#edward s. herman

[emotionalsupportkelpie]

My Top 10 Best Reads of 2024

*Author’s note: This list is not based on books published in 2024, but rather the books I personally read in 2024. Some, but not all of them, were brand new releases this year; and some were published decades ago. This was a reading year full of nonfiction–lots and lots of great antifascist, anarchist nonfiction. Maybe that’s not surprising, given I joined a local Progressive Book Club that…

[mycstilleblog]

"Die Konsensfabrik" von Chomsky/Herman erstmalig auf Deutsch - Rezension

Da ist es nun endlich, 35 Jahre nach der Veröffentlichung in den USA – und zwar erstmalig auf Deutsch. Keine Ahnung warum es so lange dauern musste bis es in deutscher Übersetzung erschien. Der Titel: „Die Konsensfabrik“. Herausgegeben vom Westend Verlag. Michael Schiffmann hat es übersetzt. Nachdem er früher bereits Angela Davis und Noam Chomsky ins Deutsche übertragen hat. In einem dreiviertel…

[leo-fie]

The year is 2023.

Noam Chomsky's and Edward S. Herman released their influential work "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" in 1988.

It got rereleased in 2002 with new content.

It takes until 2023 for it to be translated and released in Germany.

35 years later.

Most of Chomsky's other works have been released here. Even his linguistics stuff. You could expect the works of an influential public intellectual like him to be released after a few years, even if they mainly concern other countries and are only partly applicable to Germany.

But for some reason Manufacturing Consent was not.

Probably some licencing issues. Boring legal reasons. I'm not insinuatiing bad intent.

But one could.

[supervillain-smut]

(I will be writing for comics Reverse Flash, Loki, Riddler, Scarecrow, and Morbius. I will not be writing Eowells, MCU Loki, Paul Dano's Riddler, or Jared Leto's Morbius.)

[talking-theory-with-chatgpt]

Please provide 5 interesting or popular quotes from “Manufacturing Consent”

Sure, here are five interesting quotes from “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman:

“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.”

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

“The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.”

“The mass media are the vehicles through which we receive most of our information. The information is designed to tell us what we should think about and what we shouldn’t think about.”

“The media are run by corporations that are run for profit. That’s the first point. The second point is that the media are structured in such a way that they are answerable to these corporations and not to the people.”

These quotes highlight some of the key themes and arguments presented in “Manufacturing Consent,” including the role of the mass media in shaping public opinion and the power dynamics that underlie media ownership and control.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Nichols at The Nation:

Donald Trump has made no secret of his determination to govern as a “dictator” if he regains the presidency, and that’s got his critics warning that his reelection would spell the end of democracy. But Trump and his allies are too smart to go full Kim Jong Un. Rather, the former president’s enthusiasm for the authoritarian regimes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán suggests the models he would build on: managing elections to benefit himself and his Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting and constraining press freedom; and undermining civil society. Trump, who famously demanded that the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential voting be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of democracy without the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what propaganda experts Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead once described as “demonstration elections,” in which, instead of actual contests, wins are assured for the authoritarians who control the machinery of democracy. The outline for such a scenario emerges from a thorough reading of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, which specifically proposes a Trump-friendly recalculation of the systems that sustain American democracy. The strategy for establishing an American version of Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” is not spelled out in any particular chapter of Mandate. Rather, it is woven throughout the whole of the document, with key elements appearing in the chapters on reworking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In the section on the DHS, for instance, there’s a plan to eliminate the ability of the agency that monitors election security to prevent the spread of disinformation about voting and vote counting.

How serious a threat to democracy would that pose? Think back to November 2020, when Trump was developing his Big Lie about the election he’d just lost. Trump’s false assertion that the election had been characterized by “massive improprieties and fraud” was tripped up by Chris Krebs, who served as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the DHS. The Republican appointee and his team had established a 24/7 “war room” to work with officials across the country to monitor threats to the security and integrity of the election. The operation was so meticulous that Krebs could boldly announce after the voting was finished: “America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too.” At the same time, his coordinating team declared, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” This infuriated Trump, who immediately fired the nation’s top election security official.

In Mandate’s chapter on the DHS, Ken Cuccinelli writes, “Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinformation efforts. The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth.” Cuccinelli previously complained that CISA “is a DHS component that the Left has weaponized to censor speech and affect elections.” As for the team that worked so successfully with Krebs to secure the 2020 election, the Project 2025 document declares that “the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One.” The potential impact? “It’s a way of emasculating the agency—that is, it prevents it from doing its job,” says Herb Lin, a cyber-policy and security scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

This is just one way that Project 2025’s cabal of “experts” is scheming to thwart honest discourse about elections and democracy. A chapter on public broadcasting proposes to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of a larger plan to upend NPR, PBS, and “other public broadcasters that benefit from CPB funding, including the even-further-to-the Left Pacifica Radio and American Public Media.” More destabilizing than the total funding cut that Project 2025 entertains is a parallel plan to end the status of NPR and Pacifica radio stations as “noncommercial education stations.” That could deny them their current channel numbers at the low end of the radio spectrum (88 to 92 FM)—a move that would open prime territory on the dial for the sort of religious programming that already claims roughly 42 percent of the airwaves that the FCC reserves for noncommercial broadcasting. And don’t imagine that the FCC would be in a position to write new rules that guard against the surrender of those airwaves to the Trump-aligned religious right.

[...]

While project 2025 seeks to rewire the FCC to favor Trump’s allies, it also wants to lock in dysfunction at the Federal Election Commission, the agency that is supposed to govern campaign spending and fundraising. Established 50 years ago, the FEC has six members—three Republicans and three Democrats—who are charged with overseeing the integrity of federal election campaigns. In recent years, however, this even partisan divide has robbed the FEC of its ability to act because, as a group of former FEC employees working with the Campaign Legal Center explained, “three Commissioners of the same party, acting in concert, can leave the agency in a state of deadlock.” As the spending by outside groups on elections “has exponentially increased, foreign nationals and governments have willfully manipulated our elections, and coordination between super PACs and candidates has become commonplace,” the former employees noted. Yet “the FEC [has] deadlocked on enforcement matters more often than not, frequently refusing to even investigate alleged violations despite overwhelming publicly available information supporting them.”

John Nichols wrote in The Nation about how Project 2025’s radical right-wing wishlist of items contains plans to wreck and subvert what is left of America’s democracy.

See Also:

The Nation: June 2024 Issue

[grandhotelabyss]

What are your favorite essays/collections of literary criticism?

Some favorite single essays:

Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defence of Poetry"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet"

Herman Melville, "Hawthorne and His Mosses"

Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"

Henry James, "The Art of Fiction"

Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny"

Walter Benjamin, "Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death"

T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

Viktor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique"

Mikhail Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel"

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, "In Praise of Shadows"

G. Wilson Knight, "The Embassy of Death: An Essay on Hamlet"

Simone Weil, "The Iliad, or, The Poem of Force"

Jorge Luis Borges, "Kafka and His Precursors"

Ralph Ellison, "The World and the Jug"

James Baldwin, "Everybody's Protest Novel"

Leslie Fiedler, "The Middle Against Both Ends"

Iris Murdoch, "The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited"

Flannery O'Connor, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction"

Gilles Deleuze, "On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature"

George Steiner, "A Reading Against Shakespeare"

Derek Walcott, "The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory"

Toni Morrison, "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature"

Louise Glück, "Education of a Poet"

Camille Paglia, "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf"

Michael W. Clune, "Bernhard's Way"

Some favorite collections:

Samuel Johnson, Selected Essays

Oscar Wilde, Intentions

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

George Orwell, All Art Is Propaganda

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation

Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited

Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination

Cynthia Ozick, Art and Ardor

V. S. Pritchett, Complete Collected Essays

Gore Vidal, United States

Joyce Carol Oates, The Faith of a Writer

Tom Paulin, Minotaur

J. M. Coetzee, Stranger Shores

Michael Wood, Children of Silence

James Wood, The Broken Estate

Edward Said, Reflections on Exile

Gabriel Josipovici, The Singer on the Shore

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia

William Giraldi, American Audacity

[ghelgheli]

Stuff I Read In June 2024

bold indicates favourites

Books

Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler

Manufacturing Consent, Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky

Yuri/GL

A Monster Wants to Eat Me, Naekawa Sai

That Time I Was Blackmailed By the Class' Green Tea Bitch, Xian Jun

My Sister's Best Friend, My Lover, Fujimatsu Mei

Childhood Friend, Big Love, Kanno Fumi

An OL at Her Limit and a College Girl, Obata Rui

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat (Vol 4), Sakaomi Yuzaki

Monthly in the Garden with My Landlord, Yodokawa

Sora and Haena, Jackbull

Short Fiction

Does a Bee Care? Isaac Asimov

Silly Asses, Isaac Asimov

Buy Jupiter! Isaac Asimov

A Statue for Father, Isaac Asimov

Rain, Rain, Go Away, Isaac Asimov

Palestine

The Right To Exist, Rana Issa [link]

Ugly Enjoyment, Nadia Bou Ali [link]

On October 7, Gaza broke out of prison, Mariam Barghouti [link]

Queer &c.

How to get Fucked by a Trans Woman, lily bloodguts [link]

Why Be Nonbinary? Robin Dembroff [link]

Amelioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman, Katharine Jenkins [link]

Toward an Account of Gender Identity, Katharine Jenkins [link]

Why the Trans Inclusion Problem Cannot be Solved, Tomas Bogardus [link]

Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion, Talia Mae Bettcher [link]

Trans Identities and First-Person Authority, Talia Mae Bettcher

Through the Looking Glass: Trans Theory Meets Feminist Philosophy, Talia Mae Bettcher

Transgender Studies: Queer Theory's Evil Twin, Susan Stryker

Under Construction: Decolonized Queer Masculinities, Shay-Akil McLean [link]

The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto, Sandy Stone

Transsexualism: Reflections on the Persistence of Gender and the Mutability of Sex, Judith Shapiro

History/Theory

Anti-Blackness as Disavowal and Condition: Rethinking Foucault’s “Carceral Society”, Melayna Lamb & Tia Trafford [link]

1492: A New World View, Sylvia Wynter

Against the Logic of Submission, Wolfi Landstreicher [link]

Other

Who’s Behind All the `Pussy in Bio` on X? John Herman [link]

Why Do We Keep Inventing the Magical School? Tanvi Chowdhary [link]

Pants Scientists and Bona Fide Cyber Ninjas: Tracing the Poetics of Cyberpunk Menswear, Esko Suoranta [link]

Graffiti, Through Grief and Discovery, Clement Gelly [link]

[todaysdocument]

Discharge Petition for H.R. 7152, the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Record Group 233: Records of the U.S. House of RepresentativesSeries: General Records

This item, H.R. 7152, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, faced strong opposition in the House Rules Committee. Howard Smith, Chairman of the committee, refused to schedule hearings for the bill. Emanuel Celler, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, attempted to use this discharge petition to move the bill out of committee without holding hearings. The petition failed to gain the required majority of Congress (218 signatures), but forced Chairman Smith to schedule hearings.

88th CONGRESS. House of Representatives No. 5 Motion to Discharge a Committee from the Consideration of a RESOLUTION (State whether bill, joint resolution, or resolution) December 9, 1963 To the Clerk of the House of Representatives: Pursuant to Clause 4 of Rule XXVII (see rule on page 7), I EMANUEL CELLER (Name of Member), move to discharge to the Commitee on RULES (Committee) from the consideration of the RESOLUTION; H. Res. 574 entitled, a RESOLUTION PROVIDING FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF THE BILL (H. R. 7152) which was referred to said committee November 27, 1963 in support of which motion the undersigned Members of the House of Representatives affix their signatures, to wit: 1. Emanuel Celler 2. John J. Rooney 3. Seymour Halpern 4. James G Fulton 5. Thomas W Pelly 6. Robt N. C. Nix 7. Jeffery Cohelan 8. W A Barrett 9. William S. Mailiard 10. 11. Augustus F. Hawkins 12. Otis G. Pike 13. Benjamin S Rosenthal 14. Spark M Matsunaga 15. Frank M. Clark 16. William L Dawson 17. Melvin Price 18. John C. Kluczynski 19. Barratt O'Hara 20. George E. Shipley 21. Dan Rostenkowski 22. Ralph J. Rivers[page] 2 23. Everett G. Burkhalter 24. Robert L. Leggett 25. William L St Onge 26. Edward P. Boland 27. Winfield K. Denton 28. David J. Flood 29. 30. Lucian N. Nedzi 31. James Roosevelt 32. Henry C Reuss 33. Charles S. Joelson 34. Samuel N. Friedel 35. George M. Rhodes 36. William F. Ryan 37. Clarence D. Long 38. Charles C. Diggs Jr 39. Morris K. Udall 40. Wm J. Randall 41. 42. Donald M. Fraser 43. Joseph G. Minish 44. Edith Green 45. Neil Staebler 46. 47. Ralph R. Harding 48. Frank M. Karsten 49. 50. John H. Dent 51. John Brademas 52. John E. Moss 53. Jacob H. Gilbert 54. Leonor K. Sullivan 55. John F. Shelley 56. 57. Lionel Van Deerlin 58. Carlton R. Sickles 59. 60. Edward R. Finnegan 61. Julia Butler Hansen 62. Richard Bolling 63. Ken Heckler 64. Herman Toll 65. Ray J Madden 66. J Edward Roush 67. James A. Burke 68. Frank C. Osmers Jr 69. Adam Powell 70. 71. Fred Schwengel 72. Philip J. Philiben 73. Byron G. Rogers 74. John F. Baldwin 75. Joseph Karth 76. 77. Roland V. Libonati 78. John V. Lindsay 79. Stanley R. Tupper 80. Joseph M. McDade 81. Wm Broomfield 82. 83. 84. Robert J Corbett 85. 86. Craig Hosmer87. Robert N. Giaimo 88. Claude Pepper 89. William T Murphy 90. George H. Fallon 91. Hugh L. Carey 92. Robert T. Secrest 93. Harley O. Staggers 94. Thor C. Tollefson 95. Edward J. Patten 96. 97. Al Ullman 98. Bernard F. Grabowski 99. John A. Blatnik 100. 101. Florence P. Dwyer 102. Thomas L. ? 103. 104. Peter W. Rodino 105. Milton W. Glenn 106. Harlan Hagen 107. James A. Byrne 108. John M. Murphy 109. Henry B. Gonzalez 110. Arnold Olson 111. Harold D Donahue 112. Kenneth J. Gray 113. James C. Healey 114. Michael A Feighan 115. Thomas R. O'Neill 116. Alphonzo Bell 117. George M. Wallhauser 118. Richard S. Schweiker 119. 120. Albert Thomas 121. 122. Graham Purcell 123. Homer Thornberry 124. 125. Leo W. O'Brien 126. Thomas E. Morgan 127. Joseph M. Montoya 128. Leonard Farbstein 129. John S. Monagan 130. Brad Morse 131. Neil Smith 132. Harry R. Sheppard 133. Don Edwards 134. James G. O'Hara 135. 136. Fred B. Rooney 137. George E. Brown Jr. 138. 139. Edward R. Roybal 140. Harris. B McDowell jr. 141. Torbert H. McDonall 142. Edward A. Garmatz 143. Richard E. Lankford 144. Richard Fulton 145. Elizabeth Kee 146. James J. Delaney 147. Frank Thompson Jr 148. 149. Lester R. Johnson 150. Charles A. Buckley4 151. Richard T. Hanna 152. James Corman 153. Paul A Fino 154. Harold M. Ryan 155. Martha W. Griffiths 156. Adam E. Konski 157. Chas W. Wilson 158. Michael J. Kewan 160. Alex Brooks 161. Clark W. Thompson 162. John D. Gringell [?] 163. Thomas P. Gill 164. Edna F. Kelly 165. Eugene J. Keogh 166 John. B. Duncan 167. Elmer J. Dolland 168. Joe Caul 169. Arnold Olsen 170. Monte B. Fascell [?] 171. [not deciphered] 172. J. Dulek 173. Joe W. [undeciphered] 174. J. J. Pickle [Numbers 175 through 214 are blank]

[blackbutler-readerinsertsandjunk]

Which black butler characters do you think would prefer a dominant s/o?

*eyes all the ones who want dominant* c'mere babies- XD

Who prefers a more dominant/authoritative S/O: Arthur, Conny, Edgar, Finny, Joanne, Lizzie, Mey Rin, Othello, Patrick, Ran Mao, Sascha, Snake, Soma, Thomas, Triplets

Who prefers a more submissive/supportive S/O: Aleister, Ash, Astre, Bravat, Claude, Clayton, Derrick, Diedrich, Grell, Grey, Herman, Lau, Maurice, Peter, Sebastian

Who would be fine with either/would prefer a S/O who has both traits in equal or almost equal measure: Agni, Alan, Alois, Anne, Bard, Cheslock, Ciel, Dagger, Drossel, Edward, Eric, Freckles, Gregory, Hannah, John, Joker, Jumbo, Lawrence, Nina, Phipps, Ronald, Rudger, Undertaker, Wendy, William, Wolfram

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

How Anti-Semitic Rhetoric Became Mainstream

Using anti-Semitic rhetoric, society historically accused Jews of being rich oppressors as well as leeches. Jews were rulers as well as disloyal agitators. Jews, they opined, are members of an inferior race; now, they are members of a privileged one.

Contemporary Jew-haters have similarly evolved in their use of anti-Semitic rhetoric. They have transformed what were once the sentiments of the radical fringe into the accepted stance of our current woke moralists. 

“Doublespeak” – the deliberate use of language to conceal or distort the truth, a concept made popular in George Orwell’s 1984 – is the main tool in the arsenal of today’s anti-Semites. Spouting the correct language, they have seamlessly transformed their expressions of unbridled, raw hatred into commendable academic jargon. Unfortunately, it is also pure anti-Semitic rhetoric.

“What is really important in the world of doublespeak is the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program,” explains writer Edward S. Herman in his book Beyond Hypocrisy.

Phase I: “Zionism is Racism”

Post World War II, the anti-Semitic rhetoric shifted away from overtly anti-Jewish to a new concept, “anti-Zionist.” The murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust was a fresh memory. This made attacking Jews on the international stage less politically attractive.

While this didn’t stop powerful countries from closing their doors to Jewish refugees from Europe, it did change the discourse. Now, Jews were attacked by the declaration that “Zionism is racism.”

Where and how did this ruse begin? Not surprisingly, with the Soviets, world-class masters of doublespeak.

The USSR’s Campaign Against Israel

The 1917 revolutionary forces in the former USSR officially abolished the Czarists’ discriminatory policies against Jews. Yet, the reality of life for Jews under the Bolsheviks was one of state-enforced antisemitism and demonization.

Jews lived with quotas as well as outright rejection from universities. Many professions simply shut them out. When they did find employment, they faced glass ceilings, never able to progress to the highest levels.

Yet, surprisingly, when the state of Israel was created in 1948, “All international communist parties supported partition and the creation of a Jewish State,” documents Philip Mendes in Jews and the Left: The Rise and Fall of a Political Alliance.  

This included as well the U.S. Communist Party which called Israel “an organic part of the world struggle for peace and democracy. The French communists viewed the Israelis in solidary with “resistance” fighters throughout the world.

Why Soviet Support Changed

Immediately after Israel’s 1948 victory in the War of Independence, “Zionism was �� celebrated by the left as an organic movement of national return and a model for national liberation and decolonization movements throughout the world,” writes Alex Rychin in “Red Terror: How the Soviet Union Shaped the Modern Anti-Zionist Discourse.”

“Israel’s victory in its War of Independence and refusal to succumb to far mightier foes was positively awe-inspiring to adherents of political movements predicated on toppling structures of power,” explains Rychin.

Ironically, it was the communists who understood Zionism for what it actually is. Namely, the return of the Jewish people to their indigenous homeland (“Zion” being one of Israel’s biblical names). Historically, the Jewish people are the only people in existence who have had a continuous presence and a claim to the land in what is now the state of Israel.

However, communist support for the nascent state of Israel waned quickly, not due to ideology but to politics. By the time the modern state of Israel was created, the Cold War between Russia and the United States had already begun. The two superpowers pitted against each other, each vying for world dominance, including in the Middle East.

Israel's Support for Democracy

By the early 1950s, when it became apparent that Israel was espousing Western democratic values and supporting America, the Soviets realized they needed to significantly downgrade Israel, if not entirely ostracize it in the eyes of the world. That's where the anti-Semitic rhetoric came into play.

As a first step, the Soviets began spewing and exporting rabid anti-Semitic rhetoric. Specifically, they embarked on an intense and concentrated campaign against the “Zionists.” Part of this campaign was the infamous 1953 “Doctors Plot.” There, the Soviet government levied false charges against prominent Jewish doctors. They accused them of planning to murder leading government and communist party officials.

“The propaganda was highly compelling and steeped in long-established [anti-Semitic] themes of Jewish bloodthirstiness, greed, corruption, manipulation and cunning. It would contend that the very existence of a Jewish homeland was not only a plot of imperialism, but a mortal danger to the peace of the world,” writes Rychin.

While Russia was busy introducing the term “anti-Zionist” into the global lexicon, most Americans were focused on the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. Yet Soviet-supporting professors at top American universities were paying close attention. In truth, anti-Semitism had never been in short supply at these universities. Most of them had Jewish quotas of their own.

The UN Ruse

At the UN, the Soviets began employing an audacious strategy using anti-Semitic rhetoric against Israel learned. Although the Nazis were their arch enemies, the Soviets learned from none other than Adolf Hitler. In his 1925 book Mein Kampf, Hitler praises the efficacy of using the psychological technique known as the “Big Lie”-- essentially promoting a lie so big that no one would believe that anyone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

Rychin documents the fabrication of the “Big Lie” against Israel by the Soviets:

When a sub-commission of the United Nations was tasked with drafting a convention on the “elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” the proceedings naturally focused on apartheid, neo-Nazism and antisemitism. But the Soviets viewed the reference to antisemitism as a direct rebuke to their anti-Jewish measures, and served up an amendment that “was almost a joke,” even to the Soviet delegation itself.

The amendment inserted Zionism into the listed forms of racism. According to sources close to the deliberations, the Soviets understood “full well that the idea that Zionism is racism is an indefensible position,” yet they floated it anyway, in part to turn the US-led initiative into farce, and in part perhaps, to see how far a “big lie,” could go.

Ultimately, the Convention was adopted with neither antisemitism nor Zionism referred to … But the seed had been planted.

On 10 November 1975, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed resolution 3379 on the “elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” which determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and discrimination.”

The accusation stuck, and pro-Israel advocates are still fighting this absurd allegation.

Phase II: “Zionism is a settler-colonial white supremacist ideology”

Today, anti-Semites still use the “Zionism is racism” canard against Israel. But now, the anti-Semitic rhetoric comes with a litany of other “sins” – namely that Israel is a “settler-colonial white supremacist” state. In this context, its “racist” nature is simply a given.

What caused the switch in language? How does it benefit those who desire to bring down the only Jewish state in the world? 

“Coalition of the Oppressed”

Most Americans viewed the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States as a watershed moment. Finally, the country thought, the era of post-racism had arrived. The fight for racial equality began with the freeing of the slaves. It was codified into law through the 1968 Civil Rights. Yet, it saw its ultimate expression in Obama’s election.

Most Americans thought that the era of post-racialism in America had finally arrived. Yet, Obama’s reaction to a number of pivotal moments in his presidency – the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida, the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (an event that sparked the Black Lives Movement) and the 1915 death of Freddie Gray while in police custody in Baltimore – proved otherwise.

With racial tensions flaring, the Obama years constituted the perfect atmosphere for the divisive concept of critical race theory to break through the walls of academia and find its expression in the streets of America.

By the end of Obama’s second term as president, a Rasmussen poll found that 60 percent of American voters thought race relations in the United States had worsened since President Obama’s election. A similar New York Times/CBS poll taken at the same time found that nearly 70 percent of Americans thought race relations in America were bad. This represented a level unseen since the 1992 Rodney King riots.

Critical race theory’s charge that America is a “systemically racist” country was powerful. Yet, those in Obama’s camp who were forward thinking knew that this grievance alone would not be enough to sustain their power base over time. Obama also recognized the limitations of this charge.

Identity Politics and Anti-Semitic Rhetoric

It was thus during his second term that Obama embraced the concept of identity politics. He began to push the idea of a “coalition of the oppressed.” The coalition included blacks, women (feminists), Hispanics, Muslims, indigenous and other “brown” people as well as those identifying as gay, lesbian, trans and a myriad of other emerging sexual identities – essentially all those granted victim status due to their oppression by the “Establishment.”

Jews were noticeably and pointedly not included.

In the 1960s, the “Establishment” was loosely defined as the structures of societal authority. By the early 21st century, those reviving the concept had a much more specific definition of their oppressors. Namely, “white supremacist colonial powers.” Those powers specifically included Jews, Zionists and Israelis, all of whom were now identified as white, European interlopers on land indigenous to “Palestinians” (a term previously used in common English to identify anyone living in British Mandate Palestine, Jews and Arabs alike).

Despite Sharia law’s treatment of gays, women and minorities, the coalition welcomed Islamist organizations. It did the same for radical Palestinian organizations, rebranding their violent tactics and support for terror conveniently as “resistance.”

Many of these organizations, such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), had already enjoyed victim status on college campuses. This was due to the successful mainstreaming of the “Zionism is racism” mantra, classic anti-Semitic rhetoric.

"Points of Unity"

When Nerdeen Kiswani, co-founder and former chair of New York City SJP (NYC SJP), began the radical Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime (WOL), it was with this broader “coalition of the oppressed” in mind. On a page titled “Points of Unity, “ WOL’s website reads,  

“We are anti-Zionists. Zionism is a settler-colonial white supremacist ideology built on the genocide and dispossession of the Palestinian people.”

On the same page, WOL pledges its allegiance to

“all oppressed nationality people in the United States and around the world to engage in all forms of struggle in pursuit of freedom.” 

One of WOL’s goals is to “Globalize the Intifada,” a strategy they employ to tie all “liberation” of “colonized and oppressed people” to persecution by the Jews – in WOL’s words, to “break free from the genocidal grip of U.S. imperialism and Zionism.” 

Neveen Ayesh: A Case Study

Ayesh is a millennial Palestinian-American activist working as the government relations coordinator for the Missouri branch of American Muslims for Palestine, an extremist anti-Israel organization with links to terror groups and terror financiers. The Anti-Defamation League has accused AMP of “provid[ing] a platform for anti-Semitism.”

She was active on Twitter between 2011-2017 when she was between 18- to 24-years old. There, she openly and unabashedly expressed her vitriolic hatred of Jews and spewed anti-Semitic rhetoric. A sample of her rage from that period includes the following tweets:

“#crimesworthyoftherope being a Jew" ( August 4, 2011)

“I want to set Israel on fire with my own hands & watch it burn to ashes along with every Israeli in it. Call it what you want to call it idc" (February 17, 2014)

“I should join al-Qassam [Hamas’ terrorist wing]. Be the first female to join their group lololol #IdLoveToThough." (August 2, 2014)

Ayesh is now a political ally of Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO) and co-hosted a fundraiser for her. She also has political aspirations of her own and has toned down her anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Re-branding Anti-Semitic Rhetoric

Canary Mission recently called out Bush for her relationship with Ayesh (whose antisemitism was widely known). In an attempt at damage control, Ayesh responded with a long tweet thread, essentially excusing her antisemitism by re-branding it in the “language of the oppressed.”

After acknowledging that she had said “horrible things” about Jews and assuring us that she is really “not that person,” she blamed her hatred on the “chaos” she claims is part of the Palestinian experience.

“Chaos,” she says, “that no one seemed to - and still does not - care about because we’re brown. Muslims and Christian’s alike but we’re brown and Palestinian Arab.”

Ayesh says that after moving to the United States and going to college, she “learned how to assign academic terminology to what I had witnessed, experienced, & continue to experience at home & abroad. I became able to speak from an analytical and informative aspect rather than an emotional one of rage …”

Namely, what Ayesh learned was how to use anti-Semitic rhetoric effectively. Now, she labels Israel a “settler-colonialist white supremacy” entity. From this perspective, it then becomes legitimate to advocate for Israel’s total destruction.

Agendas Over Facts

Increasingly, agendas are more important to our populace than facts. This makes language a powerful tool in the arsenal of anti-Semites. It is particularly dangerous when used by radical groups like the New York-based Within Our Lifetime (WOL). These groups have successfully used venomous rhetoric to inspire physical attacks on Jews.

Last year, WOL activists sent Jews in New York to hospitals through their violent attacks. The group’s aggressive campaigns have been linked to the dramatic increase of attacks on Jews in the wider New York population.

Through equally anti-Semitic and venomous rhetoric, campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine have successfully created atmospheres at U.S. universities where Jews are not only pushed out of student leadership positions but where Jewish students at large no longer feel safe on campus.

Like their Soviet predecessors, today’s anti-Semites rely on the “Big Lie” to sell their wares. Unfortunately, they are being sold to increasingly uneducated and gullible consumers.   

[protoslacker]

While exposing the dangers and dilemmas of deterrence theory, Kubrick also satirized contemporary military figures and strategists, probably including Henry Kissinger, the author of Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957); physicist Edward Teller, the “father” of the H-bomb; the ex-Nazi space scientist Wernher Von Braun; and the bombastic, cigar-chomping SAC commander Curtis LeMay, who in 1957 had told a government commission assessing U.S. nuclear policy that, if a Soviet attack ever seemed likely, he planned to “knock the shit out of them before they got off the ground.” Reminded that U.S. policy rejected preemptive war, LeMay had retorted, “No, it’s not national policy, but it’s my policy.” Much of the strategic thinking that Kubrick critiques, and even some of the dialogue in “Dr. Strangelove,” came from the work of Herman Kahn of the RAND Corp., an Air Force-funded California think tank. Kubrick read Kahn’s work carefully, especially his influential On Thermonuclear War (1960). General Turgidson’s upbeat assessment of the outcome of an all-out nuclear exchange directly paraphrases Kahn’s analysis.

Paul S. Boyer in a 2004 essay at Arms Control Association. "Dr. Strangelove" at 40: The Continuing Relevance of a Cold War Cultural Icon

[mycstilleblog]

Florian Warweg, Redakteur der NachDenkSeiten, sprach in Dortmund zum Thema: „Medien: Vierte Gewalt oder Meinungsmacher? Der Auftrag der Medien in der Demokratie und die Realität“

Wenn ich mich auch hier wiederhole – so ist es doch einfach eine Tatsache, die aufmerksamen Rezipienten unserer Print- und Onlinemedien über die letzten Jahre immer wieder aufgestoßen sein dürfte. Der Journalismus – gern immer wieder mit stolz geschwellter Brust als vierte Säule unserer Demokratie gepriesen – ist m. E. auf den Hund gekommen. Klar: Es gibt immer noch gut journalistische Beiträge…

[thomasthetankieengine]

Uh... The Albanians and Bosniaks, maybe?

Unless, of course, you're a Serbian nationalist, the Serbian and Russian governments, a professional Islamophobe (like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller of Jihad Watch), a left-wing useful idiot who thinks Milosevic was a poor benighted socialist who being smeared by the wicked capitalist west (like Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, and Edward S. Herman), or a writer who decided to stan for the poor, misunderstood Serbs for some reason (lke Peter Handke).

If that's the case, then the Bosniaks and Albanians were never in any real danger and it was the Serbs who were the REAL victims all along.

[leo-fie]

If you'd only consume German public news, you'd think that South Africa's accusations before the International Court of Justice are untenable. Just nonsense in legalese.

The Konsensfabrik* is working perfectly. You would never think that the accusations are all true and that Israel is cartoonishly evil and lying about everything, because the truth couldn't possibly be corrupted that much, could it? But it is.

Israel has been perpetuating a genocide against the Palestinian people for decades. It has been ramped up since Oct 7th, but the killing of everyone in Gaza has always been the logical conclusion of Israel's policy. And it's happening in the open, for all the world to see. Not that it would make a difference. Even in the age of social media, the guys with the bigger guns and the deeper pockets are still able to do what they want, no matter what the public thinks.

(* German title of Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's Manufacturing Consent, first published 1988, first published in Germany 2023)

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Doctrines of Grace - Collection of Essays

What the Bible Says About the Doctrines of Grace God's Part and Man's Part in Salvation - John Reisinger The Five Points of Calvinism – R.L. Dabney The Five Points of Calvinism – John Piper The Five Points of Calvinism - WJ Seaton The Reformaed Doctrine of Predestination by Boettner The Reformed Faith – Loraine Boettner The Reformed Faith – B.B. Warfield More Than A Calvinist – John Newton Why Can’t They See This – Tom Nettles A Defense of Calvinism – C.H. Spurgeon Calvinism Fact Sheet - Joel Barnes The Five Points of Calvinism @Monergism More articles like this....

Total Depravity Free Will – A Slave – C.H. Spurgeon Human Inability - Charles Spurgeon Man's Utter Inability to Rescue Himself - Thomas Boston The Doctrine of Total Depravity – Part I – John G Reisinger The Doctrine of Total Depravity – Part II – John G Reisinger Total Depravity – Loraine Boettner Man in His Fallen State – John Newton Decisional Regeneration - James E. Adams The Myth of Free Will - Walter Chantry Captive Hearts, Captive Church - R. C. Sproul More articles like this...

Unconditional Election Chain of Grace – John G. Reisinger The Doctrine of Election – Parts I, II & III – John G. Reisinger Election - B. B. Warfield Election - J. C. Ryle The Argument of Romans 9 – John Piper Who Chose Whom – John F. MacArthur Jr. Who Saves Whom – Michael Horton Unconditional Election - C. H. Spurgeon Election - C. H. Spurgeon Unconditional Election - Loraine Boettner Electing Love - Robert Murray McCheyne More resources like this...

Particular Redemption The Atonement –  Arthur Pink Sufficient for All? - Jim Ellis Death of Death - John Owen Was Anyone Saved at the Cross – James White For Whom Did Christ Die? - C. H. Spurgeon Particular Redemption – C.H. Spurgeon Intro to The Death of Death – J.I. Packer Llimited Atonement - Loraine Boettner Partticular Redemption - Wayne Mack The Love of God and the Intent of the Atonement - D. A. Carson More Resources on Particular Redemption...

Effectual Grace Effectual Calling and Regeneration - Martyn Lloyd-Jones Justification & Regeneration - Charles Leiter The Internal and External Call - Wilhelmus a Brakel Effectual Calling – C.H. Spurgeon The Sovereignty of God the Holy Spirit in Salvation – Arthur Pink Irresistible Grace – Jacob Moseley Preaching the Grace of the Spirit’s Calling – S. Lewis Johnson Who Can Come – Mark Webb More Resources like this...

Preservation of the Saints Can a Christian Lose His or Her Salvation? - Greg Johnson Perseverance of the Saints – Loraine Boettner Sanctification and Perseverance - Herman Bavinck Perseverance of the Saints - Wilhelmus à Brakel Perseverance of the Saints by Brian Schwertley How to Know you are a Real Christian - Jonathan Edwards More Essays like this...

Related to the Doctrines of Grace

Augustine and Pelagius – R.C. Sproul From Whitefield to Wesley – George Whitefield (Includes Wesley’s Sermon Free Grace) Ian Murray on Whitefield and Wesley The Legacy of Charles Finney – Michael Horton The Carnal Christian Doctrine – John G. Reisinger The Pelagian Captivity of the Church – R.C. Sproul The Moral Basis of Faith – Tom Wells A Simple Explanation of Monergism