Institute for the Study of Academic Racism

A blue candle burns

2011-12-14T01:50:00.000-08:00

When your sailor goes to sea you burn a blue candle. As his ship sails you hope he will catch a glimpse of the flame. Our son is about to set sail and we want him to know that in this home a blue candle burns for him.

Democracy

2011-11-21T01:47:00.000-08:00

"... democracy is now but a term for the various means by which the few govern the many."
Jonathan Clark, in a review of a new book on Thomas Paine's Common Sense, by Sophia Rosenfeld (Harvard Press 2011) Times Literary Review November 11, 2011, p. 12.

See also, Al Jazeera's excellent piece on the Koch brothers at
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/10/2011102683719370179.html

Failure

2011-08-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

My love she speaks like silence ...
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all.

Bob Dylan, Love Minus Zero, 1965

In Judaism there is the concept of rav hamuvhak - the identifying teacher. For example, one thinks of Plato as the student of Socrates or Margaret Mead as the student of Franz Boaz. In the world that I come from the teacher is the master of the student and the student bears the master’s mark. Thus, Israel Salanter was the student Rav Yosef Zundel who in turn was the student of Rav Chaim Volozin - as I am the student of my teachers, Rav Zechariah Fendel and Professor Jerry Hirsch.

Success for a teacher is to have students who bear his mark. In that sense, I have failed. But, as my father taught me, by sheer repetition, “we live in hope.” I still have work to do. Each day I shovel sixteen tons and what do I get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me, cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.
Merle Travis, Sixteen Tons, 1946.

Databases and DOplomas

2011-08-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

Re: Renewal of the Ferris Library subscription to the Proquest Historical Newspapers Database.

Ferris State University currently subscribes to the six most important newspapers in the country including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Over the past seven years Ferris students have accessed these databases 112,566 times. But these are hard times and the tenured historians have been asked to help our librarians as they face the “hard decisions” that have to be made. The question is, which ones can we do without? We have also been asked to suggest areas where more money needs to be spent to bolster any significant gaps.

One of the many Ferris billboards on US 131 reminds us that at Ferris students don’t get diplomas, they get DOplomas. The cost of these billboards, like the cost of our databases continue to rise. It is important for us to remember that without these billboards we would not be able to attract the DOploma seekers who pay our salaries. It is because of these billboards that Ferris is the fastest growing university in Michigan. Our local paper recently headlined a story on declining enrollments among Education majors, apparently because there are no jobs in Michigan for teachers. Our History Ed majors don’t need databases, they need jobs and the way Michigan is going to recover from our current slump is by slashing our education budgets, cutting teacher salaries and eliminating databases so that we can afford tax breaks for business. And it’s working. Forbes magazine recently reported that Detroit had a higher rate of increase in millionaires that San Jose! Last year alone Detroit saw an increase of 4% in the number of millionaires. Teachers don’t stimulate the economy, tax breaks do. It is obvious that we need lower taxes, not more teachers. That is why I have converted all my history courses into The Barry Mehler Show. I don’t need databases or even books, the show depends exclusively on YouTube videos. My focus is entertainment, not education. I urge our librarians to cancel all of our database subscriptions so that we can bolster our billboard advertising to insure a steady stream of students interested in DOplomas. Furthermore, cancelling these subscriptions would have the added benefit of giving our students more time for their Facebook pages.
[Forbes, America’s Fastest Growing Millionaire Cities 7/14/11: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2011/07/14/americas-fastest-growing-millionaire-cities/].

ps. No historical databases were used in writing this essay.

Teaching Kindergarten in Abu Dahbi

2011-07-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

Navigating the "madcap" Abu Dahbi housing market can be a challenge. Fortunately, this kindergaten teacher is given a 65K housing allowance. But she will have to hurry and straight from a fourteen hour flight, she looks at 3 apartments in a single day. She rents a spectacular luxury apartment a few blocks from the Mediterranean. In Abu Dhabi, education is important.

Check it out, America has become a third class nation with a collapsing housing market and educational system. The only thing that we still excel in is our nuclear submarines and other military technology.

For the entire program:
http://www.hgtv.com/video/apartment-hunting-in-abu-dhabi-video/index.html
or a snip from youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbHQtg2jI14

We are a civilzation in decline pretending that all we need is a tea party. That might have worked in 1774, it is delusional in 2011.

Defending White Supremacy

2011-07-01T04:22:00.001-07:00

The Sacred and Profane:
Class Assignment for the Fourth of July Weekend for my American History classes.

Robert E. Lee believed that Virginia was the nearest thing to a Godly kingdom that could be found on earth. Certainly, Northern society had lost it’s organic connection to God. It was a materialist culture. The South was a spiritual culture. It was wisely governed by a nobility of white men, just as God had ordained that it should be. The negro, cursed by God as the descendants of Cain and cursed again by Noah as the descendants of Canaan, were at the bottom of this Godly society - as they ought to be. God certainly could not want the negro raised to an equal level with the white man. It was unthinkable. The fabric of reality made up of all the facts made it unthinkable, but only for whites. For blacks it was more than thinkable, it was dreamable, but for most only as a reward in the world to come - swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home! Even slaves are caught up in the fabric of reality in which they are glued. Slaves internalize the values of the dominate society, just as everyone else does. From the King on top to the slave at the bottom, everyone internalizes the values of the society.

More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette. They could have claimed, more lawyers smoked camels or more truck drivers... the fact, the real fact, was that for decades, Camels was the favorite cigarette of Americans, this American included. Yes, I will say it even now that the “facts” have all been changed thanks to our paternalist overloads who control thought - I will say it even now, I smoked Camels because it was a high quality, no bull shit, smoke. Fuck filters. Did I know then what I know now, that smoking is bad for your health? What kind of idiot do you think I am, of course I knew. I was an athlete. I trained hard and I knew exactly what cigarettes did - they crippled you. Yet, I smoked. Why? Because I wanted an A on the exam and I was staying up all night smoking and drinking coffee. And here I am professor Mehler. You see my point. Smoke Camels and you too can become a Jewish professor of history. I am not sorry I smoked Camels. You won’t be either. Take the Camels challenge today. Smoke Camels for 30 days and see if your throat doesn’t feel better!

Last season, I asked audience members to defend slavery and many of them simply refused. It was like I asked them to do something that they knew was wrong. You don’t want to think about things that you shouldn’t think about because you know before you start thinking where you are supposed to end up. And since you already know the answer, there is no longer any reason to think about the question. Might as well turn out the lights and go back to Facebook - somebody might have noticed me.

Remember this: You are unique, just like everybody else. You are just like everybody else. You don’t need to think. Just follow instructions and take notes. So, take note: Slavery is good. The negro is the descendant of Cain and Canaan, twice cursed by God. Don’t blame me for these propositions. I am one of those chosen by God to rule as your Emergency Manager sent here by Gov. Snyder to fire you’re Mayor. You don’t need a Mayor or a City Council. The best way to solve these fiscal problems is to bring in someone who has no stake in the community and is not accountable to anyone in the community. The EM’s job is to cut the budget and fleece you of millions before he disappears into the sunset with no liability.

George Washington asked, “Shall we become slaves, like the negro, over whom we rule with such arbitrary sway?” So, what are you, man or mouse? white man or negro? Get your head out of the mud and start thinking like a slaveholder. Sit back with a Camel and a shot of Jack and let your mind wander across the historical horizon. Despite everything you ever were taught - IT IS OK TO THINK. Don’t tell me slavery is bad and therefore I can’t imagine how to defend it. You are an attorney and I am your client. It doesn’t matter what you think. You have to defend me. And to do that you have to suspend your judgment. I know that is hard to do. Do it anyway. Do it because I’m telling you to do it and I’m your teacher. This is your homework assignment: Suspend your god-damn judgment... and come with me to the world outside your head. You will discover what a very small world you live in and you will begin a journey that will make your little world bigger. If you work hard at it, you too could someday become a old Jewish Professor of History teaching in a cesspool of intolerance for thought or provocation.

Managers Excepted

2011-06-24T04:43:00.000-07:00

“Der Jude Kann nur judisch denken. Screibt er Deutsch… aber judisch denkt, is ein Verrater” - Heidegger, 1938 Recktorship Address cited from Emmanuel Faye, p. 332. “Emmanuel Faye incontestably shows that Heidegger’s Nazism was not fleeting, casual, or accidental but central to his philosophical enterprise. Faye’s book challenges us to recognize the ethical consequences of this fact.” - Robert Norton, Notre Dame.

I wonder about Heidegger’s teacher, the Jewish phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl. Was he, like my Lutheran, to discover that he was a Jew and that this fact was far more important than he had ever imagined? And what possible value could that have had to him sitting in his study at home, watching Germany being transformed by Nazis antisemitism and denied the use of the university library by his own prize student.

We, like the moon, are caught in the gravitational field of something much larger than we are. The moon might like to travel in a straight line, but the fabric of space-time is warped and it cannot escape. Antisemitism is a huge gravitational force. It is like a black hole that we would rather not think about. Yet we see all around us evidence of it’s power to influence minds, great and small. There is already a global coalition of groups representing the widest and most irreconcilable contradictions of ideology, theology and philosophy from the politically progressive evolutionary biologist, Steve Rose to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From Russia, Eastern Europe, the European Union countries, the progressive left and reactionary right. One thing only they can all agree on - Israel is a racist apartheid state that has no right to exist. Fundamentalist Christians love us so much they want to save us from our Judaism, not realizing that most Jews have nothing to do with “Judaism.” Yes, there are still Jews, like myself who get up each morning and put on tefillin but the majority of Jews do not pray. Most Jews in the United States are assiduously working to shed themselves of their Jewish identity.

I do not see myself as an American. It just doesn’t mean anything to me. I study American history, the way I study Holocaust history. What is there to be proud of, the Tower of Babel? Walter Benjamin noted that as historians we must never identify with the oppressors of the past. “Empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers” and do we want to be a benefit to the emergency manager? The ruler who can dismiss the will of the people, usually, by the way, black people. The emergency manager system is as racist as the Drug War, which has also disenfranchised black voters. We have always known they weren’t smart enough for democracy. They need managers to handle their financial affairs, to steal what still can be stolen with impunity. No impoverished ghetto is too poor to steal from. Everyone has to pay their fair share for global war, managers excepted, of course.

Catching a glimpse of history

2011-06-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

Walter Benjamin wrote that the “past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.” I imagine a Lutheran who was arrested by the Nazis and put into a holding cell with a bunch of Jews headed for Auschwitz. The man protested that he was not a Jew, he hated Jews, in fact. He was a Lutheran. He was born a Lutheran. The Nazis replied that his mother was a Jew and so he was a Jew. No, he replied with passion, my mother converted to Christianity long before I was born and she married a Lutheran and she raised me a Lutheran and she was a Lutheran. No, the Nazis replied, she was a Jew. And so the man found himself in a chamber load of Jews as the gas was being dropped. As he drew his last breath it finally dawned on him, "oh, my God, I'm a Jew!" All his life he thought that he knew who he was. He was a German and a Lutheran and he hated Jews. At the very last moment of his life he discovers that he is a Jew. He realizes that on some level this fact was fundamental to who he was and what his destiny was to be, but what purpose does his final insight serve?

Philosophy of History

2011-06-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

I have no philosophy of history. I have only the tattered remnants of an ancient theology and a guardian angel - the Angel of Death - who protects me from illusions. At the age of three, I was diagnosed with Bright’s disease. My kidneys were going to fail and when that happened, I was going to die. From the age of three to the age of thirteen, the Angel of Death pursued me. Waking in the middle of the night in intense pain, going down the hall to my parent’s bedroom, I would wake my mother. The terror on her face left me with little hope and protected me from illusions.
- Quoted from "Dead Last," Dr. Mehler's 2010 Merit Promotion Essay.

Guilt and Shame

2011-06-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the guilt and shame over what we have done, what I have done, is overwhelming. They did not do this to us. We did it to ourselves.

My Job as Professor of History

2011-06-19T08:21:00.001-07:00

Dr. Mehler, the host of the Barry Mehler Show, never tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth because there is no truth to tell any longer. Simply put, the problem is that in the modern world political, technological and scientific jargons, inaccessible to the non-specialist, have created a situation in which language is receding exponentially from the grasp of ordinary people. Worse still, propaganda, advertising and mass communications are making truthful speech impossible. Modern speech is nothing more than an eroded jargon. Even when we talk to ourselves it is nothing more than a string of clichés.

We are engaged in historical analysis. Nothing is understood outside of the tightly woven fabric of what we “know” as facts, for example, that cigarette smoking relaxes the throat. Don’t believe me, take the Camels challenge - smoke Camels for thirty days and see for yourself if your throat doesn’t feel more relaxed. Remember, more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

We once knew the earth was flat, we were the center of the universe and the apple of God’s eye. Then we knew that matter and energy and time were all separate things. Now we know that everything we knew was mistaken, ergo, everything we now know is probably also mistaken. Where does that leave us?

An object, like a pack of cigarettes, is understood by how it fits into our tightly woven fabric of reality. We, like the moon, are caught in the gravitational field of something much larger than we are. The moon might like to travel in a straight line, but the fabric of space-time is warped and it cannot escape. Our thoughts are like that. We see a pack of Camels and our thoughts are filled with all the cliché’s we have heard over and over. All around us adults smoke. From the movies we learn of the pleasures of mixing tobacco and sex. After a fine dinner we light up a cigar. Everyone knows that tobacco is good for the digestion.

I am not interested in historical chronology or “wie es eigentlich gewesen war.” My focus is on the metaphysical contours of history. For example, democracy was an unintended consequence of the American Revolution. Furthermore, unintended consequences are the rule, not the exception in history. We never know what will come from our efforts, individual or communal.

So, what is the shape of history? Are we moving forward, making progress, going in circles? Or, are we, like everything else in the universe subject to entropy?

This is a radically new way of thinking about historical reality. Clearly, understanding reality is more difficult than at first imagined. You have to make a conscious effort to focus on the hocus pocus. And that is my job as professor of history, to provide the hocus pocus. Your job is to figure it out. I don’t have the answer.

The Holocaust

2011-06-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

I once had a nightmare about the Holocaust and when I woke I realised the Holocaust was still going on. It was after my family was threatened with death that I realised, I think for the first time, that they really do want me dead. They want to kill me and my family.

The Holocaust gave us a glimpse into what awaits us. It was a taste of olam haba'ah - the world to come.

1985, when all was well with the world… I had a dream:

2011-05-27T04:39:00.000-07:00

“When my son, Isaac, was two years old, he could already sing the Shema and the aleph bet song. I dreamed he got into my van and somehow had released the break. The van was careening down a hill and I feared for his life. There was heavy traffic and I was desperately trying to stop a car in order to get help. But the cars swerved around me as I waved my hands hysterically. They would not stop. I woke up in a sweat. And that is just how I feel sometimes - like a man desperately trying to stop the passing traffic in order to save the life of his son.”

Quoted from, “Amalek: Vengeance, Justice and Reconciliation,” a paper I read at my brother Peter’s shool, Congregation Beth El, I believe in Clearwater, Florida 19 May 1985.

Hitler was an emergency manager.

2011-05-19T04:56:00.000-07:00

He abrogatted contracts and ruled by fiat.
Germany was the envy of the world in 1936.
If Hitler could do that for Germany, think what he could do for Michigan!

Emergency Managers

2011-04-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

If Governor Snyder can legally appoint an emergency manager for any city in Michigan deemed in financial distress, by what logic would it be inconceivable for the President of the United States to appoint an emergency manager for a state like Michigan which is in economic distress.

First they came for our cities and I didn't act because it wasn't my city. Then came for my state, but by then they had already taken over the Presidency and there was no need to appoint an emergency manager. Goldman Sachs had already done that.

Imagine the White House under Donald Trump. They would call it "The Trump House."

Time to Strike

2011-04-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

The GOP leadership has challenged the MEA to strike, threatening to decertify the union and fire the teachers.

Surely, it is time to act. We need to close down every school in the state – come the first day of class in the Fall. If the Republicans take the actions they threaten, we will have to keep the schools shut and begin a struggle that will determine whether we shall be free people or abject cowardly dogs. The choice is ours to make. It is time for those of us who still have the courage to speak out, to stand against the rising tide of oligarchy.

2011-04-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

We will miss you, Manning...

Manning Marable died Friday 1 April 2011.
In 1983, he was kind enough to recognize my
work in his column, From the Grassroots.

Dr. Manning Marable, “Academic Racism,” (July 2, 1983):

Part of the renaissance of racism today is found on college campuses. As most of us know, racism has taken the form of attacks against affirmative action in the hiring and promotion of black faculty and staff.

Consider also the decline in the recruitment of black graduate and undergraduate students at white schools: the attack against black studies departments; and the loss of federal and private funding for historically black universities. There is one other component of “academic racism” which must be evaluated – the growth of new eugenics research which describes blacks as “generically inferior” to whites.

As documented in a recent issue of “Science for the People”, Barry Mehler notes that there is a direct connection between racist white academic researchers, the New Right and politics of the Reagan Administration.

Over recent years the Pioneer Fund, an academic foundation has funded a number of racist college professors. The officers and directors of the Pioneer Fund in 1981 included Thomas Ellis, a major financial contributor to Reagan, and John B. Trevor, a founder of the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies.

The Pioneer Fund has given thousands of dollars to British fascist Roger Pearson, author of “Eugenics and Race”, and an organizer of a large “neo-fascist and antisemitic” conference in Washington, D.C. in 1978; the fund has also supported notorious racist William Shockley, who has written major studies trying to “prove” whie supremacy; Arthur Jensen, “America’s leading proponent of black inferiority”, University of Georgia professor Frank McGurk and Audrey Shuey, authors of “The Testing of Negro Intelligence”, termed by Mehler, “a book that has formed the basis for numerous racist studies.”

What kind of academic research in the fields of biology, psychology and sociology is being distributed to thousands of college students and public policy makers? A brief passage from the 1978 book, “Human Variations”, edited by R. Travis Osborne, Clyde E. Noble and Nathaniel Weyl, is clear enough: “(During slavery) the environment was more favorable that anything (blacks) had experienced in Africa. As slaves they improved in health and increased in numbers. When the Negroids were liberated from agricultural slavery, they were thrown free to shift for themselves in largely Caucasoid societies… These simple, unskilled rural people were suddenly offered irregular urban employment combined with opportunities of drink and drugs, gambling and prostitution, and no reliable means of productive, creative or congenial labor.” The authors conclude that there is no “scientific and historical evidence” that blacks are equals of “the intellectually well-endowed races.”

Mehler notes that the goal of this new eugenics research “is a world of racially pure stocks living in separate geographic areas, with strict apartheid practiced in areas where racial groups share one geographic land mass. The extreme wing of this movement openly advocates the elimination of all non-white races, Jews and homosexuals.”

Some of us might think that this racist garbage could not possibly be taken seriously in respected universities. Think again: Jensen’s writings have appeared in the “Harvard Educational Review”, and his “theories on the inferiority of black children”, have been published in the “New York Times”, “Newsweek”, the “Educational Digest”, “National Review” and “Science News”.

Former University of Chicago professor Dwight Ingle has widely published his view that “Negroids” problems are “not caused by racism” but the “Negroid-Caucasoid IQ gap.”

The task of uprooting white supremacy was only begun when we removed the Jim Crow signs and when Civil Rights legislation was passed in the 1960s. Now we must develop a serious campaign to destroy racist ideology in every form in the campuses across this country.

Dr. Manning Marable is director of Third World Studies, Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y. “From the Grassroots” appears in 150 newspapers internationally.

Remembering Pumbedita

2011-04-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

4Jan11

Abaye haveh mesader seder Hamaracha...
Abaye listed the order of the alter service based on the tradition according to Abba Shaul.
The arrangement of the large pyre preceded that of the secondary pyre for the incense offerings; the secondary pyre for the incense offerings preceded the placement of the two logs; the placement of the two logs preceded the removal of the ashes from the inner alter...
Talmud Yoma 33a

This esoteric listing of the order of the alter service, virtually incomprehensible even to most Orthodox Jews who include the morning “Korbonot” service as part of their morning prayer service, has been completely dropped by Conservative Jews and is not even included in their prayer books.

Abaye (278-338 CE) listed this order at a time when the Temple itself had been destroyed over two centuries earlier. As the head of the Academy of Pumbedita in Babylonia, Jerusalem and the Temple were only distant memories.

The Academy at Pumbedita (pum=mouth, Bedita=a tributary of the Euphrates) was a major institution of Jewish learning for 800 years (220-1058). It lasted nearly as long as Plato’s famous academy (378-529 CE). The dialogues between Abaye and Rava (Havayot d’Abaye v’Rava) formed the foundation for the dialectic method of Talmudic study. In one such complicated debate over inheritance law between Rav Sheishet of Nehardea and Rav Amram, Rav Sheiset joked, “Are you from Pumbedita, where they push an elephant through the eye of a needle? (Bab Metzia 38b).

The last Rosh Yeshiva, Hezekiah ben David was tortured to death on orders of the Caliph. The Academy was closed, the Jews driven out and name of the city changed to Fallujah. Today, Fallujah is Judenrein, like much of the rest of Iraq.

And every morning, I am reminded of the order of the alter service and the great Academy of Pumbedita, where my intellectual roots were nourished on the dialectics between Abaye and Rava, and just as Abaye prayed for the restoration of the Temple, I dream of the restoration of that great institution of Torah scholarship that was once part of the thriving city of Pumbedita. I imagine a world were Jews can live in Mecca and Mexicans can live in Arizona.

Walter Benjamin writes, “Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of this.” (Second Thesis on the Philosophy of History).

For me, the most esoteric parts of the morning service are the most meaningful. We read recipes for incense that has not been burned in two thousand years, details of services abandoned for centuries, rescued from oblivion by the heroic efforts of teachers who believed that if the incense could not be smelled, at least the recipe could be recited. If the meal could not be eaten, at least the order of its preparation could be recalled, reminding us always of how much we have lost; of our hunger.

Snyder's Dream

2011-03-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

I imagined the Governor declared Big Rapids in crisis and hired a corporation to manage the city for profit. The Mayor and city counsel were fired, all public employee contracts were abrogated. Everyone was impoverished and the housing stock continued to deteriorated, but the good news was that corporate profits were up.

The Akedah

2011-02-17T06:34:00.000-08:00

Israel Diary, 1996.
In 1996, I took my son Isaac to Israel for his Bar Mitzah. The following is from my diary.
"Take now your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and get yourself to the land of Moriah and offer him up there as a burn offering." Genesis 22:2

Sunday February 25, three days before our departure for Jerusalem, the number 18 bus is blown up by a person wrapped in explosives who got on the bus and detonated the explosives. We arrive in Jerusalem four days later.

Sunday morning, March 3rd, the number 18 bus was again blown up, only this time we are close enough to hear the explosion. Have I taken my son, my only son, that I love, Isaac, to this holy place to offer him up as a burnt offering?

The bombing did not change our plans for the day. Isaac and his mom joined the tour group, I went off to visit an old friend who lives in Bayit Vegan. He made calls for me to find out where Isaac and I could go to hear the Megillah reading for Purim, which began on Monday evening outside of Jerusalem, but would not be celebrated in Jerusalem until Tuesday and by that time we would have been moved along by our tour group. He wrote down the name of a synagogue in Ramot Daled - a suburb of Jerusalem, not considered part of the city itself and thus they celebrated Purim on Monday, not Tuesday.

I took the bus back to the city center during rush hour. Standing in the packed bus, we passed the bombed out shell of the number 18 bus that had been blown up that morning. Workers on cherry-pickers were still scraping pieces of human flesh from the side of the building next to the explosion. All human remains, identifiable or not, had to be collected for burial. In this crowded bus, no imagination was necessary. We would all die together and our bodies would become one mass of torn flesh.

Monday March 4th - Isaac and I left Jerusalem just as the news of yet another bombing - this time by Islamic Jihad in Tel Aviv. I told Isaac that we could take a cab to the suburbs, but we would have to take a bus back into the city. I needed to know if that was ok with him, since we had been witness now to three bus bombings. His mother didn't want him to go. "As long as it's not the number 18," was his reply. I have a sense of great pride in my son, Isaac, who is not afraid to live his life. That he would trustingly come with his father and enter a bus that might turn into his own funeral pyre, moved me and filled me with love for my son. He is the perfect gentle warrior.

We witnessed a remarkable transformation in Israeli society. Just a few weeks ago, Labor was sure to win the elections scheduled for May 29th, but as each day passes it becomes more and more clear that Hamas may actually sway the vote toward Likud! It is strange that Hamas should so easily manipulate Israeli politics and that they would want to push the Israeli government to the right. Of course, the last thing anyone wants is peace, not when you have the attractions of endless conflict.

Tuesday March 5th - Road to Jericho.

Our tour was scheduled to visit Jericho, a city considerably older than Jerusalem, which is under Palestinian Authority control. Our bus was stopped by Israeli border guards on the old Roman road to Jericho, and ordered to turn around. Jericho had was being closed off from Israeli society.

The vise tightens and each day more and more soldiers appear. Now there will be a complete separation of Israelis and Palestinians. What a tragedy. When we arrived, even after the first bombing, the Arab shuk in Jerusalem was open and jammed with tourists and Israelis. Isaac insisted on going into a small shop that carried Casio watches. I couldn't believe that Isaac had come to Jerusalem and wanted to spend his money on a Casio watch that he could buy at Walmart, but it was his money, so I sat myself down and wallowed in my disapproval and disappointment. Isaac bargained the price down from $190 to $100. Much later, after we were back home in America, I asked Isaac what the highlight of the trip was for him and without hesitation he said, "buying the Casio watch in the shuk."

Outside of Jericho, our bus, having turned around, stopped at a dusty roadside rest stop. It was nothing but bathrooms and vending machines, but there was also a tent set up where an Palestinian from Jericho had set out cheap trinkets before the curfew had been imposed. He was waiting for orders from the border police to pack his stuff up and get back to Jericho.

Isaac saw something that he had been looking for since the shuk and he called to the man in the tent to ask how much it was. A Canadian tourist who was with us on the tour started screaming at Isaac, "We are at war with these people. You cannot buy from them." I was livid with anger and bellowed back at the man, "You may be at war, but my son and I are not. How dare you raise you voice at my son." Seeing the commotion, the Palestinian merchant retreated further to the back of his tent. I turned to Isaac with tears in my eyes and said, "Isaac, I wish we could buy what you want, but you see how tense the situation has become. We are surrounded by warriors - some of the them foolish tourists and others serious soldiers. I would gladly buy you what you want, but we can't jeopardize the man in the tent. Believe me, I am sorry."

Looking back on it, I realized that Isaac was right. The high point of our trip to Israel was watching my son buy that Casio watch. There, in the Arab market of Jerusalem, my son and a young Palestinian merchant negotiated a deal. Both left satisfied.
If only it were that simple.

Max Kantar's Statement

2011-02-07T17:03:00.000-08:00

Max Kantar graduated Cum Laude from Ferris State University in 2009. In August 2010 he was arrested after reading this statement. He was not arrested for reading the statement, he was arrested for the apple pie that was pushed into Senator Levin's face after he read the statement.

Max faces eight years in federal prison. The story has gone national, but the story is all about the pie. It seems to me, the story ought to include his reason for putting his freedom at risk.

Below is the statement Max read. This is Max's opinions and they do not necessarily represent those of the blogger.

Senator Levin,

There's no doubt that you are one of the most respected senators in the United States. Coupled with three decades of senatorial experience and your role as Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, this respect translates into great influence in policy making, especially in regard to US foreign policy.

Despite your relative popularity, I sincerely doubt that many of your constituents know the extent of your contributions to increasing human suffering around the world.

How many people know that you were an enthusiastic supporter of the primarily Clinton-era US-led sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s--sanctions which likely killed over one million innocent people by way of starvation, disease, and denial of medicines? Who were these victims? Certainly not Saddam Hussein and his regime--their grip on the besieged population was strengthened as a result. The victims were poor people, children, the sick, and the elderly. Publicly available declassified government documents now reveal the murderous (and ultimately successful) intentions of the US government to destroy Iraq's water system and then to systematically ban the importation of crucial items such as chlorine-- the effects of which were designed, according to top officials, to unleash "disease epidemics" which were predicted to affect "children in particular." The result? Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were deliberately murdered, perhaps up to half a million, according to mainstream estimates. Their blood is on your hands.

For three decades you have been the strongest supporter of Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people. While the record is far too long to run through here, it is worth mentioning that just two winters ago, the Israeli military slaughtered some 1,400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Over 1,000 were civilians according to leading Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. Over 300 were children. Israel used F-16 fighter jets paid for by us; they used guns and ammunition, paid for by us; according to Human Rights Watch, Israel dropped white phosphorus--a chemical weapon supplied by US taxpayers which burns the flesh at 1500 degrees Fahrenheit--on Palestinian schools and incinerated children and noncombatants alive. Your response to these atrocities was to co-sponsor a Senate resolution praising the US-organized bloodbath. In fact, for years you have worked diligently to make sure that US taxpayers subsidize these campaigns of murder and oppression against the Palestinian people. Perhaps this is why you receive more pro-Israel lobby money than any other senator aside from Joe Lieberman. The blood of thousands of Palestinians living under military occupation and apartheid is on your hands.

You have repeatedly voted to allocate billions of dollars in funding for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq; an occupation and invasion which has killed, according to conservative British estimates, well over one million human beings. It might behoove you to remember that according to the ruling at the Nuremberg Tribunals following World War Two, an aggressive war is "the supreme international crime" because it encompasses and is ultimately responsible for all of the crimes and suffering that comes about as a result of the aggression. This funding--our money--is the lifeblood of a brutal military occupation which has killed, maimed, caged, tortured, humiliated, devastated, impoverished, and otherwise destroyed the lives of millions and millions of people. But you don't care how many Iraqi mothers bury their sons; you don't care how many tears are shed over the unfathomable amounts of death, destruction, degradation, and humiliation suffered at the hands of the US and its surrogates. This blood, too, is on your hands.

And power learns no lessons about human suffering. Today you urge more taxpayer support for the war in Afghanistan and for a so-called government in Afghanistan which is run by, in the words of Human Rights Watch, some of the "most notorious warlords in the country,"; warlords and criminals who killed some 50,000 Afghans during the early 1990s after the US and Russia had systematically destroyed Afghanistan in a nasty game of imperial Cold War politics. The blood spilled in every house raid and every air strike on civilians is on your hands.

Today, you continue to call for more murderous attacks in the region. You have prominently called for increasing US drone strikes in Pakistan. These cowardly bombings--which are carried out by robot planes guided by Americans sitting at computers on an Air Force Base in Nevada--have killed several hundred civilians, including women and children. Not only are these bombings wildly immoral because of this, but they also inflame and incite, quite understandably, hatred against the United States. Pakistani blood will continue to drip from your hands as long as the bombings continue.

You remain hawkish and aggressive in your posture towards other sovereign nations as well. For example, your position on Iran--a country that, in stark contrast to Israel, hasn't attacked its neighbors for centuries--is that "all options, including military options, should be on the table." In plain terms, this is a threat to bomb Iran, maybe even with nuclear weapons. Such threats are flagrant violations of the UN Charter, if anybody cares. If and when the US or its Israeli client attacks Iran, that blood, too, will be on your hands.

Senator Levin, reasonable people can disagree on policy and politics. BUT, reasonable people CANNOT disagree on basic human principles of justice and decency. It is both perverse and shameful that you claim to uphold values like freedom and justice while actively taking part in the murder, mutilation, repression, and infliction of suffering on millions of Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Afghans, Pakistanis, and many more peoples living under the whip of US imperialism, from Latin America to Africa, to Asia and the Middle East.

And back home in Michigan, you treat the people you purport to serve with equal contempt. While you go to sleep in your Detroit mansion as a millionaire each night, nearly 20,000 human beings in the same city go to bed homeless, on the streets. Do you have even the slightest idea what being homeless entails? These people could be housed with money you prefer to spend on war, or money you prefer to spend on yourself. While you sit self-righteously in Washington making laws to protect power and privilege, the police systematically brutalize and imprison our state's African-American population at rate nearly THREE TIMES that of South Africa during the years of apartheid.

The truth is that, on principle, you are no different than every other senator in the U.S. and I don't respect you. And I'm not the slightest bit interested in hearing your entirely predictable response, replete with the same old lies and apologetics for heinous crimes against humanity. If there was any justice in this country or in this world, you would be in prison and I am going to say it straight to your face.

Zechariah Fendel (1929-2011): A Remembrance

2011-01-21T06:24:00.000-08:00

Arutz Sheva, the Israel National News service English language edition carried this brief obituary notice on Friday January 14th (9 Sh’vat 5771):

Rabbi Zechariah Fendel, prolific author and founding principal of the Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva High School in Forest Hills, New York, passed away last night at the age of 82.
He is survived by his wife Chava, 12 children, some 100 grandchildren, and brother Rabbi Meyer Fendel of Jerusalem. His funeral will be held in Flatbush, New York, at 10:30 Friday morning.
The late Rabbi Fendel authored some 15 books, as well as several other works, on Jewish thought, ethics, history, holidays, and more, many of them geared specifically to those who are taking their first steps in Judaism.
One Yeshiva head called him "the Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch of our generation.”

Twelve children, some 100 granchildren and 15 books, and before all that, he was my rebbe at Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva High School in Forest Hills, New York. The year was 1962, I remember because one Friday, erev Shabbos, I stared out the window, at Chofetz Chaim thinking, “Monday may not come.” On the previous Monday, President John F. Kennedy delivered a televised speech announcing the crisis and the quarantine. By Friday, it was clear that we were at the brink of a nuclear war that would annihilate Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, along with everything else. It would be the end. Not the end of the United States, just the end, the end of everything for humanity. Monday might never come.

Jerry Hirsch (1923-2008) was my last great teacher, “a pioneer in the field of behavior genetics and crusader for social justice.” Rabbi Fendel was my first great teacher and between them were clusters of great teachers, but none touched me the way my rebbe did. Without him, I would not exist as I am today. Certainly, nothing of what is essential to my being is my own creation. Without my teachers, I would be a shell of human being without consciousness. My teachers awoke in me my consciousness and their character and integrity always drove me to feelings of shame and inadequacy. Twelve children and fifteen books! And what books, the scholarship, the command of the literature is astonishing, but what is breathtaking was his command of the moment. He created the Yeshiva that existed for a short moment in time. The Yeshiva High school he created no longer exists.

My father brought me to meet Rabbi Fendel for the first time to determine if I would be admitted to his Yeshiva. It was a very small school with only ten or fifteen boys in each grade. It was known for its intensive Talmudic training and its focus on mussar. His office was small and chaotic. We sat in two wooden chairs in front of a wooden desk. My father was explaining to Rabbi Fendel that my IQ scores were below normal and he was concerned that I might not be able to keep up, especially since I was inadequately prepared for Yeshiva High School. Most of the boys had come up through the Yeshiva system and were already proficient in Hebrew, Aramaic and Talmud study. I had only the pathetic synagogue after school training. I could barely read Hebrew.

My father had studied psychology and IQ testing with Edward L. Thorndike, one of the pioneers of the field, at Columbia University in the 1930s. I had been told that my IQ test scores said something about my abilities; limited what I could achieve. My older brother Marty called me a dummy and, in fact, I believed it was true. My older brother Edward was "quick" and I was "slow". But sitting with Rabbi Fendel and my Dad in his office that day I heard my dad explain my limited intellectual abilities to Rabbi Fendel who looked at me and then to my father and said, "Mr. Mehler, I do not believe in IQ. I believe in God." Rabbi Fendel lifted something from off my shoulders. He gave me faith to challenge the limitations of arbitrary definitions. And then he looked at me and asked me, directly, in a way no ever had before, “is this what you want, Binyamin? Do you want to study Torah all day long?”

That was it, that was all that mattered. If I wanted to study Torah all day long, then that was enough for Rabbi Fendel, who turned to my father and explained that only God knows the potential of any child and that it was faith and desire, not any fixed IQ or abilities that determined ones intellect. Intelligence and humanity are things inculcated. We are not born with the ability to think. We are not born with moral character. These are things we learn if we are lucky enough to have teachers. There is today a Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva High School. In fact, there are several of them, but the Yeshiva that was open to one such as I with no training and a father with no money, that Yeshiva no longer exists.

In his masterful book, The Ethical Personality (New York: Hashkafah,1986), he wrote an An Urgent Message for Our Times in which he spoke of “an insidious problem of great magnitude, which threatens to destroy the entire cohesive fabric of the Jewish community.” It was not the strife of factionalism, but a deeper underlying current that went beyond “religious and political differences.” There is, he said, an underlying current of sinat chinam - gratuitous hatred of Jew for Jew. That is, we do not hate because of ideological difference; we do not hate black people because they are lazy and criminal or Jews because they are the killers of Christ - hatred is a gratuitous gift - an expression of our own poverty and self-loathing. It was his hope that by “ethical sensitivity” we might replace this gratuitous hatred with peace, brotherhood and friendship. Furthermore, it is our lifelong responsibility “to engage actively in the quest for character improvement.” For Rabbi Fendel, Torah was essentially “a perpetual dynamic growth process, which makes no allowance for spiritual smugness or complacency, or for ethical or moral stagnation.” For Jerry Hirsch, the same could be said of science, the pursuit of truth. For Jerry Hirsch, the pursuit of science required the highest ethical standards.

In many ways my first great teacher and my last great teacher were similar. They were men of ethical sensitivity and integrity who believed that education could foster brotherhood and peace. Born during the Depression and raised during World War II, it is hard for me to understand where their faith came from.

A Lethal Obsession

2010-02-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

A Lethal Obsession: Robert S. Wistrich's New History of
Anti-Semitism.

Robert S. Wistrich has come out with his twentieth volume, a one-thousand page tome, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, (New York: Random House, 2010). The title is a little misleading, this is not a majestic survey of the history of anti-Semitism from antiquity to the present. The focus is on post-Nazi exterminatory anti-Semitism and the bulk of the book is focused on anti-Semitism in the Islamic world.

Wistrich's 30,000 word introduction is entitled, "The Return of Anti-Semitism," but it is clear from his history that anti-Semitism never went away. Certainly, the shocking revelations of the Holocaust reverberated through many parts of the world, creating a good deal of sympathy for Jews which was translated into sympathetic movies and books about the Jews in the West. It also sustained political support for Zionism for a brief period. And, of course, after the Holocaust Jews were no longer being actively exterminated, but the ideology of exterminatory anti-Semitism that justified Auschwitz was still evolving and spreading to new cultural environments especially the post-war communist block and the Muslim world. Anti-Semitism never went away. It didn't even go into retreat. Wistrich argues that after World War II the baton was passed from the Right to the Left and from Christians to Muslims. This is a humanitarian anti-Semitism aimed at saving the Palestinian people from the hands of the last white-supremacist colonial state practicing apartheid.

The argument that Israeli aggression and occupation is to blame for this situation is itself an anti-Semitic argument. This does not mean that anyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite, but the core claim of modern anti-Semites from David Duke to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that the Holocaust is a hoax perpetrated by the Jews to justify their aggression in the Middle East. At the same time that they deny the Holocaust reality, they claim that Zionism is the moral equivalent of Nazism and that the Zionist state is engaged in genocide against the Palestinian people. When these people call for an end to the "Zionist entity" they are really calling for the extermination of the Jews. And for the first time since World War II, anti-Semitism is part of a major state's [Iran] core ideology. This is the modern face of exterminatory anti-Semitism and Wistrich believes it is pervasive throughout the Muslim world. His goal is to expose the intensity of the "culture of hatred" that permeates "books, magazines, newspapers, sermons, videocassettes, the Internet, television, and radio in the Middle East on a scale unprecedented since the heyday of Nazi Germany." The demonic images of Jews circulating in much of the Islamic world today "constitute a new warrant for genocide." They combine the blood libel of medieval Christian Europe with Nazi conspiracy theories about the Jewish drive for world domination and dehumanizing Islamic quotations about Jews as the "sons of apes and donkeys."

Wistrich presents us with a history of the evolution of a murderous ideology. This is not the history of progress towards a more tolerant world. The three major culprits in the spread of this ideology are Hitlerism, Stalinism and Islamism. In all three cases anti-Jewish demonology has been manipulated in the cause of conspiracy theories which have at their heart the oldest and darkest of ideological obsessions: hatred of the Jews. Anti-Semitism is the hatred that keeps on giving. Wistrich believes the past seven decades have been a golden age for exterminatory anti-Semitism and at no time in the past have the core beliefs of this ideology been as widely disseminated and as widely accepted. He calls the world-wide campaign against Zionism, "a warrant for Genocide." And he believes we are entering a very dangerous period. Specifically, he believes the next two years are going to be among the most dangerous since World War II.

Wistrich four minute clip from the Wilson Center Q&A on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A42dnIuf5I0
The Daily Show clip on Hamas children's cartoons: http://www.hulu.com/watch/125615/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-story-hole-childrens-cartoons-from-hamas

Call for Papers - "The Other Among Us"

2009-08-27T17:44:00.001-07:00

Call for Papers and Submission Guidelines

The Institute for Action Against Hate is soliciting submissions for the eighth volume of the interdisciplinary Journal of Hate Studies.

We are interested in articles from various disciplines that address the topic of "The Other Among Us." We are particularly interested in articles that focus on immigration, refugees, or second-generation peoples who may have been born in one country but are still seen as being representatives of another, tourists, and others who cross national borders. However, articles are also encouraged from a range of perspectives on engagement or disengagement with "the other" in our society, culture, and lives. A special invitation is extended to scholars from disciplines such as history, psychology, philosophy, women's studies, cultural studies, anthropology, political science, social psychology, economics, literature, rhetoric, and religious studies.

Submissions are due by February 1, 2010 and should be between 5000-10,000 words. Submissions should include one hard copy and an electronic copy in MS Word format. Please do not submit PDF files. Submissions should be presented in APA format and, if necessary, contain endnotes rather than footnotes.

Address submissions and questions to the Gonzaga University Institute for Action Against Hate, AD Box 43, 502 E. Boone Avenue, Spokane WA 99258-0043; email address: againsthate@gonzaga.edu; phone: (509) 313-3665.

Dancing around the black hole

2009-07-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.
Walter Benjamin, Thesis on the Philosophy of History, 1940

There was once a Lutheran who was arrested by the Nazis and put into a holding cell with a bunch of Jews headed for Auschwitz. The man protested that he was not a Jew, he hated Jews, in fact. He was a Lutheran. He was born a Lutheran. The Nazis replied that his mother was a Jew and so he was a Jew. No, he replied with passion, my mother converted to Christianity long before I was born and she married a Lutheran and she raised me a Lutheran and she was a Lutheran. No, the Nazis replied, she was a Jew. And so the man found himself in the gas chamber with a chamber load of Jews as the gas was being dropped into the chamber. As he drew his last breath it finally dawned on him, "oh, my God, I'm a Jew!"

All his life he thought that he knew who he was. He was a German and a Lutheran and he hated Jews. At the very last moment of his life he discovers that he is a Jew. He realizes that on some level this fact was fundamental to who he was and what his destiny was to be. He cannot now go back and live his life over and he has no future, so what benefit is his final insight?
Binyamin Mehler, Meditation on Benjamin, (2009)

The Haeckel Controversy

2009-07-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

Daniel Gasman has written two books on Ernst Haeckel. First, his 1971 The Scientific Origins of National Socialism which examines the Monist roots of National Socialism and his 1998 study, Hackel's Monism and the Birth of Fascist Ideology, which extends his analysis by examining Haeckel's influence on French and Italian fascism.

Gasman's work was widely accepted, if not fully appreciated. Now comes Professor Robert Richards to turn Gasman on his head. Where Gasman contends that Haeckelian Monism is significantly different from Darwinian evolutionary theory, Richards argues they were substantially the same. Where Gasman contends that Haeckel was an antisemite, Richards argues he was a friend of the Jews. Where Gasman contends that Haeckel was a proto-Nazi, Richards argues he was hated by the Nazis. Some observers have commented that the debate is about ego's rather than issues; that the debate between Gasman and Richards has become vitriolic and personal and therefore not fit for public consumption. But that view ignores the underlying significance of what is at stake. This is not about Dr. Gasman's or Professor Richards' reputation, although, both are clearly at stake. If Gasman is right, if his criticisms of Richards are sound, Richards reputation and integrity will be called into question. If Richards is right, Gasman's life work becomes a misguided attempt to malign a man who ought to share the stage with Darwin as one of the great heroes of modern science.

But beyond that and far more important is how we end up understanding fascism, the single most pernicious political and social ideology of modern times. Taken in this light, ISAR believes that Richards obscures and Gasman illuminates.

Jews and Neo-Nazis

2009-06-23T05:38:00.000-07:00

In 1994 after I appeared on ABC World News with Peter Jennings talking about the Bell Curve. My ex had just been in a bad accident and was in a cast up to her thigh. The phone rang and this guy started to rant so she hung up. He called back and left this message on the answer machine: "Listen, bitch! I know who you and are where you live and I'm coming for your family."

At the time, we had good friends, Ron and Debbie who were training Rottweiler guard dogs. She was an ex-cop and he was ex-Marine. They moved in with us to help out and brought Tasha, who they were training. She was nearly two hundred pounds of pure muscle and she would sit on my porch like a statue. She wouldn't bark or move when people walked by the house, but if someone stopped in front of the house and looked at the house, Tasha would literally fly off the porch. The heavy chain would yank her to the ground and she would communicated to whoever was standing there that it would be a very good idea to keep moving.

Isaac was about ten and Ron took him to school everyday and picked him up in the afternoon. Isaac liked Ron, but after a few days, I heard Isaac tell him, "Ron, I like you, but I want to meet my friends at our secret fort by myself." I heard Ron say: "Isaac, there are some people who might want to hurt your dad and the worst thing they could do would be to hurt you. I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen." Isaac’s best friend, Austin, who lived next door, might as well have lived on another planet. His front door was never locked and he lived in a place that was safe for children. My son lived in a world where Nazis were still gunning for Jews!

ISAR - Front for Genocide

2009-06-18T06:50:00.000-07:00

We received this email a few weeks ago from Jason.

Your 'institute' is just a front. The truth is that you are a Jew. Your true goal is to exterminate all White people. Just like what happened in East Prussia to the civilian population of Germans when the Soviet Army came. That is your true dream. Mass rapes. Mass murder. The greatest mass rape of children in the history of the world. The Russians used mass rape as a means of ethnic cleansing. Millions of German civilians were taken as slaves east to Siberia.

Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book Gulag Archipelago. He won the Nobel prize in literature for that work. Communism is Jewish in origin. Marx, Engels, Trotskey, Lenin ... they were all Jews. Communism was a Jewish scheme to enslave entire White nations. Your Jewish tricks won't work on me. Lazar kaganovich, another Jews, was responsible for the artificial famine in Ukraine in 1923-24 that killed 7 million White people.

The Jews invented genocide. In the Bible, in the Book of Numbers and later in the book of Joshua we read of mass Genocided comitted by the Jews where they slaughter countless peoples, killing men, women, children, and even their pets and livestock.

I answered Jason:
--- On Sat, 5/30/09, BarryMehler@ferris.edu wrote:

From: BarryMehler@ferris.edu
Subject: Re: your Jewish lies
To: "Jason"
Date: Saturday, May 30, 2009, 10:28 PM

Yeh, that's me. I'm a Jew.

Jason replied:

Jared Taylor had an article published in a mainstream blog today. Read the link below for a rebuttal of your worldview:

http://www.takimag.com/article/what_do_white_nationalists_want/

I'm not going to waste my time debating you. You are liar. As your father, Satan, is the father of lies.

Our movement is growing. You devil, you. You will not stop us. God is on our side. The White race is God's true choosen people.

New Essay Prize on Prejudice

2009-05-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES
ON PREJUDICE

First Annual Paper Prize

The Committee for the Prejudice Paper Prize announces the First Annual Competition for a manuscript on Prejudice from a Psychoanalytic Perspective.

Submissions are welcome for original papers that address any theoretical or empirical aspect of this important subject. Deadline: December 15, 2009.

All papers will be juried by the Paper Prize Committee. A $500 Prize will be awarded to the winning paper. Additionally, a Student Prize of $300 will be awarded to a paper by a graduate student or psychiatry resident (Psychoanalytic Candidates will be considered post-graduates).

Manuscripts should be up to 30 double-spaced pages including references, and could be authored by one or more persons. Please email intention of submitting to committee chairperson.

The journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis will have first right for publication after review. This Paper Prize competition is open to any person interested in writing on the topic of prejudice from a psychoanalytic perspective.

Submissions and Questions should be emailed to: Ron Aviram, Ph.D. at ronaviram@msn.com or 212-439-8070 (Paper Prize Committee Chair).

Each submission should have a cover page with Name, Affiliation, and contact information. Please note if the author is a student or psychiatry resident. No identifying information should appear on the rest of the manuscript.

Updated information can be found at the William Alanson White Institute website: http://www.wawhite.org/home/home.htm

Paper Prize Committee: Cleonie White, Helen Quinones, Fred Millan, Alison Feit, Mark Blechner, Christopher Bonovitz,
Steve Bashkoff, Ron Aviram.

A Response to David Kelsey – The Kvetcher

2009-04-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

David:

First, thank you for inaugurating my new blog. I really appreciate your commenting on my blog. This is my first blog and you’re the first to comment!

The Kvetcher wrote: “My post was, in fact, edited. A lot. All the block quotes--never mind the links--were taken out, and it is consequently much harder to read coherently. But I guess that works well for you with your penchant for nasty name calling that you are famous for, Dr. Mehler.”

I apologize for the inadvertent edits. I just did a cut and paste and obviously some of the formatting changed, I hope that anyone who is interested in your original remarks will go directly to your blog:
http://kvetcher.net/
I would restore the links as you asked, but I’m not sure how to do it. Your welcome to post them.

With regard to my “penchant for nasty name calling” - I must tell you that I have many bad traits. I’ve been called a Marxist and a Lysenkoist. A recent correspondent said I was either irresponsible or despicable and I wrote him back to point out that the two were not mutually exclusive. I might, in fact, be both irresponsible and despicable. David, I have always felt that it is not up to me to decide how to characterize myself and I don’t take offense.

When I characterize certain arguments as “white nationalist” it’s not a matter of name calling, I’m trying to point out that arguments about the dangers of Mexican immigration to American culture or the American nation are basically white nationalist. The United States defines citizens as those born or naturalized and it says nothing about what language they speak or what beliefs they hold about religion or government or anything. The character of this nation has changed dramatically since the colonial days and it is constantly changing. I’m not making that happen. The demography of the world is changing and the kinds of debates we are having, the British and French and Germans are having as well.

Now, you commented, “But it's okay when Israel does it, right?” If you mean, do I believe it is ok to have a Jewish state, I would have to say that if I had been in charge of history, I would have made Israel a bi-national state. What the future will hold for Israel is not up to me. Demography in Israel is changing just as it is changing everywhere. The Arab and non-Jewish minority is growing as a percentage of the population and the conflict between fundamentalist Jews and secular Jews is a serious schism that is growing more serious and shows little sign of any peaceful resolution. I wish I had an answer, but I don’t. In short, I don’t think anything is right just because Israel does it.

A Modest Proposal

2009-04-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

Caryn and I have been researching the immigration restriction movement. As you may know, anti-immigration propaganda has been at the center of the extremist campaign to gain influence politically, not only here in the United States, but globally as well. In the course of our investigation we came upon Stephen Steinlight, a Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), who is trying to convince the Jewish community that we need a stricter immigration policy because the massive Mexican immigration threatens us as Americans and as Jews. This is a daunting task since the Jewish community has always been extremely sympathetic to immigrants.

Steinlight is the last person you would expect to find working for an organization that was started by John Tanton, a racist and antisemite. He began his career working for civil rights organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the U.S. Holocaust Museum. He “converted” – his own term for his change of views – and in 2001, he joined the white nationalist as a Senior Policy Analyst for CIS. Since then he has been trying to convince Jews that Mexican immigration to the U.S. – both legal and illegal – is a threat to the country and to Jews.

He posted a blog on a Jewish web site called, Jewcy (www.jewcy.com), in which he spoke of the danger of “irredentist” Mexicans who refuse to learn English and who remain loyal to Mexico, actually threatening the U.S. sovereignty of states such as Texas, New Mexico and California. At the very least, they threaten the social cohesion of American society. In response, I posted a comment, titled, “A Modest Proposal,” in which I suggested that “it is never too late to give back what has been stolen” and perhaps we ought to just let the Mexicans have Texas, New Mexico and California. What follows below is the reaction to my modest proposal. I must warn you ahead of time, some of what follows are the mindless babblings of individuals devoid of the ability to express themselves in sentences. Clearly, I am gaining a reputation among white nationalists who can barely read.

The first response comes from “The Kvetcher.” I present his blog, unedited:
http://kvetcher.net/

Well, at least he is honest about his hopes for the Southwest
by DK

A man claiming to be Dr. Barry Mehler, a far-Left Jewish activist whose *achievements* include, according to Wikipedia,
“employing ‘inflammatory’ and ‘inquisitional’ anti-racist rhetoric in an effort to spur activism and discredit controversial scientists through the manipulation of popular opinion.”

…proposed on Jewcy that,

I have a modest proposal in regard to this possibility. It is never too late to give back what you have stolen. Let Mexico have Texas, New Mexico and California. The result would be a smaller United States and a larger Mexico. The world’s one great super-power would become more like other nations and we would have to work in concert with others.

He also had some sympathetic words for those of us who want to retain these lands as part of our Anglo-culture.

We live in a hemisphere of the earth that is predominantly Spanish speaking. The age in which European descended white men could rule the earth is over. California, Texas, Florida and New Mexico will become states with majority Spanish speaking populations and their sympathies will be different from those of English speaking white men. It’s always a new world. Get out of the doorway if you can’t understand. The Mexicans are coming and they have every right to be here.
Of course, those of us who do not want this are “white nationalists,” and therefore “racists,” and therefore there is no legitimate debate to suggest stemming the tide, because all who oppose are white nationalist racists anyway.
Just “get out of the doorway.”

And here is the liberteaux - likewise, unedited.
http://www.jewcy.com/post/no_debate_please_were_jewish_0

DoGooder's Holyland

For those of you who haven't figured it out, no World Global Government is going to protect you. When will we learn, for heaven's sake. There is nothing wrong with insisting that people of vastly different cultures shall not be welcome here unless they are willing to become part of the original American project - that being the one invisioned by the wise and worldly founders. Even David Mamet realized their brilliance recently, and has seen the light. Mexico is for Mexicans, if their loyalty is to Mexico. They are just as selfish as we are if they want to come here 'for a better way of life'. What about MY better way of life, which is one that is without them. You say that that Mexican illegals have done nothing bad to this country? When my wife grew up in Phoenix her town of Maryvale was a lovely spot. Now it is gangland. Is it a superior culture who has taken over, or has our weakness and self-imolation to the god of Eastern European remorse still so with us that we are poisoned for life. Have we no self interest that is not tied into the supposed pursuit of 'justice' - when what we really are doing is providing the lawyers to make America-hating immigrants citizens at our own peril? When did we lose sight of justice being two sided - not only for those who want to be happy, but for those of us lucky enough to be here already. I for one have no moral obligation whatsoever to 'make the world happy', especially if it means making myself unhappy. Illegal immigrants have no rights here, and no right to be here at all. There is no univeral right to free immigration. It is a canard intented to keep the weak minded and guilt ridden on a constant journey of self deprication and deprivation so that a sick and sad society can assuage their own feelings of failure. Mexicans have no 'right' to the American West, only America haters think so, so who cares what they think anyway. I love my country just as it was. Where I came from no one discriminated against us for being Jews, we owned and still own the biggest and best apparel stores, furniture stores, hunting and sporting equipment stores, and we do not consider ourselves Askenazi first. We are Americans first. Our friends are white and black Americans who owe no allegiance whatsoever to any world 'justice' movement. Justice is right in front of you if you are just, and nowhere if you are not. I and other Jews like me will continue to support the sheriff in Phoenix who does his job to protect me and my family from those who think they deserve an American life because somebody like you says they have a right to it. You who would like to live in the socialist past of Eastern Europe. You who self-immolate and throw Western Civilization on the fire for your 'justice'. So that you can stand the guilt you allowed your parents to instill in you. A guilt that makes you miserable. My kids are happy. They are not poisoned with the shame of the past. Nor are they so arrogant that they think they can 'save the planet' for everyone but the horrible European white race that made Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Korngold, Wagner, Shakespeare, Somerset Maugham, Rembrandt, Bizet, Puccini and so much more that is detested by the tribal leftist, Caucasian-hating world, ancient and modern. I can't help you. You are amongst the miserable lost. But I can help stop you - for you will once again lead us into chaos and destruction by placing us at the hands of the murdering globalists who always have us in their crosshairs. I will stay an American, thank you very much. And so will my beloved Southwest.

And then a Mexican-American weighed in to point out that: (Edited)

“Hispanic” kids are now 50.2% of ALL first graders in the State of Texas.

55% of births in California are “Hispanic”, 45% of births in Arizona are “Hispanic”, 55% of births in New Mexico are “Hispanic”, 40% of births in Nevada are “Hispanic”, 30% of births in Colorado are “Hispanic”, 30% of births in Florida are non Mexican “Hispanic”. 25% of births in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island (25% in each state) are non Mexican “Hispanic”. …

Whites (Anglos?) have below replacement birthrates all over the globe. In the southwest, this means whites are a mere 27% of births in California. 34% in Texas, etc

You people are waging battles in a war you have already lost. The only thing you can achieve at this point is the retardation of “Hispanic” socio-economic development. The flip side of this is a deep sense of ethnic cohesion….
America has been multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-cultural, etc since the FIRST DAY European illegal aliens set foot on this continent. ANYONE that has a problem with this NOW should go back to their ancestral homelands (Aliya?). Granted people here now should learn English and attempt to acculturate themselves .

Mexican-Americans are as American as ANYONE with roots in Europe. Those of you that hate us so much should make Aliya, go back to Europe, Asia, Middle East, or whatever the case may be. WE SURVIVED 500 YEARS OF EUROPEAN (starting with the Spanish) EFFORTS TO EXTERMINATE US…AND THE NEXT 500 YEARS ARE GONNA BE DIFFERENT!
The craziest thing about being Mexican-American is that after ANOTHER day of tv, magazines, radio, cable “news”, internet, etc telling me how much whites (mostly but not exclusively) hate me, I come home to learn Marine Corps recruiters have come looking for me AGAIN that I may “serve my country”.

However, to borrow a phrase from “The Greatest”; No Iraqi/Afghan ever called me a wetback!

****

Dr. Mehler would only add that the definition of an “American” according to the Fourteenth Amendment, is “anyone born in the United States.” It is a simple definition that says nothing about our language or values – both of which are constantly changing. It is this change that the white nationalists fear and that fear is the engine driving the white nationalist drive.

Today is the last day of the eight day holiday of Pesach. It is a holiday in which Jews remember that they were once immigrants, fleeing famine in Canaan, who settled in Egypt only to find the Egyptians worrying that we would become "too numerous." Driven out, we found ourselves considered barbarian invaders by the natives of the lands we wished to return to. In short, Jews remember what it was like being a stranger in a new land and we are commanded to welcome the stranger, not fear her.

History from the bottom up

2009-03-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

Stephen Pimpare, A People's History of Poverty in America (The New Press People's Histories, 2008) series editor Howard Zinn (Hardcover - Nov 17, 2008)

Walter Benjamin, famously noted that "progress" is the storm irresistibly propelling us into the future, to which our backs are turned, piling wreckage upon wreckage in front of our feet.

Abandon all hope of progress when you enter Pimpare's world of poverty. Here is what Pimpare has to say about progress.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/25/stephen_pimpare_on_a_peoples_history

"Well the way that the history of poverty is usually told is as much other history is told. It’s the history of great men and occasionally great women, right? So we’ll talk about Jane Addams or FDR or LBJ, or alternatively, we’ll talk about moments of state or national policy innovation. So we’ll focus on state-level innovations of the Progressive Era or of the New Deal programs of the 1930s or of the Great Society programs of the 1960s.

What I have done in this book is to ask, what happens if instead of asking “How has policy changed over time?” we invert our analysis and ask the question “How has the experience of being poor and in need changed over time?” And one of the consequences I argue of doing that is, among other things, instead of comforting ourselves with a relatively progressive story, a forward-moving story, an evolutionary story, that no matter how bad things may be at any given moment in time, they have in fact gotten better, what I argue is in fact the constants, the consistency of that experience of poverty over the course of American history has changed much less than we might like to believe."

According to Pimpare:
Among "advanced" nations, we have the highest of rates of poverty; the highest rates of childhood poverty; the second highest rates of elderly poverty; the highest rates of long-term poverty; of permanent poverty and income inequality. We boast the highest rates of incarceration; the highest rates of health-care costs and the highest CEO pay. At the same time, only Australia and New Zealand have longer average work weeks. We have one of the highest rates of infant mortality with Taiwan, Belgium, Cuba and the Czech Republic all showing lower rates of infant mortality than the US.

At the same time, the United States ranks among the very lowest for high school graduation, health-care coverage, mandated vacation and paid parental leave, voter participation, women in the national legislature, working-class wages, living standards among those at the bottom, and life expectancy. A 2005 study by Save the Children found ten countries in which mothers and their children fare better than in the United States. The infant mortality rate for African Americans in Washington, D.C., is higher than in the poor Indian state of Karala, and the overall infant death rate in the United States is the same as in Malaysia. Men in Bangladesh stand it better chance of surviving to age sixty-five than black men in Harlem. There is much that is exceptional about the United States, much that is extraordinary and worthy of celebration, but many Americans, perhaps /8/ most, would be better off elsewhere. As social-welfare analyst David Wagner has observed, it may be that our self-congratulatory rhetoric, what he calls our "virtue talk," obscures the less noble reality: Americans do less for the least among us than do other Western industrialized nations. (Introduction, p. 8.)

Medical Apartheid

2009-03-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

I would like to recommend a few relatively new books that are on my desk waiting for a review to be posted on our ISAR website.

Harriet Washington has written an astonishing history of racism in the medical profession from colonial times to the present.

Book details:
Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Random House 2006)

ISBN: 978-0-385-50993-0 (0-385-50993-6

You can listen to an interview of the author on Democracy Now:

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/19/medical_apartheid_the_dark_history_of

Many people believe that the history of racism is a history of a progression away from racism and towards greater tolerance. There is little evidence of progress in this monograph.

The ISAR Blog

2009-03-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

For those not familiar with ISAR, an introduction.
Our website: www.ferris.edu/isar

The Institute for the Study of Academic Racism (ISAR) at Ferris State University is a non-profit educational foundation that acts as a resource service for students, academics, journalists, legislators and civil rights activists.

ISAR monitors changing intellectual trends in academic racism, biological determinism, and eugenics. ISAR's investigative work has resulted in feature articles in such prominent newspapers and magazines as the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Science Magazine. ISAR staff have worked with Congress and the Justice Department as well as national civil rights organizations. The institute promotes research in academic racism by posting extensive bibliographies and maintaining an on-line archive of primary and secondary sources.

The Institute encourages an activist approach to understanding. It challenges students to advance the cause of social justice by countering the intellectual and ideological foundations of prejudice. ISAR's goal is to engage students in projects that result in both a lasting contribution to human knowledge as well as real and immediate social change. One such project organized by students at the University of Hawaii -- a study of Stanley Porteus (1883-1972), a psychologist and academic advocate of segregation and apartheid, resulted in a unanimous vote by the UH Board of Regents in April, 1998 to de-name Porteus Hall. The project involved an educational campaign aimed at the campus community as well as the creation of an on-line archive of permanent historical value. Students learned not only academic and political skills, they learned how to use their academic skills to bring about real social change.

In 1991, ISAR director and founder, Dr. Barry Mehler, presented a report on the international eugenics movement at the Winston Institute's International Congress on Discrimination and Conflict in Jerusalem, Israel. In 1993, ISAR presented a report on 'Race, Law and the Political Process' to the National Executive Committee of the Anti-Defamation League. In 1994, ISAR helped prepare the 'Final Report of the McIntosh Commission on Fair Play in Student-Athlete Admissions' which was submitted to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Competitiveness, chaired by then Congresswoman Cardiss Collins. In 1997, ISAR's report on psychologist Raymond B. Cattell was the subject of extensive comment in the international press.