized the harm of racism.
July 27, 2010, 5:15 pmtamberlaine says:
Oliver Stone is “no dummy”? Are you sure you’ve seen his movies, DB?
July 27, 2010, 5:31 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I was on the Andrea Doria.
July 27, 2010, 5:55 pmyankev says:
No one can acuse me of being shy for calling out posters who use anti-Semitic tropes or who apply a double standard to Israel. People have in fact accused me of the opposite. Speaking as one who has been falsely accused of falsely accusing people of anti-Semitism, I fully agree with you.
Randy has specifically said that he does not want to play who’s the bigger victim. He has disagreements over the extent to which Roma and homosexuals were targeted. I do not see him disputing anything that would lead me to put in the category of revisionist let alone anti-Semite. I have to part ways with AJ on this one.
I do think that anyone who says “Jew X is contributing to anti-Semitism by his behavior” is engaging at best in Jew baiting, just as anyone who said “Obama (or Michelle, or Jeff Fort, or Huey Newton or whoever) is contributing to anti-Black racism is engaged in despicable behavior. I seem to recall a similar slur somewhere upstream aimed at AJ. But I also remember it came from someone other than Randy.
July 27, 2010, 6:02 pmyankev says:
Yeah, and look what it got you.
July 27, 2010, 6:10 pmAnderson says:
I am sure you consider this a very cute and clever remark. You may be unaware of a few historic facts.
More likely, you may be unable to read a comment without absurdly overreacting. You are surely not “unaware” of the “historical fact” that the Romans, not the Jews, executed Jesus (and that the gospels are generally thought to’ve been touched up with implausible Jewish involvement in same, to help the early Christians deal with their Roman overlords).
My quip was simply in the long line of observations that, if anyone is to be “blamed” for Jesus’s death (which, goodness knows, was indispensable to his work of salvation and thus not blameworthy), it would make much more sense to blame the Romans. IOW, the quip was pro-Jewish, not, um, whatever the fuck you thought it was.
Take a chill-pill, Yankev.
July 27, 2010, 6:44 pmleo marvin says:
Ricardo,
Thanks for that. All I knew of Ferguson were his battles with Krugman and DeLong.
July 27, 2010, 7:00 pmleo marvin says:
neurodoc,
I’m not ignoring your questions about what constitutes “wild” accusations of anti-Semitism, burdens of proof, etc. I’m just not sure when I’ll get around to answering them. They’re hard questions, and useful ones I think. If I had some more time than I do now I could give you long, rambling answers, but I’d prefer to wait until I have even more time, and do a little better. For now, I’ll just point out that I did accuse someone in this thread of making an anti-Semitic comment, and I implied the accusations against three others were somewhat wild. I hope what those four commenters did and didn’t say is at least some basis to narrow your uncertainty about where I stand.
July 27, 2010, 7:01 pmleo marvin says:
Yes, D.M.N., I stand corrected. Nobody wins an argument over hierarchies of suffering, and I’m not sure why anyone other than George Castanza would want to.
July 27, 2010, 7:11 pmPhilo-Semite says:
Leo,
I can see at least a grain of truth in the argument that the Jacksons and Sharptons have made many white Americans think twice before voicing casual racism.
Michael,
“Why does such a sizable quarter of the Jewish community concern itself with people like Mel Gibson, when his views are not so clear as is imagined?”
They’re crystal clear — he gives most Jews and not a few Christians the creeps. Check Hitchens’ dissection of Gibson on Youtube.
“Why does (or did) a section of the Jewish community concern itself with labeling people such as Robert Novak — a Jewish convert to Xianity, to Catholocism — an “anti-Semite,” when there’s dubious evidence, at best, in support of such a view? (A sizable section of the Jewish community, in a similar vein, would seemingly shun or ostracize even such luminous converts as Edith Stein before they would concern themselves with shunning/ostracizing even such malevolent historical players as a Lazar Kaganovich, a right-hand man of Joseph Stalin during both the Ukrain