Friday, December 17, 2010

Veterans Today: anti-Semitism moving from the right to the left

In the very early 1920’s the Brown Shirts who followed Hitler were generally considered a gang of buffoons. Once known as the German workers Party, even before Hitler, their main ideas were to fight capitalism and communism, uphold nationalism and despise the Jews. They were a small group of radicals who participated in street fights with the communist. In the end they were not a joke, but were responsible for the murder of millions of people including six million Jews.

I write this having just read an article in the left leaning Israeli newspaper, Haaretz.com, Bloggers claim WikiLeaks struck deal with Israel over diplomatic cables leaks. The article written by Danna Harman, unwittingly, includes a small interview with the publisher of Veterans Today’s Senior Editor, Gordon Duff. While Veterans Today majors in progressive views its Editor, Duff, and its writers believe not only that Wikileaks was instigated by Israel but also 9-11.

Veterans Today is one of the more vile anti-Semitic sites on the internet offering material by one of the vilest anti-Semitic writers, J.B. Campbell, who advocates the death of Jewish rabbis and American leadership in both government and business. He also pushes for the destruction of Israel and believes Germany was the good nation during World War II.

In one article, DEFENSE AGAINST ZIONIST AGGRESSION, Campbell writes:

“Jews are in controlling positions in every segment of our lives, from the financial collapse of Wall Street, to the collapse of our currency by the Federal Reserve Corporation, the collapse of the US military from Jewish wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a de facto Jewish war against Pakistan and a threatened Jewish war against Iran. Trillions of tax dollars have been lost to the pockets of Jewish bankers and speculators.”
And:

“The only foreign enemies we have are in Israel. You don’t need to mess with them. The real enemy is domestic, the Jew who sends you to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran to kill people who never threatened us but who are hated by Jews. We have to clean up this country by wiping out the Jewish organization.”
This is a new move of anti-Semitism from the right to the left. The far right has always had an anti-Semitic bent. But now with the constant push by those involved in leftist movements to delegitimize the State of Israel, which they see as a symbol of all that they hate about the West, many publications, religious groups and newspapers are being infiltrated by leftist anti-Semitism.

Just recently I posted an article about James Wall, former publisher and Editor of Christian Century praising Veterans Today.[1] He wrote, “The website Veterans Today is not a “sludge-bucket”. It is a progressive website that sees injustice and calls it for what it is …” He is a contributing writer for a site connected to Veterans Today, My Catbird Seat. Also, along with Gordon Duff, Wall believes Israel is the instigator of the Wikileaks.

A Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) organization the Israel/Palestine Mission Network, with mostly a progressive membership, continues linking to Wall and his diatribes against Israel and the Jews. Such is the infiltration of radical anti-Semitism into the progressive community.

This growing movement feeds on itself. At least eight anti-Semitic sites pull in articles by Gordon Duff and others who write for Veterans Today. Interestingly enough no one has yet used any of the articles written by the ultimate anti-Semite who writes there, J.B. Campbell. But like the Brown Shirts and Hitler with which I began this article, all of this awful anti-Semitism can move swiftly into a movement that one will no longer think of as a small group of buffoons, but rather a movement of large scary orcs straight out of a JRR Tolkien book.

[1] Please note, Christian Century does not prescribe to any form of anti-Semitism. In fact before the Presbyterian General Assembly James Wall in anger wrote an article, which among other things, denounced one of their articles which stood up for the Jewish people. See, “Israeli “Agents” Infiltrate Presbyterian General Assembly.

3 comments:

Greg Scandlen said...

Viola, I love your work, but I would encourage you to rethink the traditional Left-Right paradigm, with Fascists on the Right and Communists on the Left. There is really no difference between the two, though one may be more nationalist and the other more internationalist.

The real dichotomy is between empowering the State and the individual. Fascists and Communists are both totalitarian Statists, while people who believe in individual freedom used to be known as liberals (and are now considered "classical liberals.")

Anti-Semites have always been totalitarians who use fear of "the other" to control people. These same totalitarians are also anti-Christian, or at best will tolerate the Christian church only as long as it submits to the State.

will spotts said...

Greg - I realize you are completely right about the common totalitarian nature of Fascism and Communism. Statist philosophies are, after all, naturally similar.

Yet I have to ask a question: there is a specific content in the 'traditional' groupings of left and right. Meaning each has issues or ideas they tend to strongly favor; these seem to be grouped together; and they appear to be consistent.

What Viola is most likely addressing is these 'traditional' groupings. For many years in the US, it has been the fringe on the traditional "right" grouping that demonstrated a taste for the most vile antisemitism. While it occurred in pockets on the traditional "left", it was far from acceptable there. Now it has found a home on the traditional "left" - and is being, if not widely embraced, at least extremely widely tolerated - even approved.

That strikes many of us as a change.

So, while I agree with you, I'm still left looking for a way to describe what I'm seeing on the American landscape.

Viola Larson said...

Greg,

I probably confused the issues with my title. To be precise what I meant in particular was anti-Semitism moving from the extreme right into the progressive arena, religion, politics, news etc. I think that was almost predictable. Progressivism tends in ideology to follow cultural trends since it does not espouse any kind of absolute truth.

The truth is there is and wasn’t much difference between Fascism and Marxism. Both are anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity. Both came out of the darker edges of the Romantic Movement. Perhaps in their early years the biggest difference was racism, but then that was mostly in Germany. Today one finds some Marxism in South America that is a resembles Nazism entailing the same kind of anti-Semitism.

But Will is right I was attempting to show a real shift in the thought process of some (not all) in the progressive movement.

But I was doing something else too. I needed a small article that could be used to tell someone who/what Veterans Today really is. They are not actually concerned about veterans; they just think that is a good group to peddle their poison to. I think they are wrong.