Tag Archives: medieval vs modern

FTAC: Political Islam and the Persistent Past

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

The prompt: in relation to anti-Semitism, a statement suggesting Muslims, in general, know little about Islam, and anti-Semitic sentiment in Islam relates directly to the conflict in the middle east.

Religious identification serves as a powerful discriminator and tool for the purposes of leadership in the medieval world, and for some portion of the “Ummah”, small or large, the bond of Muslim identification against the Jew serves to sustain anti-Semitic thought wherever that may be promoted to serve the interests of leaders or spoilers for power.

While the notion that in some general way Muslims know nothing about Islam would seem to confront multiple cultural histories of written clerical thought largely expounding on Qur’an, Hadith, and Sunnah, much of which may indeed have been self-serving — or serving the subscriptions of noted institutions or scholars. In the medieval world, much of power would be suspended between the church (mosque, or temple), then seats of education, and political authority whose legitimacy rested on convincing clerical validation (predicated on beliefs installed).

The “Educated Modern” has a much widened field of view as regards phenomenology associated with psychology, religion, and spirituality. We’re aware of the world’s approximately 7,000 living languages and associated ethnolinguistic cultures; we’re aware of the histories of religions “across the campus”; perhaps most importantly, we’re aware of our own foibles. 🙂 The modern may face some puzzles as regards the perpetuation of the medieval suite of opposed and similar philosophies, but first on the agenda should be the question of how to bring forward those living in the medieval world.

One may practically skip church with that kind of Sunday morning sermonette.

🙂

However,the world’s educated and dedicated or leisured may support their “team”, the same have also access to a sophisticated awareness of their rivals plus awareness and knowledge sufficient to sink everyone’s ship: the good must ask wherever there is conflict what the fighting is about.

BackChannels simple answer to that question: power.

And there follows a question: medieval or modern?

“Medieval v Modern” has been chatted up quite on this blog, so I’ll spare ye another ramble.

Or not.

Appended

The prompt involved a legalistic reinterpretation about respect for Islam (should be equal to that given Christianity and Judaism) that I penned — the addition is italicized: “Jews, Christians, Muslims should accept the validity of each other’s legal interest in their chosen faith.”

I would accept the validity of the interest in religion, not the laws, policies, or practices promoted in the interest of its related fascism.

Even Pakistan has differentiated itself from Islam in its “realpolitik” law.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1366268/man-interfaith-parents-wins-right-religion-choice/

As regards reform — i.e., an end to Islamic supremacism, supersession, bigotry regarding others, barbaric advisement — YES!

However, note the paths and leaders, including this conversation’s original poster:

Intellectualized Islam — e.g., Qanta Ahmed and others who bring a modern sensibility to Qur’anic ambiguity and move away from the supremacist mark, much preferring “no compulsion”.

Heretical Islam — e.g., M. Zuhdi Jasser and others in the Islamic Reform Movement who prefer contemplation and worship to “political Islam” and related militancy.

Renewal Through Reinterpreting Translation (goodbye Pickthall) and narrowed focus on the Qur’an — the claimed “word of God” — so as to diminish the merely mortal factor in the receiving of the Qur’an.

If any should think up other Islamic Reform options, let me know.

There is a greater and more challenging anachronism in the persistence of medieval worldviews about God and about power in a modern day that requires for greater wealth and security and the wider distribution of both plus justice a greater cooperation and integrity in global social relationships.

–33–

FTAC: Observation: Arab Refusal of Culpability for the Middle East Conflict

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Jordan, Palestinia, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Prompt: mention of “Israel apartheid” (a standard trope in the anti-Semitic wings of the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left) and “letting the refugees return”.

How about ending Arab apartheid and absorbing the Arab refugee generations whose first were abandoned between armies in 1948?

http://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300172348/palestine-betrayed

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/enough-said-false-scholarship-edward-said

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

Oh, and how about giving the Palestinians their money back, considering the manners in which Arafat and Abbas became multi-millionaires and Haniyeh and Mashaal billionaires.

Sustaining the MEC supports feudalism, makes crooks wealthy, and extends for Palestinians The Preoccupation with the Jews.

Prompt: Israel is the sole cause of the refugee issue.

Arab absence of empathy and favoring of an anti-Semitic posture and related supremacist assumptions at the end of WWII led to the refusal of terms and the subsequent genocidal (river to the sea) gang-up on the new Jewish State. The “Palestinians” — Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs, migrants also to the fields of the new agricultural economy of the day — had been encouraged out of the way of battle with hopes the Jews would be gone when it was over.

It didn’t work out that way.

It takes a mighty and malign narcissism to refuse culpability for a disaster like the one dealt to the Arab refugees of 1948 (never mind the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands that would follow in the wake of the war) and then to turn the same bereft population into a political “poker chip” for the enrichment of a criminal few unconscionable enough to spend decades manipulating hate in the cause of their own aggrandizement.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/

It appears that given a choice between encouraging conflict and undertaking development, the Jew-hating and once Soviet-loving portion of the Arab bloc invariably persists in poisoning the Palestinian mind, keeping the conflict alive, and handily siphoning off the world’s charity to line its own pockets in related systems of patronage, not that any should want “powerful families” to find themselves bereft of their portion of the take.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

–33–

FTAC: On the Edge of a Feudal American State

27 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Context: in light of dozens of bomb threats and two acts of vandalism against Jewish targets, the chatter turned to the JDL, which in the United States remains an FBI designated terrorist organization (the same has been left to operate in Canada and Great Britain).  The matter of reevaluating the too obvious public appearance of anti-Semitic acts in America came up between Jews and here fits with the notion that a part of the nation seems now driven toward the revival of feudalism.

The commission of political violence before the Larger Force of the State renders the same very small and degrades and tarnishes the nobility of the actor. Now we reached a super-generational changing of the political guards. Angela Davis is 73 years old; Noam Chomsky is 88 years old. The Baby Boomers are counting on their retirement funding or the state to east them into death, and the New Guards of the Culture are climbing into their positions and making their marks.

In the framework of time, that is where these attacks on Jewish targets are taking place.

I have on Back-Channels noted an increasingly stark choice for modern bodies politic: do ye wish to remain “Modern” — cooperating, multicultural, mutually respectful beneath the benevolent and firm umbrella of secular-humanist / Greco-Roman / Judeo-Christian law developed atop much bloody argument about political power, or may ye wish to slide back into the feudal slime hoping to come out on top with the authoritarian who says he really likes you?

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/02/27/ftac-reflexive-control-feudalism/

Conflict — equipment, manpower, research — is a money-maker for a lot of people employed and invested in related fields. Give it a thought: to really be kind to our neighbors, perhaps we should all just thin ourselves out. God only knows Americans have the firearms to do it to themselves.

Maybe Black Lives Matter would like to weigh in on this business about an America / EU / NATO that trends toward feudalism and the potential for the conflicts of all-against-all. The same would make the Arab, “I against my brother; my brother and I against my cousin . . . .” sound awfully quaint.

BackChannels reach on Facebook has been broad and not terribly shy; however, hateful events — bomb threats, the desecration of cemeteries — promote suspicions, and one may now wonder at the purposes of those who commit such acts, which appear to no longer involve one city or community center and at least one mysterious miscreant.

The bomb threats number in the dozens; the attacks on two Jewish cemeteries now involve two cities.

Has someone been going down a call list?

Has someone been driving from one place to the next?

Many who follow politics at many levels — diplomacy, foreign affairs, international relations, warfare and terrorism — have picked on some far ahead or far out concepts, e.g., that Obama made the United States “post-Constitutional” or that we are living in a modern “post-fact” world — or a world comfortably supporting “alt-facts”.  How is one to reject the arrival of so ambiguous and ambivalent a political philosophy?

For the time being, the United States of America remains a “constitutional democracy”, and perhaps one with a security community that has its own backbone when it comes to the defense of the nation against “all enemies foreign and domestic”.

BackChannels suggestion to those vulnerable to being goaded into violence against pet targets on the basis of assumptions based on the constructs of swirling conspiracies or shadow and uncertain empirical evidence: cool it.  Let’s not drag ourselves backward several hundred years in the way of the ill-educated, ill-informed, and paranoid.

Reject manipulation.

–33–

 

On Putin’s New Medieval Theater

10 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Speech delivered at the inauguration of Moscow’s Grand Mosque (“Moscow Cathedral Mosque“), September 23, 2015:

Posted to YouTube by Inessa S October 9, 2016.

Posted to YouTube by RT, September 23, 2015.

Additional news coverage —

The New Arab.  “Mosque opening in Moscow attended by Putin, Abbas, Erdogan.”  September 23, 2015.

If you only look at the surface of his speech, which is, of course, very good, you will miss the story.

If from the opening – at 0:03 – you will see two familiar leaders, Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO/PA and Tayyip Recep Erdogan, President of Turkey.

If you’re a BackChannels reader, you know of Abbas’s listing with the KGB.

You may also recall a piece about Erdogan’s shift toward Moscow, his relenting to apologize to Putin for the downing of an aggressive Russian fighter jet (Turkey reported the then unknown aircraft more than two miles inside of its border), and then resuming the Russia-dependent Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline project followed by a repressive coup / countercoup period leading to the buttressing of his own autocracy.

While the surface may look calm — and in the above video positively modern and multicultural — here’s additional reference to what appears to lie beneath.

Incubation of ISIL

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/isil-groomed-for-a-role-in-assad-vs-the-terrorists/ – 9/14/2016.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ – 10/2/2015

Kadyrov’s Islam

The president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at a mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die.

Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had “loose morals” and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings.

Berry, Lynn.  “Chechen leader imposes strict Islamic code.”  The New York Times, March 2, 2009.

Earlier this month, the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, informed his more than one million followers on social networks that he had become “the happiest man in this land.” Something had come to pass that he never could have dreamed of, he said. He had had a transfusion, he said, from a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, so now he has the Prophet’s blood flowing through his veins.

Nemtsova, Anna.  “The Kremlin’s Favorite Muslim, Kadyrov, Goes Too Far.”  The Daily Beast, September 28, 2015.

RAMZAN KADYROV has few inhibitions. Last week, just before the first anniversary of the murder of Boris Nemtsov, a liberal Russian opposition leader, by a member of Mr Kadyrov’s security services, the Chechen strongman posted a video on his Instagram page. It depicted Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister, in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. “Kasyanov is in Strasbourg to get money for the opposition,” Mr Kadyrov commented under the video, in a clear warning to opposition politicians. “Whoever still doesn’t get it, will.”

The Economist.  “Putin’s Chechen enforcer: The alarming world of Ramzan Kadyrov.”  February 6, 2016.

Vladimir Putin said when he first ran for president in 2000 that his “historic mission” was to resolve the situation in the North Caucasus. To do so, he oversaw a second war in Chechnya, already devastated by Russia’s failed attempt to subdue the republic in 1994-1996.

Instead of solving the North Caucasus issue, however, Putin created a monster. To end the fighting, he cut a deal with Chechnya’s rebel Kadyrov clan: In exchange for loyalty to the Kremlin, they received power and reconstruction aid.

This was a medieval deal that made Akhmad Kadyrov, a rebel commander and Sufi mufti, Putin’s feudal liege. The aim was to co-opt the more religiously moderate Sufis among Chechnya’s rebel fighters, marginalize the Salafist jihadists who appear to have fascinated the Boston bombers, and enable the Russian military to declare victory and draw down.

Judah, Ben.  “Putin’s Medieval Peace Pact in Chechnya.”  Bloomberg View, April 25, 2013.

Persecution of the Tatars

This subject is complicated by “Hizb ut-Tahrir”, a Tatar organization supportive of the Chechen rebels (presumably against affiliates of warlord Kadyrov) but not active itself with terrorism and, apparently, acting in the open.

Here’s reference.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/08/fns-russia-steps-up-terror-offensive-with-armed-raid-on-mosque-in-occupied-crimea-khpg-org/ – 5/8/2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars

Euromaidan Press.  “Crimea occupation authorities plan “Islamic extremist” show trial against Crimean Tatars– Mejlis head.”  June 7, 2016.

Naumlyuk, Anton.  “Crimean Tatars respond to persecution with collective prayer.”  Euromaidan Press, July 13, 2016.

” .  . teach people mercy, justice, and to care for one another . . . .”

Heffer, Greg.  “‘Hell beyond hell’ Syria snipers use unborn babies as target practice.”  Express, October 19, 2013.  The story has abundant corroboration in multiple major — and vetted — publications, including CNN – “Syrian snipers target pregnant women, unborn babies, doctor says” (October 23, 2013).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/syria-war-calls-sanctions-chemical-weapons-160831045020057.html – 8/31/2016.

Chemall, Hagar Hajjar.  “Why Syria’s children should be a global priority.” CNN, September 1, 2016.

Posted to YouTube by BBC News, March 15, 2016.

Crimea, Ukraine

Sterling, Toby and Anthony Deutsch.  “Malaysian flight MH17 downed by Russian-made missile: prosecutors.”  Reuters, September 28, 2016.

Pifer, Steven.  “Watch Out for Little Green Men.”  Brookings, July 7, 2014.

The Pentagon has identified eight staging areas in Russia where large numbers of military forces appear to be preparing for incursions into Ukraine, according to U.S. defense officials.

As many as 40,000 Russian troops, including tanks, armored vehicles, and air force units, are now arrayed along Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia.

Gertz, Bill.  “Russian Military Forces Staging Near Ukraine.”  The Washington Free Beacon, August 17, 2016.

One could research and read through the many themes, but I like Ben Judah’s comment best regarding the compact between Putin and Kadyrov: “This was a medieval deal that made Akhmad Kadyrov, a rebel commander and Sufi mufti, Putin’s feudal liege. The aim was to co-opt the more religiously moderate Sufis among Chechnya’s rebel fighters, marginalize the Salafist jihadists who appear to have fascinated the Boston bombers, and enable the Russian military to declare victory and draw down.”

BackChannels has been singing medieval about “Putin, Assad, and Khamenei (and Baghdadi)” for ages, but the observation now begs another question: how modern is the west?

If we call what we have been witnessing in Syria a “New Medievalism”, we may well ask where is NATO on the timeline of political conventions?

BackChannels hopes there is such a thing as “Modern” in governance  and that it is supported by the bravery in arms, integrity in character, and the honest research of the thoughtful.

Related in Recent News

Conley, Heather A.  “The Kremlin Playbook.”  Center for Strategic & International Studies, October 13, 2016.

Mortimer, Caroline.  “Russia tensions with US ‘more dangerous’ than during the Cold War.”  Independent, October 10, 2016.

Posted to YouTube by CSIS, October 13, 2016.

–33–

 

 

 

 

FTAC – Medieval vs Modern – One More Time

04 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

You missed what happened.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/27/putin-yanukovych-manafort-trump/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/04/ftac-he-vs-she-elections-medievalism-democracy-and-the-american-way/

So have the American and international publics.

The “Phantoms of the Cold War”, including Moscow-driven deflection and disinformation, have run through the Syrian Tragedy.

We may have a medieval world in which political experience involves broad illusion and perception managed by very powerful and wealthy personalities.

That’s life.

At this point, we should have had neither the Tyrant nor The Terrorists. I happen to believe — I’m the editor of the blog — that the two are of a whole “theater of politics and combat” in which the victims — dead, displaced, injured, or deeply manipulated — had no inherent value but to serve a new master or collection of them.

If there’s a positive observation to be made, cynically perhaps, or ironically, Syria may be interpreted as a demonstration project of the medieval worldview. The more established that becomes, the more widespread the potential for conflict and similar tracts of death and mass destruction.

BackChannels rests its case.

–33–

FTAC – “He” vs “She” – Elections, Medievalism, Democracy, and the “American Way”

04 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I’ve been waffling because I think whether “he” or “she”, it’s Putin who may pick up a round in the “re-medievalizing” of the west’s portion of global politics. He has helped damage political NATO through Hungary (Orban) and Turkey (Erdogan) and, of course, has manipulated terrorism

— and by the way, look up “Moscow, PFLP —

to goad westerner toward a rightly defensive nationalist response, but in the process we lose both a part of our democratic, modern, and tolerant soul.

Despite the Trump-Manafort-Yanukovych experience, Trump, who seems to be trying to figure these politics out from a cold start — and he knows he’s a beginner as politician, but he’s a fast learner too — may well stand up for American constitutional arrangements and values and temper the demagoguery with our culturally INCLUSIVE ethos, related ideals, and extensive development of law and policy across years.

Hillary might wind up in the same place — there is an “American Way”.

Missing from public popular perception: the Cold War — check out BackChannels for that (https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/ftac-interpreting…/) and how business and politics among the world’s most powerful and wealthiest people, Putin and the oligarchs among them, hew themselves to feudal models. Perhaps we are doing that now — and Hillary, by way of the necessity of delivering a Constitutional American experience to the American people, will also have to confront Putin (and the Phantoms of the Soviet in the Middle East and around the world).

Muslims – this from an American of Jewish descent who has tired of religious cant: no one “wins” anything with either a supremacist or totalitarian outlook and permit for barbarism.

The medieval worldview, fully on display in Syria, promotes political absolute power.

Whether Putin, Assad, or Khamenei or Baghdadi — “Different Talks — Same Walk!” applies.

Also, Center-of-the-Universe Christian, Jewish, or Muslim self-concept seems to me a remnant of medieval history.

The enemies of the west — extremists Red-Black, Brown, and Green / old comrades, new nationalists, and Islamists — need that worldview sustained, but the democratic open societies of the west, also secular in governance and humanist in ideals, simply don’t need that anymore.

We have all to make this choice about which world we would prefer to live: the medieval world (let it go, please) or the modern one (where we investigate issues and address problems every day in the interest of greater peace and prosperity plus human dignity and freedom).

I’ve edited some between the “Awesome Conversation” and this post, but in essence feel we need greater distinction in time between medieval worldviews and related governance and the same under the umbrella of the modern worldview.

The argument between Russia — a revanchist neo-imperial state — and its allies and clients and NATO, God bless that old alliance — may be distilled as “Medieval Absolute Power” vs “Modern Democratic Distribution”.

We may have a long way to go with that “argument”, but at least we should see it for what it is.

-33-

FTAC – Another Approach to Islam and the Medieval and Modern Worldviews

08 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Sadiq Khan symbolically stands between the medieval world, specifically a world defined by the possession of political (and social) absolute power as bragged, defended, and exercise by singular leaders using whatever means necessary to place themselves and keep themselves positioned as rulers. Although a dozen European states today remain monarchies, the democratic forces evolved within the “western” character — such things are not so limited, but for the sake of conversation one may use the convention — have over centuries modified and exchanged “absolute power” distributed power with a chief administrator or two (where a president and prime minister may co-exist).

The gulf between between the medieval and modern worldviews is immense and, perhaps as demonstrated by Putin and the related axis defined by Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran tells that the matter is not strictly about religion, including. It is about the human grasp of power and power in the hands of the malign.

With Islam, and this apart from examinations of the content of the Qur’an and related wisdom and exegesis — all of which criticism has been well argued and displayed all over the “strident infidel” web — the mere rejection of the “Islamists” (now that we have that term) and the bent toward caliphate, and that by the proverbial sword as swung by such as Baghdadi and others like him, constitutes reform. Whatever Muhammad may have done that Baghdadi believes he’s emulating, the modern wish not to do over and over and over and over all the way to second comings.

Evolved with piety kept intact, which I think may be D______’s conservative election, or instantly updated per the wishes of the Muslim Reform Movement, Sadiq Khan and others, again of modern bent, have a pretty good palette within which to reside within the House of Islam.

Regarding the role of the Jews (apart from “No Moses — no Muhammad”), the Hebrew’s teleological ejection of unquestioned and unquestionable human authority, the rejection of Pharaoh, has had its revolutionary impact on the world, and the shape of it has been such as to repeatedly meet some of the challenges posed by dictators, but as history has jagged edges, the power of the despotic may shrink across time, but there are many despots and some live out their lives to die peacefully in their beds (at least it’s looking that way for Mugabe).

In short (wouldn’t that be nice?), it’s not the Jews that may stand in judgment of Sadiq Khan but rather those who have come across from the medieval world and left behind — ejected — its manners in the development and exercise of political power.

The gist of the assertion posed as a question: the Jews won’t accept London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s overtures until Islam has been definitively reformed.

Well, bunk.

As noted above, the Ummah’s rejection of the al-Qaeda-type organizations may constitute “reform” — at least Baghdadi, that stickler for authenticity who believes he’s conducting a state in Muhammad’s image, would reject such “reform”.

In the medieval mode, it would be natural to expect that “one true church” would conquer all the others; in the modern, democratic, secular, and tolerant mode, every true church may borrow, evolve, and shift by parts accommodation and parts compassionate discernment and idealism.  The conquest by one of all becomes irrelevant.

As regards criticism and issues swirling around the figure of Muhammad and Islam, the blanket rejection of the same may call to mind Haider Mobarak’s term, “civilizational narcissism” as well as the many online sites devoted to the “anti-Jihad”.

Reference

Anti-Jihad (impossibly short list).  Answering Islam, Clarion Project, Pamela Geller, United West

BackChannels.  “Short and Pointed — The “Declaration of the Muslim Reform Movement.”  December 6, 2015.

Muslim Reform Movement.

Addendum – May 9, 2016

Sadiq Khan is no Muslim extremist. And it is not only his track record voting for gay rights that proves this. Having known him when I was a Muslim extremist, I know that he did not subscribe to my then-theocratic views.

Nawaz, Maajid.  “The Secret Life of Sadiq Khan, London’s First Muslim Mayor.”  The Daily Beast, May 8, 2016.

# # #

On Naz Shah’s 180-Degree Apology

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Political Psychology, Regions, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

I am sorry.

For someone who knows the scourge of oppression and racism all too well, it is important that I make an unequivocal apology for statements and ideas that I have foolishly endorsed in the past.

The manner and tone of what I wrote in haste is not excusable. With the understanding of the issues I have now I would never have posted them. I have to own up to the fact that ignorance is not a defence.

http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/jewish-news-exclusive-naz-shah-my-apology-to-the-jewish-community/

From the Awesome Conversation —

FB friend: Just a political move of a Jew hater!

Editor: I’m not so certain. People dead-end on bad habits, including bad habits of mind. In the past month, she has been the guest at a private seder without issues; she has made a public apology that reads as authentic statement . . . I think the world surrounding her has changed, and Naz Shah MP has set off in a new direction.

FB Friend: yes, the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder! It’s good to be optimistic! i am skeptical though!

Editor: I’ve just been to her page, and you can read the anti-Semitic spew that comes out in her crowd. Naz Shah with her apology and her soul has betrayed that mob, so she’s going to have to gather herself and face it. Good news if she has courage, she’ll have decent company and plenty of it.

Not only Naz Shah has been plunged into soul searching, the entire Labour Party has been lit up like summer noon by no less liberal a spotlight than The Guardian:

Lady Neuberger claimed the issue in Labour was “attached to Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader”, and “an issue within the hard left”.

John Woodcock, MP and former chair of the Labour Friends of Israel, said: “The handling of this has been a mess. But the most important thing is that the Labour leadership properly acknowledges now the scale of the antisemitism problem that is growing in the party.

Ben Judah, author of  Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013) has weighed in on George Galloway’s Hitlerian method — leveraging “Jew hate” (start with the stew — anger, fear, jealousy, ignorance, impoverishment, suspicion, shame — and stir it up) into political power and comfortable digs — and legacy in Bradford:

Perhaps that cycling-up of the anti-Semitic phantasmagoria that has duped and shortchanged Bradford will stop now with Naz Shah’s turnaround and the Labour Party’s (perhaps garment-rending) introspection as regards its tolerance for bigotry (anti-Semitic cant generally signals greater antipathy and contempt for additional others matched to the speaker’s own avarice and penchant for social control and related plunder).

Underestimated: the length of the shadows cast across the Left / Far Left (on this blog, the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left and Syndicate Red Brown Green) by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and their deliberate, intense, and medieval defamation of Jewry in service to whipping their mobs and using that energy to build the aristocracies that would then ride them into the ground.

Cited and Related Reference

Edwardes, Charlotte.  “George Galloway: I’ve always fancied being mayor – and next year I finally could be.”  Evening Standard, November 4, 2015.

Judah, Ben.  “You wouldn’t be surprised by Naz Shah’s remarks if you knew more about the city she came from.”  The Independent, April 29, 2016.

Mason, Rowena and Heather Stewart.  “Naz Shah row: peers accuse Labour of failing to root out antisemitism: Lord Levy and Lady Neuberger say Bradford West MP’s case highlights wider issue of antisemitism in parts of the left.”  The Guardian, April 28, 2016.

Shah, Naz.  “Jewish News Exclusive: Naz Shah: ‘My apology to the Jewish community’.  Jewish News, UK, April 27, 2016.

Addendum – April 29, 2016, 8:17 a.m., EST

The conversation rolls on:

Facebook Friend:  It is claimed that Shah’s apology was much more contrite before Seamas Milne took his blue pencil to it, speaking specifically about antisemetism.

BackChannels: Then she’s now wrestling with conscience and her political position. Gosh, I would like to speak to her for a few minutes! 🙂 When we “talk politics” we seldom talk “political psychology”, but behind all of this — behind Galloway, behind the disinforming and misshaping of Bradford’s political perception — there has been at work the malignant narcissism that manipulates mobs, that reaches for their sorrows and then gives the same a plate of readymade answers to what bothers them. Counter to that: the reparative vision — and once gotten, it’s impossible to give it back or give it up.

The latest on Seumas:

https://youtu.be/6u15lisZGAA 

Posted to YouTube April 29, 2016

Related: http://order-order.com/2016/04/29/seumas-milne-praises-hamas/

Related (Posted Both At and After Publication and Addendum Dates):

Cohen, Justin.  “Suspended MP Naz Shah tells synagogue: ‘I was ignorant about Judaism.”  Jewish News Online, May 30, 2016.

Cohen, Nick.  “I saw the darkness of antisemitism, but I never thought it would get this dark.”  The Guardian, April 30, 2016.

Julius, Anthony, Nick Cohen, and Daniel Johnson.  “The Socialism of Fools.”  Standpoint, January / February 2013.

Malik, Kenan.  “The British Left’s ‘Jewish Problem'”.  The New York Times, May 3, 2016.

Mosbacher, Michael.  “The Stalinist Past of Corbyn’s Strategist.”  Standpoint, December 2015.

Omer-Jackaman.  “The Left, Anti-Zionism & Anti-Semitism.”  London Progressive Journal, March 28, 2015.

# # #