Category Archives: Anti-Semitism

Why Everyone Should Boycott Official 2014 Holocaust Commemorations in Hungary

13 Thursday Feb 2014

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Dr. David Mandler's avatarDavid Mandler's Blog

Imagine the White House chief of staff stating the following at a press conference after a significant meeting about a highly controversial issue with the leading representatives of American Jewry: “the President will address all of our fellow Americans as well as our Jewish citizens next week.” It does not take a lot of imagination to envision the firestorm of criticism that would follow such a division of the American people into real Americans vs. Jewish citizens of America.

Yet, this is precisely what János Lázár, the Minister of State for the Prime Minister’s Office, said after the unsuccessful round-table meeting with leading Hungarian Jewish organizations. Of course, he was not talking about fellow Americans but rather “fellow Hungarian countrymen” and “our Jewish citizens.” Perhaps at other times, this statement would have drawn more fire from liberal Hungarians and Hungarian Jews alike. At this time, though, Hungarian Jews are, in a…

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Middle East Conflict – The Other Path Toward Peace – Glazov Interviews Zahran

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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An Hamas terrorist has more rights inside Israel than a Jordanian Palestinian citizen inside Jordan.

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The Glazov Gang- Secular Palestinian Leader Denounces John Kerry’s Peace Plan. – YouTube – 18:44 – 2/8/2014.

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Jamie Glazov Productions

Mudar Zahran :: Gatestone Institute

Jordanian Palestinian who writes for ‘Post’ indicted in Jordan for ‘inciting hatred’ | JPost | Israel News – 12/31/2013.

* * *

The sun doesn’t also rise.

In some parts of the world, it rises for the first time.

With time, and with the efforts of a courageous independent few, the hateful games played by spoilers against the Jewish people become more clear as to their true intents, and not only as regards Jews but as regards all others in their path.

Around 11:15:

This is all anti-Semitism 2.0 . . .  the problem for me as a leader of my people is we’re going to suffer because of this . . . as long as they push us into fighting against Israel and make the point that Israel is demonized and bad while we get killed and kill Israelis in the process . . . .  this is awful, and this is exactly what Mr. Kerry’s peace plan, actually King Abdullah’s peace plan, this is exactly what it’s going to bring . . . .

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Muslim & Zionist! Kasim Hafeez: “Israel is the only liberal democracy in ME” – YouTube – 6/5/2012.

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Arabs for Israel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Islam in Israel and the Palestinian territories – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Muslim supporters of Israel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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“I’ve had a few instances even in Halifax when Muslims will say, look I may not agree with everything but its given me things to think about. That’s the start you know; its’ creating cracks in the lies they may have accepted as truth. So that’s one of the best feelings, when I do have Muslims and it’s made them think, challenged what they believe and their ready to take it further.”

Why a British Muslim of Pakistani Origin Defends Israel | United with Israel, n.d.

Related: The Muslim Zionist states his case | In The Paper | Comment and analysis | Mail & Guardian – 8/23/2013.

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Hungary – How Distant in Time? – Comment: Holocaust Memorial Boycott

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics

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Mazsihisz wants the government to abandon the memorial to Germany’s 1944 invasion of Hungary. The leaders of the organization also want to stop the erection of a new center devoted to the memory of child victims of the Holocaust.

Mazsihisz has decided to boycott; a portrait of Viktor Orbán by Miklós Jancsó | Hungarian Spectrum – 2/9/2014.

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A Hungarian museum director visited Yad Vashem last week to get inspiration for the creation of a Holocaust memorial museum in Budapest.

“It made such an impact on me,” said Maria Schmidt, who visited Israel on Thursday.

“It’s such a great responsibility [creating the Budapest museum], so I am a little bit afraid.”

Hungarian woman planning Budapest Shoah museum visits Yad Vashem | JPost | Israel News – 11/17/2013.

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How much may anyone ask of yesterday when it comes to justice today?

How live an issue, for example, is the “Armenian Genocide” that appears to have taken place 99 years ago?

For the targets, it would appear to never go away; for the Turks, the claim of it remains met with denial.

What if the event had taken place 999 years ago?

Would the descendants, if still cohered as an ethnic group, continue to press their claim?

The role that time plays in the experience of injustice and the want of remediation or revenge poses a puzzle: when is it too late to reasonably do something about the experience of evil in a near or far away yesterday.

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The Arab states of the middle east have hung on to the notion of “Arab Lands” and post-WWII Zionism, itself a part of their narrative libel, for a stretch going on 70 years.  Their abuse, callousness, and carelessness extended to keeping for generations the descendants of refugees of their failed wars of annihilation against Israel and the Jews has been well illustrated by twists and reversals in the laws of hosting states and, most recently, by the neglect of the agony experienced by the refugees settled in Syria’s Yarmouk Camp.

Is 70 years too soon for grumbling about it but getting along with complete acceptance of the Jewish state — or is it too late?

* * *

So it goes with the truth about Hungary’s role in the Holocaust — the genocide of the Jews during World War II — and how close in time, or far, the matter remains for redress.

Hungary’s main Jewish umbrella organization voted on Sunday to boycott official Holocaust commemorations this year unless the role of locals in the Nazi deportation and killing of Hungarian Jews is made clear. The Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) decided to stay away from events marking the 70th anniversary of the deportation of 437,000 Jews from Hungary to the Nazi death camps.

World Jewish Congress – Hungarian Jews vote to stay away from events marking Holocaust Memorial Year – 2/10/2014.

Jobbik’s rise and Orban’s government have added their nationalist heat to the counter-cause of contemporary inclusion and tolerance.  It’s easy to hear in the head the call to vigilance, “Never again!” when the smoke of the Nazi yesterday starts appearing in familiar black wisps around the neighborhood.

Still, what is wanted?

A coming out in shame?

And would that be for conspiring in the murder of the Jews as a class, the Roma too, and others?

Or for losing that terrible wrong-headed fight?

Or engaging with it in the first place?

What is wanted — the names of octogenarians who facilitated the crime (and God alone knows what was going through their minds when they did it)?  General reparations?  To whom?  For how long?

When does it end?

When does any war end?

To this day, the “War Between the States” remains an uncomfortable subject in many homes of the American South.

We are almost 160 years beyond that blood mired wound in American history.   Atlanta has boomed in a good way; the south has made itself into a business center and traveler’s paradise; and the slaves of its antebellum years have integrated in every way imaginable with the American Dream except where choice otherwise has swayed the heart, and yet for those in whom that heart has been swayed, reparations may still be demanded — and on the honky side, deep grievance about Big Government and “states rights” remain.

If a person: how long do you hold a grudge?

If a culture: how many generations?

Given what my people think about Pharaoh and Haman, should be peace now be impossible between Israelis, Egyptians, and Persians?

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The organization again called on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government to cancel the unveiling of a statue on Szabadsag tér commemorating the Nazi “occupation” of Hungary, maintaining its position that such a moment absolves Hungarians of complicity in the exportation of Jews to concentration camps.

MaZsiHiSz: No Jewish participation in Holocaust events | The Budapest Business Journal on the web | bbj.hu – 2/10/2014.

The machine-translated English leaves much to be desired on this piece — http://www.mazsihisz.hu/2012/02/08/neonaci-bujocska-%E2%80%93-nagyon-keszulnek-a–becsulet-napjara–4863.html — but one may glean from it how the presence of a resurgent nationalism in Hungary has infected the assessment of memorial plans associated with WWII and the Holocaust.

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On November 3rd, much to the shock of many Hungarians, the far-right Jobbik party unveiled a statue of Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian Governor who ruled after the first World War and allied Hungary with Nazi Germany during the second World War. Despite the efforts of numerous individuals who have fought tirelessly to stamp out radicalism and racism, evil is still out there.

Honoring anti-semitic governor of Hungary is a disgrace | The Daily Caller – 12/9/2013.

It would seem Hungarians have some difficult navigation ahead as regards their national self-concept and identity.

However, the Jews, not alone, have these still troubled and dangerous waters to navigate as well.

No one should want a drifted return to investment in the myths of nationalist socialism,  blood and honor, superiority in blood.  Those things exist in the poetry attending and healing “narcissistic mortification” but also at times compelling “malignant narcissism”.  The response in the head is to the damage of self-concept and image, which may need enough to stand but, perhaps, not so much as to loom as a dark shadow across the landscape, a phantom energized by old wounds.

Additional Reference

The siege of Budapest: Neo-Nazis remember the “breakthrough” of February 11, 1945 | Hungarian Spectrum – 2/8/2014.

Holocaust Obfuscation Courtesy of the Hungarian Government in 2014 | DefendingHistory.com – 2/9/2014.

Addendum

Israel’s Sephardim abuzz at Spain’s expanded offer of citizenship | FaithWorld – 2/10/2014.

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Hungary’s UN Envoy Seeks to Clear National Conscience, Admits Hungarian Collusion in the Holocaust

26 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Hungary, Politics

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“Hungarian state institutions at the time [shared responsibility] for the Holocaust. This apology today by the Hungarian state must become part of national memory and identity,” he added.

Hungary’s UN envoy makes country’s first-ever Holocaust apology – Jewish World News Israel News | Haaretz – 1/25/2014.

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Hungary at UN apologizes for role in the Holocaust | JPost | Israel News – 1/25/2014.

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He added: cowardly attempt to keep the attention of diverting the Horthy regime of Judaism destruction played a role, and confuse the Holocaust of Hungarian people with the “suffering” caused by the German occupation, while the latter historical facts prove that instead of resistance rather general received applause – wrote in the letter. wrote I understand that “due to various political and economic reasons, the Holocaust Memorial Center operating managers do not want or can not speak out against this impudent forger course of history.”

Mazsihisz.hu – 1/26/2-14.

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Serious efforts are being made by Fidesz-Jobbik supporters to recreate the old Soviet/Russian friendship from which twenty-three years ago Hungarians were happy to escape.

Attack on the United States and friendship with “tolerant” Russia | Hungarian Spectrum – 1/23/2014.

Hungarian Ambassador Casba Körösi would seem to understand that the Jobbik Party, its affections, whatever the basis, for Iran, Russia, and Putin’s own nationalist “vertical of power”, and its disaffection with Jews and the open democracies of the west have put Hungary on a collision course with a 1933 all its own.

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In admitting Hungary’s guilt he said institutions in the the Hungarian state of the 1940s were responsible for the Holocaust as they had been complicit in accepting incidents led to the genocide of Hungarian Jews.

Hungary apologises for its part in Holocaust | Denver Sun – 1/26/2014.

With whom — what what — shall Hungarians go?

* * *

Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s controversial leader during World War II, oversaw the deportation of some 18,000 Jews to the German-occupied Soviet Union in 1941 — more than 10,000 of whom were murdered — and is seen by many as complicit in the mass deportations to Nazi death camps in 1944 which resulted in the deaths of around 450,000 Hungarian Jews.

NewsDaily: US scholar returns Hungary award over Holocaust ‘whitewash’ – 1/26/2014.

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“We know we are responsible for the Holocaust and we also know that Hungarian state institutions were responsible for the Holocaust,” Navracsics said in parliament. “Hungarians were the perpetrators and Hungarians were those who suffered. Hungarians did the shooting and Hungarians died.”

Jewish groups in Hungary oppose 1944 memorial – The Washington Post – 1/21/2014.

The statements may be subtle.  That above by Hungary’s standing Minister of Justice recognizes what happened and yet equates the suffering as general: for sure, Hungarians did the shooting, but where the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing are concerned, it was Hungarian Jews who were made to die, and while not alone in that for ethnic persecution — more on that in a moment — certainly the numbers overwhelm.

* * *

Some Gypsies were sterilized as early as 1933, though no Jews yet were; beginning in the same year, camps were being established by the Nazis to contain Gypsies at Vennhausen, Dieseistrasse, Mahrzan and Dachau, although at so early a date Jewish victims were not being sent en masse to any camps. It is a matter of singular disgrace that in 1936 the anti-Gypsy campaign became globalized, through the establishment of the international Centre for the Fight against the Gypsy Menace by Interpol in Vienna. Again, this did not happen for the Jews. In effect, the Nazi Party sought, and was given, the cooperation of other Euopean governments in its campaign to locate and identify Gypsies throughout Europe for its later plans for extermination.

Gypsies: A Persecuted Race : Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota – 1985.

“Jew Hate” is never confined to the Jews, but perhaps ever since Abraham’s failure to speak for Isaac when asked to make a sacrifice of him, Jews have been “speaking truth to power” for thousands of years and are a vocal people, so it is good today to learn of power in the person of an Hungarian ambassador speaking truth to the Jobbik Party and Prime Minister Viktor Mihály Orbán’s government.

Hungarians know what Hungarians have done.  Clear acknowledgment might cleanse a national conscience, that as opposed to covering it up, glossing it over, in successive acts of patronizing cant and shameful cowardice.

Addendum

Dear György és Szabolcs:

I am writing to request that you remove my name from the Téka és Információs Központ at the Holocaust at the Holokauszt Emlékközpont. I reached this decision with a heavy heart, having followed the recent developments in Hungary with great concern. The history-cleansing campaign of the past few years calculated to whitewash the historical record of the Horthy era, including the changes in the constitution that “legalized” the sinister measures that were subsequently taken to absolve Hungary from the active role it had played in the destruction of close to 600,000 of its citizens of the Jewish faith, have left me, and I assume many others, stunned.

Randolph L. Braham’s open letter | Hungarian Spectrum – 1/26/2014.

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FTAC – A Note on Bigotry and Language

30 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Psychology

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I think what’s going on is early infancy to childhood social rule formulation tied to language uptake. Anti-Semitic remarks within the family or close cultural quarters (church) may be met a) without filters because b) curiosity to create the rules for filtering data and generating speech have to be formed first. That learning may be congruent with what has been heard (by the very young human) or formulated for entertainment (we’re a really bright species and boredom is an existential problem addressed partially by art and artifice).

Feedback to the child’s rule-making and subsequent adventure in language may take place in a welcoming environment suffused with bigotry or otherwise just continue stubbornly on its anti-social course until the adult’s behavior finds its reflection in a larger cultural environment. That is our contemporary politics, of which this thread is a part. My suggestion that some portion of anti-Semitism — and other bigotry — is acquired as part of language learning and rule-based may help account for the difficulty encountered in argument with bigots who cannot access the origins of their earliest formed attitudes and beliefs.

I know I often hit the same keys — with this note, i.e., anti-Semitism and other prejudice may have anchors in language uptake and the discovery by deduction or invention of essential cultural language-shaping rules.

The source for inspiration was an article about Hollywood’s latest collection of celebrities who have taken anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist positions in the political facet of their careers: » Hollywood’s War On Israel – 12/28/2013.

From Walt Disney to Mel Gibson, attitudes toward the Jews inevitably surface in “The Business”.  Whether it’s good to harp and harass along this axis — there’s a lot of finger pointing and mud slinging involving a behavior I believe inseparable from persons from an early age — I don’t know, but as I suggest that the behavior is rule-based and acquired with language uptake, public opprobrium cannot get to it — nor, as I have been seasoned in this elsewhere, does adult argument or persuasion.

What airing in the media may do, however, is influence a part of a generation of mothers, fathers, and teachers to adopt and promote a greater tolerance of others and through the timbre of the environments known to infancy change the instructions imparted accordingly — and exactly that would seem implicit in the American and other open democracy stories.

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FTAC – A Note – Forgiveness, God, and Man

27 Friday Dec 2013

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Language is the belief (take it or leave it). In Judaism’s Day of Atonement, confession (God forgive me) isn’t half the job: setting right with a person whom one has aggrieved is as much the point. From Hillel the Elder — possibly, probably — to Jesus and the construction of a new religion seems a short intellectual distance and the relation of the two together to more ancient tradition would seem hard to refute.

The association of glory in righteous suffering and death and the polarized emphasis on sinfulness and holiness seem to me to run counter to Judaism’s practical emphasis on life — on being alive and living graciously in the sight of God — and ethical awareness and practice.

The thought responds to AN Wilson’s “It’s the Gospel Truth – So Take It or Leave It” in  Wednesday’s The Telegraph (It’s the Gospel truth – so take it or leave it – Telegraph – 12/25/2013), and as a feel-good for the pious of the Christian community, the term “Jew” or “Jewish” seems not to have a place in it.  Instead the “gospel truth” omits reference to the revolutionary thought of Rabbi Hillel the Elder, an elder contemporary — or very near it — of Jesus, also a figure in various historic records, much less mention of the ancient Yom Kippur, the Jewish “Day of Atonement” in which confessional one asks forgiveness of not only God but of any who have been aggrieved by the confessor’s behavior or actions and that on the basis of a just setting to rights, not mere apology.

For some Christian standard bearers, the business of successionary thinking, i.e., that the enterprise of Christianity will fully displace Judaism and, no less than Islamist thinking on this matter, churn the world into itself — a part of the “Christ Process” as one Jesuit noted to me many years ago — has been politely hidden beneath the verbiage.  One need not (at this time) advance the point except by eliminating from discussion mention of origins in thought or other possibilities in belief, ethics, faith, and reason.

That’s the gospel truth.

The term “messianic delusion” seems to refer to the presence of grandiose ambitions to control the world (in the name of one’s own chosen glorious mission) to produce a heaven on earth reverberating primarily to one’s own power.

The lethal nature of that worn track in human affairs would seem to repeatedly prove itself wherever unchecked.

Look to the al Qaeda affiliates pouring into Syria today for the proof of it — and be sure not to miss what they do to others (and themselves) beneath their black death-cult banner.  By comparison, the Christian Church at its strident best would seem a happier affair by far, and yet it too, so well demonstrated in the European history of anti-Semitism — one in which (in 12th Century Hungary) laws devised to discriminate against Jews were applied equally to Muslims — and the culmination of its “Christ killer” libel in Germany’s blood-and-death descent into the mindless cauldron of war against all accompanied by industrialized mass murder and genocide.

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Online Etymology Dictionary – “messiah”.

Messiah – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Buchanan Gets Putin in One Wrap

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

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“He is seeking to redefine the ‘Us vs. Them’ world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West,” Buchanan said.

Pat Buchanan: Anti-LGBT Vladimir Putin is a true conservative hero | The Raw Story – 12/17/2013.

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Did you know that in Sweden, “early sex is the norm—from the age of nine?” Or that the pro-European protests rocking Ukraine are part of a Western plot to revenge 18th-century Tsarist military victories? And not only should gays be prohibited from donating organs, but their hearts, upon death, should be burnt or buried because they are “unsuitable for extending the life of another?”

Welcome to the world of Dmitry Kiselyov, now the most powerful man in Russian media.

Meet Dmitry Kiselyov, Putin’s New Shock Jock – The Daily Beast – 12/17/2013.

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“While preserving the secular nature of our state, and not allowing the over-involvement of the government in Church life, we need to get away from the vulgar, primitive understanding of secularism,” he said.

“The Russian Orthodox Church and other traditional religions should get every opportunity to fully serve in such important fields as the support of family and motherhood, the upbringing and education of children, youth, social development, and to strengthen the patriotic spirit of the armed forces.”

Church should have more control over Russian life: Putin | Reuters – 2/1/2013.

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Putin is a man with a plan: He wants to show the world — his fellow autocrats in particular — that Russia is a steadfast ally, in contrast to the U.S., which has the nasty habit of throwing allies under buses. He wants to reassert Russian influence in the Middle East. That Assad provides Russia with a Mediterranean port is icing on the babka.

Vladimir Putin, the Neo-Soviet Man | National Review Online – 9/19/2013.

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In forests clear cut for timber, the second growth comes up thorny.  In that way, perhaps, nature protects her wild enterprise until the trees once again shut out the sun.

Pat Buchanan’s remarks, rather parallel to Putin’s, belie the Christian side of post-medieval cultural, nationalist, and religious fascism.

“Our kind” becomes its own enterprise.

“Your kind” stand in the way of “our kind” — or, simply, we find “your kind” offensive.

Post-Soviet Russia has developed some thorns and the 75-year-old son of the old south Pat Buchanan has perhaps recognized in Putin’s cant a part of his own proclivities and, unintentionally, sent a signal as to where such ideas may lead.

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On American Jews and the Pro-Israel Lobby (ADL archived remarks).

Pat Buchanan – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/17/2013.

Why MSNBC Dumped Pat Buchanan: His 10 Most Outrageous Statements | ThinkProgress – 2/17/2012.

Related: The New Blacklist – Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website – 2/17/2012.

Menachem Rosensaft: Patrick Buchanan: What Else Is New? – 5/25/2013.

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Putin doesn’t talk so much.

A fast glance at “state, nationalism” searches suggests to me that anti-Soviet sentiment in now post-Soviet clients has produced some anti-Russian drift, the facets of which seem tied up with relations to The Bear rather than The Jews.  Putin himself has been careful to navigate carefully as regards Russia’s multicultural modernity and the state’s relationship with Israel, which he seems to respect — not to mention by way, possibly, of his military’s purchase of second-tier military technology from Israel — and Russia’s need for revived validation in self-concept rooted in the historic tradition of the Great Imperial period.

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Putin narrates a similar decline of the West and caution at importing Western ideas, particularly liberalism, into Russia. His speech dwelled on the West’s rejection of Christian values and traditions and bemoaned its embrace of political correctness and homosexuality. To him these have placed the West on a path of “degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis.”

Historical Lineages of Putin’s Russian National Identity | Russia – 9/26/2013.

Perhaps ironically, as “Buchanan gets Putin”, Putin gets Israel, relating Jewish ethnic nationalism to Slavic ethnic resurgence.  It’s not an unpleasant idea as one may note that language culture and cultural legacy are inseparable and of necessity must be valued but constrained, this with about 7,000 living languages extant, to state and region.

To what extent do hate and xenophobia integrate with ethnic pride and strength?  To be ourselves, whether in our homes or in the possession of a state, must we hate someone else who is not necessarily “out to get us”?

It’s a tough question.

Buchanan seems to have answered it for himself a long time ago.

Putin would seem to be answering with multicultural or secular state policy on one hand while encouraging traditional conservative Christian attitudes on the other, but he’s not so vocal as to lay himself out for definitive cultural and political dissection on the matter.

Perhaps the baseline is in fact the autocracy of the 19th Century accompanied by the desire to see a Russian way into the future rather than suffer co-option by the open societies of the west, but what comes marching behind that may look anti-Napoleonic and impossibly anachronistic, albeit grandiose, messianic, and armed to match.

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Iran’s Path – A Simple Juxtaposition

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics

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London: Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper has published satellite images that it says prove Iran is developing a second path to a nuclear weapons capability by operating a plant that could produce plutonium.
The images – commissioned by the Telegraph and taken as recently as February 9 – show steam rising at the heavily-guarded Arak heavy water production plant, about 240 kilometres south-west of the capital Tehran. International inspectors have been barred from the plant since August 2011.

New nuclear concern over Iran as satellite images expose plant – 2/28/2013

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Iran’s Mullahs, with the aid of the beguiled illiterate and religiously fanatic masses, strengthened their stranglehold as they blamed others for their incompetence and larcenous nature for the people’s intractable problems. The ever-machinating Mullahs had to find a scapegoat, preferably many scapegoats, to blame. True to form they turned and bit the hand that helped bring them to power — the United States. For good measure, the Mullahs included Israel. Jews have always been good scapegoats for Islamists, going back to the time of Muhammad in Medina. The prophet of Allah, as soon as he gathered enough power, found it expedient to plunder the Jews’ properties, kill the men and take the women and children as slaves to exploit or sell.

Archived-Articles: Mr. Obama: Don’t Betray My People – 7/3/2008

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Iran, once OPEC’s second-largest producer, is talking with European companies about future projects, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told reporters today in Vienna. The minister said he hopes Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM:US), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) Plc, BP (BP/) Plc, Eni SpA and Statoil ASA (STL) will invest in the country. Iranian officials will meet with international companies in London in March, he said, declining to identify them.

The Islamic republic agreed last month to restrict work on its nuclear program for six months in return for a loosening of sanctions that offers about $7 billion in relief and access to $4.2 billion in oil revenue frozen in foreign banks.

Iran Plans to Meet Foreign Oil Companies to Seek Investment (1) – Businessweek – 12/4/2013.

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What could go wrong?

Don’t answer.

The future will be here soon enough.

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